D&D sci-fi setting?

[RotGrub]

Hi,

Can anyone recommend a setting that is focused on Android player races?

I was thinking about starting a new sci-fi D&D campaign. Specifically, I'm wondering if anyone has seen an RPG setting in which everyone is an android/cyborg of some kind.

The campaign setting I'm looking to create will have no biological life forms at all. In fact, I plan to take the races in the PHB and convert them to some sort of robotic option. From a technological perspective, there will be no modern weapons. Only medieval weapons and high sci-fi lasers.


Any thoughts?


Thanks

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Well who built the androids? Androids don't just evolve you know. Somebody has to build them. Perhaps you are thinking of something like WestWorld.

Funny, I googled Androids and got a lot of this:

This isn't an android, I had to search to get actual pictures of androids, robots designed to look human.
An android is not a race, it is a thing, androids do not breed, they do not reproduce, they are not alive, they are designed to mimic life, but they are not alive. To be a race, it has to be alive by definition.

 

[RotGrub]

oh yes, I should have said that the Andriods don't know who created them. The idea of biological life is simply a legend. Of course, at some point in the very distance past they were build by some form of humanoid life form.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

They better check their memory cards then. So if the World has no life, are they on Mars or something?

Here is an interesting thought. Suppose we decided to colonize Mars with Androids, just the way it is without terraforming it? The Androids look like people, they live in ordinary homes, no domes, no pressurization required. Inside each android's processor is a simulation of a human being. The computer simulates their respiration, their eating and their brain activity. Each home contains a dock where the android can upload himself into a simulation of the home's interior, inside each android is a real human being within the simulation, they can have breakfast, talk to family members, go to sleep play with their children, and watch them grow within the simulation. They can stare out their windows and look at the Martian landscape, or go out into the simulated lawn into the simulated garden and grow some fresh vegetables under the simulated Martian sun. Mars would be a great place for androids to live. and when these sim people need to do something outside in the real world, they download into their android bodies, and breathe the fresh Martian thin air. The children need to have their android bodies refabricated every day to match their growing sim bodies so they can play outside.

 

[MarkB]

What distinguishes android characters from biological ones game-mechanically? It's easy enough to do things like "don't need to eat / breathe / sleep" - do they heal like biological creatures? Do they have emotions? Are there any capabilities they possess due to their artificial nature?

Basically, what unique effects of these characters' nature are you hoping to incorporate into your game that prevents you from simply choosing any existing system or setting and just declaring "by the way, you're robots"?

 

[Sunseeker]

I don't think I've seen such a setting (does Transformers count?), but it wouldn't be terribly hard to do. It'll mostly be a language and visuals change, replace terms like "eyes" with "optics", "organs" with "filters", players need to "power down" and "recharge" instead of "sleep" and "eat".

As for making the races themselves cyborgs (which are machine-organic hybrids), andriods (which are humanoid robots) and strict robots (machine beings not limited by humanoid form) it would again largely be a language and visuals change. If the art for the setting were clear enough that "there are no fleshlings here" then you could convert just about any organic race to a machine one with simple visual changes.

For example, if your art for "humAN" was this:

the basic description for humans in the rulebooks (of any edition really) would still be fitting.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

I guess Cylons from the reimagined Battlestar Galactica would either be too human to count as Androids or Robots.

 

[Derren]

Nothing in the D&D sphere I know of. But I only know of 2 D&D related sci-fi settings. The new Starfinder and the 3E setting Dragonstar. The latter had Soulmechs, robots with a bound soul in them but in the end both were space operas without much focus on androids.

You might want to look at Eclipse Phase. Its transhumanism but a lot of the concepts like switching bodies and uploading minds would also apply to androids to a even higher degree. But I dont think the gameplay is very D&D like with swords etc.

HC SVNT Dracones (yes thats sci fi despite the name) also has some interesting ideas about androids and how they see themselves. Good for stealing ideas (androids or Cogs as they are called are in the expansion book. Basically they are artificially limited from the time of their creation and those limitations slowly go away with time to simulate a growing up process. There is another class of android which is entirely programmed without limitations. They are hyperintelligent but cold and cant really play nice with others). But its probably hard to find a group for it as in the end its a rpg for furries.

There might also be a Blade Runner RPG out there which might have informations on androids.
Still none of those rules would fit your setting idea as they are not very D&Dish with sword etc. At best you can steal ideas about android societies.

 

[RotGrub]

They better check their memory cards then. So if the World has no life, are they on Mars or something?
Here is an interesting thought. Suppose we decided to colonize Mars with Androids, just the way it is without terraforming it? The Androids look like people, they live in ordinary homes, no domes, no pressurization required. Inside each android's processor is a simulation of a human being. The computer simulates their respiration, their eating and their brain activity. Each home contains a dock where the android can upload himself into a simulation of the home's interior, inside each android is a real human being within the simulation, they can have breakfast, talk to family members, go to sleep play with their children, and watch them grow within the simulation. They can stare out their windows and look at the Martian landscape, or go out into the simulated lawn into the simulated garden and grow some fresh vegetables under the simulated Martian sun. Mars would be a great place for androids to live. and when these sim people need to do something outside in the real world, they download into their android bodies, and breathe the fresh Martian thin air. The children need to have their android bodies refabricated every day to match their growing sim bodies so they can play outside.

That is very close to what I had in mind. Except, they are living on an artificial Dyson Swarm created by beings that have long since perished (or evolved themselves via a singularity). In ages past, Earth like planets in the system that once harbored life were completely consumed/destroyed to create the Dyson Swarm.

In the current age, life is completely artificial in nature. Creatures range from old crude robots to complex artificial cellular forms of life.

One thought I had was that a major faction of artificials would be completely under the control of the "mother brain". Other factions, living in the wild zones would oppose this oppressive entity to variing degrees. And one dangerous faction in particular would seek to steal the secret of biological life, which they believe the mother brain is withholding.

The PCs would be stuck in the middle of this conflict. They would have to avoid being connected "to the brain" (think Borg) at all costs. They might even quest to destroy her, to free millions of oppressed artificials or even start of a new genesis. At some point, during the campaign, they would be given the option to transfer their minds into biological life forms. It's a sci-fi Pinocchio story of sorts, but think it will work out well.

When the PCs start, I might have them make standard characters and races. Of course, when they wake up as an artifical dwarf, an artifical human, etc.

With that said, I still want everything to feel medieval. No guns, but high sci-fi weapons and magic will be available.

But yes, PCs might wonder if their world is some sort of westworld simulation, but that's not my problem

oh and Transformers is certainly an inspiration.

One thing I have been thinking about are the environmental challenges robots would have. A desert might cause serious issues with overheating, dust, etc. Water might be completely disabling. Rust would be another issue.
Food would be some sort of energon and/or solar energy. I'm not sure what an energon farm looks like, but I'm sure I could tweak a medieval robot society a bit.

 

[RotGrub]

Nothing in the D&D sphere I know of. But I only know of 2 D&D related sci-fi settings. The new Starfinder and the 3E setting Dragonstar. The latter had Soulmechs, robots with a bound soul in them but in the end both were space operas without much focus on androids.

You might want to look at Eclipse Phase. Its transhumanism but a lot of the concepts like switching bodies and uploading minds would also apply to androids to a even higher degree. But I dont think the gameplay is very D&D like with swords etc.

HC SVNT Dracones (yes thats sci fi despite the name) also has some interesting ideas about androids and how they see themselves. Good for stealing ideas (androids or Cogs as they are called are in the expansion book. Basically they are artificially limited from the time of their creation and those limitations slowly go away with time to simulate a growing up process. There is another class of android which is entirely programmed without limitations. They are hyperintelligent but cold and cant really play nice with others). But its probably hard to find a group for it as in the end its a rpg for furries.

There might also be a Blade Runner RPG out there which might have informations on androids.
Still none of those rules would fit your setting idea as they are not very D&Dish with sword etc. At best you can steal ideas about android societies.

Thanks I'll certainly check them out. I totally forgot about blade runner, despite having loved both movies.

 

[RotGrub]

cool I'm really liking Eclipse Phase.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

That is very close to what I had in mind. Except, they are living on an artificial Dyson Swarm created by beings that have long since perished (or evolved themselves via a singularity). In ages past, Earth like planets in the system that once harbored life were completely consumed/destroyed to create the Dyson Swarm.

In the current age, life is completely artificial in nature. Creatures range from old crude robots to complex artificial cellular forms of life.

One thought I had was that a major faction of artificials would be completely under the control of the "mother brain". Other factions, living in the wild zones would oppose this oppressive entity to variing degrees. And one dangerous faction in particular would seek to steal the secret of biological life, which they believe the mother brain is withholding.

The PCs would be stuck in the middle of this conflict. They would have to avoid being connected "to the brain" (think Borg) at all costs. They might even quest to destroy her, to free millions of oppressed artificials or even start of a new genesis. At some point, during the campaign, they would be given the option to transfer their minds into biological life forms. It's a sci-fi Pinocchio story of sorts, but think it will work out well.

When the PCs start, I might have them make standard characters and races. Of course, when they wake up as an artifical dwarf, an artifical human, etc.

With that said, I still want everything to feel medieval. No guns, but high sci-fi weapons and magic will be available.

But yes, PCs might wonder if their world is some sort of westworld simulation, but that's not my problem

oh and Transformers is certainly an inspiration.

One thing I have been thinking about are the environmental challenges robots would have. A desert might cause serious issues with overheating, dust, etc. Water might be completely disabling. Rust would be another issue.
Food would be some sort of energon and/or solar energy. I'm not sure what an energon farm looks like, but I'm sure I could tweak a medieval robot society a bit.

How about something like the Matrix? A simulated world and then a real world, or how about a whole bunch of simulated worlds contained within the shell of a Dyson Sphere, and I know just the sort of star to build a Dyson Sphere around. Ever hear of Gamma Crux? It is the closest red giant star to our Sun, it is located in the constellation known as the "southern cross."

Gacrux has a stellar classification M3.5 III.[3] It has evolved off of the main sequence to become a red giant star, but is most likely on the red giant branch rather than the asymptotic giant branch.[7] Although only 30% more massive than the Sun,[6] at this stage the star has expanded to 84[7] times the Sun's radius. It is radiating roughly 820[8] times the luminosity of the Sun from its expanded outer envelope. With an effective temperature of 3,626 K,[9] the colour of Gamma Crucis is a prominent reddish-orange, well in keeping with its spectral classification. It is a semi-regular variable with multiple periods.[3] (See table at left.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_Crucis
This star has some pretty important properties that would make building a Dyson Sphere around it easier than building one around our own Sun.
First thing is that it is 30% more massive than our Sun but 820 times as bright, that means that the habitable zone is much further out than our Sun, to find out how far out that would be, you take the square root of its luminosity 820, which is 28.6 times the distance of the Earth to the Sun A regular Dyson Sphere around our Sun would have a surface area equal to 500,000,000 Earths. Gamma crux can illuminate a sphere with 820 times that area at the same energy intensity as the surface of the Earth, the amount of area illuminated would be 410,000,000,000 times the surface area of the Earth, that number is also about the number of stars in our galaxy. You could simulate the inhabited portion of an entire galaxy, as you only have to simulate the parts where the people are! People within the simulation wouldn't know they are in a Dyson Sphere, they would have space ships and flit between stars, kind of like in Star Wars, and they would be none the wiser. To go outside, they would need android bodies.