Idea.

Vess is a bounty hunter. She wears somewhat revealing (arms and legs) armor and has a pretty sensual body language (distracting behavior). She is hired on to help the PCs do a job and is built to be mysterious and kind of sexy. She NEVER takes off her helmet. She does drink through a straw though. The point being, that hopefully one of the PCs takes a shine to her over the course of the job. She will respond appropriately, but rebuff any physical implications. Eventually (either through a bit of moral issue of sneaking a peak at her in the refresher) the PC will find out that she is actually a droid. NOT an HRD. Rather, she is like a protocol droid, with prosthetic arms, legs, stomach, and heart. Strange for a droid to use prothetics of course. She WANTS to become as human as possible. That is why she is working for the money.

Now will be another issue. The feelings involved were actually real. So does the PC STOP caring for her? Do they help her in her mission to become more humanoid? Do they reject and resent her for being deceitful? I see this as kind of a commentary on transgender. I like to pull Star Trek-ish modern social concepts/issues into my games.

What do you all think? Can you help me add more flavor to Vess? (This all started because of Order 66's Servo's and Circuits 2.0 episode. They said droids would have no need for Prosthetics and my brain ran with it) Thank you all for any and all thoughts/ideas.

Are you asking for traits to make the PCs like her?

• Make her useful. She's a bounty hunter, so that probably takes care of that - but make sure she respects the skills of PC fighter-types. She brings them a tip or two about employment or money-making endeavours (for a tiny cut) or news about their enemies (for free).
• Make her independent. If she has other things to do the time she spends with the PCs is a valuable resource she's giving them. If she needs help with problems of her own it may help the PCs to see her as one of the gang rather than just hired help (if they turn her down she can still laugh it off and agree that she should really take care of it herself).
• Make her a friend. She teases them for setbacks instead of nagging. She puts herself at risk, but doesn't steal the spotlight. She listens to their problems and empathises (camaraderie, not sympathy).

Hmm, the end result still sounds very difficult - at least without providing one Player OOC information on what you're trying to achieve.

I'd go the other way. Instead of hoping one of the PCs will take a shine to her, have her take a shine to one of the PCs. Engineer situations where she can ask about the character's taste in women (Vess trying to covertly gather information on what an attractive human looks like - something that may seem incredibly arbitrary to a synthetic).

"You hesitated back there." [teasing] "Did the pretty bodyguard remind you of someone special?"

If asked about the helmet she may grow cool and agitated muttering something about an accident before making excuses to leave for a while. If she grows to trust one of the group, she may confide that she's saving up for "surgery".

When she finally gets enough money she reveals her "post-surgery" face and she's a collection of the PC's most appealing traits. Okay, there's a few minor surgical scars, but they add character. Certainly she shouldn't be as self conscious as she has been.

(Perhaps a different PC makes a difficult Perception or Intelligence test - she looks vaguely like that bodyguard from weeks ago...)

Let things simmer then reveal the truth in a dramatic way. Vess taking a bad hit that had been intended for a PC and requiring "medical" help is a convention, I believe.

I agree with Col. Orange that designing your character in a certain way in the hopes that another PC will fall in love with her is a dead end unless you talk to them out of character and get them on board. You could also approach this by talking to the GM and having them introduce a recurring NPC that is attracted to Vess.

Before going forward with this, you might want to do a little research on how the transgender community approaches "disclosure," and how those dangers map onto a droid analogy. After all, droids are property and have no rights, so Vess disclosing her construction could very well lead to a restraining bolt, being sold, or being memory-wiped. This is not to say that disclosure has to be accidental or forced, as Col. Orange implies, but if Vess decides to disclose to another PC, you should think carefully about why and how.

You might also want to consider both the maturity level and tone of your group. Some players might not react well to being "tricked," and while you might see that as a teachable moment, so to speak, the group in general might not take kindly to you turning their roleplaying session into a consciousness-raising workshop (This is another reason why it might be good to talk about this OOC first rather than surprising the group with it).

All of that being said, one idea for developing this character idea: A lot of transgender people feel pressured to follow traditional gender roles more closely than they would otherwise because it's the only way to reliably pass/be taken seriously. Vess might feel the need to be very, very Human (whatever that means) in order to avoid being outed. Building on that, she might insist on having some private space (whether her own quarters, a shooting range that no one else uses, etc.) so that she has opportunities to take a break from "performing Human" so thoroughly.

I love Col. Orange's post and fully support the make her the one who grows the feelings for a PC or the group.

Another idea to throw onto the pile is that maybe instead of saving for part by part, she could be saving in order to have a Replica Droid made for her that she could be transplanted into or gather the materials she would need to grow one herself. The issues of transferring her conciousness, what memories might be lost, what parts about her might be forgotten or changed, etc could add to some amazing interpersonalized drama for the party. Especially since, as good as processors are in Star Wars they still can't get close to what true sentient life and HRDs are capable of. A whole flood of knew emotions, feelings, thoughts, etc could drive her to temporary madness.

Interesting concept.

You could base her core components on a Nanny Droid. They come standard with Synthflesh coverings for their arms and midriff, and weapons and combat skillsoft is a dealership option for families who feel their little ones need the protection. And more obscure WEG sources cited a Moff having them reprogrammed for bodyguard work. Sounds like a history for Vess, all you need to do is remove the second pair of arms, do some reprogramming, and throw some armor on her....

Of course there is the issue of what happens when she gets wounded.... I mean "cybernetics" is only so good of an excuse...

Really good thread - nicely done, everyone!

Nanny Droid is going to give me nightmares, though.

WALL OF PINK ALERT!

So, I think all the suggestions up to this point have merit, but especially pay attention to what Kaigen said. The issue (especially right now) is a hot button one, and I've seen a lot of hate thrown about from people I wouldn't have expected the behavior from. If what you said about throwing socio-political topics into your games as a regular exercise is true, though, then your group probably knows what they're in for.

That said, the nanny-bot is an especially good choice for Vess' backstory, and can actually work into the back story. Vess was serving a high profile family and their young child when the family came under threat of assassination. The matriarch of the family was killed in the initial attempt, and the patriarch, devastated, reprogrammed the nanny droid to act as a companion as well as protector, creating "Vess" as a emotional personality. In the subsequent months the family was again targeted, this time the attack took both the patriarch and the child, leaving Vess badly damaged, but surviving. The emotional programming crossed with the protection programming and (due initially to the patriarchs need for emotional comfort from a companion and later from being left for "dead" for an extended period) without any regular memory wipes a de-facto "consciousness" was born and seeking vengeance. This is what led her to the Bounty Hunting lifestyle, and though the demons from her past have been put to rest (she since hunted down those responsible) she is left with the desire to have that emotional connection she had before (with the matriarch). After initially being rebuffed because of her quasi-droid state (and the uncomfortable clinginess programmed into her originally) she adopted the idea to complete her transformation.

When it comes to transgender psychology, I'm not an expert, but there are a few really important things to keep in mind if that is the rationale for Vess that you're using.

1) The tendency is to think of the body as is being "broken" - kind of like tonsillitis. Your tonsils are supposed to protect you, but when tonsillitis hits, they instead attack you - your body then becomes your enemy. So you take medicine and have surgery to cut them out and everything begins to fix itself. A transgender person sees that their body is "broken" it isn't a "lifestyle choice" its an illness, just like tonsillitis. So they take medicine and have surgery to fix what isn't right so their body can start fixing itself. Vess would feel that she was trapped in a body that wasn't right, and like any ailment, would be making attempting to fix that. To her, it isn't something she feels she needs to tell anyone. Think about the tonsil analogy - you wouldn't meet someone and blurt out you had your tonsils out. If it came up in casual conversation, you might, but you wouldn't go into it thinking "I have to tell them I'm tonsil-less."

2) Transgender men and women are regularly killed once being outed. It doesn't sound like it should happen in today's world, but it literally happens twice every month. The published death rate is 1 out of 12 transgender women are murdered, 1 out of 8 transgender women of color. This makes the casual revelation of the tonsil story to a new level, because imagine the pause you would have if when the tonsil story came up you suddenly had to weigh, "okay, I have this information to relate, but is this the appropriate place and time for it, and is this person(s) trustworthy enough to relate it to?" In Vess' case, this would come up whenever someone asks about why she hides her identity or any other time it would be appropriate for her to weigh in on droids (even when she isn't the subject of the conversation - because it is still something she's faced with). Over time, this constant exposure to the stress of this decision tends to make transgender men and women angry (wondering why an already monumental hurdle has to be made so much worse) before they finally become numb to the issue (out of emotional self-preservation) and begin actively not even thinking of revealing their state as an option.

3) The more a transgender man or woman cares about someone, the worse it gets. The more attached to somebody they get, the more the potential backlash frightens and immobilizes them. This is the same feeling that one gets when being faced with revealing a truth to parents or siblings that they expect won't be accepted. The deeper the emotional connection to someone, the more a transgender man or woman wants to share the information, but there is also a steadily rising threat of rejection/assault/murder from someone believing themselves to be "tricked" or "manipulated." Depending on the age, maturity, and exposure of the transgender man or woman, the reaction may be to "take it to the grave" or to arrange for a safe place and time to discuss it, but in any case I've been told it's probably one of the most frightening situations that can be faced (far more than the actual reassignment surgery, as this is often seen as the positive alignment of inside and out - despite the risks). This third point is the real "hot button issue" that you want to explore though - and it doesn't happen unless a commitment is made between the PCs and Vess.

As such, I'd suggest that you not make it readily apparent at all that Vess is anything other than a normal human female. You can certainly have her "incomplete" and not a HRD, but I wouldn't make it easy to identify that she is a droid prior to her developing feelings that might be returned. The helmet concealing a protocol droids head could lead to disassociation from the PCs, a physical wall that is far better achieved through the emotional walls that can be represented by Vess' behavior and role playing. If her torso weren't anatomically correct, the same thing could be achieved (always wearing her armor, never being seen in the shower, etc) but would allow for the PCs to make eye-contact, and keep suspicion low. I would even argue that you could have her be an HRD and still achieve the required emotional impact once her droid nature came out, because the topic you want to discuss is the resentment of "being lied to."

The backlash to Caitlyn Jenner centers around the debate of her "not being a real woman" which directly stems from the idea that she is on some level not being truthful in her gender. When people look at the issue from a distance, it is Caitlyn's opinion and the moderate will say "she should do what she wants." The opponent will be disgusted or revolted by it because of the feeling that it disingenuous, and a "sham." When the moderate is personally involved in the situation - perhaps having dated her before discovering she was once "Bruce Jenner," then that moderate may become a detractor because he feels personally deceived. That is still the same issue as the opponent - the idea that "Bruce" was never "Caitlyn" and always was "Bruce" and was disingenuous to them.

Most of your party will probably find it easy to be in the moderate camp, as they are in a fictional universe, they're role-playing with no real consequences, and it's all make-believe. The way to combat this and again force the issue (which in the end is; if the feelings are real, does the rest really matter?) is to establish the relationship, and then reveal the "falsehood." You then force the question of if it was real or false, and can have the greater debate.

A good ending (and probably a indicator of what side I fall on) is if the PCs do spurn Vess, have Vess give her life saving the one she fell for the same as she almost did for the matriarch and child.

Nanny Droid is going to give me nightmares, though.

For what it's worth, the earlier WEG art is a bit less calm-damaging.

A nanny droid holding a child without looking totally creepy

Seriously, whoever approved the more recent images needs their head examined...

A 3D rendering of a nanny droid looking SUPER CREEPY

WOW! I really appreciate the maturity and advice given here. I AM the GM and this would be an NPC but I will take into account and integrate all of these suggestions. I plan on going with the Nanny Droid background, but have it be a different model than the standard. I have friends that are activists in the transgender support community and certainly don't wish to be insensitive. I do like the idea of having her like a PC and the struggles there, rather than relying on my narrative to attract the interest of on of the PCs. Kyla, great minds think alike. In one of my DnD campaigns I had Lord Nerrick (the patron of the group) take a fancy to one of the male PCs. I'm terribly proud of how the PC handled the awkwardness of the situation (as the PCs character was not attracted back). In the end Nerrick dove infront of a shot and sacrificed himself for the PC. The PC was a berserker and went into a rage from it, taking out the assassins. It was an emotional moment for the PC and group. I'm very proud of my players and how they handle hot button issues.

I am totally going to play an ex-nanny droid as my next PC. I'd forgotten all about them...that is such a fun character concept to work with, though.