[Flux2077]

Hi there fellow Shadowrun chummers!!

Quick intro about myself.
Finally opened an account in here after years of being on the sidelines, I'm from the DeeCee area, but always having troubles to find tables and all that drama either because of work schedule or distance, family obligations, you name it! there's never a shortage of excuses.

Then Roll20 came along, I discovered it late, long story short I'm GMing a table of my own that accommodates to schedule and all that jazz. Having 6 players.. All IN and rolling! Hype train ain't stopin! All veteran players but mostly 10+ yrs D&D and Vampire Masquerade types.

But let's be honest,, all of my life wanted to play Shadowrun but could never find a table, and as the old saying goes.. 'sometimes if you want something reallybad, you have to make it yourself'.

Forgive my intro.... I just look forward to be a regular here.

Now to the meat and potatoes.

Data Trails!!!
I'm very excited for finally getting a hard copy of Data Trails book.. And where to start with this gem?

Just going to get straight to the point here (what!! a wall of text later and still no meat?)

I'm royally excited about the fact that Data Trails allows for player character AIs..

My question to the community is if any of you or your fellow runners ever played as an AI? Please share experiences.. I'm hoping that one of my players joins my table as an AI.

[Mirikon]

I have a couple AI characters that I've used before.

Tachikoma is an AI Rigger who grew up in the firmware of a Steel Lynx drone, and still lives there, but uses multiple drones now.

Sakura is an AI Face who grew up in the body of a sexbot modified to be a companion/bodyguard for a member of the Yakuza. After a friendly separation, she is in the shadows working as a face.

[firebug]

I made one AI character.  For the record, AI riggers are nearly broken, while AI deckers are incredibly vulnerable and tend to be worse at hacking than metahuman deckers.

The character I made was named SAINT; it was an AI born out of the pilot AI of a nurse/medical-assistant anthrodrone that had been used by a shadowrunner, but then got heavily damaged in a run in Chicago (the runner and his team died).  SAINT was found by a scavenger and mostly repaired.  I had fun playing up the Real World Naivety through the lense of "what would an pilot for a hospital drone know".  So it knew about metahuman biology, and by virtue of being a drone first, had a more founded understand of what physical meant.  It also understood an amount of psychology and basic etiquette, so I didn't have to play it as a total Blue/Orange Morality alien-mindset being.  Its major blindspots were magic (outside of healing) and the value of money.  I played SAINT with it not being fully aware it was truly an AI; it still acted subservient most of the time, and had no idea it was capable of leaving the anthrodrone it had been "born" in.  This, combined with its medical knowledge, meant that it legitimately had a concept of death and thus self-preservation.  SAINT was fascinated with how learning things felt, and I looked forward to having it gain more self-awareness and become more powerful as it broke free of its self-imposed limitations.

Unfortunately, the campaign fell through and I lost the computer with SAINT's character sheet.  However, I may remake SAINT some day since it was just such a good character and a lot of fun to roleplay.

AI characters are very difficult to build.  The rules are flawed and there's a LOT of parts that don't make sense or simply seem non-functional.  I've combed through them as part of the errata team but coming up with solutions for them has been difficult (and my focus has been in other books).  If a player wants to play one, you'll have a lot of headaches to deal with facing inconsistencies and blind spots in the rules, on top of the fact that an AI character's effectiveness varies wildly.  It's a mess.  But they have a huge amount of story and roleplaying potential.

[Flux2077]

Mirikon,

About Sakura AI... One of my players and I explored the idea of making the AI a rigger for her to manifest into the physical world.. So far, so good all clear and dandy.

About the sexbot aspect, I'm too new to this and mostly familiar with SR5,, Would you recommend me please some books or sources for the bots with human like bodies for AI usage? I imagine they cost a fortune sine they are all full chrome if I'm no mistaken.

Cheers!!!
Stay Chromie !

[Flux2077]

I made one AI character.  For the record, AI riggers are nearly broken, while AI deckers are incredibly vulnerable and tend to be worse at hacking than metahuman deckers.

The character I made was named SAINT; it was an AI born out of the pilot AI of a nurse/medical-assistant anthrodrone that had been used by a shadowrunner, but then got heavily damaged in a run in Chicago (the runner and his team died).  SAINT was found by a scavenger and mostly repaired.  I had fun playing up the Real World Naivety through the lense of "what would an pilot for a hospital drone know".  So it knew about metahuman biology, and by virtue of being a drone first, had a more founded understand of what physical meant.  It also understood an amount of psychology and basic etiquette, so I didn't have to play it as a total Blue/Orange Morality alien-mindset being.  Its major blindspots were magic (outside of healing) and the value of money.  I played SAINT with it not being fully aware it was truly an AI; it still acted subservient most of the time, and had no idea it was capable of leaving the anthrodrone it had been "born" in.  This, combined with its medical knowledge, meant that it legitimately had a concept of death and thus self-preservation.  SAINT was fascinated with how learning things felt, and I looked forward to having it gain more self-awareness and become more powerful as it broke free of its self-imposed limitations.

Unfortunately, the campaign fell through and I lost the computer with SAINT's character sheet.  However, I may remake SAINT some day since it was just such a good character and a lot of fun to roleplay.

AI characters are very difficult to build.  The rules are flawed and there's a LOT of parts that don't make sense or simply seem non-functional.  I've combed through them as part of the errata team but coming up with solutions for them has been difficult (and my focus has been in other books).  If a player wants to play one, you'll have a lot of headaches to deal with facing inconsistencies and blind spots in the rules, on top of the fact that an AI character's effectiveness varies wildly.  It's a mess.  But they have a huge amount of story and roleplaying potential.

Awesome character!!! You should definitely re-make it.
I love the RP aspect of it, when it comes to runs,, I mostly enjoy RPing characters , legwork and all that is outside of combat.

From what you describe, RPing an AI is pretty alien to any metahuman. I have zero experience with AI players and your story is very inspiring. The money part is spot on I imagine,


About my current table,
None of my players is an AI (sadface),, we at least have a good Decker who suggests to take a D&D Wizard-Familiar approach where an NPC AI could be recruited as a Shadowrunner, to which it will provide very, very limited support and will be there mostly for RP purposes, basically avoid stealing the table's spotlight.

Best wishes!

[Frost]

I've made AI NPC's, one as an antagonist and one as comic relief (for now). The bad guy was locked in a wireless underground nanite research facility who was trying to escape. He used nanites to infect the people in the facility, take it over, and was slowly using the nanites to carry fractions of himself out of the facility by the time the runners got to him.

The second is the last remaining code of an AI that was hunted down by Turing and destroyed. This little bit managed to slip past them, then downloaded into the first thing it could: a Renraku manservant. It found an unoccupied condo to hide in, only to have one of the NPC's move into the condo. So it posed as the robo-butler and has been buteling ever since. Like I said, its more for comic relief than anything. She gave it access to a bank account so it could buy thing for the house and pay bills (automatic lifestyle handling) but it hasn't properly determined what she likes yet, so it buys random thing. For instance, it knew women usually like kittens, so it bought he a kitten from a meta-critter pet store. The store latter sent him and advertisement for hawk, so he bought that too. The hawk ate the kitten and the flew away. The next day the same pet store sent him and advertisement for an awakened baboon, which he also bought. So she finally returns home after a long run to find a good chunk of change gone and a baboon sitting on her kitchen counter.

I'm not even sure if this is relevant to your question. Just thought I'd share my AI character stories.

[Mirikon]

Mirikon,

About Sakura AI... One of my players and I explored the idea of making the AI a rigger for her to manifest into the physical world.. So far, so good all clear and dandy.

About the sexbot aspect, I'm too new to this and mostly familiar with SR5,, Would you recommend me please some books or sources for the bots with human like bodies for AI usage? I imagine they cost a fortune sine they are all full chrome if I'm no mistaken.

Cheers!!!
Stay Chromie !

The iDoll in Rigger 5 is a sexbot. Oh, they don't call it a sexbot, but everyone knows what it is for. It has the Mimic thing going on, so it looks like a person. An earlier version of Sakura back in 4th was built on the Nadeshiko (equivalent to the iDoll), and her previous 'owner' had given her a cosmetic upgrade to make her look like Nadjia Daviar. Never said she was one of the Nadjias, never said she wasn't.

[Flux2077]

Mirikon,

About Sakura AI... One of my players and I explored the idea of making the AI a rigger for her to manifest into the physical world.. So far, so good all clear and dandy.

About the sexbot aspect, I'm too new to this and mostly familiar with SR5,, Would you recommend me please some books or sources for the bots with human like bodies for AI usage? I imagine they cost a fortune sine they are all full chrome if I'm no mistaken.

Cheers!!!
Stay Chromie !

The iDoll in Rigger 5 is a sexbot. Oh, they don't call it a sexbot, but everyone knows what it is for. It has the Mimic thing going on, so it looks like a person. An earlier version of Sakura back in 4th was built on the Nadeshiko (equivalent to the iDoll), and her previous 'owner' had given her a cosmetic upgrade to make her look like Nadjia Daviar. Never said she was one of the Nadjias, never said she wasn't.

Wow!! I came to the right place and asked for the right questions!


I'm not that familiar with any of the Rigger books as I was under the wrong impression that they were mostly vehicles and there it lost my attention, but now that you are mentioning it this,, I got to look more closely!

[Flux2077]

I've made AI NPC's, one as an antagonist and one as comic relief (for now). The bad guy was locked in a wireless underground nanite research facility who was trying to escape. He used nanites to infect the people in the facility, take it over, and was slowly using the nanites to carry fractions of himself out of the facility by the time the runners got to him.

The second is the last remaining code of an AI that was hunted down by Turing and destroyed. This little bit managed to slip past them, then downloaded into the first thing it could: a Renraku manservant. It found an unoccupied condo to hide in, only to have one of the NPC's move into the condo. So it posed as the robo-butler and has been buteling ever since. Like I said, its more for comic relief than anything. She gave it access to a bank account so it could buy thing for the house and pay bills (automatic lifestyle handling) but it hasn't properly determined what she likes yet, so it buys random thing. For instance, it knew women usually like kittens, so it bought he a kitten from a meta-critter pet store. The store latter sent him and advertisement for hawk, so he bought that too. The hawk ate the kitten and the flew away. The next day the same pet store sent him and advertisement for an awakened baboon, which he also bought. So she finally returns home after a long run to find a good chunk of change gone and a baboon sitting on her kitchen counter.

I'm not even sure if this is relevant to your question. Just thought I'd share my AI character stories.

Very inspiring!!!
Also totally relevant to my question.

As none of the players on my table are going for AI,, I'm slowly introducing them to an NPC AI,, I'll copy some of your ideas, making my AI a bit of a comic relief as well with being a load and a burden for responsible mature people to decide whether to help her live, or leave her behind.

Personality wise,, thinking annoying child-like asking them why for everything about the physical world, with a zing of philosophical curiosity wondering about nonsensical things in the middle of critical moments.

[neomerlin]

One of the players in my game plays as an e-ghost rigger. It's an interesting character. Took a lot of work to actually get a grip on the rules for playing an AI on top of the rigger rules and the result is a character that's really good at being in multiple places at once and they sure can drive like a boss, but in combat, they're about as useful as the decker. The reliance on Logic + Gunnery [Sensors] to shoot and the low Sensor rating of drones puts a real limit on how much damage they can dish out. The best strategy for the character is usually to use the extraordinary ammo capacity of drones to control a battle with suppression fire.

But the mechanical limits of the character aside, they are a good character to have in game. He's currently trying to build himself a proper body to inhabit by piecing together cyberware into a full sized humanoid drone. This goal is one of the key driving forces in the game, right now. I love when players are that motivated. Beyond that, it's also made for some interesting role-playing opportunities and challenges. Not everyone respects an AI. Hell, not everyone can see an AI. So, despite those initial challenges and my own misgivings, I'm happy to have the character around.

It's delightful fun making their life hard.