AI Characters?

Burning Empires Burning Empires Character Burner
1

Hello - this is my first time posting, and already I’m asking for help…

I’m going to be starting up a BE campaign soon (we’ve had a brainstorming session, and will be doing formal world-burning next week), and have a bit of a quandry about one of the concept Valyen FoNs we came up with.

The game in general is planned to have a cyberpunk-y feel to it, and one of the concepts everyone was jazzed about was having relatively low (for BE) tech, save for advanced cybernetics and very advanced artificial intelligences. So, the planned Vaylen-side FoN for the Usurpation phase is an AI (one that’s pissed about its kind basically being traded as fantastically intelligent slaves).

So… I’ve found the thread on robots, but that doesn’t really get to what I’m concerned about. I’m trying to think of how to burn up the NPC. I don’t want to burn it up as tech, since it’s a full-blown character. Right now, my best idea is to burn it as a normal (human) character, but just ignore physical stats and any traits that don’t make sense for a disembodied intelligence. I figure I can simulate the super-advanced intelligence by outfitting it with some Will and Perception-boosting tech.

It strikes me that this isn’t a bad solution, but it bugs me a little. On the one hand, it seems a little like cheating to get to ignore quite possibly detrimental Traits just on my say-so of “it doesn’t seem like an AI would have that.” On the other hand, it just seems a little… inelegant? So I’d welcome any other ideas folks have.

  • Daniel
2

Use the Alien Lifeform Burner, and aim for the same levels of traits and such you’d get from a “normal” character.

Besides that, all I can say is your pain is from going against genre. :wink:

3

Yeah, as Stormie said, it’s not canon. Sorry, man. Good luck!

4

Yeah, I know it’s against canon. But the idea was really getting folks excited around the table, and we were actually getting into some of the business of coming up with ways of mixing cyberpunk tropes into the canon materials (I’ll bore people with details when I write up the world for the wiki once we’ve finalized it). So I figured I’d run with it (but I’ll take the “I told you sos” if it ends up being really painful).

I’d toyed with the idea of using the ALF Burner, but I think going through lifepaths will give the character more depth… maybe I’ll try burning it up both ways and see which one looks more fun.

Thanks for the input, and I’ll be sure to let folks know if I crash and burn.