No robotic love?

[jkwleisemann]

You know, I was poking through some of the character lists that are out there (and books full of them), and something occurred to me.

 

There are incredibly few super-robots in the current Champions Universe.

 

By 'super-robot,' for the record, I mean artificial, technologically created, lifeforms that have intelligence (to a large degree, at any rate), powers that put them beyond normal humans and usually give them combat capability, and the big one - free will.

 

So Mechanon is in, but the Viper combat-drones and Destroids are out.

 

The thing is... unless I've missed something... it's pretty much *just* Mechanon out there.

 

Is it backlash against Mechanon? "The last time somebody did that, look what happened?" Or just no love for mechanical menaces (or good guys, for that matter) anymore?

[Hermit]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Player wise, I think they're just costly to make. Life Support can get expensive (20 points to have my robot immune to diseases and poisons? yowch). Official universe wise... mm you got me. There are some AI computers, but they aren't particularly ambulatory.

[Tom]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Syzygy in VVV qualifies I believe...

[Asperion]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Here is something that could be a good reason for why the mechoniods do not exist: Money and Time. Think of it this way - the AI brain will take months to years to develop at millions of dollars each year, the motor systems will need to be created in a manner that will all work together (no easy task), weapons arrays that will do its fuction with no harm to the robot, etc. In the end, the time, effort, and expense that goes into a simple humaniform robot will cost millions to billions and take more than 18 months. Unless you have the backing of some major corporation or government, there is no way that you will even be a fraction of the way to covering these problems. Most of the time these entities will want to have something that they can totally control, which cancels the AI.

[assault]

Re: No robotic love?

 

More to the point, the old CU robots from the Enemies books were written out. At least a couple of them were alien, and didn't really fit the current CU.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Hopefully we can get some return to the "High Tech Enemies" area in the 2007-2008 schedules. (I think we may be getting a little help in the high-tech area in CCC, at least generally, but not much in the way of robots.) That -- not just the robots, but the broader high-tech scene of which robots are just a part -- is one thing I've desperately missed in the new CU, especially with all of the coverage we've gotten from the mystical side of things.

[Metaphysician]

Re: No robotic love?

 

I tend to think that most of the aspects of Life Support are overpriced for a supers game, disease and poison immunity in particular.

[ghost-angel]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Here is something that could be a good reason for why the mechoniods do not exist: Money and Time. Think of it this way - the AI brain will take months to years to develop at millions of dollars each year' date=' the motor systems will need to be created in a manner that will all work together (no easy task), weapons arrays that will do its fuction with no harm to the robot, etc. In the end, the time, effort, and expense that goes into a simple humaniform robot will cost millions to billions and take more than 18 months. Unless you have the backing of some major corporation or government, there is no way that you will even be a fraction of the way to covering these problems. Most of the time these entities will want to have something that they can totally control, which cancels the AI.[/quote']

 

Given the large number of lab accidents that result in mutants. in the CU I would say the chances of an AI spontaneously forming on a Commadore64 are relatively high, much less an more advanced machine.

[gmurie]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Given the large number of lab accidents that result in mutants. in the CU I would say the chances of an AI spontaneously forming on a Commadore64 are relatively high' date=' much less an more advanced machine.[/quote']

 

Plus "The Commodore" would be a pretty cool name for a character.

 

From a story/role playing perspective robots just aren't that interesting. Marvel had something good going with VISION, but in the end he was just a dude with powers and red skin. Little of the fact that he was a robot showed through in the story lines.

 

A lot of the rest of the "robot" characters in comics like Robotman were brains or personality engrams scooped out of a meatbody and shoved into a machine body. The Champions universe does have plenty of those.

[braincraft]

Re: No robotic love?

 

I hate things like robots, because once you have one, you open the door for lots of others, and then the tech levels in your world start exploding beyond your control.

 

It's easier to scale back on robots and hyper-scientists.

[Enforcer84]

Re: No robotic love?

 

What fun is that?

[Lucius]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Player wise' date=' I think they're just costly to make. Life Support can get expensive (20 points to have my robot immune to diseases and poisons? yowch). Official universe wise... mm you got me. There are some AI computers, but they aren't particularly ambulatory.[/quote']

 

Crossposted from: What I Learned Playing a Robot

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Just because you technically don't "eat" or "breathe" or "sleep" or even "get sick" does NOT mean that you need to take the full suite of Life Support Powers.

 

You don't eat, but you do need to input energy in some form, and even materiels (spare parts, perhaps.) Do you really need "Does not eat?"

 

Unless you were specifically designed for multiple environments, that does not mean you won't suffer deleterious effects if dropped into water, methane, a high pressure atmosphere, or vaccuum. Just because you don't "breathe" as such, doesn't mean you can't be deactivated or even destroyed if out of the environment you were designed for.

 

You don't "sleep" but you may need regular downtime for self-maintenance, internal computer diagnostics, and to correlate and properly assimilate the day's experiences into your memory banks.

 

Just because you're not organic, doesn't mean you can't catch a virus. Or a worm. Just because you can ignore some or most of the things that poison a Human, doesn't mean there aren't substances that will do you serious damage. Instead of taking a broad-based immunity, ask if you can be assumed to be vulnerable to different things - the way a fish doesn't need "life support" to breathe water, it just has a different "default" environment.

 

Just because you don't feel "pain" (trust me, you're not missing anything) doesn't mean you should have Takes No Stun. If you get hit by a lightning bolt, it's still a shocking experience. You can be "stunned" just as effectively as if you felt pain, and you can be rendered temporarily inoperable as readily as a Human can be rendered unconscious - and they are the same thing mechanically (pardon the expression.)

 

Parts wear out. Quantum effects and background radiation eventually degrade even shielded positronic brains. Even personality programs that are repeatedly uploaded to new bodies become corrupt over time. Check out your warranty. Odds are, you DON'T really have "Immunity to Aging."

 

 

They are damned expensive characters to create.

 

Keith "Stupid 5th Ed. Life Support" Curtis

 

That depends on your assumptions. See above.

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Things I learned riding a palindromedary

[Hermit]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Just because you're not organic, doesn't mean you can't catch a virus. Or a worm. Just because you can ignore some or most of the things that poison a Human, doesn't mean there aren't substances that will do you serious damage. Instead of taking a broad-based immunity, ask if you can be assumed to be vulnerable to different things - the way a fish doesn't need "life support" to breathe water, it just has a different "default" environment.

 

IF you can get your GM to agree to this, it works fine, but not every GM will allow it ,and some will prefer if you take a physical limitation disad for what your character is affected by as a robot, while still demanding the full price for the immunity to diseases and toxins instead. In which case, you're back at square one of it being a pretty big bite into your character points.

[Narratio]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Even if allowed, or even desired, robots are a tricky to play. No matter what we write for characteristics, back history, actions etc, during a role play, the real you will start to creep in. The character will do things that you do, and then you have to spend time justifying it, etc.

 

With robots, the role play is truly wierd. Why on earth (mars/krypton) would a robot want to get involved with any of the things that humans do? Sitting in a cupboard, soaking up power and downloading information from the web appears to be the best course of action in most cases. Engaging Grond in hand to hand battle? Outracing missiles to save people you don't know (and whose probable net addition to culture, economic wealth or knowledge base is a negative number) seems pointless, especially when you could suffer immense damage.

 

Really players don't create robot characters because there's no persoanl connection to a machine. GM's don't create robot characters for the same reasons and because, when you've seen one Mechanon/Ultron, you've probably seen them all.

[wrestlinggeek]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Engaging Grond in hand to hand battle? Outracing missiles to save people you don't know (and whose probable net addition to culture, economic wealth or knowledge base is a negative number) seems pointless, especially when you could suffer immense damage.

 

 

Three Laws (thank you, Mr. Asimov)

 

1. A robot may not harm a human, or through inaction, allow a human to come to harm. (Better stop those missiles.)

 

2. A robot must follow any orders given to it by a human, unless they contradict the First Law. ("Hey, robot! Go fight Grond!")

 

3. A robot must preseve itself, unless this conflicts with the First or Second Laws. ("Hey, robot! Go fight Grond!")

 

Program any robot with these (and throw in the Zeroeth Law, for good measure), add appropriate capabilities, and you've got instant Superhero! Or, if you prefer something that gives the character a little more flexibility, there's always Robocop's Prime Directives:

 

1. Serve the Public Trust.

 

2.Protect the Innocent.

 

3.Uphold the Law.

 

And, yes, you can have free will and preprogrammed directives in the same character. But, if we're asking why a robot would be motivated to act as a superhero, we might as well ask why any super-powered individual would be motivated to act in such a manner. And, isn't asking that question a big part of superhero role-playing in the first place?

[Narratio]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Can't disagree with you too much, but players want thier characters to be human and that means doing what they want, no matter the effect to thier cause. Following the 3 (or 4) laws would put the robot leaving the fight against the villain to go and stop a flood/ fire/ whatever, as that other event placed more humans at risk than the current villain did. He/she/it would walk away from a theft in progress to rescue somebody from a fire say.

 

Too many limitations or restrictions of choice don't make the 'is a robot' choice attractive to players.

[Lucius]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Can't disagree with you too much, but players want thier characters to be human and that means doing what they want, no matter the effect to thier cause. Following the 3 (or 4) laws would put the robot leaving the fight against the villain to go and stop a flood/ fire/ whatever, as that other event placed more humans at risk than the current villain did. He/she/it would walk away from a theft in progress to rescue somebody from a fire say.

 

Too many limitations or restrictions of choice don't make the 'is a robot' choice attractive to players.

 

And how is this different from the limitations imposed by Psychological Limitations?

 

Lots of my characters would respond like the robot you describe.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

And an irrelevant palindromedary tagline

[Tech]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Even if allowed, or even desired, robots are a tricky to play. No matter what we write for characteristics, back history, actions etc, during a role play, the real you will start to creep in. The character will do things that you do, and then you have to spend time justifying it, etc.

 

With robots, the role play is truly wierd. Why on earth (mars/krypton) would a robot want to get involved with any of the things that humans do? Sitting in a cupboard, soaking up power and downloading information from the web appears to be the best course of action in most cases. Engaging Grond in hand to hand battle? Outracing missiles to save people you don't know (and whose probable net addition to culture, economic wealth or knowledge base is a negative number) seems pointless, especially when you could suffer immense damage.

 

Really players don't create robot characters because there's no persoanl connection to a machine. GM's don't create robot characters for the same reasons and because, when you've seen one Mechanon/Ultron, you've probably seen them all.

 

Have you seen "My Life As A Teenage Robot"? Now this robot breaks the mold.

[Tech]

Robot love here

 

In my group's campaign, several robot characters have been tried. Years ago... some of the current Hero Games players weren't born then... I tried a Vision rip-off and it failed. A couple years or so later, my brother tried a robot character and it failed. More recently within the past seven years (I think), one of my friends tried it and it didn't work - although I think it's more because of the way funky power(s) write-up.

 

And then recently within the past few months, I tried again...

 

And succeeded beyond anyone's expectations! If you get stuck on assumptions of what a robot character supposedly can and can't do, you've shot yourself in the foot. Some of the ideas I've read here of what a robot can and cannot do, what's it like and not like, etc etc are (again) assumptions based on stories and movies. I simply refused to go those routes and I've having a blast playing a robot. Do I have difficulties playing my character? Nope! Any differences in playing a robot versus oh, say a human, isn't a hurdle to jump over but something I use for interesting or funny effects.

[OddHat]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Genre-wise, outside of the CU, Robots aren't being used out there quite as much as they used to be. Biotech is in the public's imagination right now, and a bio-bot looks cooler when you blow it up / splatter it / or otherwise use it for the same purposes so many robots used to be used (something the Heroes can smash without messy questions about the morality of excessive force). Every other Hero these days seems to have massive regeneration and regrowth as well, so the old robot role of being the guy who gets maimed or eviscerated can now be taken by non-robot "heroes".

 

Within a CU campaign, assuming you don't want to just introduce whatever robots you feel like, the easiest assumption is that the huge numbers of rebellious, free willed robots created from the 40s to the 80s finally convinced inventors that the risks weren't worth the potential profits.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Can't disagree with you too much, but players want thier characters to be human and that means doing what they want, no matter the effect to thier cause. Following the 3 (or 4) laws would put the robot leaving the fight against the villain to go and stop a flood/ fire/ whatever, as that other event placed more humans at risk than the current villain did. He/she/it would walk away from a theft in progress to rescue somebody from a fire say.

 

Too many limitations or restrictions of choice don't make the 'is a robot' choice attractive to players.

 

Just because a character is a robot doesn't mean they are automatically programmed with Asimov's laws, or any hard-coded limitations. That's a player decision. That's why they're free-willed robots, not automatons.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: No robotic love?

 

It might have something to do w/ it being expensive to model all the stuff a robot should have for not much game effect, and also that most robots end up looking very similarly to each other mechanically making it kind of boring / limiting.

 

 

Anyway, here are a couple of "robot" villains on my site that I tried to make interesting in some way other than just "its a robot":

 

Mr Roboto

 

THUG

THUGBE

THUGEE

[ghost-angel]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Can't disagree with you too much, but players want thier characters to be human and that means doing what they want, no matter the effect to thier cause. Following the 3 (or 4) laws would put the robot leaving the fight against the villain to go and stop a flood/ fire/ whatever, as that other event placed more humans at risk than the current villain did. He/she/it would walk away from a theft in progress to rescue somebody from a fire say.

 

Too many limitations or restrictions of choice don't make the 'is a robot' choice attractive to players.

 

Invoke the 0th Law. Worked for R. Daneel Olivaw

[Vestnik]

Re: No robotic love?

 

Player wise' date=' I think they're just costly to make. Life Support can get expensive (20 points to have my robot immune to diseases and poisons? yowch). Official universe wise... mm you got me. There are some AI computers, but they aren't particularly ambulatory.[/quote']

 

This is one reason why I hate the "only powers that cost END can go in an EC" rule. Without my Life Support in a "Robotic Body" EC, there's no way I can do it on 350 points.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: No robotic love?

 

This is one reason why I hate the "only powers that cost END can go in an EC" rule. Without my Life Support in a "Robotic Body" EC' date=' there's no way I can do it on 350 points.[/quote']

 

This is what house rules are for.