Robot Ideas

Robots!

I've been drawing more robots lately and thinking about a robot RPG. One of the thoughts I had is that a percentile system, not unlike Star Frontiers, would suit a robot RPG quite well.

So I started noodling the idea more and I have a draft of My Robot Head in progress. I don't know how far I'll take this. I hope I'll see it through and publish, but this is just a fun thing I'm playing with right now. Stay posted.

As a teaser, the game would probably be set in the future in our solar system. I actually had written a bunch of this last year and I wrote that it takes place in or around 3100. All humans are dead. They left behind a fairly vast empire of cities and colonies on the Moon and Mars and places. But they are all dead because some AI asshole decided to bake a DNA timebomb into them and remove them. Now you are robots in this future where your masters, the humans, are gone. What do you do?

So the game deals with the fun shit like robot combat, exploration, resources, etc. But also angst and ennui. Robots are self aware. They have to decide how to be a people moving forward without destroying themselves through warring factions. My Robot Head as the title refers to the inner struggle of a robot character to understand who they are and where they belong. The dawn of a new civilization with the raw power and mental prowess to very quickly destroy itself.

Percentile system inspired by Star Frontiers, but not a clone. Lots of information carrying over from Cozmic Metal Heads because My Robot Head as a concept came first. I actually stripped MRH down and turned it into a Troika! book, so now I'm circling back and revisiting the original idea.

The other idea is to publish a robot art book. I'll have enough pure robot drawings that I could do a little art book in POD someplace. Sorry folks, I'm just not up for the whole physical printing and shipping one man show at this time. POD is where it's at for me. At least for now or until someone wants to publish my shit in nice, shiny volumes I don't have to physically handle.

 

Cozmic Metal Heads Cover Inks

Inks are done. I tried to keep it more or less in the style of the Supercalla cover art, since it's technically part of that series.

Let's see... 99% of the writing is finished. I'm going to try to wrap it up today and send it off to Andy for some edits. Then I'll put it in Matt's hands and hopefully we'll see a new book real soon.

Excited!

Cozmic Metal Heads Cover Sketch

The book is almost finished. Here's the cover sketch...

Cozmic Metal Heads

After much pondering and noodling and doodling, I finally decided that my robot game idea is really multiple ideas and one of them is a Troika! based romp kit about robots. And that's what I decided to focus on right now.

So, Cozmic Metal Heads will be a 48 page follow-up to Supercalla, set in the same universe and referencing some of the material in that book. This is in alignment with my original idea to create a series of these things all set in a universe known only as the Cozmos, or the Coz for short. I've been working on it pretty relentlessly these past few days and making excellent progress. Right now I'm neck-deep in writing the d66 Robot Models (Backgrounds). And, of course, finishing the robot art.

The deeper ideas I had for this are obviously going to make it into some other project later. I have ideas about how being a robot character means you can truly transform yourself over the course of a campaign. How would adding a shoulder canon alter the very nature of a robot designed to be a diplomat? I think that's fucking interesting.

I am not sure I'll dive into any of that in the Troika! book. Keeping to 48 pages with 36 robot models will be tight enough.

More later.

Robots IV

Robots III

But Robots Are Not Human

Robots are people. Robots are not human. These are the first premises of My Metal Skull, an RPG about robots.

Robots are people because that's the only way you can have character. And character is essential to an RPG. I can't imagine an RPG in which I slip into the role of an object that has no character. But all of that is kind of moot because we're all people and no matter how hard we try, we cannot possibly "play a role" that isn't a character. So robots are people.

Robots are not human because duh. They're machines originally designed and built by humans. They're not human, but their fundamental purpose, architecture, and design are based on the needs and desires of human beings. Robots are not human but they speak to the conceits of humanity.

But robots are not human. So it's OK if they act kinda funny. Kinda weird. Kinda odd. They are not human. They're gonna have quirks that we humans don't get. Especially after we humans go extinct and the robots continue on, evolving in their own ways over long stretches of time. This game takes place in an uncanny valley epoch where robots are becoming their own species, for lack of a better word, but are still fundamentally the playthings of humanity. Their behavior is going to be all over the map.

And it's those two ideas that I find most interesting about this project. Both in the process of drawing robots and in designing a game about them, I find it fascinating that robots are people and are not human. I hope the game speaks to that concept in an adequate way.

Robots Are People

As is my wont, I suddenly had a fixation on a thing in recent days and that fixation is only growing. You may have noted my many posts in the pinup art vein, a fixation I've had since I was 20 years old. That's not new or sudden, that's just me.

But now robots. Why robots? You know, I didn't even like the animated movie Robots. I can't remember why, exactly, but it felt disjointed and ungrounded to me. Or it was just too generic. I don't know. I didn't even love all the robot stuff in it.

But I love me some god damned robots. And I've been drawing a lot of them lately. I think the impetus was that I can just start drawing a robot straight to inks without a sketch. I mean... who's going to call me out on bad anatomy? It's a damn robot. Show me the correct anatomy.

Drawing robots is like drawing monsters. You can invent as you go and it's a brilliant, freeing experience. So I'm continuing to draw them daily. And of course, naturally, I'm noodling an RPG out of it.

I haven't made much progress on the RPG. I don't have a plan. I just have some notions.

Working title of the game: My Metal Skull

I flirted with My Metal Head, but the ubiquitous nature of "metalhead" signifying heavy metal music didn't mesh with my concept. I mean, I am a metalhead... but the game isn't going to be metal in that sense. It needs to be more fluid than that, not quite so locked-in to such a specific cultural aesthetic.

Some early game design beats*:

1. Like, this is a game about being given an identity (you were built, after all) and then having the autonomy to change and grow into your own robot. So it should have elements of random character creation along with choices (point buys, maybe). But the real meat of it is the way you evolve through play. No levels or anything like that. You just change organically. You find modules you can add to your body, or you lose them. And the catch is that adding a module alters you fundamentally. So you have to constantly make decisions about what kind of robot you are and what kind of robot you want to be.

2, It is RPG adventure. So there's a focus on danger, exploration, etc. But also it's got to have a strong social component. These are robots without living human masters. They are trying to figure themselves out. You need social mechanics.

3. Weights. I don't usually give a damn about encumbrance. But here I'm leaning into it. Your body will be composed of various elements (chassis, CPU, modules) and each will have a weight given in kilograms. You'll have to keep up with that stuff a little bit because you're a robot and knowing your physical parameters is important.

4. Lots of cool modules. Like skills, spells, magic items, etc. The modules you can acquire or build speak to who you are and certainly what you can do. So these are important and I want to have a ton of them pre-written with nice clean rules for making your own.

5. Setting. All I know right now is that humans are gone. So it's "post-apoc" in that sense. But I don't want to call this a post-apoc game or make too much of the fact that people are gone. People had their time and that time is over. Now it's robots' time. I'll lean into the fact that robots can trace their origin to people and thus "humanity" is something perhaps many robots seek to emulate. Also, I'll lean into the far-future nature of the setting and have some funky cool evolutionary stuff with wildlife and with wild tech. I have not decided if this will be space-faring yet. It kinda makes sense to make it space-faring. But it's "hard" sci-fi at least in the sense that there's no FTL drives. So the robots may tool around the solar system, making the setting the solar system and not just Earth.

6. Some have asked if this will be a Troika!-based follow-up to Supercalla. I certainly have had that Troika! that make it less ideal for this project, as much as I love that game. So no, this will not be a Supercalla expansion**.

*I was noticing recently that "beats" is a term used by various people when talking about their RPG projects. I found that interesting because it's a thing I've used in my private journals for decades. When would noodle a comic idea I'd write down "five beats" about the comic and then riff from there.

**I say that, but I'm in the earliest possible stage of development. Everything could change tomorrow.

Robots

Drawing a lot of robots lately. I have no idea why, but damn sure am thinking about a robot RPG now.

Robots