Editing Robot (section)

== Star Wars ==

In [[Star Wars]] robots are called "droids", a term Lucasfilm owns and defends jealously. Most droids must obey their master, refrain from harming sapients, and display no initiative beyond what their programming tells them to rendering them essentially appliances. 

All but the cheapest droids have a heuristic processor that gives them some ability to make rational judgements and improvise as needed. Droids without one are completely incapable of exceeding their programming at any level to the point a battle droid can not use any weapon it wasn't explicitly programmed for. Overtime droids often learn quirks due to their heuristic processor. These quirks range from harmless speech patterns, extremely annoying like scream at the slightest provocation, pros and cons like overspecialized for certain uses, and horrific consequences like outright disdain for authority. Since these are generally undesirable, droids frequently undergo memory wipes to clear this data. These wipes are near universal for government or corporation owned droids, though individual owners are free to leave a droid's memory unwiped. One rare outcome of this is sapience, complete with the ability to ignore their master and even harm sapients (though most have no inclination to do so, especially not unprovoked). Since these droids stand out and rare is relative in a population of at least trillions, it's well known as a source of opposition to memory wipes.

Droids in Star Wars RPGs can be both player characters (always the sapient ones mentioned above) and NPCs bought by the PCs. The ability to buy or otherwise acquire droids leads to more flexible party composition than most games. A medical droid can replace a doctor, a pilot droid can replace a pilot and mechanic droids can replace mechanics. Combat droids are rare in most eras and heavily regulated in all of them, but PCs rarely lack in murder power so this is rarely an issue.