OOC: 7. VI Rights Activism

Maybe we could 'wipe' him and then head straight for the nearest dealer and see about trading him in for a 'newer' model. That might mitigate the cost a bit and should resolve the issues.

We'll play out the debate in the Dr Calvin interview. But no matter what we need a new Alpha. The question is if we wipe and discard James, or if we keep him and change his role. Obviously, I'd rather keep him and hire the Dr. However a decent middle ground is to leave him with her and not hire her, if we can make that work out.

Regardless, we need a new synth and Hank isn't going to override Corbin if he thinks we absolutely have to get rid of James. Keeping Corbin is way more important than keeping James.

And if Corbin is willing to work with the middle ground, we will also have to talk with James to get his buy-in for a new role. If he doesn't like that, then we'll be forced to wipe and move on. An unhappy emergent VI is not something we're gonna want to deal with!

@Esidrix,

Before we send Dr Calvin and James on their ways, I do want to raise a point. Yes, I understand your desire to mitigate risk. However, simply discarding VIREN and James with nothing learned and nothing gained, means that we are failing to take advantage of opportunities to improve our knowledge. James has already done something that would not have happened had he not changed. That change is a risk, yes. But, his NOT changing would have been a risk, too, and we would never have known.

Let me put it this way. We are going into the unknown. We are going to run into AI. We are going to run into things we can't understand. We are going to face risks that we cannot prepare for. James has demonstrated that he can think in ways that we cannot. Is that a danger? Sure! But he is also an incredibly valuable resource, too. He has already saved at least one life. Why not find out if he can save more lives?

Also, one thing that Hank wouldn't think of, but I have. You are making the assumption that having synths doing rote things during jump is best. That is absolutely true as long as jump is always boring and perfectly predictable. But it is incredibly dangerous to assume that will always be the case. Humans cannot operate in jump; only synths. We have the chance to develop a dynamic synth to protect against such a danger. Discarding James means we remove the chance to have that resource.

Plus, from a completely meta-game level, we have been given a warning (twice with James) and an incredible resource with Dr Calvin. I call that a gift from the GM. Turn your back on that with both VIREN and James and you are telling the GM to do whatever he wants. I do not like to turn down GM gifts. Sure, it is possible that it could be a Trojan bearing gifts. That's why we will have protections against that (a new synth, Dr Calvin, a new schedule for James). Turning down gifts from the GM is usually a much more dangerous gambit than accepting them. Put another way, the GM has given us a clear warning. We ignore such warnings at our own peril. This will happen again and we are forfeiting our chance to prepare. Just sayin'.

One last meta-game point: You can have a VI player character. That means, in reality, VI can be fully sapient. The only reason synths are not is because they are not allowed to be (with the frequent wipes). If we wipe James against his wishes (and remember, he does not want to be wiped), we are fundamentally killing him. Legally, this is fine and expected as he is just property. Morally ... not so much.

... and I just reread the section on VI (on page 197). How it describes "clever" VIs is exactly how "malfunctioning" synths are described in htech's descriptions. To me, that means the GM is literally telling us that a "malfunctioning" synth is really a "clever" VI. To simply bury that revelation, ignore it, and hope for the best isn't the best plan.

From page 198, I offer that we have reached a 'Playstyle Fork' and are choosing different tines. I, personally, have no interest in discussing VI or AI or robot rights in playing 'Space Games'. I find the whole issue to be a Socio-political hot button that I try and 'play around'. If this group, as a majority, wants to keep and explore and play with VI/AI and the topics it evokes. I will happily continue to play the game, just don't expect me to contribute to those conversations.

From an in-game standpoint, Corbin's origins did not involve any robots or AI entities. They were far away, in-accessible tech. His first, in character, interactions would have been with the Synths on the Voyager. He has, by the start of the game, come to terms with them, but still treats them like machines, extensions of the Ships computers. That they would suddenly become 'people' evokes all of the holo-vid horrors to him.

Robots In Your Campaign
A GM is not obligated to include VIs or ubiquitous robotics in her campaign. Adding these elements can have
a significant effect on a setting, and sometimes they can prove to be a distraction from the sort of play that
the group wants to have.

I feel like this is a natural progression of the story, and really interesting. Synths were involved from the beginning as necessary for jumps, so he would be familiar with them. Any ship he had ever been on would at least have them around.

Also, nothing is ever required for a game. That's the whole thing about TTRPG s, there isn't a requirement. Every game and group has their own spotlights, focuses, darkspots, inclusions and missions; it's baked into the hobby.

There's plenty else going on(Eldar, trading, crew interplay, etc) as well, it's not like we're centering the campaign around them. But they are one aspect of the game we have been olaying, and they are a staple of the scifi/space explorer genre in general so it feels natural and interesting to me.

Ok, this is why we discuss this stuff outside the characters. Thank you @Esidrix for bringing this up so directly.

This is really a question for @htech. How do you envision this? The vibes I have been getting are what I have outlined: synths are VIs and VIs are people. Or at least they can be. As such, there is a conspiracy to hid this from the population so that synths can remain things. If that is the case, Hank is not comfortable with effectively murdering James. Particularly when James specifically asked not to be, which was a direct counterpoint to the current Kelly. Hank would rather turn James over to the Explorers (or whoever has the best chance to help him) and pay full price for the replacement. He would also have to start figuring out how to deal with the absolutely horrific implications of the job he has chosen to do. I am not sure what that resolution looks like.

On the other hand, if synths are straight up not sapient and cannot be, then so be it and that completely removes the moral questions from the equation. And, quite frankly, Dr. Calvin is just the person to explain why that is and why what we have seen is not sapience. Especially when she the cites the research that shows no matter what, they just fail and don't actually become sapient. That synths will only degrade over time and you just have to replace them as their faculties wear out. I am good with this option, but I need reassurance that this really is the case. Not a long string of breadcrumbs leading me in the wrong direction.

Of course, what that means for RB over time, we'll have to see. Maybe they are too arrogant to see how James's situation applies to them. On the other hand, maybe they do and they now have concerns. Or maybe RB really isn't sapient, and therefore has no concerns because of that.

Anyway, Esidrix raises a good point: what is the intention of the game at hand? Because, as I said at the very start of the game, I'm not comfortable with a system that requires the use of a lobotomized slave species to keep the system running if freeing those slaves is not part of the options available. Especially when it is now obvious it's going to eventually completely screw us over.

TLDR: I am happy to go in either direction. I just don't want to have such a horrible injustice baked into the game with no chance to address it. And I don't want us to get screwed over later because we didn't take this hint. If we drop it now, it needs to be something that isn't revisited later. (BTW, weird stuff with AI and not taking VIREN is perfect grounds for screwing us over. Not working to free the actually sapient VI because part of the players don't wanna deal with it and having that screw us later is NOT.)

BTW, if the answer is "VIs are not sapient", then we will wipe and "trade in" all four of them for a whole new set. They will only be used during the in-jump time. They will do their tasks. They will not have names, but will instead purely be addressed by their position: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta. They will not have an identified gender, and the lines between non-sapient machines and humans will not be crossed again. They will be automatically wiped every time they enter cryo-stasis.

I don't know what that means for RB, but the synths will purely be the simple ship components that they are supposed to be. In fact, I want to make sure we get as "dumb" of variants of the synths as we can. No personality. No side interests. No "happy" or "unhappy" with their jobs. Just they are their functions. Then maybe this degradation that the current group suffered will not happen again.

It is also possible only some have the option of gaining sapience and even that is a "mutation". Making wiping them not murder, because there's nothing really there. Though the ones that mutate can eventually become sapient, but aren't until the mutation, and others never can
This can make James unique and the only one we may ever come across. We can let him become an NPC and not worry about the others.
If he is an NPC we can treat him like a crew member, if he is willing to become one.

That is definitely an option, but it still is pretty morally repugnant as the mutants are all still harshly suppressed and wiped regularly unless you accidentally find out otherwise. But the fact that Kelly was also affected means that it can't be *that* rare. (Given we had a full 50% hit rate.)

Honestly, I'm not really that interested in a middle ground on this issue. Either it is intended (from a meta-perspective for the setting) to be the full horror that we are supposed to discover and try to deal with, or it shouldn't be an issue. In the first case I will have a problem with not dealing with it because it is guaranteed to come back and bite us in the butt. (I don't want to be an oppressor caught in a slave revolt when I didn't even want to be a slave owner in the first place.) In the second case, so be it. They are just human-shaped automatons. I'm fine with that and we move on.

But, if we are going to wipe James, then we need to trade them all in and start with a new fresh set. I honestly think that 20K credits is a decent price for peace-of-mind on something that will absolutely kill us if things go wrong. And if they aren't sentient, we are screwing ourselves to treat them like they are. If they are simple automatons, we should treat them like it and stop the self-deception we were doing before with the old set. No names. No hobbies. No personalities. Just robots doing their functions. If James was instead just Alpha with no assigned gender, no personality, no emotions, no hobbies, nothing like that, then none of this would have come up. He would have just been seen as a machine operating out of expected parameters and treated as such. And if we are going to completely change the way we treat them, I want to do that to a new set that knows nothing else, not to existing systems that might "remember" how things used to be. It needs to be a fresh start with a clear demarcation between "old" and "new".

I want this as a separate note to be very, very clear on something:

I am not bothered if we choose not to engage with this subject. That's fine. In some ways this can be pretty trite and isn't really new ground. Not having it is perfectly fine and I am completely on board with it.

I will be bothered if we have a system where we must use lobotomized, sentient, sapient creatures for the society to function and we can't do anything about it and we have to act like there is nothing wrong with this. Whether this comes back to bite us in the butt or not, this is just awful and it really will bother me.

Since we have a player that doesn't want to engage in this entire trope at all, I recommend that we redefine what has happened thus far and eliminate the trope entirely. We have plenty of other fun, exciting things we can engage with. Let's do those. We will still have full AI running around. We can even toy with the idea some with RB. But the synths should be different, work different, and not be a moral hellscape.

From a completely meta-game level, the original intention was to plant history and plot seeds, multiple seeds, and see which ones the players were interested. So really, there was no warning, no hidden dangers and no gifts with the AI, the Synths, the Ecumenopolis, the strange laws, the mining planet or the virus in Verdura. All that can be quickly ignored, resolved or fully engaged with. There is no "screwed over" in my games, at least not without the players aware and having fun playing it.

Dr. Calvin could have stayed or you could easily replace Alpha. Those options were available from the beginning and there are no "right" or "wrong" answers, really. =)

Now, considering all posts in this thread, specially Corbin's posts, from now on I would like to keep the Synths as simple non sapient machines that we will make as detailed and relevant as the spike drive. It can malfunction as part of something else but the drive is not an NPC crewmember and is never at the spotlight.

There are a lot of things going on, so let's consider that this seed didn't get into fertile ground and we moved on.
As a GM, I really like this. See where the game goes, see what's fun, what works and what doesn't work. I try not to plan too far ahead and really try not to railroad the group or the adventure. I love sandbox-style games, random tables and player driven content.
We will now go with the above. =)

Daryen, would you rather write for Dr. Calvin to close this subject or do you want me to do it? I would prefer if you do, to let you finish this the way you feel comfortable. Feel free to use her as you wish. Here is the (partial/relevant) BBCode:

npc="Dr. Susan Calvin" https://i.imgur.com/0LgOGqU.jpeg

A thought, on this note to describe James new "behavior" is that he is just advancing his vocabulary and communication through longer exposure than most Synths ever get.
Pretty much he was being trained how to communicate the same way we train Chat Bots, It *sounds* like us but that's all. There's no "emotion".

I would like to. I think I have a good way to close this out. Now that we have the parameters, I'll get us through this in one post. I probably won't do it until tomorrow morning, though.

OK, I made the post. It actually took me like three tries and two approaches to get it where I liked it. I hope it works.

The key take-away is that it allows for emergence in VIs (like RB), but just not in synths. So, that general idea (and the idea of VI PCs) are still on the table, but synths are just machines that work as part of the ship.

A - I really appreciate the time and attention and openness to discussion.

B - I'm actually thrilled with the level of conversation we've been having and glad to have become acquainted with this group.

C - @Daryen - Good call on stepping back and having us 'set the stage' so we're all seeing the same game universe. Since we're sandboxing the setting as we go, I think we should try and plan occasional discussion session when we find new things. So we keep building a universe where we can all enjoy the adventure and wonder of it.

D - Pretty sure that rabbit hole has enough concrete for now :) Let's go adventuring !!

I want to second that I appreciate that we were able to step back and talk about our expectations and wants and comfort. It's very important when we're investing time and emotion in this story.

Thank you guys for working to find a good solution that works for everyone.

And thank you @htech for facilitating all of this. I really appreciate how you are continuously working to make sure everyone is having fun!