I'm an INTP. In playing role playing
games, I'm out to explore ideas as well as have a good time.
On of my favorite themes is the alien mind pattern. Joy Mudd is one
such. She is not human. She is a machine created to obey orders while
seeming to pass as human. This has caused me some grief as a few of
Joy's commanding officers don't understand that Joy just can't do
what they think she ought to do to further the main plot line.
On line games tend towards 'overscripting'. They are story telling
games. The game master (or commanding officer) creates a plot. The
players act out various parts to make the plot come to full fruit.
Since the commanding officer is running the ship's captain, the
degree to which the CO controls the actions of the players seems
quite natural.
I come from a role playing background. Off line games have more time,
and in many ways allow more freedom. There, the game master often
provides a conflict, and the characters are free to resolve the
conflict however they like. The players are presented a problem to
solve. It just isn't considered fun or entertaining if the character
making all the decisions already knows the answer to the problem.
Before I tried on line gaming, I thought it clear and painfully
obvious that the game master of a science fiction game should
never play the captain.
For the most part, this is not a problem for Joy as an on line
character. The Joy class's Laws of Robotics were designed for a Star
Trek TNG sim. "Obey legal orders from your valid Starfleet chain of
command" is the central core of Joy's programming in a ship sim. So
long as the majority of the orders coming from a ship's CO are legal,
and the chain of command stays clearly valid, Joy is fine.
I did have one GM take the whole sim outlaw, invalidating the chain
of command. I received stage instructions that Joy should be cheerful
about this. I took Joy off the ship rather than invalidate Joy's
programming. Acting outside the law triggers negative reinforcement.
She simply should not be happy as an outlaw. Another GM liked to
explore situations where something had to be done to fix an immediate
problem, the law forbids interference, but a little violence would
make everything all right. Joy's programming required a legal,
nonviolent solution, which resulted in considerable clash. The theme
on several levels was Rule of Law against Rule of Men.
There are only three basic rules in role playing games. The game
master is always right. The game master is never wrong. In case of
conflict, see above. Still, would a Star Trek game master tell a
Klingon or Vulcan character to be more cheerful and smile? Would
Asimov, to further the plot and tell a better story, ignore the Laws
of Robotics? Can science fiction on line explore ideas, or is the
media inherently limited to doing action adventure in outer
space?
I think it is possible to do genuine Science Fiction on line, and to
present players with choices that matter. However, on line games have
a high turnover, and you have trouble fitting players into a group.
Bitter experience shows the GM has to keep firm control of the
action, and this results in firm control of the plot.
I have decided not to play a Joy class android in a game with
Cyberpunk themes and conflicts. Her programming can't handle it. This
does not resolve the larger problem in game structure, but it should
keep Joy out of trouble.
But the Joy Class androids are not my first non-human characters. In
1987 I was playing in a superhero campaign. After using the Champions
rules for several years, and creating literally hundreds of
superheroes for play in my own game and others, it was becoming
difficult to create a really original superhero. Coda was my last
attempt at an original superhero before I started falling back into
variations on favorite themes.
Coda's theme was prophecy. As the game master in this campaign never
knew what was going to happen next, responding to the characters
actions rather than demanding they follow the script, prophecy is a
tough buy. I limited it to six seconds in the future.
Coda's superpower was to always know how to get out of trouble, at
least in the very short run.
But if Joy is subtly alien, Coda is blatantly so. Joy makes decisions
based on a rigid pattern of rules, filtered through an emotion chip
so the decisions are emotional ones. She is also part of a hive mind,
sharing memories, thoughts and feelings with other androids in the
Joy class. Coda, however, bases all her choices on a method of
perceiving the world not shared by humans.
Which makes Coda very very strange. However, her method of responding
to the world proved entirely valid, at least if you could suspend
disbelief enough to run in a world full of superheroes and myths.
Still, the final problem with Coda was that she wasn't trusted by
the other players. She was too alien. When the other players got
together to plot and plan, her perspective on the universe wasn't
really contributing, so they stopped inviting her. I had to stop
running her, and created another character, the Lady Talora Elafayin
of Dragon
Friend.