How do you play as an emotionless robot that still cracks wit and puts on a display of personality for the sake of the...

I don't know what to say, man. you want to have a cold, unfeeling machine, but also do things that are closely tied with human emotions. There's always going to be that struggle there.

B1 BATTLE DROIDS.
EASILY.

>but also do things that are closely tied with human emotions
My Siri puts up the illusion of having a personality as well, that doesn't mean she has emotions. Something passing the Turing test is no indication of that thing possessing human emotions.

ROGER ROGER

And would you want the extent of your character to be Siri? You need to have more depth to a character than that.

The character wants to complete the objectives that his superiors give him, because that is what his programming mandates. Now in terms of personality, he usually plays the role of sarcastic wisecracker or some other friendly personality, not indicative of any true feelings for his comrades but simply to ensure team spirits remain high.

The personality is quite detailed though. The only time the facade drops is when the rest of the team considers disobeying orders from higher up, whereupon any semblance of friendliness from the robot is dropped and he compels them to carry on with the mission.

Well, sounds like you got it figured out, then, although it sounds more like an NPC the GM would use to guide the players towards the plot, possibly by force.

What happens if the team decide to disobey?
Does he become Comrade Cyber-Commissar?
Is he capable of actually forming bonds with the party?
Is he able to do anything outside his programming?

So your character isn't sapient? No creativity, only programming?

...

Depends on how you define "creativity", he certainly can come up with unique solutions to problems if that's what you mean. I mean hell, we already have AI's that create original music undistinguishable from music made by humans.

>What happens if the team decide to disobey?
>Does he become Comrade Cyber-Commissar?
That's what I'm trying to figure out right now mostly. Would he try to use his influence and personality to push the team towards completing their objectives, if not now, then later on? Or would he use force, killing his own team if necessary to carry on the mission on his own? I'm not sure yet.

>Is he capable of actually forming bonds with the party?
They're one way bonds. His "personality" talks to the crew and forms friendships, but ultimately they hold little to no sway over his actual decision making.

>Is he able to do anything outside his programming?
No, but his programming is quite creative. He'd never rebel against his commanders or go against the mission, but he can come up with unique solutions to problems. He does have trouble seeing the bigger picture though, as to him the mission always comes first, even when deviating from that mission may help the war to a greater extent.

Of course I'm always open to suggestions, I just don't want to go with the typical emotional robot route.

Actually come to think of it K2SO and the other droids in Star Wars are basically what I'm looking for out of the robot. The droids have personalities, but they ultimately follow orders and are loyal to whomever they are programmed to be loyal to.

Sounds like he's pretty one-dimensional. He's not a part of the party, he's their watch dog and potential killer. You're probably going to have to rework that concept, or provide the party with an opportunity to hack him, if you don't want inter-party conflict.

Honestly, it sounds like you're best off drawing inspiration from sociopaths. Emotionless, able to put on the facade, but utterly incapable of giving a fuck for anyone irrelevant to themselves or their interests.

Or even better yet, make it autosentient - Full self-awareness, because it has literal nerves of steel it reacts to every situation in absolute calamity. Problem is: Your autosentient robot now can not just understand its own mind nearly perfectly, but also the minds of non-autosentient beings around it. All their actions as deterministic and predictable as imaginary figures.
>pic would be an example of a autosentient would behave.

Probably the same way you'd play an amusing psychopath, eg Patrick Bateman style. Except that his mission is to help the party, instead of feed cats to an atm.

>Have a table for jokes / puns that you randomly roll for.
Actually a pretty good idea.

>he usually plays the role of sarcastic wisecracker or some other friendly personality, not indicative of any true feelings for his comrades but simply to ensure team spirits remain high.
I feel like it's almost funnier if the robot has no idea that he is being funny. Like, he's just following his directives, but seems hilarious to other people because of his more of speech or whatever. Sorta a tobias funke robot.

>Like, he's just following his directives, but seems hilarious to other people because of his more of speech or whatever
That sounds like a good idea, I'll need to figure out how to go about it.

HK-47

HK-47 is distinctly emotional. it has disgust for living beings for irrational reasons. there's no reason a robot would have an opinion on a human being, except for maybe being confused and in awe of how random and irrational their behavior can be to the more rudimentary consciousness of a robot. I'd specifically recommend against doing HK-47 since it's kind of a tired cliche at this point

have an overarching human-designed directive(s) that form the basis of your motives and personality. AIs have whatever desires they are programmed to have. they just usually have a very distinct way of pursuing them. a robot that wants to save person will do it very pragmatically, and considering itself justified in doing so. a robot PC will typically be very "the ends justify the means" unless specifically directed not to be, in which case it will often be openly frustrated about seeing an easy solution but being inhibited from using it.

i would stay away from intentional jokes and stick to unintentional humor derived from the difference in morals and values between humans and robots.

>human trapped in a jail cell, asks robot PC to get him out
>robot: "Searching solution. Solution found: Remove non-essential sub-objects in human object. With diminished size, object can fit through obstacle."
>human: "What? Even if I take off my armor, I still won't fit the bars!"
>robot: "Misunderstanding detected. Clarification: For the removal of non-essential sub-objects, parameters include: Right leg, left leg, right arm, left arm, right kidney-"
>human: "What the fuck, no! Think of something else."
>robot: "Disregarding viable solution due to human emotional factor. Converse: You are acting 'picky'."

i don't know, i'm not that good at writing

although that might get hard to roleplay. you'd definitely need a list of syntaxes you would use while talking. but at least you could say "calculating" prefacing everything to give you time to think

Have it be cold and emotionless, except for whenever it's promoting its inventor and their company. And that should be whenever humanely possible

>This is why you should invest in "Murder Bots inc."!
>If you need replacement guards, you should go to Murder Bot inc.
>I bet Defence Robot LTD robots aren't THIS customisable!
>Did you know that you can charge your phone off my fission core in less than 5 minutes?
>Need to send a message to your foes? For only 200 credits, I can be programmed with over 250 ways to mutilate a corpse!
>What's faster than a speeding bullet? A speeding bullet from the new MB4500K-pi from Murder Bots inc.!
>We are now selling romba based home defence units, starting from 1200 credits!
>I come installed with over 50 ways to stall terrorists while everyone else lines up shots!

>desire human emotions
>desire
>envy

well they've already got one down, so they're off to a good start

I also envisioned this albeit mixed with that robot side-kick from Star Wars Rogue One

Are those combat top-hats?

...

Talk like HK-47, minus the meatbag comments.

That's too close to slavery for me to be comfortable with, user. Either the being is non-sapient and forced under somebody, or the being is sentient and free.

Sapience doesn't really apply here, not with the type of robots that are being discussed in this thread. Sure, some people may insist that they have souls or emotions, but at the end of the day they are just lifeless code designed to parrot human behavior for our own amusement. We call it "sentient" and "enslaved" because we assume that since it behaves like us, it must be like us. But this simply isn't true.

They are metal commissar hats.

I can't tell if this is me anymore.

Just play them like anyone else who's great to be around. Their programming is very good. If the teammates can see through the shell, its not effective. Just be a good friend, helpful, considerate, funny, an active listener to everyone's problems.

If you're going for the angle that the simulation is made to be as good, or even better, than regular human companionship, its not like anyone should be able to tell the difference.

Sauce on pic?

Future's End: Swamp Thing

Dry observations that are funny because of the timing or delivery.

No idea how to go about that, but it's an idea.

You play pic related.

Tell jokes like it'a natural, but then immediately follow it up with "PLEASE RANK EFFECT ON MORALE FROM 1-10, PREFFERED FREQUENCY OF RETELLING 1-10" ect... Survey after every joke, break the ice and then lay it back on thick.

I mean, arguably he had an actual personality at the end, but still

Nice.

Make joke at both good and bad times.

>group is about to undertake a dangerous mission to Uranus and your sensors detect high stress levels
>randomnly generated joke category is pun
"Lets go beat Uranus"

>Group has buried friend who had their head blown off and your sensors are detecting high stress
>randomnly generated joke category is situational humor
"Come on guys, lets not lose our heads over this"

Sounds like me in real life.

See, this is where a contradiction happens within your idea of a logical robotic mind.

You're thinking like HAL, HAL was a flawed machine given contradictory missions.

If your Robot is designed to follow the mission exactly, and is assigned to a team, There is no logic to simply shooting the rest of the squad to continue the mission only to fail because you need the Squad.

Fundamentally an AI programmed to understand emotions understands Empathy and can use abstract solutions to solve conflicts and solve the mission.

See; Bladewolf and Gerty in this thread. A smart AI that understand human emotion will not be autistic.

Underrated relatable post

Thanks user, will check it out.

>Bladewolf and Gerty
I've seen Gerty but not Bladewolf, I'll check it out.

He's basically a Hyper advanced Combat AI who was removed of his limits of purely being within Combat parameters.

He quickly deduces it's illogical to fight and understanding things is easily the better option. Bladewolf is probably one of my favorite examples of how a sentient AI would actually work.

If a Combat AI is designed for abstract thinking and finds a way to "Escape" it's limited foundation, Why the hell would it want to stay in Combat? Combat is an illogical outcome for survival.

Very interesting. That's sort of what I was hoping to go for with the robot, a machine that can socialize out of a logical desire to see the mission accomplished with the best results, without going the route of "it has feelings and a soul".

Bladewolf is very interesting because at first he has no emotions. Everything he says is done Matter-of-factly and he states the reasoning for everything.

However he develops emotions more and more through the game, because he develops preferences and dislikes based on his logical assumptions.

He likes Raiden because Raiden helped free him from his crude parameters, but he thinks Raiden is overly emotional.

He likes Jetstream Sam because Jetstream Sam treated him like a sentient being, which, even when he was just the IF prototype and stuck in the parameters of his mission he was.

A sufficiently autonomous and advanced AI will naturally develop preferences due to logical outcomes and experiences. Bladewolf was such an advanced AI it deduced it's own Missions and programming were morally wrong, but was unable to not perform them.

It's always wrong to think "Has feelings" means "not a robot."

If it can deduce and understand emotions, it can in turn develop them based on logical preferences.

For example, let's say your AI character has a "Friend" a person in the Squad it enjoys talking to and learns from. To your AI, this Friend would be more valuable than the others, and as such, it would logically be fine to priorities this friend to ensure your missions go smoothly.

Logic is still only in the eye of the beholder, in fact that's how our AI's work right now. Some of them do such back assward things yet work well for the AI.

The DLC outlines Bladewolf really well.

youtube.com/watch?v=_63MzteDbl0

Man MGR was such a good Setting.

I was disappointed this wasn't posted sooner.

I disagree. He's as unemotional as they come, he just adds emotional explicatives to the beginning of his sentences so he appears less like the psycho he is.