A question has come up in the campaign I am running. It relates to Droid memory and their ability to recall details they have witnessed.

For example: when most of us walk down a street, and we walk past posters, we might be able to recall the image on them, or maybe large-print titles, or a funny line or memorable quote. But other, smaller-print details are often lost -- glossed-over, or never read in the first place.

But how does a Droid "see" and remember such things, and how does the GM allow for the recitation of such information? Assuming all such details are visible (in a reasonable context) to the Droid? Again, using the example of the posters: it's not inconceivable that a droid might be able to read all the information at a very quick scan (if Droids see in photographic terms). Would the totality of this information be recall-able in perfect detail to the Droid at any future date, barring a memory wipe? What are the limits to this, from the GM's perspective? Does the GM act as a surrogate for reams of information, essentially relaying them to the PC on behalf of the Droid's memory?

The query stems from a question posed by a Droid PC in my current campaign. The group was ransacking an office of a local Imperial magistrate, looking for documents. They missed a key piece of information on the magistrate's desk. But new information has come to light and, assuming the Droid has photographic memory and totall recall, they assume that anything the Droid might have seen on the desk will be recall-able to corroborate this new information.

I'm willing to let this one slide and allow them to make the "recall", but am thinking about imposing some limits on the ability so as to prevent future abuse. Any thoughts about how to phrase this? I don't want to put a damper on what is, to be fair, a legitimate advantage to playing a Droid character. I just want to avoid situations where said Droid says, "Yeah, I remember every single face from every crowd I've ever walked through and can tell you in perfect detail if I've ever seen that person before." Which seems ripe for abuse and sh*tty GM narration.

Personally, I'd treat a droid PC the same as any organic PC. They're assumed to be sentient with electronic thought processes that function similarly to humans, which means their memory isn't perfect. So I'd have the droid's player roll an appropriate Knowledge skill check to see what the droid can remember, with all the interesting possibilities that rolling the dice in EotE can bring!

But, remember the rule where a droid can incorporate equipment into its body. If the droid in question has a holorecorder in its head, and it made a recording of something, it can just play the recording back.

Well it's up to the GM as always, but if you need some semipseudoscience explaining why droids may need to make a check or flip a Dpoint like everyone else:

Droids, with certain exceptions, don't have total recall, simply because it's not economical. Think of just a standard household labor unit, whose primary duties would be cleaning, cooking, running simple errands and occasionally watching the kids. While it might maintain a detailed recod of the last few hours, or possibly days, a detailed record of EVERYTHING would turn into massive amounts of data. Think about it, binocular super HD video, with full surround sound audio, odor detection, temperature, tactile, continuous adaptive navigation data paired with pathfinding, dynamic predictive pathfinding of mobile obsticles, ect... a simple walk to the store for a droid could generate petabytes of data.

At some point something has got to give, and a lot of that data is really totally unnecessary for a droids continued operation.

So, I suspect that in most cases, a droid would have total recall of moments ago, basic audio visual of the last few hours or day depending on it's need, and after that it's memory would be condensed down into something that would more closely resemble an operations log. By the next day a droids memory of a warm thursday afternoon would go from detailed hour-by-hour temperature record to just a note of an average afternoon temperature of 85F and a week or so after that it would just be noted that Thursday was "warm" and a month or so after that the entire month was warmer then average. Even things like memories of people would be consolidated down into what's needed for audio visual recognition and authentication and a quick scan/search file that's essentially an extended dossier outlining the persona and critical interaction notes.

Likewise the droids purpose would be a point of discretion. A Medical droid might keep a long detailed log of a patients medical conditions, but leave the actual personality profile of that patient as just a sentence or two. A protocol droid would continuously update the dossier of various people it interacts with, but not keep any serious notes on the speeder he drives beyond it's a newer sports model.

Key things could be flagged for long term recall of course, but it would be a "conscious" decision by the droid to do so, so unless the droid had a reason to memorize everything on the dudes desk, he probably wouldn't without reason, and even if it did it would probably just be a single still capture.

How dense the droids memory would be would depend on the droid. A complex service droid like a protocol unit might keep details of the last 24 hours for various note taking and personal security reasons and slowly reduce and compress that information over years. A simple labor unit on the other hand might start data reduction and compression in a matter of hours, or even minutes. A reconnaissance droid might take extremely detailed logs of an operation, and then auto-wipe it all after it's debriefing is complete.

What droids can and cannot do is pretty clearly laid out in the rules.

Star Wars treats them as just another species, no more immune to fear or heat or cold than any other organic. There's no 'First Law' or other robot stuff you might presume from other genres.

They feel discomfort and take critical damage just like the meatbags. Ion weapons hit them much harder, but they suffer stun and strain just like every other species.

As Ghost points out, they can have items fitted internally however, at no extra cost.

(Our droid is fully resistant to this concept, however, pointing out she's not a hollow storage shell and 'I need the things in my arm as much as you need yours' .

Gear. The neural recorder, or some such. I would think retaining "infinite" quantities of data would eventually result in slower reaction times, indecisive "lock-ups", and other glitches. Droid PCs are not data storage devices. They're just another "specie" that's playable. If they could remember everything, that would have been detailed in their Special Ability.

I also think the sentiment is a hallmark of "lazy" game play.

PS: Welcome back, GM.

My computer at home is slow and creaky, taking forever to load and start up and even open up browsers. Compare this to a freshly formatted hard drive with lightning fast response time. I can easily see that a droid that's been running for a while might have problems with recalling past events as they have a thousand Bonsai Buddy popups to sort through during their day to day operations.

PS: Welcome back, GM.

Thanks! I was mountain climbing in China for a few months. I didn't have a VPN so the wackiest things were unavailable to me from behind the Great Firewall. Including FFG websites. Which is weird, since Star Wars has been Cautiously Endorsed by the Party in China. But I got a lot of campaign writing done and fanboyed about Nexus of Power from a distance until I could get back to my local store.

Droids memory seems to function about the same as human memory. C-3PO forgets things in the movies (the comlink in Ep. IV), and there is never any indication that they have a photographic memory.

Droids are much like anyone else they only remember what interests/programed to remember. A medical Droid may want to remember a patients data and such but it would be a stretch for it to recall what his shoes looked like and what is their favorite color is.

Having a big memory and being able to use 6 million forms of communication is one thing. Having photoreceptors with the necessary resolution to capture that much detail all the time as a routine seems like overkill. My weedwhacker works well on weeds, but it's not IED proof. Most droids likely aren't engineered to capture that much information in that much detail. Why would a protocol droid need that?

Then again, if a PC asked about some kind of cybernetic upgrade to be able to do that sort of thing, I might entertain it and give them some kind of 'boost/upgrade' for Perception checks when determining if their system captured the specific detail they're looking for after the fact.

My weedwhacker works well on weeds, but it's not IED proof.

Although to be fair, have you tried?

My weedwhacker works well on weeds, but it's not IED proof.

Although to be fair, have you tried?

No, but I've seen what a pretty lame IED will do, and I'm confident my weed whacker won't cut the mustard.

IMO, data compression and data reduction over time is definitely the way to handle this one. Droids would have a limited amount of storage space, and even if they did have a built-in holorecorder, keeping everything recorded since the last memory wipe would just be totally implausible. They should have to pick and choose what seems important to keep, and what is not.

Given that, a roll to remember a specific detail from some time ago would definitely be appropriate. And it might be a very difficult roll.

But I don’t think it would be materially different for most droids than it would for organic PCs.

Memory wipes are a thing, and part of that may very well be to keep accumulated 'junk' memories from degrading the droid's capabilities. Sure, we want to think that they're just for terrible people that want to keep their mechanized slaves in line, but maybe droids need memory wipes for good health.

(Our droid is fully resistant to this concept, however, pointing out she's not a hollow storage shell and 'I need the things in my arm as much as you need yours' .

Our two droids are all about self-improvement and constantly install new stuff to their bodies.They just need those upgrades as much as the meatbags need a nice pair of cybernetic arms and legs to become "competitive again". The meatbags disagree strongly on those encouragements and offers to cut of their limbs and rebuild them stronger and better. ^-^

Memory wipes are a thing, and part of that may very well be to keep accumulated 'junk' memories from degrading the droid's capabilities. Sure, we want to think that they're just for terrible people that want to keep their mechanized slaves in line, but maybe droids need memory wipes for good health.

That sounds not really legit to be honest. You would assume that the concept of forgetting is an integral part of the droid brains design and thus eliminates the need of full scale memory wipes. Google is working on the concept since a few years already btw. ^-^

Using too much modern science to explain anything in Star Wars is usually a sign that you're doing it wrong. If Google's working on it now, then chances are really **** good that it's not the SW answer.

Using too much modern science to explain anything in Star Wars is usually a sign that you're doing it wrong. If Google's working on it now, then chances are really **** good that it's not the SW answer.

So remove the idea of intuitive AI from star wars as google is working on that or what? ;-)

I totally get that star wars is space fantasy and stuff works according to plot anyway, but throwing out common sense and basic principles sounds not like it would fit star wars either. I mean those droids keep forgetting stuff all the time, and R2-D2 is stated to not had a memory wipe at all ;-)

The main problem with this is long term balance. The droids as written are balanced (reasonably). But if you start tweaking, your players will start looking for any advantage they can get.

It reminds me of a D&D game I ran where a player approached me with a concept I liked where he was a wizard who transferred his essence into a crystal and moved telekinetically (essentially a floating rock). I said that sounds cool, and every session he started digging into why each thing should go his way. First, he could fly everywhere. Then he was small enough he should be harder to hit. Then he was immune to poison. Finally I had to shut him down by bringing in downsides. He wanted less damage from edged weapons because he is a rock? Fine, but take double from blunt weapons. You want to fly? Sure. But you can only fly for 1 hour per level per day. The rest of the time you have to convince someone to carry you. And so on.

Moral is to make sure you know what you are getting into. Talk to the player, and lay out what each of you expect.

That sounds not really legit to be honest. You would assume that the concept of forgetting is an integral part of the droid brains design and thus eliminates the need of full scale memory wipes. Google is working on the concept since a few years already btw. ^-^

Yeah, except the problem with digital memories is that they can be written to only so many times before they become unwritable, and potentially corrupted. Different types of technology have different lifecycles for this kind of problem, but they all have it.

Once you get that corruption, that section of memory can no longer be used at all, and you have to mark it as bad and hide it. And that will reduce your functionality by a small, but still measurable, amount.

Do that enough over time, and you end up spending more time mapping out bad memory sections and working around them than you do with “real” work.

A full-blown memory wipe might include actually swapping out memory devices so that you can restore full function.

So, yeah — I think we can plausibly say that occasional full-scale memory wipes could be to the benefit of helping the droid maintain proper mental health.

So, yeah — I think we can plausibly say that occasional full-scale memory wipes could be to the benefit of helping the droid maintain proper mental health.

It for sure deletes any personality that the droid might have picked up. I hear lobotomizing people was considered helpful to maintain proper mental health as well, I would fully accept this stand as ingame reasoning.

As unfortunate as it is, I could see this being used as the reasoning. Whether it's what people actually believe or not is another matter entirely, however.

... a thousand Bonsai Buddy popups to sort through during their day to day operations.

Lucky you... I get a ton of Brazilian Babes or Saudi Hotties popups

I don't believe Droids have perfect recall for one reason; namely that even the droids with higher functions are often obsessed with their primary function to the extent that they consider almost everything else to be secondary. Hence a "recall" check has much more to do with the droids capabilities to note things outside it's interest then it's actual memory; memory space is limited thus they aren't going to have picture perfect recollections of anything unless it was something directly related to it's function

Sure you can recall that man's face perfectly *gestures towards Destiny point pool*

IN the second half of the star wars legacy series comics the droid AG-37 was able to recall images and recording of past encounters it had. also the droids recall could depend on what class of droid it is an asp droid would not but a protocol droid could.