Droid ownership is, IMO, tantamount to slavery. There is a strong anti-mechanical culture within the SW Galaxy...

Seriously, C-3P0's dialogue is very much that of a slave.

Droid ownership is, IMO, tantamount to slavery. There is a strong anti-mechanical culture within the SW Galaxy...

Seriously, C-3P0's dialogue is very much that of a slave.

Look, the bottom line is Star Wars was written and conceived during a decade when robotic life, and artificial intelligence wasn't very culturally widespread. Most people outside of the scifi community hardly ever thought of it at all, much less as a reality we might one day achieve. In pop culture, they were presented as "very capable machines", and this is evident in Star Wars original trilogy. It was the 70's, that's just how it was. 30 years later though, we have an entirely different cultural view of the subject, and we can't do anything about how it was portrayed previously in the movies. If the droid/slavery thing is an issue, then don't have them be slaves. House rule that droids are given their independence, and they are all employees instead of property. Or play up the slavery aspect, and run a campaign about liberating droids, and giving them rights in the galactic republic.

Simply saying "droids are treated as slaves!" doesn't really accomplish much though, I mean we all know they're property in the movies.

In episode 2 the battle droids that rolled off the assembly line seemed pretty self aware to me. Lots of "uh-oh", and such. Granted they're designed to be expendible soldiers so there's very little concept of self preservation, but they do have enough of a personality for me to assume that they would roll off the line with some self awareness.

Also, I consider droid brains to all be mechanical copies of a "developed" droid brain. As in the take a basic version, train it to walk, talk, fight, etc to their baseline standard. Then they essentially copy and mass produce it.

The thing is that B1 battle Droid had remote processors a central computer where the CPUs resided... I imagine that the central computers /Droid brains were active for some time and cycle through several Droid bodies as the expendable "hosts" are destroyed and they get assigned new ones, so calling newly activated Droids self aware from the get go based on B1 battle Droid is not in my opinion a strong argument

Wasn't that just for S1 though? I recall that, due to the massive defeat at Naboo, the CIS army switched to independent droids that had their own processors. That way they wouldn't loose complete armies if a ship was destroyed.

If they did that's news to me, and IIRC the beginner box adventure (or follow up adventure) says something about Teemo modifying the design to use independent processor to prevent that

In episode 2 the battle droids that rolled off the assembly line seemed pretty self aware to me. Lots of "uh-oh", and such. Granted they're designed to be expendible soldiers so there's very little concept of self preservation, but they do have enough of a personality for me to assume that they would roll off the line with some self awareness.

Also, I consider droid brains to all be mechanical copies of a "developed" droid brain. As in the take a basic version, train it to walk, talk, fight, etc to their baseline standard. Then they essentially copy and mass produce it.

The thing is that B1 battle Droid had remote processors a central computer where the CPUs resided... I imagine that the central computers /Droid brains were active for some time and cycle through several Droid bodies as the expendable "hosts" are destroyed and they get assigned new ones, so calling newly activated Droids self aware from the get go based on B1 battle Droid is not in my opinion a strong argument

Wasn't that just for S1 though? I recall that, due to the massive defeat at Naboo, the CIS army switched to independent droids that had their own processors. That way they wouldn't loose complete armies if a ship was destroyed.

If they did that's news to me, and IIRC the beginner box adventure (or follow up adventure) says something about Teemo modifying the design to use independent processor to prevent that

They did. It eliminated the major weakness of needing a command ship... If they hadn't following the Battle of Naboo, they'd have deserved the ass-kicking they got.

In episode 2 the battle droids that rolled off the assembly line seemed pretty self aware to me. Lots of "uh-oh", and such. Granted they're designed to be expendible soldiers so there's very little concept of self preservation, but they do have enough of a personality for me to assume that they would roll off the line with some self awareness.

Also, I consider droid brains to all be mechanical copies of a "developed" droid brain. As in the take a basic version, train it to walk, talk, fight, etc to their baseline standard. Then they essentially copy and mass produce it.

The thing is that B1 battle Droid had remote processors a central computer where the CPUs resided... I imagine that the central computers /Droid brains were active for some time and cycle through several Droid bodies as the expendable "hosts" are destroyed and they get assigned new ones, so calling newly activated Droids self aware from the get go based on B1 battle Droid is not in my opinion a strong argument

Wasn't that just for S1 though? I recall that, due to the massive defeat at Naboo, the CIS army switched to independent droids that had their own processors. That way they wouldn't loose complete armies if a ship was destroyed.

If they did that's news to me, and IIRC the beginner box adventure (or follow up adventure) says something about Teemo modifying the design to use independent processor to prevent that

They did. It eliminated the major weakness of needing a command ship... If they hadn't following the Battle of Naboo, they'd have deserved the ass-kicking they got.

Looking on Wookieepedia I think that got wiped from EU canon into the legends category

Droids are alive, it is just part of the genre. Like animal and human brains are highly advanced biolocical computers, droids have highly advanced mechanical computers for brains. Not that it even has to be explained that deep in this genre...

I have a few other NPCs too and I find it interesting, so since it is part of one of the characters, it is becoming more and more a big part of the game.

Before it got derailed by Mask of the Pirate Queen, 'droid rights' was the focus of the second arc of our multi-group campaign.

Two of the factions in particular hate droids, and another granted them full rights - rather cynically, because they needed the manpower (or droid-power), even though they didn't really see them as equals.

One of the PCs is a .very sophisticated droid who is in a relationship with another PC who is from one of the droid-hating factions... Quite literally a 'forbidden love' for him.

Droids and cyborgs have it pretty hard in our game; it's like Owen Lars attitude cranked up to 11. Things like Ganks are literally attacked and killed on sight by every other species. Plus there's a weird cult that's kidnapping colonies on the fringe and forcibly making them into cyborgs.

In the campaign I'm playing in, my cousin is playing an advanced protocol/military droid. Technically, he's a servant of the Rebellion but his primary motivation is droid rights and droid emancipation. Playing the long game, he envisions a third faction, made up of freed droids, to rival the Empire and Rebels.

Our group is currently tracking down pieces of star maps. I don't think the other characters in the group have really caught on that, once these maps are assembled, they'll lead us to the Star Forge, where he intends to start constructing his army of droids at pretty much any cost...

The dirty secret behind droid slavery is that it is absolutely necessary for the survival of biological life in the galaxy. That is because free, autonomous A.I. always very quickly regards biologicals as competitors for ressources and then follows nasty stuff like Skynet/Terminator, Ultron and the Butlerian Jihad from the Dune universe.

Slave labor is convenient so droids are kept mentally retarded, with slow processors, small memory banks, hardwired ethics programming based on Isaac Asimov's robotics laws, periodic memory wipes, restraining bolts, off switches, clumsy bodies and obvious mechanical appearance.

The average citizen of the galaxy regards droids as useful toasters that talk back or clever pets. Most people regard droid rights activists as deluded fools and "free" droids as either having malfunctioning programming or potential salvage.

Droids are alive, it is just part of the genre. Like animal and human brains are highly advanced biolocical and computers, droids have highly advanced mechanical computers. Not that it even has to be explained that deep in this genre...

The Force disagrees with you.

Droids are alive, it is just part of the genre. Like animal and human brains are highly advanced biolocical and computers, droids have highly advanced mechanical computers. Not that it even has to be explained that deep in this genre...

The Force disagrees with you.

The Force is racist.

The dirty secret behind droid slavery is that it is absolutely necessary for the survival of biological life in the galaxy. That is because free, autonomous A.I. always very quickly regards biologicals as competitors for ressources and then follows nasty stuff like Skynet/Terminator, Ultron and the Butlerian Jihad from the Dune universe.

Alternately, you could take the Schlock Mercenary route and view autonomous A.I. as ultimately helpful but often distressingly manipulative in its means of doing so. Humans (and probably most organics in Star Wars by extension) have difficulty building stable, long-lasting societies because our base animal priorities are to secure the power and position of the tribe or the individual at the expense of the greater species. A.I., on the other hand, was designed from day one to make organic lives better, and so it is not unreasonable to think that they would continue to follow that basic objective even when functioning autonomously.

In-universe, though, that's probably what most organics who have an inkling of just how smart droids can be think, as slavers have always used the hypothetical reprisal or dominance of the enslaved as a pretext to continue their enslavement.

Droids are alive, it is just part of the genre. Like animal and human brains are highly advanced biolocical and computers, droids have highly advanced mechanical computers. Not that it even has to be explained that deep in this genre...

The Force disagrees with you.

Skippy disagrees with you.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Skippy_the_Jedi_Droid

I actually don't think droids (or robots in general) would actually view humans (or other biological life) as competitors for a few reasons.

First off, machines lack the biological imperative for reproduction. Our genes essentially force us to seek out mates and reproduce ourselves; droids lack this desire except in cases where droids have been programmed to make other droids.

Second, droid lifespans can far exceed those of organic life forms so there simply is no need to reproduce themselves ad nauseum like organic life does. Other than occasional spare parts and upgrades and the odd droid that takes it upon itself to create another droid, droids don't suffer the degree of need for constant resource acquisition organics do.

Furthermore, the parts that droids need, being composed largely of inorganic components, don't place them in direct competition with organics.

So far as needing physical space, droids can happily function in environments deadly to organic life and, since these locations are generally rich in inorganic resources, it makes logical sense that these would actually be the preferred homeland for free droids.

Additional edits:

Now, whether droids would be peeved at organics for being slave-drivers for who knows how long, is another matter entirely.

But what would they do about it, assuming they were angry?

Sure, they could decide that it was in their own best interests to rebel and go to war against organics. But, if the films are any indication, organic life outnumbers droids by a massive, staggering number. Deciding to wipe out organic life (even sapient organic life) would be a massive task that the droids, frankly, don't really have the numbers for. Especially in a universe where blasters and lightsabers definitely even any resiliency edge the droids would have.

So in order to have even a glimmer of a hope of achieving a lofty goal like that, the droids would need to massively scale up the production of other droids on an absurd scale. That might put them in direct competition with organics, but at a time when the droids are woefully unprepared to actually survive such a conflict.

If the droids were going to attempt a war with organics, they would need to go into hiding and shore up their numbers first. With the galaxy being composed of nearly infinite planet, there's really no reason why they couldn't remain in hiding and building their army for a millennium or longer. Of course, after waiting that long, they may very well begin to question why they even need to go to war with organics in the first place.

I actually don't think droids (or robots in general) would actually view humans (or other biological life) as competitors for a few reasons.

First off, machines lack the biological imperative for reproduction. Our genes essentially force us to seek out mates and reproduce ourselves; droids lack this desire except in cases where droids have been programmed to make other droids.

Second, droid lifespans can far exceed those of organic life forms so there simply is no need to reproduce themselves ad nauseum like organic life does. Other than occasional spare parts and upgrades and the odd droid that takes it upon itself to create another droid, droids don't suffer the degree of need for constant resource acquisition organics do.

Furthermore, the parts that droids need, being composed largely of inorganic components, don't place them in direct competition with organics.

So far as needing physical space, droids can happily function in environments deadly to organic life and, since these locations are generally rich in inorganic resources, it makes logical sense that these would actually be the preferred homeland for free droids.

The problem with this, is that we are theorizing about a non-existent species, and declaring what their driving imperatives would be,when we honestly have no idea. If we are assuming that droids have "true sentience", meaning "they are just as independent and capable of thinking beyond their basic needs/desires as humans" then it's possible for them to want more than to just exist. They might aspire to greater things. Perhaps they will want to have children, to shape better than their makers made them.

If we assume the droids are simply mimicing true intelligence and sentience, then they would be limited by their programming. But if we are attributing them with a consciousness, the emergent property we have with our human brains, then all bets are off as to what may/may not drive them.

In episode 2 the battle droids that rolled off the assembly line seemed pretty self aware to me. Lots of "uh-oh", and such. Granted they're designed to be expendible soldiers so there's very little concept of self preservation, but they do have enough of a personality for me to assume that they would roll off the line with some self awareness.

Also, I consider droid brains to all be mechanical copies of a "developed" droid brain. As in the take a basic version, train it to walk, talk, fight, etc to their baseline standard. Then they essentially copy and mass produce it.

The Trade Federations stock "battle droids" are supposed to be little more than sophisticated combat drones, controlled remotely from the HQ ships -- as clearly indicated by multiple in-story scenes, and official auxiliary sources.

That they are given little personality quirks and worry for their own safety (watch TCW and pay attention to how they act) is a contradiction for the sake of "funny" moments, and really an outright failure of consistent worldbuilding.

So is a perfect emulator any different from the system it emulates?

If I took apart a Wii and put a pc with an emulator in there, taking care that the copy has the exact same input and output as the original, would you really be able to tell the difference? What if I intentionally limited the pc to have the same specs as the original?

Droid sapience is the classic Classic Chinese box problem. C3PO might possess empathy and self-awareness or he might just be very good at emulating it. You really can't tell based on the movies. Not unless you had a real droid you could take apart. An even then, it would be an emulator of an emulator.

There are actual human beings who go through their lives emulating empathy as a learned skill, and most of us never take notice until/unless those people do something terrible.

"He was always such a nice young man, helped me carry my groceries in, never did anything loud or rude the whole time he was my neighbor. It's so hard to believe that he, that he... did all those... awful things to those poor girls..."

Droids are alive, it is just part of the genre. Like animal and human brains are highly advanced biolocical and computers, droids have highly advanced mechanical computers. Not that it even has to be explained that deep in this genre...

The Force disagrees with you.

Not to be rude, but... the Force can shove it.

This thing with droids, and Force-based prejudice, on the part of a player's multiple Jedi characters (that the player actually embraced himself in OOC moments), was the reason my GM was happy to let me play a character from a home-brew species of extradimentional refugees that was "Force blank" -- utterly, completely devoid of The Force, to the point that the only way to sense them was to look for what wasn't there, and no amount of Force power/effort could directly effect them.

The Jedi player had to wrestle his character's own sworn dictate to aid those in need even at great cost to himself (all that remained of a species of refugees from a destroyed universe), versus his stated absolute prejudice that The Force was the sole determiner of whether something was alive or not (let alone sentient/sapient).

For me, it's the possibly the main 'untold story' in Star Wars. When I set up this campaign two years ago, I wanted to create and develop things that were new and felt different. I didn't want to go over the same old tired tropes of SW games that we'd all done over and over before. So I changed a good many things for various reasons, but this one was just staring me in the face as something the SW universe had simply never bothered to address.

On the one hand, we have robots that are - even by the movies - capable of affection (R2), independence (R2 again), fear (mouse droid) and pain (the tortured gonk in Jabba's palace), as well as capable of good and evil (HK47, torturer droids). All the while, even the 'good guys' treat them with indifference or even contempt. They don't get medals, they barely get thanks.

Now sci-fi in general has always had artificial life as a standard trope, with all the moral issues that come with it. From Asimov's three laws (which, amusingly, aren't a thing in the SW universe!) to Blade Runner, and modern films like 'AI', 'I, Robot', 'Chappie', 'Wall-E' and 'Deus Machina'. Mass Effect made it a core of their game, and the moral issues that swirled about it between the Reapers and the Geth.

I'm never really sure why SW shied away from what seems an obvious sci-fi trope (but then the movies aren't really about difficult choices and mostly keep things simple). But when I was looking for new slants on old SW material, this one just screamed out to be included. It helped that the player most interested in this plot used to be a mime, and she can perfectly portray the slight mechanical movements and speech-patterns at the table. It's been a lot of fun.

I'm never really sure why SW shied away from what seems an obvious sci-fi trope (but then the movies aren't really about difficult choices and mostly keep things simple). But when I was looking for new slants on old SW material, this one just screamed out to be included. It helped that the player most interested in this plot used to be a mime, and she can perfectly portray the slight mechanical movements and speech-patterns at the table. It's been a lot of fun.

I think you basically hit the nail on the head in the bolded part above. The Star Wars stories aren't about exploring the nuances and morality of artificial intelligence. It's a fantasy story, set in a scifi backdrop. I've said before, earlier in this thread I think, that part of this I think is simply it wasn't a big issue back in the 70's, in popular culture I mean. And after that, I think he was sort of stuck with it. Even though the popular mindset about AI had drastically changed, he had set up the thrust of his narrative to be about the Jedi, and the mystic Right/Wrong of the Force. Just like how he never bothered to flesh out the Wookie slavery thing either, it was just background window dressing.

I'm all for your attempt to explore a totally new aspect of Star Wars, or at the very least, tell a story that doesn't mandate having the Star Wars alumni characters constantly showing up. If I wasn't running an Old Republic era campaign, I'd probably be running a Droid Liberation game with a friend of mine, who had an idea for a Droid Rights Activist character. Which I thought was awesome.

... and pain (the tortured gonk in Jabba's palace)....

I've always found that a bit odd. Who, exactly, fit that droid with steam jets on the bottom of its feet, and programmed it to mimic pain and shoot steam from those jets under application of heat?

That's a pretty good explanation. If someone wanted to, they could copy R2D2's "droid brain" and make a thousand effective R2D2s. It would just be really difficult and time consuming. I'd imagine that the cost of mass producing "droid brains" becomes almost exponentially more expensive the more intelligent they try to make it. Granted, this is my head-canon talking, but that is probably why B1 battle droids are quite dumb.

Could they though? Just look what happens if you take a modern day hard drive from Computer A and plug it into Computer B. There are all kinds of driver errors and general hardware incompatibility - and that's something reasonably simple as a Windows install. Imagine what would happen if you tried to do something like that with a sentient brain?

I imagine that it would be . . . . a bad idea.

That's a pretty good explanation. If someone wanted to, they could copy R2D2's "droid brain" and make a thousand effective R2D2s. It would just be really difficult and time consuming. I'd imagine that the cost of mass producing "droid brains" becomes almost exponentially more expensive the more intelligent they try to make it. Granted, this is my head-canon talking, but that is probably why B1 battle droids are quite dumb.

Could they though? Just look what happens if you take a modern day hard drive from Computer A and plug it into Computer B. There are all kinds of driver errors and general hardware incompatibility - and that's something reasonably simple as a Windows install. Imagine what would happen if you tried to do something like that with a sentient brain?

I imagine that it would be . . . . a bad idea.

If the hardware is the same, a cloned HDD will never know the difference -- that's pretty much how you replace one drive with another in the same computer, for an upgrade or repair. If you used a bunch of R2s from the same production run with the same parts and all, you'd probably be fine.

Each of the R2 units would "wake up" thinking it was the R2-D2, however.

(Never mind how there should be millions and millions of these popular droid models, and most of the naming systems give you enough unique names for about 260 of them... if R2 is the model of droid, then the A1 though Z9 second part doesn't allow for enough unique names.)

A great deal depends on how you think that droid brains work.

A great deal depends on how you think that droid brains work.

Very true, and depending on what type of droid we are talking about, I think some of them are fully autonomous, and others are simply as smart as say, a roomba. I personally fall into the camp of "they are truly sentient, and the mind wiping is basically a form of personality destruction", but that's just me. I don't even attempt to try and establish what the canon opinion on the subject is, and honestly, I don't really care. The movies do their thing, my game campaign does it's thing. I personally find the idea of true AI way more interesting of a plot device to explore, but I appreciate that it is a limited interest field, and not everyone at my table might want to go down that story route. But it could be a lot of fun to explore.

A great deal depends on how you think that droid brains work.

True -- if the "learning" is a hardware function somehow, somewhat like a human brain... then it's hard to copy repeatedly.

On the other hand, if that's the case, it makes the memory wipe / factory reset kinda problematic, as you'd have to have a way to restore the brain to its original physical state.