Editing Robot (section)

== History ==

Although people have been writing stories about and building what we might call "robots" since ancient times (e.g. the ancient Greek tale of Galatea, Jewish [[golem]]s, Japanese [[Wikipedia:Karakuri puppet|Karakuri puppet]]s), the word itself is actually fairly young, having been coined in Karel Capek's 1921 play, ''Rossum's Universal Robots'', from the Czech, derived from a common Slavic root ''robot'', meaning "worker" or "labourer." (If you want to call a sentient machine something less judgmental, you could use the term ''automaton'', Greek for "self-willed.") Those robots were rather more biological than the usual popular image of a robot, but they kicked off most of the essential elements of robots in fiction: they were artificially created to serve a particular purpose, grew beyond their creators' original design, and eventually rose up to overthrow their masters (the last bit being a relic from the days of the ancient proto-robots of myth above, since slavery was still a thing back then, and the idea of coexisting peacefully with folks Not Like Oneself hadn't occurred to anyone yet).

Probably the most important stage in the history of robots in fiction (besides R.U.R. coining the word itself) is the Three Laws of Robotics, created by scientist and author [[Isaac Asimov]] in response to his frustration with the usual robot-rebellion storyline.  The original three laws are:

# A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.<br/>''Later stories included robots that generalized this law into a Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.''
# A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
# A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

He then spent a great deal of ink and paper writing stories (many of which are collected in the seminal science-fiction book "I, Robot") about all of the ways that these laws could cause unexpected and unintended behavior.  The Three Laws weren't perfect (for example, "robot", "human being", and "harm" are not actually defined in the laws), but they made for much more interesting stories than "Oh no, I have created a machine and it is killing everyone!  What has SCIENCE done?!" [[RAGE|This, by the way is the reason why the Will Smith movie which shares the same name as ''I, Robot'' (in the credits, the film is said to be "suggested by" the book) is one of the worst adaptations of a book ever.]]

With all that said, robots in fiction (including tabletop games) tend to fall on an axis from "faceless and expendable" to "full character".  Sci-fi [[wargame]]s will inevitably include at least one faction that pads out their armies with swarms of weak but numerous drones.  Most [[role-playing game]]s are set in medieval worlds, but robots and robot-like things can still exist in the form of [[golem]]s and certain kinds of [[undead]].  Again, to what degree such creatures are "people" varies, but when they exist, there will inevitably be rules for PCs to play at least one kind of them (usually the most anthropomorphic kind).

In terms of rules, robot characters are mostly the same as characters of other species. They tend to be more resistant to hazardous environments and adverse conditions than their fleshy counterparts, but lack natural regeneration and more vulnerable to certain varieties of damage -- electromagnetic pulses are a common robot weakness (because military-grade EM shielding and Faraday cages do not exist in poorly thought-out fiction worlds), as are logical fallacies and paradoxes (e.g. "this sentence is false", because exception handling is for wimps). In settings where it matters, they are usually immune to radiation, even while real life robots tend to fall apart and cease to function after receiving only the third part of a human lethal dose of radiation (semiconductors are more vulnerable to it, and lack the immune system\regeneration combo meatbags use to negate minor radiation damage) - although in some settings like Fallout, it is explained by using vacuum lamps or other low-tech solutions instead of semiconductors (just like in real-life rad-resistant robots).