Simple Devices with AI

[Clay Bush]

A simple, innovative device can enhance role-playing. This is a topic for devices which use some intelligence, but enhance players abilities without being able to upstage them.

 

[Clay Bush]

This was inspired by a Gadget Boy cartoon, But I thought it made too much sense to ignore.

SMART GRAPPLE
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You have this lightweight robot, which can look like a frisbee. Through it over an obstacle. The CPU in the center activates, the edges spread out to be legs, and the eyestalk comes out. It looks around for a secure grip, walks over to it, grabs, and tugs on the rope behind it.

I had a few different prices, depending on drive (none, air cushion, grav).

 

[Clay Bush]

This item appearred in a few episodes of RED DWARF, but was only explained in a novel thereof.

THE TOASTER
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The ship has a first-generation toaster in the kitchen. It has an AI chip and voder, and is programmed to have a pleasant conversation with crew members and passengers.

Where the design went teribly wrong is that the AI has focused on the 'goal' of making toast.

Toaster (T): "Good morning!"
Player (P): "No I don't want any toast."
T: "No english muffins?"
P: "No, Toaster. Nothing."
T: (hums for a while.) "Oh, the voice mail went off again."
P: "Would you please tell me how you learned to command the communciations subsystem?"
T: (Thinking of overheard conversations between the crew and the bridge computer) "You can't prove anything."
....
P: "Okay, that's one sourdough, two english muffins, and four wheat. Did we get any messages?"
T: "Just one. It said...."