Hypothetical:
Verser Velma meets a nice android named Andy and decides to take him with her as an associate. In her next verse, she and Andy come to in the cargo hold of the Mary Piper Alpha. When they stand up, they need make skill checks to see how well they can walk under these challenging conditions. Velma rolls her B2@4 Walk at Walking Speeds.
What does Andy roll?
Is this T12@3 Operate Self (Android)? Can I call it B2@4, because it's his body, organic or in-? Or should I keep it tech, but knock the operation down to 12@0 out of charity?
If I take one of the tech options, what do I do when Velma decides to teach him martial arts?
Isn't his Bod rating - a measure of how well coordinated he his, how fluidly he can move, and so on - a function of how well constructed he is, and therefore a function of whoever built him?
Put it like this: I can go down to Radio Shack right now and with my 1@8 Robotics skill build myself a clockwork arm. It might be able to swing a hammer, or flip a skillet, but it'll never be Jackie Chan's arm. But then, I'm no Noonien Soong. I can't exactly built robot ninjas - but in all the multiverse I'm sure there's some guy with a 3@5 Build Robot Ninja skill who can, and his clockwork arms will be fluid and well coordinated and actually be able to throw a punch - a much more respectable Bod rating than my unguided clockwork limb.
I don't know exactly how the creator's Build Android skill would relate to the resulting android's Bod rating, but I'm sure they are, or ought to be, related somehow.
As for teaching him martial arts, would that be him sort of photographically memorizing her moves and extrapolating from there? (I imagine androids must learn at a phenominal rate - positronic brains, and all.) Or is it more her programming him to thereafter know Kung Fu? I don't imagine that teaching an Android Kung Fu would look anything at all like teaching it to a human.
Well, sure - I expect that the skill of his designers and builders are reflected in his BRAs and skill levels at various tasks.
There are several reasons I want to avoid making this a "creator's skill check" situation. One is that, as an associate of Velma, Andy will be doing a lot of very different things, and I want to spare myself the burden of deciding the exact sitmod to the creator's skill in robot design every time. Another is that, as a sentient entity, Andy is capable of making is own decisions and learning from his experiences. It just makes sense for him to have his own attributes and skills. And if he has skills, the bias of the skill he uses in this hypothetical scenario has immediate and observable consequences.
* If it's a T12@3 Operate Self, the skill is curved out - he is unable to operate his own body. Better luck next verse.
* If it's B2@4, I'm granting his everyday workings Bod status; not only does that mean his walking check in this instance is adjusted by (the higher of his or the world's) Bod bias level, it means that if he follows Velma into a world where the Tech bias is through the roof (say, 15@10) but the Bod bias is -10@1, neither of them can walk.
* If it's T12@0, he can walk in the Mary Piper and his skill check is adjusted by tech bias (his or the world's). More importantly, though, as an @0 skill, his self-operation can never be curved out, and he will (almost) always be able to walk - much in the same way that Velma, in the negatively bod biased world mentioned above, can still see, hear, and speak.
Sorry, somehow I missed half of your comment.
I don't imagine that teaching an Android Kung Fu would look anything at all like teaching it to a human.
My "suppose" assumes she's trying exactly that - teaching Andy as if he were a human.
Now, if Andy has Bod skills defined up through B5@3 Broad Jump, then there really isn't that much reason that he couldn't pick it up in the same way humans do - that's the same bias gap everyone has before learning a martial art for the first time. But, defining his movements and so forth as Bod would have other ramifications as well, as I point out above.
If he has no bod skills at all - that is, if we've defined everything as tech, down to seeing and hearing and standing up - then his highest biased bod skill is "nonexistant," and he's working against a bias gap of seven whole levels. If that's the case, teaching him the human way would be practically impossible. You could even make the argument that he doesn't have the required body structure to learn the skill (a requirement unique to the Bod bias area) and forbid him from learning martial arts at all.
But, if you do that, what happens when she tracks down Noonien Soong, pays him to hack into Andy's head, and teaches him martial arts that way? Shouldn't robot ninjas be possible? Is it a bod skill, or some sort of weird T12@1 Martial Art?
I really think it ought to be a bod skill. General Grievous, for instance, has four arms that can wield lightsabers because the guy who built his body gave them to him. He knows how to use them to wield lightsabers because Count Dooku taught him to. That's sort of the situation Andy is in here - he has the body his builder built him, and now he wants to learn how to use it in a new way. It's absolutely a Bod skill.
For it to be a Tech 12@0 Operate Self, you're assuming his Self is separate from the workings of his mechanical body, and I'd really rather avoid the philosophical "can a robot have a soul" argument that would provoke.
And I don't think you would have to define it against his creator for each skill, just for the highest one he started life with. Then you can just extrapolate from there for anything else he might be trying to learn, no?
Then if he does track down Dr. Soong (hopefully in a world where he's not dead yet) and get him to program some martial arts algorithms for him... then he just slots a chip and has 2@5 Robot Ninjutsu, or something. No training required, just Dr. Soong making a Build/Repair Android check.
I think I understand your argument here. When you say "it" ought to be a bod skill, it sounds like you're only talking about the martial arts; do you think his ability to stand, walk, and see ought to be bod as well?
The bit I don't understand is this:
For it to be a Tech 12@0 Operate Self, you're assuming his Self is separate from the workings of his mechanical body, and I'd really rather avoid the philosophical "can a robot have a soul" argument that would provoke.
(Of course a robot can have a soul; there are universes in which animism is true and rocks have souls. That's a side issue, though.)
I'm not sure how I can separate his self from "his mechanical body." He is his body in the same way that you are yours. Most of the time, you have no trouble at all operating your body. Occasionally, though - for example, when you find yourself at sea on a rocking boat and attempt to walk normally - circumstances test your ability to use your physical form to achieve the results you want, and we ask you for a skill roll.
You, as a member of Animalia Chordata Mamilia Primates, use a level two Bod skill to walk. You grew from a zygote, a member of a genetic line that goes back over a billion years to single-celled life. Andy was built eight years ago by a roboticist using a T12@8 Design & Build Android skill. The question is, does the difference in his nature change the bias area of the skills he employs when he mimics the basic bod skills of human beings?
I don't think it does.
What I mean is, when I think of using an Operate X skill, I think of using my body to manipulate a device - the manipulation of the device being a separate act from moving my hand. Andy here is not operating his body as a separate operation - he's just moving, as much so as you or I would. And it would be the same Tech-bias skill for him to, for instance, pilot a giant robot as it would be for you or I to. But he's not operating a giant robot just by walking around - he's just walking around.
I'm fairly well convinced that it ought to be a Bod attribute. For obvious reasons he has to HAVE a Bod attribute, otherwise I imagine it will produce bizarre results somewhat akin to dividing by zero somewhere down the line. The problem I'm stuck on is, how do we define what his Bod is?
Well, it's not really an attribute. The Bod bias of a character is a function of his highest-biased skill in that area. Just as a person whose most advanced technological skill is computer programming has a higher Tech bias than someone who just now mastered the pulley, so too is the Bod bias a starfish higher than that of a high school track athlete. (The kid may be able to run a hundred yards in ten seconds, but if you cut off his leg, it won't grow back.)
Andy doesn't have to have a bod bias. If he has no bod skills, his bod bias is 0@0 - no different than your great-aunt Mary's Psi bias (unless she was a teacher or a fitness instructor). If he does, then we ask ourselves: does he know any martial arts? If no, then any acrobatics? Can he jump, tumble, run, walk, swim? We define his bod skills, and the one with the highest bias gives him his rating.
Here's the downside to calling it Bod (and I'm not trying to convince you it's not; I'm just exploring the question):
In a world with an extremely low bod bias, Isaac discovers that he can't remember how to walk. To overcome this difficulty, he uses his limited telekinesis to construct a robot to carry him around. Am I, the referee, now forced to tell Isaac that his robot can't walk, either, despite Isaac's successful use of his professional-level T12@5 Design/Build Decision Machine?
_
While examples are fun, I guess what I'm trying to say is that, in a high tech bias, I feel like robots should work. At the same time, though, I see and support the points you make. Do you see the difficulty?
I definitely see your point. So... why not give him both? Just because he HAS a Bod bias, doesn't mean he can't have a Tech 12@ Operate Android (self) skill as well, and one kicks in if the other fails.
Kinda like a character I read in a book recently who was paralyzed but learned to use telekinesis to move his body to simulate actual movement.
So Andy hits a Bod-negative world where he can't walk normally, but finds out that with a little applied effort he can manually power each individual servo in order to fake it convincingly.
Thank you. This sort of solution is exactly why I start these threads.
In theory, this still leaves the question of which skill set he starts with and which he needs to learn - that is, does he need to learn the tech skill in The Bodiless Pit, or does he need to learn the bod skill on the Mary Piper (and I know which answer you favor) - but that is a much less thorny question, probably depending on the individual robot and design. Noonien Soong designs Andy to move and react in ways that mimic the human nervous and muscular systems (bod), but Isaac makes sure that Mr. Lifter runs on good old-fashioned mechanical principles.
Precisely!
By the bye, do you know how to access off-the-front-page threads that are not under "Multiverser" but the level above it? I'm trying to find that "Wersers" thread and I'm having a rather difficult time of it.
I'm assuming that Andy is not a biomechanical construct--part machine, part organic--but is the sort of 12@ android envisioned under 12@ skills. That makes a difference, because if we're thinking of the six million dollar man multiplied until there's very little organic about him, or Darth Vader whose organic body was largely replaced by prosthetics but who still apparently has at least his brain and/or whatever parts are necessary for him to engage the Force (a biologically associated psionic power, I think), then we have some basis for identifying it with a body. However, the distinction between bias areas is, where does the power for this skill originate? In an entirely mechanical android, there is no organism. You're asking what the bod skills are of a sword or a car or a computer. Robots do not have bod skills because they cannot draw from their organic existence the empowering of bod skills--they have no organic existence. They have technological skills that are analogous to body skills.
It is not unreasonable to suggest that Andy operates himself as a 12@0 device. There is a degree to which, though, it makes more sense from Andy's perspective for the operation of his various skills to be seen as subsystems of the total--his eyes are T10@3 video imagers, his ears T9@4 sound and pressure sensors (or possibly T10@3 sonic detectors, if more sophisticated), his muscle fibers specialized electrocontractive T9@3 polymers. From Velma's perspective, getting Andy to do something, or to learn something new, is a 12@3 operate android skill; from Andy's perspective, doing something involves operating the subsystems that comprise his physical functions.
The skills suggested above are mostly the design level skills; the operation skills for most things Andy does would be @1 skills.
This allows you to distinguish such aspects as his visual and auditory accuity, giving him skill in each subsystem much as we give humans skill in each sensory or physical ability.
You can also consider whether Andy learns these maneuvers as a human would, practicing them to improve over time, and thus list each maneuver as its own skill at its own SAL (but mostly at the same bias level); or you can say that he doesn't really have any skills in the martial arts as such, but rather has a skill at operating his physical movements into which the new pattern is programmed (entirely possible to do this by demonstration and explanation with a couple trials to get it right). This latter approach would mean that once Andy has been given the pattern for a maneuver or style, he has that at whatever SAL his movement (or other appropriate skill) already is, but cannot improve it by practice--only by hardware or possibly software modification.
You have to be a life form to have body skills.
Also, there's no reason to suppose that Andy would not be helpless in a low-tech world. I'm not certain whether my martial arts training robot is functional my present world, although I'm not sure whether that's a bias problem or something else.
--M. J. Young
I've not yet faced that problem, and I encourage people please to put threads in one of the forums (listed at the top of the main page). However, Scott has been diligently adding tags to threads, and if you do a search on a tag it's supposed to bring up all the threads that have that tag. If it has no tag, there is a link at the bottom of the main page for accessing threads with no tags (along with one for accessing threads with no replies).By the bye, do you know how to access off-the-front-page threads that are not under "Multiverser" but the level above it? I'm trying to find that "Wersers" thread and I'm having a rather difficult time of it.
I probably should learn how that works, but thus far I haven't needed it.
--M. J. Young
I found it. You just ... um... click on... Roleplaying Games, I think. It's the top one in the little list above the Recent Discussions list...
Anyway MJ you're the guru here - what do you think about the whole robots-and-bod thing?
Martial arts, then, could be specialized applications of his T9@1 Operate Musculature? Interesting.
Presume I decided that Andy learned the maneuvers as a human would, listing separate SALs for each, but all at T9@1. Would I be justified in using the martial arts rules for his combat using these maneuvers - damage category bonus, style modifiers, the whole bit?
Of course, there are certain skills I would never allow him to learn - Non-Contact Damage springs to mind - and others that might require greater understanding of his musculature than @1 to pull off. Damage Reflection, for example, might be T9@3. Oddities like Psionic Resistance would require installation of new equipment and would probably operate under a different bias level altogether (minimum 10@, probably level 14). Attack and Defense Analysis would probably fall under T1@ or T13@ . . .
Under this system, your martial arts training bot now gives us an odd case study in a verser learning skills from one bias area using an example performed under another.
Also, there's no reason to suppose that Andy would not be helpless in a low-tech world.
Really? It seems that if most of his operations are @1, then he's protected by the bias curve. In that way, he has a leg up on his human counterparts - even in a flatlined world, the majority of his basic motor skills still function.
Of course, in a negatively tech biased world, he loses functionality fast. By -8, his mind stops working; is that sufficient cause to say he won't verse in to such a world? I heard somewhere that versers don't seem to appear in worlds wherein their survival is impossible.
I found it. You just ... um... click on... Roleplaying Games, I think. It's the top one in the little list above the Recent Discussions list...
There's also a link near the bottom, Topics with no tags, that you can use as a last resort.
Anyway MJ you're the guru here - what do you think about the whole robots-and-bod thing?
You just missed it. It's the post above the one you responded to.
Oh. I'm smart. Thanks guys.
I guess MJ is right. Or at least he makes sense. (Except about Darth Vader - I think the Force is biologically dependant /Magic/ not Psionics, as the Force itself is not intrinsic to the character, even if the control of the Force is.) Alas, I am outdone.
There's actually been a bit of discussion about the force; I'll see if I can dig up a link to the old boards.
Well, it took me over an hour to find it, but this post outlines the best handling of the mechanics of the Force you're likely to run across in this game system.
Before you read it, recall that within the story, the Force is described as "an energy field" emitted by "all living things" (Ben Kenobi says that, I think); if it comes from life, it doesn't come from beyond the bounds of the natural universe, and if it's not supernatural, it's not magic. MJ, earlier in the thread, proposes that the Jedi draw on this energy field (instead of just on themselves, as in most psionics) because high levels of psionic static in that world interfere psionic skill use, and they need that boost to overcome that interference.