Games about AI

[Lord Goon]

So I've been reading a lot of stuff by Iain M. Banks, and it has me wondering whether anyone has ever made a serious attempt to design an RPG in which there could be both Human an Artificial Intelligence PCs. Can anyone out there think of an example? Or does anyone have any intuitions about what might be a good character generation system for this sort of game?

[mjbauer]

I'm curious too. I have plans to do AI PCs in my game but I haven't even begun to research the subject.

What books have you been reading, by the way?

[Lord Goon]

So far, I've read CONSIDER PHLEBAS, THE PLAYER OF GAMES and MATTER by Banks. The cyberspace trilogy by William Gibson is also very provocative as a representation for how AIs might work as PCs, as is RAINBOWS END by Vernor Vinge.

What sort of game were you planning? A whole new set of rules, or an extension of some other system?

[lessthanpleased]

I'm drawing a blank on systems and mechanics, though I do have some intuitions about how you could make this work.

The occult RPG Unknown Armies actually handles the creation of an AI fairly well - PCs can  suddenly discover they're occult clockwork men, and this can be done with almost no tweaks to the system by which players design human characters.

Though UA is clearly not what you're looking for because it's the wrong genre, the approach for doing it in UA gives me a couple ideas about how a game can do AIs in a fairly satisfying way.

Ultimately, this might not be something you need mechanics for - depending on how advanced the AI is or the scope of the game, you might be able to do this through simple roleplaying and backstory. Your launching point is The Culture, though, so I think that probably rules out simpler AIs.

Now, if there are mechanics that can handle this or already do this, then that'll make things easier; But as much as I love Iain Banks' work, mechanics aren't going to give a player all - or even most - of the tools she needs to believably play a Culture AI.

Science fiction isn't my RPG flavor of choice, but if I were trying to do a Banks-style game I'd look more to setting and flavor to empower the players to make these kinds of characters than mechanics; I prefer rules light systems, so this might just be personal preference talking. So while I have no doubt that brilliant designers can (or have!) created mechanics to do this, as a player I'd need more than mechanics to get the job done.

[mjbauer]

So far, I've read CONSIDER PHLEBAS, THE PLAYER OF GAMES and MATTER by Banks. The cyberspace trilogy by William Gibson is also very provocative as a representation for how AIs might work as PCs, as is RAINBOWS END by Vernor Vinge.

What sort of game were you planning? A whole new set of rules, or an extension of some other system?

It's called Genesys. It's a near-future earth setting. Cyberpunk-esque, only more cyber and less punk. I'm creating the rules, but I'm not against borrowing from other systems. So far it's a D6 system with a dice pool, a little like the FATE/FUDGE system, minus Aspects. My main objective with it is to strip it down to the essentials but still have rules to cover everything.

I've always intended to include a number of options for characters to play different levels of humanity mixed with technology, from completely human to entirely synthetic, hence the name "Genesys." I intended the main tension of the game to be the redefining of humanity, life and intelligence, but now I'm starting to wonder if including all of that is still appropriate to the goals of the game since they have evolved a bit as I've been working on it.

Whether I use it or not, I still think it's an interesting topic.

How is AI going to be used in your game? What is the setting?

[Seth M. Drebitko]

[Lord Goon]

Interesting stuff. I'd like to hear more about Genesys, esp. how you think adventures mmight be structured and what sorts of conflicts might play out. The main puzzle that I'm trying to get my mind around is that, if we're talking about Banks-style AIs (i.e. huge lumps of code stored on some kind of hyperspatial recording medium) as opposed to, say, Asimov-style robots, then it's very difficult to imagine how a GM would involve them in the action. The only thing I can think of is that players with AI characters would have to perform a sort of hybrid role, acting as much like the GM as like the human PCs themselves. But I still need to think more about this.

[mjbauer]

The main puzzle that I'm trying to get my mind around is that, if we're talking about Banks-style AIs (i.e. huge lumps of code stored on some kind of hyperspatial recording medium) as opposed to, say, Asimov-style robots...

Wow, that does sound like a challenge. In that case it seems like you would have to have some type of alternate (or perhaps, parallel) character creation system, with physical attributes for Human PCs and virtual attributes for AI PCs that represent the quality of the programming that created the Intelligence and thus, what the limits of the Intelligence's abilities are. That's only if you want traditional stats-based characters, and I'm not sure if that is the best way to approach it.

[Wordman]

The latest edition of Gamma World (the d20 version) allowed AI PCs. While it's not a great game, there are a few things in the book that make it worth reading.

One of them is the idea that, prior to the apocalypse, not only did humans figure out how to produce AIs and do genetic alteration, but both of these became extremely commonplace. Children's toys, for example, could "take boring old species and make fun new ones". It became so easy to make AI, that there was really no reason to make a computer without one. Need a tiny bit of computer control for your kitchen toaster? Just stick an AI in it. The end result is, essentially, all these artificial consciousnesses going quietly mad trapped inside a very limited piece of machinery.

[Bert]

Greetings Lord Goon,

The AI's in Banks are pretty radical. Culture AIs have some serious firepower and are so far beyond human intelligence it beggars belief - and they are nigh on indestructible if I remember correctly. Some of them are huge. Is this really the kind of AI you're looking at?

The replicants in Bladerunner are a good source of ideas. While they are physically more powerful than humans, with possibly far greater raw intelligence, they are socially and emotionally limited. Even the schmulzy AI has some good pointers. In this movie AIs are designed for a specific function and their minds are limited in this sense - but there is more to them if somebody pushes their boundaries. They're not all that robust either, although they can scrounge body parts from defunct models.

The nature of the hardware is going to be important. Star Wars style droids? Terminator style cyborgs? Hovering things that do everything with fields? Wetware humanoids? Walking prostheses? Disposable POV avatars for immobile supercomputers? The key thing is going to be balancing advantages with disadvantages.

The boundary can get blurry too. In Greg Bear's Eon human beings are born as minds in virtual environments and only become embodied when they reach their majority. Then they tend to pick wierd bodies that match the fashion of the day, such as floating spheres with human arms and several eyes etc. They are completely artificial, but intellectually they are little more than ordinary human beings with mental access to the internet - and their bodies are no more enduring that ordinary human bodies, despite their odd shapes.

Good luck.

Bert

[Lord Goon]

Wow, they're still doing revisions of Gamma World? Nostalgia time...

The Banks AIs actually vary a fair bit, from 'drones' who accompany humans and seem to play a sort of dual role as nannies and pets, through 'Ships' that manage the environments that humans live in, but still have discernible (albeit esoteric) weaknesses and personality quirks, up to the uber-minds that Bert mentions that sit back and quietly plan out their civilization's future without much input from humans at all. I guess the way that I envision gameplay would have to involve this latter class of super-minds all being run by the GM, and stepping in only to provide the occasional deus-ex-machina moment. The issue I'm more concerned with is what the lesser, but still formidable minds might have as overall in-game agendas for action.

I am also thinking about stats-based character generation for these sorts of AI characters, but haven't reached any firm conclusions yet, so any further input would be most welcome.

[Wordman]

I guess the way that I envision gameplay would have to involve this latter class of super-minds all being run by the GM, and stepping in only to provide the occasional deus-ex-machina moment.

You could run these kinds of minds as PCs (after a fashion) using a similar approach to the way Ars Magica works, where the "main" PC wizards, well, don't get out much and instead direct minions, and the action cuts to the players then shifting to play the minions. (That isn't a very good explanation.)

[Callan S.]

Given the "How do you play an AI" I would make play about not being certain whether other things are human or an AI and what it feels like to not have any diffinitive divide for others. Indeed, I'd also add a near endgame where your not sure if YOU are an AI or a human, and what it feels like to not be able to make a distinction even within yourself - what does a character do when they don't know which they are?

Mind you, I'm a premature intelligence rights activist(stich in time and all that) - what is called AI isn't artificial - it's just another animal, just like the rest of us.

[chance.thirteen]

Perhaps the term constructed or designed intelligence would be better than artificial. That may lead into Intelligent Design making Designed Intelligence in humans, but I'll leave humans out of it for now.

For my money, AI's are either going to be utterly alien because they are machines, or because they are vastly intelligent, or there will be a reason why they seem human, The real question is what do you want to do with them? Their main advantage would be that they never lose sight of important details, they do not have human memory problems. They do not have hormones and physiological systems distracting them from thought, nor directing their action.

Again, what do you want them to do in play? For my own setting that actually had AIs, they were really just complicated programs that had massive resources, and were set to learn. Most use was in helping player research, or program OS modules, where they acted as a facilitator, or expert system that learned what you wanted to do, and how you communicated that. This left the role of asking questions and directing actions in the hands of the players.

[Bossy]

It would be awkward if PCs were a mix human Culture citizens and ship Minds (not to mention orbitals). It would be like mixing level 15 and level 1 D&D characters... A ship Mind is constantly doing millions of things simultaneously: looking at the stars, conversing with other Minds, controlling avatars, housekeeping the ship by itself, collecting snowflakes, etc. A ship Mind is the industrial version of a god.
I would restrict PC AI to drones and avatars. Alternatively all players play Minds, but it would be entirely another game...