Guide to roleplaying a robot-feeling robot

This is a short roleplay guide to help your IPCs, Cyborgs and AI’s play less like a person and feel more robot

If you want to play a character who is more human-like than robot you can obviously feel free but I do find that the majority of players do that and I wish for more people to try to roleplay a genuinely robotic character as I find it fun

  1. Speech
    Your vocal mannerisms can very quickly make yourself look like a robot, replace most words with more robotic sounding ones, the most common one is replacing “Me”, “I” and “Myself” with “ThisUnit”, another thing I like to do is to call people by [Jobrole]Personel
    so instead of saying:
    Hey James, could you cook up some bicaridine?
    you can say :
    ThisUnit queries if ChemistPersonel James Smith could synthesise some bicaridine?"
    but ofcourse, writing this can double or even triple the time it takes to talk to someone so don’t feel bad if you cut some words out if you are in a rush, the sentance can still be said as
    ThisUnit requests bicaridine
    or
    ThisUnit requires the synthesis of bicaridine
    overall I wouldn’t really theres an exact way of speaking

I might add some more details onto this but I am not certain, the speech part for me is the mot important part of roleplaying a robot, generally you can think to yourself “what is the most robotic/efficient way I could do this”, especially with things such as where you stand and what you hold, these tiny details are how I help immerse myself

I like sprinkling pseudo code into statements sometimes as well
“IF (STATUS == HEALTHY) THEN (leave_Medbay());”

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I like using me : ‘plays sigh.mp3’ instead of using *sigh and similar emotes.
This way I get to sneak in the occasional slow clap processor joke.

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“Oh good, that still works.”

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IPCs are cyborgs, not robots. They’re a human brain, in an MMI. So any IPC you see with the whole “THIS UNIT DOESN’T COMPUTE” they’re wrong.

this is a joke

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This unit appreciates the clear humour delineation.

IPCs are robots, they contain a positronic unit that is a computer

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Yeah if you go to our wiki we have a pretty expansive IPC lore section that clears that up, i’ve seen it mentioned before if they “still count as human” no, they uhh… don’t really.


wiki lore doesn’t mean anything

I am a often contributor to Bee’s wiki.

I am telling you, do not trust that fuckin place. Theres so much outdated, wrong or dumb shit that you should only consider if it has a big “PROTECTED PAGE” at the top.

I still have to cut out the occasional racial slur from some of the deeper wiki pages.

Don’t believe me?

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Oh hey I read that page before the edit!
Mr chuckles is alot tamer than… erherm
but yeah damn some of those pages do have some pointed terms in them to say the least.
Oh well that’s the goons for you.

Round spawn Cyborgs contain a brain in an MMI and IPCs contain a positronic brain. It’s weird. lol

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Be your own god. Mix and match the lore so it fits your story. Be creative, mischievous and expressive. What could go wrong!

It was this moment that lore gods using the above necropost made me realise that the way D.I.Y. was created on the outside looks like an ipc that behaves like a human and i seriously dont wanna scrap the idea

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Alternatively

#include iostream
int main() {
std::cout << “Get the feck outta medbay ya wanker”;
return 0;

}
end

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My character Rob is meant to come off as more robotic but “this unit” doesn’t quite fit (he’s a felinid it feels weird) I do however have a few tips! Done in edits as I switch to desktop. Also OOPS NECROPOST MY BAD

1) Objectivity!

Keep it clinical, sterile. Question marks can be used but refrain from something like an exclamation point. "Today I'm going to do Xenobiology" Is exciting or otherwise shows emotion. "Today I'm going to do Xenobiology." Is just a statement. A lot of what we normally consider "robotic" is the emotionless one that uses logic to answer everything or perhaps just the Tin Man, supposedly unfeeling and emotionless. Examples would include Auto from WALL-E and his inspiration HAL-9000, Soundwave from Transformers, among others.

2) Personality still matters!

Let's say you aren't trying to make a knockoff here, you want them to simply speak monotonously but have a attitude! In that case you can still give them personality! Are they more serious? Snarky and sarcastic? Monotone speak doesn't mean your robot needs to be fully devoid of personality!

I actuallly do the complete oposite.

Too much excitement, always, regardless of context can be seen as robotic. I do this for Delphine.

I also do somthing very silly by just typing things like “processing…” and “engaging killmode…” in emote chat.
I really like that

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This is my headcanon for IPCs, the incredibly corporate software makes them sound happy and sanitized all the time, in a corporate music kind of way

Good point, too! Sanitized, happy characters can come off as a stepford smiler and really drive that uncanny valley aspect

Also see:
Chatgpt.

Sure! Here’s a list of science tasks that need doing:
Etc.

Just talk like a silicon valley social media manager. They’re what all the corpos will base the personalities of their silicon slaves off of in the long run.

We need more souless corporate IPCs ong

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