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CRMcNeill
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 Posted: Sat May 23, 2020 3:29 pm Post subject: Protocol Droids and Mimicry |
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Something that has never been dealt with in the RAW is Threepio’s ability to mimic sounds (seen in RotJ). There’s a lot of potential here; can protocol droids replicate any sound they hear? Can they mimic the voice of an organic being? Can they engage in audio trickery, as in ventriloquism or throwing their voice? How would one house rule that sort of thing?
If so, other questions come to mind. Are protocol droids legally required to be restricted from doing so? Is it “against their programming” to deceptively impersonate a living being? How easily could that programming be bypassed for a droid working for the Alliance or the Fringe?
If one accepts the Radio Dramas as canon, then Threepio is actually quite adept at deception. Adding mimicry to the mix makes for interesting possibilities.
Thoughts?
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sat May 23, 2020 4:21 pm Post subject: |
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When in ROTJ did 3po mimic something, other than when he was doing those 'sounds' of fighters/walkers, when addressing the ewoks?
That said, i say no they couldn't mimic someone's voice, but can do sound effects.
As for throwing their voice, again no..
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sat May 23, 2020 4:40 pm Post subject: |
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Okay, but why? If Threepio can mimic such disparate sounds as TIE fighters, blaster fire, Darth Vader’s breathing, an AT-AT walking and a lightsaber, and can already speak fluently in six million different forms of communication, including such things as Ithorians (which speak simultaneously from two different mouths), why the arbitrary restriction on mimicking a specific being’s voice?
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MrNexx
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| Posted: Sat May 23, 2020 6:02 pm Post subject: |
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In KOTOR2, it is a plot point that the HK-series droids can imitate voices.
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Whill
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| Posted: Sat May 23, 2020 6:13 pm Post subject: Re: Protocol Droids and Mimicry |
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Cool topic.
| CRMcNeill wrote: | If one accepts the Radio Dramas as canon, then Threepio is actually quite adept at deception. Adding mimicry to the mix makes for interesting possibilities.
Thoughts? |
Threepio was originally written as more of a slick-talking, sleazy, used car salesmen type who conned people before he turned into a worried butler type of character, but in the final films there are vestiges of the original concept. Threepio tells Luke he doesn't know who Leia is but he obviously really does. Threepio made stormtroopers believe he and artoo were Death Star droids who had been locked in a closet by the rebels in the prison level, and that he had to take Artoo down to maintenance. Threepio also tells Luke he's not good at telling stories or making them interesting, but he does exactly that on the Forest Moon of Endor.
| Quote: | Something that has never been dealt with in the RAW is Threepio’s ability to mimic sounds (seen in RotJ). There’s a lot of potential here; can protocol droids replicate any sound they hear? Can they mimic the voice of an organic being? Can they engage in audio trickery, as in ventriloquism or throwing their voice?...
If so, other questions come to mind. Are protocol droids legally required to be restricted from doing so? Is it “against their programming” to deceptively impersonate a living being? How easily could that programming be bypassed for a droid working for the Alliance or the Fringe? |
As his campfire summary of the classic trilogy to the Ewoks shows, Threepio is capable of producing sound effects like lightsabers, AT-ATs and TIE fighters, so I do not see why he could not mimic voices too. However I would think there might be a difference in difficulty between duplicating exactly what he had heard in another voice and mimicking a voice saying something original while trying to pass that off as something being said by a certain individual or just a different voice. Throwing his voice to making it sound like it came from something else could be possible, but difficult. This would be an extension of speaking other languages that are not easily produced by non-native speakers, like the stereo language of Ithorians.
These abilities could make protocol droids very powerful and dangerous so I feel the only thing that make sense is that by default, they are programmed against deception of any kind. I think bypassing a protocol droid's honesty programming should be extremely difficult, failure coming with a chance of screwing up the droid in immediately obvious, or not immediately obvious, ways (GM fiat). I also think it would be very illegal to override the programming in this way (with stiff legal penalties) so maybe how good of a roll it was can also indicate how well hidden the reprogramming is. Better get Babu Frik to do it. If paying someone on the black market to do it, it should be extremely expensive.
Threepio could have been re-programmed so that he was capable of deception as needed for his important role in Rebellion. As far as the things Threepio says he can't do along these lines, that could be more deception. Threepio can impersonate a deity to primitive savages, but his personality is such that he feels that is improper. Threepio could lie and say he can't do thing that he really can and just doesn't want to. I think it makes the most sense that Threepio is a special case in that he never had the honesty programming in the first place because he was built by a genius kid who cobbled him together from parts from three different protocol droids. But factory protocol droids should for sure have the honest programming that has to be overcome. The spy droids out there would have had this re-programing.
| Quote: | | How would one house rule that sort of thing? |
In the mid-90s I ran a one-player adventure for a friend playing a Wookiee smuggler. I ran a reprogrammed protocol droid conman NPC based on the early Threepio concept as the PC's sidekick. He did not have the personality of Threepio. I don't remember much from the adventure but it was fun.
I do have some game mechanical ideas to contribute to this discussion. Instead of allowing any existing avian species as PCs in my game, I designed a PC species, Avesians, that serves as the "missing link" species that a lot of them are evolved from (The descendant species all evolved from specific subspecies or "races" of Avesians). This allows players to have a PC that looks like any of the descendant species, but actually be one species with a unified stat block/special abilities write-up. However when writing them up I quickly realized that all of the cool possible abilities bird people could have would make them way too powerful, so I came up with the concept that the species abilities are diverse like the number of subspecies. Players creating a character of this species build a custom special abilities package from all the abilities available. They have 4D devoted to special abilities, and can also use 1D of skill dice if they choose to so all custom packages have a total value of 4D or 5D. Advantageous abilities have positive die values and disadvantages have negative, so positive abilities can add up to greater than 5D as long as they have disadvantages that bring the total back down to 4D or 5D. One of the bird abilities I think would be cool for a bird alien character to have is vocal mimicry. This is the most powerful avesian ability, with a 5D cost...
| Whill wrote: | | (+5D) Vocal Mimicry: Avesians with this ability are adept at using their voices to mimic other voices and even other sounds. This ability can be used to achieve a wide variety of effects, including bonuses of up to one additional wild die on vocal uses of art and interaction skills such as animal handling/riding, bargaining, persuasion/charm, intimidation, investigation, leadership, streetwise and deception (including ventriloquism). When used for the purpose of deception, this ability is not effective on other Avesians as they can more easily perceive the mimicry. The availability and level of the bonus are determined by the GM based on the specific circumstances. Languages checks made to speak alien languages may also receive the bonus based on the avesian ability to match tone, accent, pace, and other vocal qualities. If fluent in the language and/or successful in the skill checks, vocal mimicry also grants Avesians the ability to speak languages that most non-natives cannot produce, such as Droidspeak, Ithorese and Shyriiwook. |
It should be easy to determine the RAW skills from my renaming of them. And I know this isn't fully useful for your purposes because you tend to prefer more crunch for things I leave open to in-play GM judgement (I write rules primarily for myself so I have no trouble filling in the blanks as needed in-play). But this is at least in the direction of what you were going for. If you want to pick it apart or add to it, that's ok. Maybe that will help my game.
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RyanDarkstar
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| Posted: Sat May 23, 2020 10:35 pm Post subject: |
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Threepio mimicked Leia's voice in Heir to the Empire to attempt to lead the Noghri/Imperial agents after the Millennium Falcon, allowing Leia and Chewbacca to hide out on Kashyyyk. Naturally, Thrawn figured otherwise.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sun May 24, 2020 2:41 am Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | Okay, but why? If Threepio can mimic such disparate sounds as TIE fighters, blaster fire, Darth Vader’s breathing, an AT-AT walking and a lightsaber, and can already speak fluently in six million different forms of communication, including such things as Ithorians (which speak simultaneously from two different mouths), why the arbitrary restriction on mimicking a specific being’s voice? |
To me, its the same as those mimicing birds.. They can imitate general stuff, but not mimic someone specifically (from what i remember at least).
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Raven Redstar
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| Posted: Sun May 24, 2020 11:48 am Post subject: |
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TBH, I have never had a player EVER want to play a protocol droid, but if I did have one. I would allow him to roll his Con skill to mimic someone else.
I'd consider this against its basic protocol programming, so it typically will not do it on its own. But, maybe in desperate times it might, since protecting humanoid life would go above maintaining proper protocol in hierarchy of programming.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Tue May 26, 2020 12:25 pm Post subject: |
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(I replied to these two in the same post because there's a lot of overlap between my replies)
| RyanDarkstar wrote: | | Threepio mimicked Leia's voice in Heir to the Empire to attempt to lead the Noghri/Imperial agents after the Millennium Falcon, allowing Leia and Chewbacca to hide out on Kashyyyk. Naturally, Thrawn figured otherwise. |
| garhkal wrote: | | To me, its the same as those mimicing birds.. They can imitate general stuff, but not mimic someone specifically (from what i remember at least). |
This is a quote directly from the Protocol Droid stats in the Star Wars Sourcebook:"The droid’s vocabulator speech/sound system makes the droid capable of reproducing virtually any sound it hears or is programmed to reproduce." "Any" should include specific voices. However, IIRC, the instance cited by RyanDarkstar in HttE did require the assistance of a slicer to get the sound programmed right.
I'd suggest that the reason for the programming assistance was to get the quality of Threepio's mimicry of Leia to the point where it would be more likely to fool the audio analysis any listening Imperials would almost certainly do on any received transmissions. That fits well with the extant system where a Protocol Droid would be required to roll some form of skill dice against varying Difficulty to measure how effective the mimic is (probably the Disguise skill would be a good place to start), with most basic audible interaction being relatively easy, while trying to fool someone with access to audio analysis systems would be much harder. For example, Threepio might have 8D in Disguise: Voice, but the Difficulty of fooling the sound processing algorithms on an ISD's main computer would be Heroic+10, so the slicer would be needed to fine-tune the quality of Threepio's mimicry (which would be simple enough seeing as how they had the audio source - Leia herself - there to help) to increase Threepio's effective skill level.
Still not enough to fool Thrawn, but whatever...
EDIT: For some reason I was thinking there was a Disguise skill in the RAW, but now I can't find it. I'm probably thinking of a different system...
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Tue May 26, 2020 12:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Raven Redstar wrote: | TBH, I have never had a player EVER want to play a protocol droid, but if I did have one. I would allow him to roll his Con skill to mimic someone else.
I'd consider this against its basic protocol programming, so it typically will not do it on its own. But, maybe in desperate times it might, since protecting humanoid life would go above maintaining proper protocol in hierarchy of programming. |
Same. For me, I found Threepio's character to be somewhat annoying. I much prefer a droid character like Bollux from the Han Solo Trilogy, who always manages to find a way to interpret orders both literally and creatively in such a way that it benefits the entire party, while simultaneously exuding an attitude of humility, bravery and selflessness.
If I were to play a Protocol Droid, I rather like the idea of a droid con man. Either that or something along the lines of my Marvin crossover stat from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
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MrNexx
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| Posted: Tue May 26, 2020 12:38 pm Post subject: |
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I imagine 3PO would be aided in mimicking Leia by familiarity. He's got thousands and thousands of hours with her, listening to how she speaks, and analyzing it for emotional state and the like.
He could probably do a respectable Darth Vader impersonation, but it would not have the breadth and depth of his Leia impersonation. For example, I doubt 3PO would be able to extemporize Vader's humor.
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Whill
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| Posted: Tue May 26, 2020 2:58 pm Post subject: |
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LOL, right.
| CRMcNeill wrote: | | If I were to play a Protocol Droid, I rather like the idea of a droid con man. Either that or something along the lines of my Marvin crossover stat from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. |
I don't allow pure droid PCs but I d have Shards with droid bodies. The protocol droid conman is one of my concepts for a Shard PC template, but I haven't written that up yet.
My Marvin PC concept is a Shard in a 5th degree droid. He is an 18D BLX Labor Droid, so he is depressed that with all his capabilities, he is a lowly Labor Droid doing what he considers to be menial work.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Tue May 26, 2020 7:10 pm Post subject: Re: Protocol Droids and Mimicry |
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Cool response. A lot to reply to...
| Quote: | | Threepio was originally written as more of a slick-talking, sleazy, used car salesmen type who conned people before he turned into a worried butler type of character, but in the final films there are vestiges of the original concept. |
Good points. I can't help but think Threepio would be a more entertaining, less annoying character if this aspect of him had been played up more. But unfortunately, Lucas' ability to write likable characters is hit-and-miss (cough*Jar-Jar*cough).
If I were to play a Protocol Droid character, I'd certainly want to play it more to that style.
| Quote: | | However I would think there might be a difference in difficulty between duplicating exactly what he had heard in another voice and mimicking a voice saying something original while trying to pass that off as something being said by a certain individual or just a different voice. Throwing his voice to making it sound like it came from something else could be possible, but difficult. This would be an extension of speaking other languages that are not easily produced by non-native speakers, like the stereo language of Ithorians. |
Definitely a lot to flesh out on the rules aspects of how a droid would mimic sounds. A blanket bonus to Con would be inappropriate because any advantage this would provide would be highly situational, but at the same time, Con would likely be a good place to start for familiarity-based Difficulty modifiers for how well the droid is able to duplicate the sound.
On a side note, a droid with an internal comlink could also broadcast fake messages over the local comm net...
| Quote: | | These abilities could make protocol droids very powerful and dangerous so I feel the only thing that make sense is that by default, they are programmed against deception of any kind. |
Makes sense. Seeing as how a protocol droid's primary function is that of clear, polite communication between two parties, deliberate deception of one or the other would be, well, distasteful to it.
| Quote: | | Threepio can impersonate a deity to primitive savages, but his personality is such that he feels that is improper. Threepio could lie and say he can't do thing that he really can and just doesn't want to. I think it makes the most sense that Threepio is a special case in that he never had the honesty programming in the first place because he was built by a genius kid who cobbled him together from parts from three different protocol droids. |
Makes sense, too. There may also be an aspect of priority overrides, in that if he receives a direct command overriding those protocols (such as might occur in an emergency), he can do so. In that case, Threepio's objection to Luke instructing him to do something would be the audible equivalent of a pop-up on your Web Browser asking "Are you sure?"
| Quote: | | But factory protocol droids should for sure have the honest programming that has to be overcome. The spy droids out there would have had this re-programing. |
I wonder what it would be like to play a spy droid... Seems like it would incorporate a lot of what we're discussing here, a protocol droid modified specifically for deception. Maybe a rogue Imperial Intel espionage droid?
| Quote: | | I do have some game mechanical ideas to contribute to this discussion. <snip> But this is at least in the direction of what you were going for. If you want to pick it apart or add to it, that's ok. Maybe that will help my game. |
Will do. I've already got some thoughts in this direction, but not quite enough to put fingers to keyboard yet. IIRC, there was another species...
Okay, not actually a species, but the Srrors'tok bounty hunter Tyionsis Cex (GG10, pages 56-61) has learned how to throw his voice to make it seem as though there are multiple Srrors'tok in the area. However, the limited vocal range of the Srrors'tok limits its use beyond that.
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cheshire
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| Posted: Tue May 26, 2020 9:56 pm Post subject: |
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IIRC, it took some reprograming to get Threepio to reproduce Leia's voice.
I think that doing a record and playback is a pretty reasonable interpretation of reproducing any sound that it hears. Being able to reproduce someone's vocal cadence and timber would be something different altogether. Just like you can record parts of someone's voice, but if you try to mix the audio to make them say something specific, there are enough recording artifacts that it's obvious what you're doing.
I would say that taking deliberate vocal samples from the person would be one step, and then a Difficult Droid Programing/Repair would be the second step. Then they would have to reprogram the droid back to its original default voice.
At least, that's how I would run it.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Tue May 26, 2020 10:27 pm Post subject: |
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| cheshire wrote: | | At least, that's how I would run it. |
That's fair. Maybe a decent bonus to Con when trying to mimic someone's voice, such that the voice itself is a good facsimile, but it's still dependent on the droid actually being able to play the part?
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