shitty robots as characters

i like how in portal each panel - the walls and floors - is a shitty robot - these characters have no effect on the outcome of the story but it shows a bit of life in the scene, and we want more than this but its good to have, cosmic background robots, in a robotics story, or like, any other story

(theres the obvious douglas adams example)

similarly in dishonored 2 with jindosh's machines - the way they fold away and come together - capturing the spirit of the inventor

but - r2d2 and c3p0 is the ultimate example of, having shitty robots as characters - having, the basic personal affect of an old modem and a phone tree respectively, being agents of chaos in the story, like player characters in a game

so when im playing a star wars game i wnat to play the 'c3p0 with a gun' archetype that you see in a lot of star warses (r2d2 is the prototypical c3p0 with a gun, but you got... the alan tudic robot from rogue one  and the one from the han solo movie, its in all the star warses)

but a lot of the character of robots coems from how shitty they are, the jankiness of their animation, the letterboxness of their faces, the limitations of what they can comprehend, and the assuredness that they are performing their task properly,

this distance between robots and people

and all of this come from - physical limitations, inexactitudes in the art of making robots, which of course its desirable in robotics to overcome. but if we move closer to being humans we lose this robotness we're trying to have, and so we have to maintain this robosity

alright, so the shittiness of c3p0 - i think even in the 70s the notion of we would build robots as these janky golden men is a throwback to like galatea from metropolis, its a neonoir pulp revival thing. thank um ralph for that, ralph star wars

so c3p0 doesnt fuckign get it, he doesnt understand whats happening in the scene. hes slow moving, he's fragile, hes only got like luck and persuasion - and hes not good at persuasion -

so what if hes like remarkably good at shooting, would that be good, c3p0 with a gun

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so the star wars stuff is all made backwards, the reason astromech droids exist is so we can have these features in the story,

so the language r2d2 speaks is called binary, he doesnt speak english which i think is called basic or something

which in an rpg is like playing an elf who insists on speaking elven and you have to know elven to speak with this elf, which i think is a bummer move as a rpg player but it does give you some grist to work in the machine, its a dramatic mechanic conveying messages between languages

r2d2 only speaks with machines, or, begrudgingly, people who can speak binary, he's a machine-facing droid where c3p0 is a human-facing droid. so these two classes of droid form like a protocol stack in between machines (like ships) and humans, carrying messages from the ship to the r2d2 to the c3p0 to the human, but this is like a sort of chinese whispers thign because c3p0 doesnt fucking get it, he doesnt know what's going on.

so the hack for this is humans learning binary, which makes sense with luke, hes learned the language of r2d2 so he doesnt have to speak to c3p0, like an ace pilot, - which i think its - too common nowadays, in star wars where all the humans in the scene can speak binary - but maybe thats a feature of the new time period, the postrepublic star wars...

idk if this star wars craze never ends will the time in star wars continue to progress, if the tech in star wars does advance in that way, where we'd have - noone speaks binary, then only specialists, then everyone, then you could return to the only-specialists republic times to tell stories at that - level, but its probably too granular to be a super cool detail of a system

anyway the shittiness of r2d2 it has a less dramatic effect on the scene, its very graphic, being a wheely bin thing that beeps, the importance of r2d2 being shitty is he sets this graphical tone for star wars, its star wars because the sort of utility background technology in star wars is - also alive and also has feelings about stuff

( like the robots in wall-e )

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c3p0 with a gun

healing and finding endings for your characters

so the game usually ends with things unresolved, usually because of a scheduling conflict

the story that you imagine for your character usually doesnt survive the game and contact with the other characters

the thing that...

grrm, the world and legacy of game of thrones affects the way everyone writes fantasy in this next phase, theres no end to these westerim stories because its a proven hit, like star wars, the shadow of grrm is immeasurable, this kind of story is assured...

but fantasy stories they arent really made to have endings, theyre supposed to be points of light in these larger contexts... so like, all of the story with the starks and lannisters is a point of light in grmms world which extends, far in all directions,

we get these these unfinished or mangled arcs for player characters

and so maybe all of your characters and all of you games is form some sort of constellation that arcs across the sky or whatever and you can track the changes from one character, one adventure to the next over time...

the healing

ive been doing some numbers on healing....

so the kind of 5th ive been playing is like.... level 1 to 5 over and over again. sometimes starting at 3. which... i like the way the 3rd level character maps to a 1st level 4th character... so i like to start at 3rd level.

the first level spelly character gets... two spells a day its a totally different game that I havent played much... because you usually level up after a couple sessions.

i dont usually play healers its not my habit to heal. in 5th you cant heal more damage in a turn than a monster can deal in a turn, so dealing damage to monsters is a higher priority usually than healing. the healing classes (cleric bard druid, fucking... sorcerer... warlock i think, wizard maybe?) tend to be deal a lot of damage.

i play a druid4/cleric1 and the other players in the game, a wizard5 and a fighter5, have each expressed interest in gaining access to healing spells on level up so that they can heal more. the druid cleric naturally has... perfect access to healing spells like a combined level5 druid and cleric. so i think, maybe these other players could get healing and heal themselves,,,  and/or i could be like.... a better healer for the party

(edit: i made a mistake here, you dont get spells like a lv5 cleric, so the druid4/cleric1 actually has much less healing than that... level 1 cleric spells, level 2 druid spells, some level 3 slots you can use to boost lower level spells.)

a wizard5 could add like a single level of sorcerer or cleric or whatever. to get the healing at level5. (edit: nope at lv1)
the phb is strict on the fighter who can only gain cleric1 and heal like a first level cleric. 2 spells a day.

if i was trying to add healing to the fighter, if i was a dm, i could throw in like a magic item that grants the 5th level healing....

but i already have... all the healing and it doesnt cost anything.

anyway i made a spreadsheet

'healing in 5th' spreadsheet on google docs



so i always bring... healing word. but i don't want to use it unless the target is already unconcious or otherwise if i can proc more damage by healing someone. this is the garbage language

i have the order cleric 1 thing that grants an ally spell target a reaction attack when i cast spells on them, so i'll also use healing word to grant that attack as a bonus action. if theres a rogue around i try to stick it on the rogue, otherwise the fighter, lastly the wizard.... the wizard has the least hp and needs the most healing... so its actually counter-synergy with healing.... this is the garbage language again