RPG Licensing Fun: Isaac Asimov's Robots

It's back: Our look at how intellectual properties might be interpreted as role-playing games. How would any given franchise be handled?  System design, look, supplements, what characters could be played in the setting...

This time: The late, great Isaac Asimov's Robot novels and short stories. From the I, Robot stuff to the Elijah Baley mysteries, Asimov painted a coherent picture of a human society served by robots, a vision so powerful, many robots in RPGs and later fiction have "Asimov circuits" to keep them from destroying humanity. How would we envision an "I, Robot"-type RPG though?

Ideas
I think an Asimov game should give you the option of playing robots (I guess advanced ones like in the Baley stories; might the focus be robot noir mystery stories?), and there should be a moral dilemma challenge. The three Laws naturally have to be obeyed, so how do robot characters get around them to successfully complete goals, etc.?

This could work like "alignment", but perhaps a system more like the World of Darkness' would be more interesting. Instead of losing your humanity like you do in Vampire, you gain more and more humanity as you contravene the rules of robotics, eventually leading to your destruction by humans when you turn out to be dangerous. Mixing in human PCs might help bring this them to the forefront more - what happens when the aforementioned destruction must come at the hands of a friend? A very interesting campaign dynamic might come out of human players being jerks to the robot players just trying to loophole the hell out of the Three Laws.

If "Robot City" is successful, the game could expand into Asimov's Foundation universe, since the last-told book of that series reveals an important link between it and the robot stories.

System help
While one might be tempted to use GURPS Robots to design characters (if you like math that much) - and if your campaign's end game is for the delicate balance between humanity and robots to fall apart, eventually spin off into GURPS Reign of Steel - but believe it or not, the closest role-playing support we have for this idea is Acute Paranoia from West End Games. File off the overt humor and keep the existential angst, and you already have what you need, except the setting.

What would YOU do with an "Isaac Asimov" SF RPG?

Comments

Anonymous said…
The first one sounds an interesting dynamic probably best explored in story-teller type games - you could produce a commercial one with the Asimov names filed off given the ubiquity of the robotic laws adoption. :) Invariably, if you go for a crunch-style system some players will feel it's perfect territory to go on a robot rampage - they'll want to build a stat robo-monster.