Quote from: jibbajibba;750981(Scott - I played a sword once in a D&D campaign. My PC died I could see no way for him to come back until we escaped the location so the DM offered me to play an intelligent blade the owner of which the party had just killed. Was pretty good fun for a few sessions )

Intelligent weapons are among my favorite DM tools. It takes a special kind of player to successfully roleplay one though I find.

A robot character needs to have a reason for being built in the first place.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;751809A robot character needs to have a reason for being built in the first place.

Quite the opposite. People build thousands of robots, unless they are one of a kind, Data-like robots.

Robot characters need to have a reason for why they are doing what they are doing, why they are different to other robots, but not why they were built.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;751791Intelligent weapons are among my favorite DM tools. It takes a special kind of player to successfully roleplay one though I find.

It was great. Took a Uriah Heep approach right up until the bearer had dropped enough HP for me to own them on ego

Quote from: soltakss;751875People build thousands of robots, unless they are one of a kind, Data-like robots.

Link, or it didn't happen.

Also, why are the robot(s) being built? No fail this time.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;751809A robot character needs to have a reason for being built in the first place.

One of my favorite passtimes on a MUD I used to play on was to transform myself into a magical sword and just lay there waiting for some new player to happen along and pick me up. Then theyd hear in their minds "Who now dares wield me!!!"

A few months afo I believe someone Kickstartered an RPG where you play magical weapons.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;751900Link, or it didn't happen.

Also, why are the robot(s) being built? No fail this time.

Servant robots: Janitors, maids, etc.
Military robots: Soldiers mostly
Worker robots: Heavy lifters, construction, etc.

As for why build an advanced robot?

Hobby: Because you can.
Assistant: Data storage and retrieval, lesser tasks.
Exploration: Hazardous environs or mobile sensor platform.
Weapons platform/Bodyguard: Carry the recoilless rifle without getting tired.
Proof of Concept: They said it couldnt be done!
Infiltration: Spy, walking bomb, built in recording of evidence, etc.
Medical research: Testing platforms for human cybernetics or even a platform for a full conversion cyborg.
Entertainment: Robot gladiators, robot actors, etc.
Crew: To fill positions or because they can handle the station better.
Grief: To replace or honour a lost loved one. Or to avenge them.
Companionship

Lots of other reasons to build.
8-Man was a special police operative/detective. Fairly common on TV as well.
Astro Boy was built by a grieving father in the image of his son. Pops up in movies now and then.
Data was built as a proof of concept mostly.
Cherry 2000 was an adult companion bot. Also a fairly common theme.

Quote from: Omega;751910Cherry 2000 was an adult companion bot.

And a pretty good film, with the bad guys going off into the desert with packed lunches.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;751809A robot character needs to have a reason for being built in the first place.

No, the robot may have been built to serve a purpose, but when it becomes a character it no longer has to pursue that purpose.

There is a guy who builds robots out of technological parts and pieces of dead animals (some of his stuff has been seen in NIN videos) and he calls it art.

Quote from: jeff37923;752023No, the robot may have been built to serve a purpose, but when it becomes a character it no longer has to pursue that purpose.

I played in a comedy anime style game where everyone just came up with whatever they could think of and stuffed it into one game, my wife came up with an assassin android that desperately wanted to be a cook.

She had a high poisons skill and the fault of "Confuses poison skill for cooking". She worked for an eccentric billionaire who had an "immunity to poisons" advantage and loved her cooking that was played by another one of the players.

It was actually really a fun game. Anyway, yeah, robots trying to be not what they were built for is a fun concept to explore, either seriously or not.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;752055I played in a comedy anime style game where everyone just came up with whatever they could think of and stuffed it into one game, my wife came up with an assassin android that desperately wanted to be a cook.

She had a high poisons skill and the fault of "Confuses poison skill for cooking". She worked for an eccentric billionaire who had an "immunity to poisons" advantage and loved her cooking that was played by another one of the players.

I'm stealing this.

One of my favorite setting setups for d20 Gamma World was the City of Forgotten Toys. Which was a ruined city where robotic AI toys had gathered into a society and attracted other lost machines over time.

Planned but never published was a TSR RPG where you would have been playing robots. I believe it was all robots. No humans. Been ages and cant pin down the article.

I wouldn't bother to make a robot PC "fair".  They'd have great strength, AC, but would be immune to or affected differently by a great variety of spells, couldn't heal naturally, etc.

Quote from: Omega;752167Planned but never published was a TSR RPG where you would have been playing robots. I believe it was all robots. No humans. Been ages and cant pin down the article.

It was called Proton Fire.  It was sometime between Dragon 98 and 150 I think.

There was also a game called Nuts and Volts by the author of Top Secret in White Wolf Magazine it was issues 10 - 11 maybe.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Superior strength

Depends on design. Brute strength might be relatively affordable, but great strength COMBINED with good or even passable desterity is going to cost a lot of money, as you'll need a lot of percision parts.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Superior intellectual processing speed

Depends on model design. Possibly FAER better than organics in mathematics and organizational skills, not necessarily as good in skills requiring creativity unless a "full" AI.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- 100% recall and photo-video-audio recording capabilities.

Depends on the memory management system, after all storing EVERYTHING the robot senses is going to take a lot of space and be difficult (slow) to search; AIs will probably have memory systems organized along Human lines rather than a hard drive.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Immunity to pain

Possible. An AI with a synthetic body might be programmed to feel pain. Otherwise yeah, immunity to pain.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Immunity to psychology and emotions

A sentient AI will probably have emotions and psychology of some sort, this usually goes along with consciousness. semi-sentient proto-AIs will most likely have software bugs instead of psychological issues.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Immunity to physiological issues (disease, poison, starvation, suffocation, exhaustion)

Might be vulnerable to radiation instead and require large amounts of energy instead of food. Might also require routine maintenance instead of rest. And routine maintenance on an expensive robot might be costly.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Immunity to telepathy

Vulnerability to hacking, which is typically more common than telepathy.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Ability to be upgraded or re-fitted

Upgrades might be expensive. Also, a robot might get obsolete soon and thus NEED to be upgraded to catch up with software updates and/or fix hardware and software bugs.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Can lie flawlessly

Might not understand WHEN to lie and/or might be programmed to provide the truth at all times.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Cannot harm sentient creatures or let them come to harm (Laws of Robotics, getting kind of corny and don't make sense in many settings)
- Must obey certain creatures.
- Have terrible social skills (except for lying).
- Vulnerable to hacking.
- Super vulnerable to EMP and similar "kills tech" effects.
- Energy hogs.
- Can't heal naturally, must be repaired rather than medically treated.

A semi-sentient proto AI might have much slower learning rates than a sentient being, that is, it might start with good skills, but be unable to improve them by learning, possibly requiring costly upgrades to improve its skills, and/or much slower learning.