Dragon Warriors

Does anyone have any experience with using automatons/robots/droids as a playable race in DW? If so, I'd love to hear it.

Failing that, does anyone have any thoughts on how they might be incorporated into the game?

Off-hand, the one thing I'm fairly certain of is that I wouldn't want just one single model of robot. In fact, I'm more inclined to the opposite end of the spectrum, such that finding two identical automatons would be pretty unusual. Thoughts?

I really believe one of these days if I got a lot of free time I can run a game where people play mishapened hellions. Realistically unlikely. I suppose book 4 was too small to include much in the way of variables but you could probably create an entry similar to Hellions.

Man, now that I think of it, I better read up on Hellions on the new rulebook.

Yeah, some may be limited. The text talks about the variations, like how some of them operate like radios and you can have some looks 18 automaton I'm sure. I also like to think that there are variations based on the materials used, like metallic ones, clay ones, wooden automaton... and some of them may not be humanoid.

Something like R2D2 which serves refreshments. I know in episode 2 and 3 he became a savage little fighter but before that he just carried stuff like beverages and lightsabers....

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That's a pretty interesting thought. Definitely bears thinking about...

Thanks!

To make them easier to play by a real person, you could propose that androids where designed not only to look like humans, but to also act like them, requiring complex artificial brains. Minds of such complexity would eventually develop self awareness and free will, so originally androids would have been 'factory reset' periodically to maintain their original programming.

But those times are long past. Any androids that still exist have long since evolved mentally, with full faculties of emotion and personality, though perhaps with a undertone of a deeper, colder logic.

Those that still exist are terribly ancient, but have long since lost the memory of their past - like humans, they were never designed to store much data, so their memories only go back a few hundred years at most, new experiences eventually overwriting the old.

Occasionally you'll find androids with little or no experience - juveniles in some respects. Typically these are units that needed to reset their systems due to damage or unrecoverable error, being reborn as a new consciousness in an old body.

That's another good thought. Such characters are most certainly possible, and therefore likely to exist to some degree or another, in the world I'm developing.

My original concept was more along the lines of DW's automatons, though with a much wider range of designs, incorporating things along the lines of R2D2 (though probably not the "super powered" version seen outside of Episodes 4 and 5), the robots in Silent Running and Interstellar, and Gerdy from Moon. It seems to me that we (humans) are likely to be more comfortable with such plainly artificial creations than with things like the replicants from Blade Runner, A.I., and the Alien franchise of movies. But I'm interested in hearing other takes on that.

Another thing that I'm not sure about with androids, speaking from a strictly mechanical standpoint, is how much they differentiate themselves from human characters. Conventional robots, as outlined above, are obviously very distinctive from the other races. What makes androids mechanically distinct from a human, elf, or dwarf?

I would presume playable automatons would be those designed to mimic or pass as humans or meta-humans rather than utility robots. Roles where human interaction was common or a primary function, such as domestic help, customer support or pleasure bots.

As such these androids would have come in a variety of forms, including all the playable races. As form follows function, an android version of a race would have the same characteristics as a biological version of that race. They were not designed for military or exploratory functions, so do not have super strength, speed or an array of additional sensory capabilities.

They have some differences though - they require neither air, food nor water to survive, though must periodically recharge their energy reserves via solar energy. They must simply expose themselves to sunlight for at least an hour to recoup a day's worth of energy, and can store up to 10 days of energy at a time. Modesty is not a virtue held by many Automatons. If they run out of energy they simply shut down - exposing them to sunlight will allow them to recharge.

They are much more tolerant of extremes of heat and cold, and are immune to disease, poisons and mind control. However, any electrical or exotic energy based attacks will do double damage, and healing magic has no effect on them.

They have a natural AF of 1.

They do not pass out when at zero hit points. They are self healing, though this is still a slow process at best and works just as it would for a human character. They do not need to sleep, though must enter a low power mode that appears as a sleep like state to heal themselves.

They cannot cast magic in any form. They do not age.

They can communicate 'telepathically' with any other automaton or sentient magical device within a range of about 100 meters (and as such will know if one is nearby if they are 'broadcasting').

Some societies may shun automatons, and many hide their true nature from their biological counterparts. Because of their special abilities, automatons are often found employed as spies, assassins and in other espionage roles, further increasing the distrust held for their kind.

A player may be an Automaton if none of their attribute scores are below 9, and they roll a 16 or higher for psychic talent (I'm making a presumption here that magic is fact high technology - Automatons are very aware of 'magic' in the environment, though their artificial design does not allow them to take full advantage of it).

Here's a question: should an automaton be able to advance in rank, or to improve, mechanically-speaking, through acquired knowledge and experience?

I've been working on this under the presupposition that such characters should have fairly static abilities. Automatons might start off more capable than the average human character but they would not improve, nor could they achieve the same level of power that men might reach later in a game. Is there something I'm missing by going with that approach?

Thanks for sharing that! I really hadn't considered incorporating such characters, but there's a lot of good ideas there, and I'm definitely going to give that more thought.

I'd allow normal advancement - there could be a presumption that player character automatons have been 'reset' in the recent past, so are gradually adding knowledge on top of their basic starting memory and skills. Any AI that needs to accommodate a wide range of possible situations would need to be a learning machine to some degree.

There could of course be specialised automatons with much less flexible programming, not designed for much human interaction. I'd imagine these would be NPC's, and may also have physical modifications pertaining to their original roles.

Note that although automatons are immune to typical biological illnesses and mind control, there may be certain magical devices that were designed to target automatons specifically, infecting them with magical 'viruses' that disrupt or take control of their systems. Rare artefacts, but not unknown.

Glanced at the Hellion rules. As much as there are so many variations with Hellions, I think in the same way you get so many kinds of automatons, some fly, some of them are encased in metal, some crawl along the ground or use wheels like in the star wars movie. In the same way you could probably use a variation of those tables for Automaton.

Sure, there are ones specifically designed to be humanoid, or closely resemble them. However some of them might not resemble anything and might pass for some kind of hellion with their unnatural appearance.

Perhaps a different form of advancement, more in the way of skills and less in the way of physical ability. Perhaps for them its important to have a good engineer/sapper who can refit them with better and more robust spare parts, casings and all. I always thought sappers would be the ones who create automaton at rank 12+....

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