This question has been on my mind for a bit. One of the players has a character who is basically like EDE from Mass Effect (heck, we even found an official model that suits her, the BD3000). Though the player can't quite do the accent yet, she has that slightly-stilted dialogue down to a T, and she's fun to GM for.

The player decided she's also much more sentient than most other droids, essentially thinking she's kind of human. She's already super-smart, and this is fun because 'Responsibility' is her Obligation and 'Droid Rights' is her motivation.

BeeDee also self-identifies as a 'she' - which got me thinking... I never really thought of R2 or 3PO as 'it' - I'd have always called them 'he'. I think the other characters do as well? I mean a Power Droid or something probably wouldn't have a gender identity, but the more complex ones might.

The other players treat her as crew (she has a poignant backstory) not gear, but plenty of NPCs wouldn't do so. I have them talk to the ship's captain and get annoyed when 'your droid' butts in. At best, there's a kind of patronising 'aww, it thinks it's people!' attitude to them.

I have no problem with BeeDee having a full suite of emotions, PCs are special anyway (PC droids can roll to override a restraining bolt). But how sentient are the rest of them?

3PO and R2 certainly seem to exhibit some feelings and emotions. We can't understand R2's words but we always know how the little guy is feeling. (And we think of him as a 'little guy', not a 'she' or an 'it'). He can sound happy or sad, or perky, or like a smart-alecky know-it-all. 3PO is fidgety, supercilious and something of a coward, traits common in protocol droids.

I even remember the one in Jabba's palace torturing another droid, implying that they can feel pain or at least discomfort.

So it's fun to see BeeDee want to liberate her 'not-quite-as-smart-or-emotional-as-me' brethren. And it will be even more fun when she meets the 'Droid Liberation Movement' in the 'Debts To Pay' adventure, and discovers that being an underdog doesn't necessarily make you one of the good guys...

Anyway... how do other people play their droid PCs?

I've always though star wars droids were fully sentiant. The Gonk in Jabba's Palace being tortured and screaming in terror, the MSE droid running away scared, R2 whisteling to himself as he swam along on Dagobah or acting afraid and talking to himself - with nobody else around for miles - in the Jawa canyon.

It depends upon the droid in question and how sentient the programmers wanted them to be.

We have a sentient astromech droid in the party who is completely sentient, and very droid-rights. The party has already threatened to mind wipe him again after his insistence on "rescuing" a pair of binary load lifters. Not very sentient.

So it's fun to see BeeDee want to liberate her 'not-quite-as-smart-or-emotional-as-me' brethren. And it will be even more fun when she meets the 'Droid Liberation Movement' in the 'Debts To Pay' adventure, and discovers that being an underdog doesn't necessarily make you one of the good guys...

Yeah, that is the adventure I am running next for my players to get them used to the system before I let them loose on the Star Wars universe full tilt. I can't wait to see how the party interacts afterwards.

Most droids are generally "sentient," with I believe the DUM-series of Pit Droids, Mouse Droids (more due to very limited range of programming), and Binary Load Lifters being the major exceptions. I'm fairly certain that they are all 5th degree droids, where were built more for simple/menial labor. After all, if you need a droid to simply lift and carry heavy things, then you don't need it to be a sparkling conversationalist or well-versed on the works of various philosophers. The B1-series battle droids used by the Trade Federation weren't all that bright in the movies, but that's due to them using very simplistic processors (when they weren't outright slaved to the remote processor aboard a Droid Control Ship), but they're 4th-degree droids and generally only need to be useful for combat-related functions.

Astromechs are 2nd degree droids, which their main functions require them to fairly bright (they've got to be able to diagnose various mechanical issues and then resolve them, often under less-than-ideal conditions) and be self-aware. Same with protocol droids like the Threepio series and the BD3000's, which are designed to interact with organics in a meaningful way.

So for your player with the Betty-Bot, being self-aware and self-identifying as a specific gender is perfectly in keeping with what we see of the more advanced droid models in the Star Wars 'verse, both the films and the various EU.

However, the thing also is that R2-D2 and C-3P0 also went for long times without a memory wipe, something that most droid manufacturers suggest be done on a regular basis. I know there was an element in Sage Edition's Threats of the Galaxy sourcebook, noting that owners of various R-series droids (particularly the R2 and R4 series) ignored this suggestion, finding that not wiping the droid's memory lead to an astromech droid that was far more useful as it was quite familiar with the routine tasks it was assigned and became better and coming up with novel and workable solutions to problems that vexed their organic owners. So again, it could be that the BD3000 character was allowed to go without a memory wipe for similar reasons, as her prior owner (or perhaps current legal owner) felt that she'd accrued too much useful experience and knowledge from performing her duties to justify subjecting her to a periodic memory wipe; yeah, she might have picked up some personality quirks, but it's a small price to pay for the wealth of info she has on dealing with various organic species and ensuring various feathers (figuratively and literally) don't get ruffled during the owner's meetings with various individuals.

I can't really contribute much to figuring out how sentient droids were but I did notice that the droid near the beginning of Episode 1 has a feminine voice... so identifying as one gender or another (or another... or another??? Its a BIG galaxy!!!) Is possible for droids...

Doing a search for definitions, I stumbled across an article which gives some useful definitions. Sentience, Sapiance, and Sophonce. Note: I believe the Sophonce category was made up for the fictional universe described in the linked site, but it makes a useful distinction, so I included it here.

Sentience is awareness, including the ability to experience pleasure or pain (or analogous drives and experiences) and make predictions about the future. Every (or at least virtually every) droid is sentient, along with virtually every multi-celled organism on Earth, and even some single-celled ones. Even some plants exhibit this level of self-awareness.

Sapience is the ability to think and solve problems; intelligence in the strict sense. Most are probably sapient, even Binary Load Lifters (at least within their areas of expertise). They join the ranks of a wide variety of animals including Humans, Crows, Dolphins. Collectively, certain hive insects seem to exhibit these qualities.

Sophonce is sentience and sapience with metacognition: self-awareness, including self-reflection and the ability to think about one's thinking. A rare few droids become self-aware enough to become sophont, usually through extended periods without memory wipes. Sophonce could be considered hyper-sentience, basically having become sentient enough to be aware of being sentient.

This thread is educational. I'd never heard of sophonce and I've been misusing sentience and sapience!

I think in Star Wars droid have the ability to become "sentient" which is why they reference wiping their memory cores often.

I even remember the one in Jabba's palace torturing another droid, implying that they can feel pain or at least discomfort.

This probably has its roots in that a droid, much like a person with congenital analgesia, could harm themselves without even realizing.

My sister is playing a medical droid based on a cross between Leebo and 41-VEX, with a bedside manner just a step above Dr. House. She's pulling off the stilted speech with intermittent inflections quite stunningly: this little bit makes all the difference.

She insisted on freeing the R5 unit from the scrapyard in the "Escape from Mos Shuuta" adventure, satisfying her "Droid Rights" angle, and netting her a "Droid Companion". I'll work out some way for what was effectively stealing someone's property to bite them in the end; perhaps R5 has a tracking device even he's unaware of.

This thread is educational. I'd never heard of sophonce and I've been misusing sentience and sapience!

Pretty much everyone are using sentience wrong (so far it goes for everyone in this thread, and myself in numerous other occasions). We might as well redefine it to make life easier on us

I think in the broadest term, self awareness, self-reflection and the ability to feel emotions would make one indistinguishable from a human being and most of the droids in the Star Wars movies we have seen clearly exhibit all of these things. Close your eyes, watch the movies and consider what the droids say and how they behave... They would likely appear, clearly human, in particular C3P0.

I'm glad someone else pointed out the differences between sentience, sapience and sophonce.

I think in the broadest term, self awareness, self-reflection and the ability to feel emotions would make one indistinguishable from a human being and most of the droids in the Star Wars movies we have seen clearly exhibit all of these things. Close your eyes, watch the movies and consider what the droids say and how they behave... They would likely appear, clearly human, in particular C3P0.

But even C3PO admitted during the Holiday Special** that he and R2D2 are incapable of feeling emotion and that sometimes he wish he could feel emotions so he could understand life day better.

As a protocol droid, C3PO is programmed for human/cyborg relations. Just because he's programmed to sound like he's expressing an emotion doesn't mean he actually has those emotions. Of course Robots do not want to be scrapped or built wrongly, hence why he bickered with Chewie during ESB. It was out of his inability to fulfil his droid functions in the state he was in, rather than any true emotion.

R2D2 just developed a potty mouth and those mannerisms because unlike C3PO, he certainly seemed to get mind wiped less often than he did. C3PO was clueless about his life pre-episode 4, but R2 was well aware of who Obi-Wan Kenobi was.

**Yes, it's bad but Episode 3 Revenge of the Sith made sure that the Holiday Special was canon as it used the artwork produced for that special (the first time the Wookie planet was ever shown anywhere) in order to create Kashyyk.

EDIT: Forgot the asterisks.

Yes, its' bad but Episode 3 Revenge of the Sith made sure that the Holiday Special was canon.

It would seem that you intended for that to be a conclusion to what you wrote over, but I see no correlation there. Why would RotS make Holiday Special canon?

But even C3PO admitted during the Holiday Special** that he and R2D2 are incapable of feeling emotion and that sometimes he wish he could feel emotions so he could understand life day better.

Threepio is... kind of unctuous, really.

It wouldn't surprise me if he just said that to make the organics feel better about themselves

No human wants to know that their toaster has feelings, after all.

What about Obi Wan's line that, if droids could think there would be none of us here, from EPII?

What about Obi Wan's line that, if droids could think there would be none of us here, from EPII?

Two options: 1)obvious metaphor, or 2) subconscious anti-droid bias. For example, we see R2 take leaps of reasoning *many* times across the 6 movies, taking action to benefit himself or his friends without specific (or often *any*) instruction.

Tricking Luke into removing the restraining bolt on Tattooine.

Using his fire extinguisher to provide concealment racing back to the Falcon on Cloud City.

Getting fed up with the meatbags not listening to him, and reactivating the Falcon's hyperdrive.

Turning up the heat in Leia's quarters in Echo Base. (Oops.)

Actively *disobeying* orders/instructions on a number of occasions.

- Going into the droid factory on Geonosis.

- Leaving the X-Wing on Degobah

Etc.

C-3PO is a bit more 'restrained', but still manages to think on the fly a few times, not least of which was the plan to hide in the storage closet in the hangar control room on the Death Star.

My dad is the biggest Star Wars nerd I know (and I say that lovingly!). So I asked him this question. He said that he remembered reading that there were numbered classes of droids. The higher order droids could be sophont (he said sentient but we clarified) given time without a memory wipe. But with sophonce came other issues. They'd develop personalities and quirks and that was undesirable to most people who just wanted their droid to do the job they were bought to do so their owners would wipe their memory from time to time to reset them.

I don't know if eote mentions the classes of droids... Would this work in eote?

Can someone find me a definition of "sophont" or its derivatives that shows it exists outside of a science fiction source? I can't seem to find one.

From what I remember IG-88 did whatever it wanted to do.

My opinion: as sentient as you want them to be.

Personally, I get a feel for the last wipe, when I create the droid (NPC). The longer it has been since “the wipe”, the more personality I give the droid, with the ones recently wiped acting like toasters.

That said, I tend to stick with droid "logic", if you will. Like most built items, they were designed for a specific task, for instance the toaster I mentioned. It happens to be very good at toasting, but not so good at frying eggs. I bleed that over to personalities as well. I tend to have them ham-up one emotion, but seem a tad lacking (tad being the key word), in others. I also tend the have them emulate an organic that has played a large role in their existence. Like if one was a butler for Elvis, it takes some of Elvis' traits, as it shows learning through environment. It's just they way they are built, as they don't have a culture or parents for guidance.

Technically I don't have droids feel "pain" or anything else. They have no nervous system, "most" lack all true emotions (with the exceptions being very far between with an extremely in-depth reason for said attachments), that way they really stick out when they do. I have them mimic emotions from time to time, making it obvious to an observer they are acting on a program instead of physical emotions.

I've run them like this for years, not just FFG's games. The narrative system gives me a ton more wiggle room in how I go about it.

Truth be told, I've never been a huge fan of PC droids. Player's, as organics, never seem to play them correctly, IMO. In fact to do this one would have to completely detach from the game, which is counter-intuitive to RPGs. If I have a character that wants to play a droid, I usually run with the shard concept (or Krang from TMNT), allowing for more of an organic feel to the character, logically. I don’t assign anything to the species that is “driving” the droid, but it allows for a more “human” response in acting and reacting, so things like “The bad guy is gonna go wetwork a batch of kids” isn’t met with “meh”.

There are no "true" rules for any of this, find what works for yourself and your crew and roll with it. Heck you may wish to open this as a discussion at your table and get their input. That way everyone, PCs included, are on the same level (being the common knowledge of your universe).

Hope it helps...

Sham

Can someone find me a definition of "sophont" or its derivatives that shows it exists outside of a science fiction source? I can't seem to find one.

Someone defined it further up in the thread, but it does not exist outside of science-fiction. It has come to existence just due to authors limited knowledge of the terms sapiens and sentience.

Can someone find me a definition of "sophont" or its derivatives that shows it exists outside of a science fiction source? I can't seem to find one.

Someone defined it further up in the thread, but it does not exist outside of science-fiction. It has come to existence just due to authors limited knowledge of the terms sapiens and sentience.

Probably. I included a note to that effect in my earlier post. (I guess italics wasn't the right choice for emphasis, because you don't seem to be the only one who missed it.)

What about Obi Wan's line that, if droids could think there would be none of us here, from EPII?

Two options: 1)obvious metaphor, or 2) subconscious anti-droid bias. For example, we see R2 take leaps of reasoning *many* times across the 6 movies, taking action to benefit himself or his friends without specific (or often *any*) instruction.

Tricking Luke into removing the restraining bolt on Tattooine.

Using his fire extinguisher to provide concealment racing back to the Falcon on Cloud City.

Getting fed up with the meatbags not listening to him, and reactivating the Falcon's hyperdrive.

Turning up the heat in Leia's quarters in Echo Base. (Oops.)

Actively *disobeying* orders/instructions on a number of occasions.

- Going into the droid factory on Geonosis.

- Leaving the X-Wing on Degobah

Etc.

C-3PO is a bit more 'restrained', but still manages to think on the fly a few times, not least of which was the plan to hide in the storage closet in the hangar control room on the Death Star.

Or, if you go by cut scenes, C-3PO set up an ambush in Echo Base on Hoth by removing the warning sign from the room where they were keeping wampas that attacked the base captive (leading to a terrible surprise for the snowtrooper that opened the door). Which is kind of interesting since it also goes at least somewhat against the idea of non-4th degree droids having a First Law rule; R2 didn't have much issue zapping Ewoks in ROTJ either. If more "sophant" droids can start sneaking around such rules, it makes sense why memory wipes would be more common than not, as a safety measure in addition to avoiding less lethal "quirks".

As for Obi-Wan denigrating droids, I seem to recall at least one of the books saying the Jedi didn't like droids (I think it had Anakin as a kid fixing up a bunch of droids around the temple irritating the Jedi and at least one meeting with a lightsaber accident via Master Windu). Considering they can't be Force sensitive, it makes a lot of sense the prejudice would be there.

As a general game rule, I would make PC droids fully sentient/sapient/sophant/etc. Not counting avoiding the RPG idiocy of telling a player what his PC thinks, there have certainly been too many droids at least as clever as regular humans to rule the whole idea out. I would say some of the more limited models don't become smart without unusual experiences (there has been a distinction between some droid brains being better at learning than others (like the 3PO "verbobrain"), and I'd think any droid not expected to need to adapt to circumstances would lack the better ones) and the average models usually being memory wiped too often to develop it. Granted I lean towards "sophant droid = rare" primarily to sidestep the whole "robots as slaves" moral issue which tends to derail the usual tone of Star Wars (otherwise the heroes = slavers), though if you want to explore the issue by all means go for it.