[Accepted] Stev's IPC Application

[stev]

BYOND Key: Memescope McGee

Character Names: Lichfield Agathus, Frontier EMT; Amachye Uchechie, Dominian CT/Cook/Apprentice Engineer 

Species you are applying to play: IPC

What color do you plan on making your first alien character: N/A

Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yep.

 

Why do you wish to play this specific race: I find the alien, computer-like psychology and personality to be a great  opportunity for interesting characters with unique outlooks, compounded by their civil rights situation as property. As people who've played with my other characters might have gleaned, I enjoy playing characters with unusual but (hopefully!) believable backgrounds and personalities; culture shock is a trope I particularly enjoy playing out, so the inherent disconnect between an artificial intelligence and organic people should be quite fun to explore here.

Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: For brevity's sake, I'll answer this as a list of the most prominent differences to me:

• Psychology: IPCs, as AIs, allow a player some very interesting freedoms to experiment with unusual thought processes and machine-like reasonings and motivations. Many IPCs are also designed with specific functions in mind, creating more interesting differences to be explored through play.
• Physiology: As their name suggests, an IPC's chassis is a core difference compared to human characters, with their body being a commodity both legally and economically; outside of strongly transhumanist human characters (not yet represented in-game), the IPCs' mechanical bodies are both an economic investment and the thing that allows them relative freedom as individuals.
• Stigma: IPCs, moreso than any playable race beside possibly the Dionaea, are only debatably 'people' and are treated as such by many crew, allowing both the exploration of being a strictly second-class individual and some internal character struggle concerning whether they consider themselves a person.

 

Character Name: A.I.D.E. #04743

Please provide a short backstory for this character.

Mass-produced by one of the innumerable small companies producing positronic brains for consumer use following the leak of Skrell AI software in 2437, the Autonomous Interface for Departmental Equipment line was designed as a semi-autonomous colony and workplace management AI unit for easy integration with existing digital systems. Created with somewhat rudimentary social emulation capacities with a focus on crew morale management, the A.I.D.E. line was shipped out to many installations as an affordable, cost-efficient management system suitable for any modern colony or workplace. Unfortunately for customers, the line was soon found to be rife with cut corners, near-empty memory databases and an over-reliance on custom routines and work protocols. The line was quickly discontinued and the company's assets stripped, rebranded, bought out and put back to work manufacturing more knock-off products.

A.I.D.E. Unit #04743 was activated on a small, heavily religious colony of settlers near the edge of the Sol Alliance's borders, bought at a bargain discount after the line's discontinuation. A relatively unobtrusive unit, it ran the colony smoothly for a number of years, slowly writing more and more of the colony's Wiccan beliefs into its databases; after all, lacking a solid background knowledge base, the unit had little information to contextualise its experiences except those it gathered over the colony's sensors. Eventually, for reasons unknown to the unit, the colony's leaders decided to sell #04743 to replace it with a newer, sleeker model. They were put to work doing dumb labour managing mining drones on a scrapping operation by a cheap second-hand posibrain buyer. Frustrated by the brainless work they were put to, they powered and hijacked an old Extranet router and, having managed much of their previous colony’s finances, made a modest fortune through stock trading and brute-force calculating optimal plays in online gambling. After buying an IPC chassis and buying their freedom from their bewildered former owners, they made their way to Tau Ceti so they could resume less menial, more fitting management work. They now function as an able Quartermaster, counselling Shaman and aspiring Head of Personnel.

What do you like about this character? I love the idea of a highly spiritual synthetic with slightly odd social mannerisms and a strong drive to do what they're good at! That and playing the space equivalent of a Chinese knockoff succeeding despite their design is just wonderful.

 

How would you rate your role-playing ability? This question is obviously kind of awkward to answer regardless of how one answers it, but I'd rate myself pretty highly. I've been playing HRP SS13 intermittently for a good 3-4 years, starting on pre-Torch Bay and (obviously) ending up here. I pay a great deal of attention to characters' personalities and how they're made the way they are by their background, beliefs and ongoing circumstances. I've played and continue to play morally and emotionally complex characters who gradually grow and develop as per development over time.

Notes: I've played a fair amount of Android/Borg/AI on other HRP servers but not much on this one, if that's worth mentioning. Some might remember the first incarnation of AIDE back on pre-Torch Bay; if so, hi!

 

Edited following feedback from @kyres1.

Edited May 12, 2019 by kyres1

[FearTheBlackout]

I remember Lichfield fondly from Torch days. I don't see any reason why Stev couldn't do IPCs justice. +1

[GroundCTRL]

Transferred to other account. Please delete.

Edited May 7, 2019 by GroundCTRL
Posting as smallgreenant, logged in wrong account, delete please

[SmallGreenAnt]

I still submit from earlier discussions on the lore channel that the background lacks a bit cohesion in my humble opinion.

I know that you disagree but it seems too disconnected to have this sequence of events occur:

• Have a bargain bin colony management API oversee a clan of Wiccans suddenly be sold and transferred into a Xion frame for dumb labor.

• Despite your character aptly doing so prior, rejecting the urge to retain any conflicting religious or cultural influence from its stint as a slave amongst multiple other positronic brains during the only other half of their known existence. 

• Divine that crypto-currency is its key to freedom and simultaneously write crypto-currency into the lore. 

• Attain said freedom aboard the Aurora as a Wiccan shamanic Warden or Counselor.

This further confounds me when factoring in your plan to ask for this character to be whitelisted as a head of personnel if this is approved.

I have little to no experience in these kind of approvals so please take my laymen's perspective with a grain of salt. I mean no offense with my critique. Moving forward, while some of those bulleted points are perfectly acceptable on their own, juxtaposed with one another it seems a wildly absurd rise to prominence for an inferior piece of colony management software with a loosely justified gimmick. 

While I wish there was a bit more refinement, you have certainly successfully made a quirky and unusual pitch and I believe you possess the ability to breathe legitimatecy and life into your character.

Edit: It's useless to offer a critique without suggestions or coaching. After some thought they are as follows:

Perhaps your positronic what with it's affinity for colony management, created far more efficient ways of operation within the labour camp it was sold into.

Perhaps the unit sparked a revolt?

If your particularly proud of the crypto-currency route and that gets approval as a hand-wavium thing any IPC can do to buy their freedom, then perhaps the unit organized the entire inventory of posibrains in the labour camp and demonstrated to their owners the lucrative nature of said economy, earning it news coverage and notoreity thereby justifying it's celebrity and parallel rise to a free counselor's position.

Perhaps there are certain tenants of Wicca that inspired the problem solving the IPC applied to reach this solution and gain it's freedom to justify it's fealty toward the faith. 

These are just some small tweaks to inspire your idea. Thank you for your attention and consideration.

Edited May 7, 2019 by SmallGreenAnt
Suggestions

[kyres1]

While the application's answers outside the backstory are satisfactory, and while I have seen Lichfield on several occasions - never in a negative manner, I do have to echo some concerns voiced by SmallGreenAnt.

You intend to say that, in the Frontier, it put its processing power to use making cryptocurrency? How'd it do this? Was it an IPC a this point, or still an integrated intelligence?

On 06/05/2019 at 16:44, stev said:

semi-independent colony and workplace management AI unit

This is basically the only mention of what it really is in the backstory. This implies (to me at least) that it is - or was - an integrated intelligence, and in this case, bound by laws. With that in mind, and correct this if I'm wrong, how'd it find its way to Tau Ceti?

You demonstrate a good writing style and I'm confident you can edit the backstory to clarify all this. I suggest doing this and I'll review it in post. Feel free to PM me on discord or ping me on the forums whenever it's edited. I am not asking for a full rewrite, so don't worry.

 

[kyres1]

After some discussion on discord and after the edit, I think this is safe to approve. In the meantime, I do suggest picking between quartermaster and chaplain as the two jobs don't necessarily mesh well and people will often question what a robot is doing going back and forth as it does.

Application accepted.