I was in a game run by my partner for a year where I played a droid mechanic. Throughout that year I became quite intrigued with how droids would perceive the idea of personhood. Were a droid to get the programming quirk that they wanted to become a person, how would they go about it.

There are very few droids in Star Wars that have achieved personhood in my opinion. Off the top of my head I would say maybe IG-88, C3PO, R2D2, or HK-47.

My thoughts are to introduce a droid as a quest giver to the party. This droid has a simple request. They want to have a child. They want to give birth. This will result in the party helping the droid to clear out and reactivate an old abandoned droid factory (a very small one), for the droid to have their "children".

Ultimately, I want to build the Droid into a main villian that does horrible things in a misguided quest for personhood. One idea I have, once they have their small army of children, is to become obsessed with skin, and end up like Necron flayed ones.

Any other ideas?

Hang on - better idea. Stand by.

Here we go, our efforts to take Event Horizon and turn it into a creepy as hell Star Wars game full of droids wearing meat suits:

Very much along the same lines, unfortunately the google drive link is dead

I think I will have the droid hire the party as I said and open with foreshadowing comment to the Zeltron: "You have such beautiful skin..."

Did this not work? https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5ytBajSy3DbbFg4Y1E3UV9yc2c/view

ah thank you, maybe i clicked on the wrong link

1 hour ago, RedEyeManiac said:

I was in a game run by my partner for a year where I played a droid mechanic. Throughout that year I became quite intrigued with how droids would perceive the idea of personhood. Were a droid to get the programming quirk that they wanted to become a person, how would they go about it.

There are very few droids in Star Wars that have achieved personhood in my opinion. Off the top of my head I would say maybe IG-88, C3PO, R2D2, or HK-47.

My thoughts are to introduce a droid as a quest giver to the party. This droid has a simple request. They want to have a child. They want to give birth. This will result in the party helping the droid to clear out and reactivate an old abandoned droid factory (a very small one), for the droid to have their "children".

Ultimately, I want to build the Droid into a main villian that does horrible things in a misguided quest for personhood. One idea I have, once they have their small army of children, is to become obsessed with skin, and end up like Necron flayed ones.

Any other ideas?

I would take a lot of notes from Data from Next Generation, as that's pretty much exactly the situation you are talking about.

You might do some research into an old title by White Wolf called Prometheus. It's a game about, well basically Frankenstein's Monster. The things created by, usually, mad scientists, who are now living beings, who have zero clue what it is to be alive. The entire focus of the game is as they learn certain aspects of what it is to be alive/human, and how that informs their existence. If you are planning on taking him the Evil route, then it would be doubly useful, as it's White Wolf and...well, most things in White Wolf do not end with rainbows and unicorns.

8 hours ago, RedEyeManiac said:

I think I will have the droid hire the party as I said and open with foreshadowing comment to the Zeltron: "You have such beautiful skin..."

Aaaand now I'm picturing an android Buffalo Bill; "It puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the pulse-wave blaster again!"

10 hours ago, RedEyeManiac said:

Re activate an old abandoned droid factory (a very small one), for the droid to have their "children ".

Ultimately, I want to build the Droid into a main villian that does horrible things. One idea I have, once they have their small army of children, is to become obsessed with skin .

WALL OF PHILOSOPHY WARNING!! Well firstly if the droid was capable of programming themselves to be fully sentient, then they would be fully sentient already. It can't just be programmed to understand sentience then program itself to be fully self-aware. It is literally impossible for a computer to program itself to sentience. This means it needs an external actor to work on its AI to help make it sentient. The problem there is the limits of humanity; humans CAN understand sentience but can they replicate it? Identity, will and experience are all incredibly subjective (and objective) so one human alone can only replicate aspects of their experience of personhood.

There is also the notion that programming is limited to what is programmed. Even so called "computers that learn" are limited to their programming -- they cannot move past it (but I suppose that just goes back to the initial problem). The problem with programming something to think for itself is programming. I am a native English speaker. I don't have a word of Chinese. If I were sat in a room with a number of cue cards with Chinese expressions written on them and an instruction manual on how to arrange these characters to form sentences, it would give me the appearance of speaking Chinese when in fact I was just following what was programmed in the manual. All programming can ever be is following instructions. If something outside the scope of those instructions is met then you can't do anything about it. (This is the main concept behind robots being destroyed by logical paradoxes in lots of different sci-fi media).

Anyways the above are all things to take into account if you want this droid to be seeking personhood. True artificial intelligence has yet to be proven even theoretically possible. It could exist in the Star Wars universe but if you want to create a real villain, the above gives you the kind of context they would need. It can't program itself to personhood. It can't make a human do it. If it could find some kind of omniscient being, that would be the only solution. Basically, the droid needs to find some kind of god to make him a real boy Trying to achieve full sentience will always be futile so you can make a real tragic villain out of this concept.

These are all strong points.

Then again, we're talking about a world inhabited by kung-fu monks with laser swords.

3 minutes ago, Desslok said:

These are all strong points.

Then again, we're talking about a world inhabited by kung-fu monks with laser swords.

Yeh but they do philosophy too

Honestly, I just pulled an all-nighter writing philosophy essays. It might be effecting the way I think right now

Like yeah that all checks out for our life, but droid sentience has been pretty hotly debated for 40 years now. If anything I think its more Star Wars to have a droid develop a programming quirk to want to imitate life. If you take a protocol droid that has been programmed to mimic meatbags, its not too hard to think a quirk it there would make it go from mimic to become.

And I think the whole preformative nature of it is what is so fundamentally horrifying. You have this logical machine that doesn't have empathy trying to achieve something it doesn't truly understand.

Personally I tend to avoid arguments about sentience that do not first define it, as most unspoken definitions are basically "like us-ness", which is also curiously the basis of many of the world's problems.

I think, at least for star wars, 'sentient' is the default setting for droids. Why would you program an MSE droid - a simple, basic messenger droid - for the capacity of fear? Why would you program a Gonk Droid - a slightly more advanced model of droid - with the capacity for utter terror? Why would you program mass produced and disposable battle droids with snark and humor? And yet one runs away from Chewie, the other is scared as hell when tortured (also, why would you program a droid with a sadistic streak), and the notoriously niggardly Trade Federation has snarky battle droids that talk back.

Not sure if there's a cultural divide, but niggardly is not an appropriate word to use, as it is basically describing one who is like a n*****, based on the assumption that they are all devious, selfish, cheap and untrustworthy. Its racist.

Why would you program droids to feel fear and pain? Cos you are a terrible person that's why "Hey you know what this innanimate object needs? Awareness of the fleeting nature of existence and the ability to feel terror. "

Fun fact: The back chatter from trade federation droids was the result of an intelligence upgrade. Their hardware couldn't properly hand the new software and resulted in them talking **** all the time

"Niggardly" (noun: " niggard ") is an adjective meaning "stingy" or "miserly". It can be traced back at least to the Middle English word nigon, which has the same meaning, and is perhaps related to the Old Norse verb nigla, which means "to fuss about small matters".

3 minutes ago, TheShard said:

Not sure if there's a cultural divide, but niggardly is not an appropriate word to use, as it is basically describing one who is like a n*****, based on the assumption that they are all devious, selfish, cheap and untrustworthy. Its racist.

Nigardly is completely unrelated to that other heinous word. It is only due the the USA's horrific historical relationship with that word and with slavery that sensitivity flairs around it (understandably so). The only way it is in any way similar to that other word is through phonetics. Its etymology is actually from Old Norse word "nigle" which means to worry over nothing. Ut is more similar to the word "niggling" as in "I have a niggling feeling that this thread might get shut down if this turns into a heated debate racial terms".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_"niggardly"#cite_note-Garner2009-1
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=niggard

Actually this is news to me... Its interesting but if people feel like it's invoking the n word, it still probably shouldn't be said. Maybe it's different outside the U.S., but since at face value it looks as if the n word is it's root, and that word is still used to convey those same feelings of untrustworthy, lazy, and selfish... Id just cut it out of my vocab to be safe.

However I stand corrected about it's origins.

This is why I like to think about star wars droids and not being binary. I often compare them to the robots in the fallout series. Star wars has always struck me as a world that doesn't have the equivalent of microchips and microprocessors. They're still using vacuum tube equivalents and such. They're mechanical so there's some modularity to it, but a droid brain has to be trained to do what it does, much like a sentient child. Now, you an pre-plug in the walking function and speech, but anything beyond basic skills requires training. Then, once you've trained your droid, you lock it in and use that droid as the template for the rest. Sure they can still learn beyond that, but not as much or as fast. And the more a template droid knows the harder and more expensive it is to replicate that. That's why we don't see armies of special ops droids. The first ones took longer to train and the ones that come after that are harder to make. Sort of along the lines of modern chip manufacturing. They produce several chips in one go then they go through them and remove the flawed copies. Some only have a few flaws so those flaws get locked off and the chip is sold as slower model. But some simply aren't viable. This helps account for the differences in personality between the battle droids too.

To me it explains why 3PO could barely stand in EpI. Anakin couldn't afford a basic walking module so 3PO had to lean to walk on his own.

It's the way I look at it anyway.

21 hours ago, Desslok said:

Did this not work? https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5ytBajSy3DbbFg4Y1E3UV9yc2c/view

I am SO going to download this at home, VERY well-written...great basis for my own Death Ship idea...8)

2 hours ago, TheShard said:

Actually this is news to me... Its interesting but if people feel like it's invoking the n word, it still probably shouldn't be said. Maybe it's different outside the U.S., but since at face value it looks as if the n word is it's root, and that word is still used to convey those same feelings of untrustworthy, lazy, and selfish... Id just cut it out of my vocab to be safe.

However I stand corrected about it's origins.

Someone showing their ignorance is not a reason to not use a word. I dont mean your reaction TheShard, I mean those who take offence for no reason just because they are ignorant.

There is a reason, a very very big reason.

The only time I've heard anyone use that word was because they knew how offensive it might.be taken and said it for exactly that reason.

Secondly most people are not etymologists, I would consider myself to have had an above average exposure to culture and I assumed the word was derived from the slur. I cannot reasonably expect, with the crappy education most people receive in th U.S., to know it's derived from a Norse word... Shoot I cannot reasonably expect people to know what the word Norse means.

Given the history here, and the current climate where racism is now and more out in the open, I'll pay it safe. I'd rather not offend someone, or be mistaken as a shithead racist. I don't loose anything by not using it, I can loose something by using it.

3 hours ago, Desslok said:

I think, at least for star wars, 'sentient' is the default setting for droids. Why would you program an MSE droid - a simple, basic messenger droid - for the capacity of fear? Why would you program a Gonk Droid - a slightly more advanced model of droid - with the capacity for utter terror? Why would you program mass produced and disposable battle droids with snark and humor? And yet one runs away from Chewie, the other is scared as hell when tortured (also, why would you program a droid with a sadistic streak), and the notoriously niggardly Trade Federation has snarky battle droids that talk back.

I would think that programming a basic bit of self preservation might come across as fear. The little mouse droid that runs from Chewie, could simply be doing a logical assessment, "Biological entity known for ripping off limbs when angry, is apparently angry at me. Retreat to preserve self." Of course there is the droid torture room in Jabba's palace, so apparently they have some level of pain sense and emotion.

I would probably say it's something along the lines of the robot construction company from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in attempting to make droids more personable, by giving them emotions, and a bit of the More Human Than Human mindset from Blade Runner.

Also, running parallel to my thoughts on pain in cybernetics, it could also be an inhibiting factor on the droids, to prevent them from doing dangerous/stupid things, that could bring themselves or others to harm. Negative stimulus reinforcement is a very effective tool after all.

If we are assuming they have genuine sentience, not just a replication of it, then the reason for them having emotions is self evident, they have them. If a person views them as not being "truly" sentient, and are only an imitation of it, then it's probably an effort by the manufactorers to minimize the Uncanny Valley, and allow them to be more readily accepted into society. I mean, just look at all the fan love 3PO and R2 have received over the decades. And it's entirely due to their personality. We like them more than the emotionless droids of other shows/movies, because they are more personable, and we can more readily relate to them. The only real question is whether it's genuine or a simulation of personality. But that's getting into the realm of real world thoughts on AI, to a level that I frankly think is pointless in Star Wars.

In a universe where an 8 year old can shipjack a fighter and take out a droid capship, and all the other entirely goofy crap this 'verse has, I'm not really going to question if they are genuine or not. They have magical levels of technology in every other facet of life, I see no reason to think they didn't lick the problem of true AI as well.