What to do with a player using his AI as a buffer?


Advice


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Had a bit of an odd duck in a game last night; a player who constantly wanted his computer AI to act as sort of a buffer, to do just about everything for him.

Hack the computer? Let the AI do it.
Look up information on the holoshpere? Let the AI do it.
Socialize with the opposing racers? Send the AI to do it.

Essentially, if it didn't need the technomancer to cast a spell or make an attack, the player wanted the AI to take care of it.

It was like watching Mel Gibson in "The Beaver" all over again.

And it wasn't even that the player was playing his AI rather than his character, or that he was trying to power game by using a powerful computer, rather than the numbers on his character. The first I could understand, the second I know how to fix.

Instead, it was more like the player didn't know what to say, do, or ask; so he had the AI do it; and then basically made me, the GM, play the AI. The player literally asked me "What kinds of questions would my AI ask in this situation?"

He might as well not even have been there! I could just as easily have filled his slot with an NPC since I practically ended up playing the "character" anyways.

How do I make the next game better? Both for that particular player and everyone else at the table (including me)? Any advice you can give would be most appreciated.


I don’t know how well this relates to your situation (if it does at all), but I remember being exactly that sort of guy. We were trying out Dark Heresy and I was 100% not familiar with that setting, so I was playing an Inquisitor and then a Tech-Priest, and in both cases, I found myself participating in the roleplaying via “Okay, what would a Tech-Priest think about this? Okay, I do that thing.” Unsatisfying, to be sure, but I’d hoped it was just a lack of familiarity. It certainly wasn’t the gameplay or the specifc story the GM was running; I was plenty engaged with those, just not the universe those things were occurring in. Then I read up on the setting and the sort of mindset it apparently needed, and I just couldn’t get into it. Fortunately, we switched to something else.

That might have nothing to do with your case, but if it does, then it may be a matter of your player not knowing how to get engaged, either with the setting or his character’s role within the setting, and so he’s falling back on the one sure-fire way to stay engaged, by shunting it all to an AI that presumably is familiar with the setting.


Its hard to assess remotely without knowing the player. However, here are my two cents:

1) Explain to the player that the character's AI is under his (the player's) control. If this were Pathfinder and it was a familiar, the GM is not going to play the familiar's personality - they would at most stepping in if something nonsensical happens. The player runs it. In this case, they bought the AI and its programmed with whatever personality they wanted, and is loaded whatever data they wanted loaded. It also, like the character, doesn't know everything.

Turn the question around to the player, and ask "What kind of personality did you buy for your AI? What information from the infosphere did you download for it?" Finally, follow up with "How do you think such a personality with that information acts in this case?" Ask him to make his best guess. If he can't answer to the first two questions, and asks you what his AI would do, you can answer "I don't know because you haven't given me enough information about your AI."

2) Try to convey it is a game, everyone is there to have fun, and even if they make a "mistake" (whatever that means in a roleplaying game) in playing the character or AI , it is OK. It is important to make the player feel comfortable (hard to tell from a forum post if that is the problem). They don't have to act it out, simply telling you what they do in general terms is fine, as long as they tell you something.

3) Lastly, explain that GMs have to deal with every other NPC in the game, and do a fair bit of prep work. Adding another "NPC" (the AI) that shows up in every scene is extra work for you. Its a shared story, where both the GM and players need to put in ideas and interaction to sure everyone has fun, and no one is doing all the work.

You really can't make a player "play" if they don't want to. You can only try to make it fun for them so they do so on their own.

Good luck.


The important thing to remember with the AI is that none of the AI options available to players (with the possible exception of a level 20 mechanic's drone) have any sort of self-awareness or actual consciousness, they're all basically just souped-up versions of Siri, Alexa, Bixby, etc. If your player wants to know what sort of questions that their AI would ask, a perfectly valid response would be "What kinds of questions do you want it to ask in this situation?" (Perhaps an even better response would be to point to your phone and ask what sort of questions Siri would ask in that situation, but that might be a bit snarky).

Another thing to remind your player is that the AI has a very limited set of skills that it can attempt tests on: Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Sense Motive. That's it, and even those skills you have to consider through the lens of the AI initiating those test *at your request*, rather than on its own. It might be easier to think of it as effectively giving the character who has an AI-equipped computer training in those skills rather than thinking of the AI as being an NPC with those skills. Though not specifically called out in the rules, I'd also imagine that it'd be fairly obvious to someone that you're interacting with in person that your computer AI is communicating with them unless the player frames the conversation in such a way that it seems like someone is communicating remotely *through* the computer. While I wouldn't put a penalty on the test for that (unless the target has a specific reason to dislike AI or computers for some reason), I would certainly have it called out if the AI failed the test ("You insult me by having your *machine* try to convince me? Speak your own words!")

If this was in a game that I was running, I'd have the player come up with a personality for their AI and play it accordingly, as well as come up with an explanation for *how* the AI actually communicates things to him. Example: the character might have told his AI to observe any conversations that he has and advise him on whether or not the other party is being truthful (which is a pretty good justification to allow the AI to roll Sense Motive tests without the player having to specifically tell it to), but how is the result of that test relayed to the character? Is it a small light on a display (red for lie, green for truth), or does the AI just say, "They are lying" out loud for all to hear? (That would be my personal choice for the default behavior of an AI due to it being funnier). If he has a blanket "tell me if the person that I'm talking to is lying" rule (rather than calling on the AI to do so in specific situations), then have the player roll for the AI on *everything* that might apply. "Thanks for holding the door, I really appreciate it." "That's a lie, he appears to be sullen and angry that you assumed he couldn't open his own door."


Ravingdork wrote:

Had a bit of an odd duck in a game last night; a player who constantly wanted his computer AI to act as sort of a buffer, to do just about everything for him.

Hack the computer? Let the AI do it.
Look up information on the holoshpere? Let the AI do it.
Socialize with the opposing racers? Send the AI to do it.

Essentially, if it didn't need the technomancer to cast a spell or make an attack, the player wanted the AI to take care of it.

It was like watching Mel Gibson in "The Beaver" all over again.

And it wasn't even that the player was playing his AI rather than his character, or that he was trying to power game by using a powerful computer, rather than the numbers on his character. The first I could understand, the second I know how to fix.

Instead, it was more like the player didn't know what to say, do, or ask; so he had the AI do it; and then basically made me, the GM, play the AI. The player literally asked me "What kinds of questions would my AI ask in this situation?"

He might as well not even have been there! I could just as easily have filled his slot with an NPC since I practically ended up playing the "character" anyways.

How do I make the next game better? Both for that particular player and everyone else at the table (including me)? Any advice you can give would be most appreciated.

Sounds like you have a player who simply picked the wrong class. Sometimes you get the player who simply isn't that smart, and they mistakenly take the thinking man's class. It happened all the time when I used to run White Wolf. Player with Intelligence 2 is playing a Tremere Vampire with Intelligence 4.

The first thing to do is make the player read the section of the book relating to the setting. This gives an overview of what is going on. The second thing to do is make a hard rule that, the AI can only be as smart or creative as the player character, since they designed it. Meaning if the character doesn't know what to ask, then the AI doesn't either.

If that doesn't sit well with the player, suggest playing a more straight forward, less cerebral, class like a Melee Soldier. The player can focus on running up and hitting things.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Perhaps, HWalsh. He happened to be playing a technomancer made by another player, so it may well have been that he didn't quite know what to do with it.


From my experience I have seen this quite a bit (but then I have seen a lot of gaming in your Friendly Local Game Store as well as have played for a few years).
The issue seems to be (from my perspective) is often a good player who is very comfortable with a fantasy game has trouble shifting to a more tech game or future game.
Often, I have seen other GM's (and I know I have) have to take a more "hands on approach" to some players PC's vs just let them do what they want to do. (In general this is a common issue I struggle with, when to step in with a player and say based on your PC's knowledge you would not do that. Then are you sure you want to do that or continue to do that?).
From observation and personal experience I can say that sometimes it just takes time for the player to "grow" into the new game and I can also say that I have seen other players who have no interest in learning the game and are there just for something to do with friends.

For some advice, I would help the player adjust to the new game but if from your experience you know the player will not adapt then you have to set some ground rules and or ask them to change class's.
But then again with the AI, this does not solve the issue as any class can buy an AI (IIRC).

Hope the helps a little.
MDC


Ravingdork wrote:

Had a bit of an odd duck in a game last night; a player who constantly wanted his computer AI to act as sort of a buffer, to do just about everything for him.

Hack the computer? Let the AI do it.
Look up information on the holoshpere? Let the AI do it.
Socialize with the opposing racers? Send the AI to do it.

Essentially, if it didn't need the technomancer to cast a spell or make an attack, the player wanted the AI to take care of it.

It was like watching Mel Gibson in "The Beaver" all over again.

And it wasn't even that the player was playing his AI rather than his character, or that he was trying to power game by using a powerful computer, rather than the numbers on his character. The first I could understand, the second I know how to fix.

Instead, it was more like the player didn't know what to say, do, or ask; so he had the AI do it; and then basically made me, the GM, play the AI. The player literally asked me "What kinds of questions would my AI ask in this situation?"

He might as well not even have been there! I could just as easily have filled his slot with an NPC since I practically ended up playing the "character" anyways.

How do I make the next game better? Both for that particular player and everyone else at the table (including me)? Any advice you can give would be most appreciated.

Well in theory it could be done but in general most AI you can afford at lower level is not going to be in general as good at various things as the player is. So some stuff being automated like infosphere searches is totally a sensible use for the AI to do. But somebody in your party is likely much better at doing it manually so somebody should probably be also doing a search directly. As for hacking again something pretty sensible for an AI to do but again somebody in your party likely can do it much better directly than any AI they can likely afford until pretty high levels.


AI are great for basic grunt work stuff. They can do info searches/data collection but are not intuitive about it. Give them their parameters and they can harvest the heck out of data for that but any trained player is going to be better at getting that same information faster. But sometimes if your group does not really have any info specialists it could be totally fine just having the AI doing that kind of stuff. But just make clear that the AI is basically going to be like a really advanced personal assistant. It is not going to do guess work or play hunches it is going to do basically exactly what you ask it to no more no less.


Another thing I just thought of is if you are going to play with them regularly you can create a list of stuff you allow the AI to do as well as options for the future growth of the AI.
This would provide some boundaries for the player as well as guidance going forward.
If you did something like this I am sure people on the forums would love to see what you come up with.
MDC

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