Compete in the Grand Robotics Exposition
The Grand Robotics Exposition
- Thread starter Tithed_Verse
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The Start
Tithed_Verse
Vainglorious
- Location
- Iowa
- Pronouns
- They/Them
In late 20XX a new type of celebrity emerged. Roboticists: Like the Artisans from Venice of old that once wowed people with their eccentricity and skill, or like the Rockefeller, or the Jobs or the Gates, or even the Zuckerbergs these innovators serve as artists, industrialists, public speakers and more. Their celebrity, wealth, fame, and occasional power make them the envy of many individuals, but there's only so much wealth and fame to go around, and the fierce competition for status among them starts and ends at the Bi-Annual Grand Robotics Exposition.
For most the exposition is an event of wonder and joy. Visitors wander between the tents, buying robotic toys from vendors, picking up freebies, watching competitions and contests between the established players. Some people shell out several thousand dollars for VIP tickets giving them preferential treatment and behind the scenes tours.
You're not one of the common visitors, though. Rather, you're in a grungy pit trying to coax life back into a particularly finicky robot. This is your first robotics exposition, and it's not going very well. Your supplies were inferior, your toolset incomplete... It's a miracle that your robot managed to get this far in the competition instead.
As you desperately dig through the growpramming for the error, and consider simply resetting the rudimentary AI to scratch, a shadow looms over you. A shadow with a powerful offer.
[]To join their Lab as their second in command. The one who handles their day-to-day operations
(Triggers a subvote where we determine which Dr. asks you to join. You start as the operations manager, you get a lot of power, and may eventually be their successor)
[]A loan, a large one, with very low interest rates... in exchange for promised work on a secretive project
(You start as an independent working on a secret project for unsavory sorts)
For most the exposition is an event of wonder and joy. Visitors wander between the tents, buying robotic toys from vendors, picking up freebies, watching competitions and contests between the established players. Some people shell out several thousand dollars for VIP tickets giving them preferential treatment and behind the scenes tours.
You're not one of the common visitors, though. Rather, you're in a grungy pit trying to coax life back into a particularly finicky robot. This is your first robotics exposition, and it's not going very well. Your supplies were inferior, your toolset incomplete... It's a miracle that your robot managed to get this far in the competition instead.
As you desperately dig through the growpramming for the error, and consider simply resetting the rudimentary AI to scratch, a shadow looms over you. A shadow with a powerful offer.
[]To join their Lab as their second in command. The one who handles their day-to-day operations
(Triggers a subvote where we determine which Dr. asks you to join. You start as the operations manager, you get a lot of power, and may eventually be their successor)
[]A loan, a large one, with very low interest rates... in exchange for promised work on a secretive project
(You start as an independent working on a secret project for unsavory sorts)
Dramatis Personae
Tithed_Verse
Vainglorious
- Location
- Iowa
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Dramatis personæ
The Eccentric Eight: The biggest names in Robotics, hands down.
Dr. Lambda:
She's a perfectionist who always wears a sharp power-suit and looks like she was weaned on a pickle. Each of her robots are carefully crafted by herself and her interns. She's been known to scrap entire production runs and start over, and she's a terror to work for, imagine Gordan Ramsey but without the friendliness. She's gotten in trouble with employee rights agencies for slapping around employees who upset her too much. Her robots usually win several competitions due to their superior quality, and she sells bespoke services at very high prices and limited production runs.
Dr. Rankle
If Dr. Rankle had a motto, it would be that quantity has a quality all of it's own. He's a very energetic and friendly man, donates money to charity, and his robots are typically solid contenders. The areas he shines are in networking and mass production. He tends to prototype his robots in full production factories, and he usually secures several governmental and industrial contracts. The dark side of his business is that most of his factories are located in third world dictatorships, and many of his robots are sold to the same horrible dictators. Still, he pays his workers well for the countries that they work in, and his bombastic and personal style mean they have surprisingly high moral.
Dr. Maloof
Where some would use words like 'Shoddy' Dr. Maloof uses words like 'budget' and 'affordable'. She dresses in cheap suits, and presents almost like a greasy used car salesman. She prefers to use off the shelf components where she can, re-purposes parts from old production runs, especially from the other doctors, and avoids custom made machine parts or ROMs where possible. This allows her to undercut her opponents on price, and while their robots may be a little prettier, a little faster to put together, or other small increments of quality higher than her constructions, her robots work, and they're cheap. She's dependent on outside parts and infrastructure, and her employees often suffer low moral due to their comparatively lower benefits and pay.
Dr. Oliveira
Dr. Oliveira's robots are tough. This roboticist prefers not to use more complex systems when simpler ones can do. He often sacrifices learning capabilities, and beauty to make sure that his robots won't bug out, develop unstable behavior, or break in the field. In a famous demonstration of his, he once took a sledgehammer to one of his tree-picker robots, culminating into driving a pickup into it, only for it to right itself after and go back to picking oranges. The taciturn man has difficulty directing others, and has problems with his shy and retiring nature. But if you want solid and dependable, Oliveira's your man. Most of his low level workers don't even know who he is, though his higher level ones are mildly protective of him.
Dr. Lebedev
Dr. Lebedev looks more like a greasy 28 year old college student than one of the world's leading robotics experts. Serious, driven, and possessed of a famous *stench*, she's the spearhead of the open source movement in robotics. She has released several open source BiOSes, RAMs, frameworks and operating systems for robots of many varieties, as well as designing several open source parts and components. She makes most of her money renting her team of developers out to companies for tech support and assistance in setting up assembly lines and customizing parts. Amusingly, Dr. Maloof is one of her largest customers.
Dr. Kyenge
Dr. Kyenge doesn't call himself a robotics expert he instead claims he's a cybernetics expert, though most of his products are less 'implants' and more 'human operated exoskeletons, remotes, and vehicles'. He doesn't believe in creating tools that are better than man, he believes in improving man and providing man with better tools. He also believes that AIs are inherently unpredictable, and that it's safer and saner to put a human in the ultimate decision making seat of anything you construct. He's a strangely devote man in a field of secular practitioners, and his factories have Zoroastrian priests to bless the lines and lead the men in prayer.
Dr. Wang
Dr. Wang is a man who doesn't stand out much. He's not notoriously shy like Oliveira, nor gregarious like Rankle. Instead he presents as a largely normal man, with limited desires. Much of his money is reinvested into the company, and he pays himself a very small salary compared to the other doctors. Perhaps to compensate for this, his robots do stand out. Dr. Wang's robots have the ineffable quality of just being fun. They have wacky designs, bright color schemes, unusual programming choices, and clever solutions to both complex and simple problems. He often uses his designs as a sort of testbed, and is the largest wildcard in the field. While his designs are not popular with most industrial nor governmental entities, they're often very successful in commercial applications, especially ones where presentation is key.
Dr. Loess
Dr. Loess is a biotech specialist. She's very mysterious, with a somewhat surreal and playful personality and claims to have 'fallen into this world from an alternative dimension'. She refers to her technology as a 'glimpse of the way things could have been'. While she uses plenty of metal, plastic and silicon in most of her designs, she also often grows and molds brain tissue, 3-d prints organs, weaves circulatory systems and stitches skin. Even in her purely mechanical/electronic work, the influence of the natural world is obvious in how her structures are composed, further everything she designs is, even if only in a very limited sense, self repairing.
The Eccentric Eight: The biggest names in Robotics, hands down.
Dr. Lambda:
She's a perfectionist who always wears a sharp power-suit and looks like she was weaned on a pickle. Each of her robots are carefully crafted by herself and her interns. She's been known to scrap entire production runs and start over, and she's a terror to work for, imagine Gordan Ramsey but without the friendliness. She's gotten in trouble with employee rights agencies for slapping around employees who upset her too much. Her robots usually win several competitions due to their superior quality, and she sells bespoke services at very high prices and limited production runs.
Dr. Rankle
If Dr. Rankle had a motto, it would be that quantity has a quality all of it's own. He's a very energetic and friendly man, donates money to charity, and his robots are typically solid contenders. The areas he shines are in networking and mass production. He tends to prototype his robots in full production factories, and he usually secures several governmental and industrial contracts. The dark side of his business is that most of his factories are located in third world dictatorships, and many of his robots are sold to the same horrible dictators. Still, he pays his workers well for the countries that they work in, and his bombastic and personal style mean they have surprisingly high moral.
Dr. Maloof
Where some would use words like 'Shoddy' Dr. Maloof uses words like 'budget' and 'affordable'. She dresses in cheap suits, and presents almost like a greasy used car salesman. She prefers to use off the shelf components where she can, re-purposes parts from old production runs, especially from the other doctors, and avoids custom made machine parts or ROMs where possible. This allows her to undercut her opponents on price, and while their robots may be a little prettier, a little faster to put together, or other small increments of quality higher than her constructions, her robots work, and they're cheap. She's dependent on outside parts and infrastructure, and her employees often suffer low moral due to their comparatively lower benefits and pay.
Dr. Oliveira
Dr. Oliveira's robots are tough. This roboticist prefers not to use more complex systems when simpler ones can do. He often sacrifices learning capabilities, and beauty to make sure that his robots won't bug out, develop unstable behavior, or break in the field. In a famous demonstration of his, he once took a sledgehammer to one of his tree-picker robots, culminating into driving a pickup into it, only for it to right itself after and go back to picking oranges. The taciturn man has difficulty directing others, and has problems with his shy and retiring nature. But if you want solid and dependable, Oliveira's your man. Most of his low level workers don't even know who he is, though his higher level ones are mildly protective of him.
Dr. Lebedev
Dr. Lebedev looks more like a greasy 28 year old college student than one of the world's leading robotics experts. Serious, driven, and possessed of a famous *stench*, she's the spearhead of the open source movement in robotics. She has released several open source BiOSes, RAMs, frameworks and operating systems for robots of many varieties, as well as designing several open source parts and components. She makes most of her money renting her team of developers out to companies for tech support and assistance in setting up assembly lines and customizing parts. Amusingly, Dr. Maloof is one of her largest customers.
Dr. Kyenge
Dr. Kyenge doesn't call himself a robotics expert he instead claims he's a cybernetics expert, though most of his products are less 'implants' and more 'human operated exoskeletons, remotes, and vehicles'. He doesn't believe in creating tools that are better than man, he believes in improving man and providing man with better tools. He also believes that AIs are inherently unpredictable, and that it's safer and saner to put a human in the ultimate decision making seat of anything you construct. He's a strangely devote man in a field of secular practitioners, and his factories have Zoroastrian priests to bless the lines and lead the men in prayer.
Dr. Wang
Dr. Wang is a man who doesn't stand out much. He's not notoriously shy like Oliveira, nor gregarious like Rankle. Instead he presents as a largely normal man, with limited desires. Much of his money is reinvested into the company, and he pays himself a very small salary compared to the other doctors. Perhaps to compensate for this, his robots do stand out. Dr. Wang's robots have the ineffable quality of just being fun. They have wacky designs, bright color schemes, unusual programming choices, and clever solutions to both complex and simple problems. He often uses his designs as a sort of testbed, and is the largest wildcard in the field. While his designs are not popular with most industrial nor governmental entities, they're often very successful in commercial applications, especially ones where presentation is key.
Dr. Loess
Dr. Loess is a biotech specialist. She's very mysterious, with a somewhat surreal and playful personality and claims to have 'fallen into this world from an alternative dimension'. She refers to her technology as a 'glimpse of the way things could have been'. While she uses plenty of metal, plastic and silicon in most of her designs, she also often grows and molds brain tissue, 3-d prints organs, weaves circulatory systems and stitches skin. Even in her purely mechanical/electronic work, the influence of the natural world is obvious in how her structures are composed, further everything she designs is, even if only in a very limited sense, self repairing.
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Solarstream
It's all in the cards
- Location
- Zombie World
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X]To join their Lab as their second in command. The one who handles their day-to-day operations
[X]A loan, a large one, with very low interest rates... in exchange for promised work on a secretive project
(You start as an independent working on a secret project for unsavory sorts)
(You start as an independent working on a secret project for unsavory sorts)
I mean, how large a loan are we talking here? $10 million? $100 million? @2%? 1%? If we're going to get involved in shady stuff, it needs to be worth it, and we need to be able to afford body guards and lawyers.
KnightDisciple
Brotherhood. Unity. Peace.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
[X]To join their Lab as their second in command. The one who handles their day-to-day operations
Tithed_Verse
Vainglorious
- Location
- Iowa
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Depends on the shady stuff, there would be a vote. Assume between 250m and 1 billion and between 1.5% and 7.5%.
Compounded continuously. The better the terms, the more conditions.
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Okay then. I'm guessing that our current net worth is orders of magnitude less than even the minimum loan, so ...
[x]A loan, a large one, with very low interest rates... in exchange for promised work on a secretive project
Tithed_Verse
Vainglorious
- Location
- Iowa
- Pronouns
- They/Them
That's absolutely not the worst case scenario.
One of the many potential worse case scenarios is that this is actually a sting operation, and you're going to eventually be arrested and that they're going to try to take down as many other roboticisists as possible in the process. I'm leaning away from this possibility because it does remove a great deal of player agency, and that's a problem.
Another bad-case scenario are that the demands become so ludicrous you can't keep up, causing a default, which gets pretty ugly pretty fast.
Regardless, I'm really imaginative about potential worse case scenarios. And I enjoy handing players the keys to their own destruction.
I've just been reading this book about Jean-Paul leRoux, it's quite fascinating. It's coloring some of my potential plot threads XD.
Long story short: This is Megaman inspired... but it's not the Megaman Setting.
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Loan size
Tithed_Verse
Vainglorious
- Location
- Iowa
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[]A loan, a large one, with very low interest rates... in exchange for promised work on a secretive project
[]Huge Loan
"I just want you to know, if you take this money, I own you" the man said "You can't just take my money and not... Look, you have the right to argue prices over the commissions I throw your way, I understand that you need to get paid, but you can't just take my money and say no, you understand? You take this, you're mine."
[]Large Loan
"We need cultivators" the man said "Cultivators of talent. I think you can do it. I think you can teach normal people, like yourself, to have these skills. These robotics skills. The artistry, the science, the skill. We need you to train people, and send them our way. Can you do that?"
[]Medium-large Loan
"There's this... untapped market" They said, fiddling with some sort of clicking device. "If you take this deal, we're partners. 70-30. The seventy is me, because I brought the money, and I brought the idea. You need to be on-board for it. No-one's really doing discrete robotics, you know? There's this whole market out there that, well, it's inaccessible. It's regulated. The state wants to keep their monopoly on it. But there's still demand. Grey market. Black market. All sorts of people want it. It's incredible, really. Get good enough and we could even sell to the state."
[]Medium-small Loan
"We don't want you to be too successful" The woman said "We're going to be using you as a cover. We don't want you drawing too much attention too fast. Discuss with us before you make any major moves. And don't question anyone too hard."
[]Small Loan
"Don't look a gift horse too hard in the mouth" They say. "Take this money and do something loud with it. Make a splash." "Loud like what?" "Loud loud. Scream your name from the top of the mountains. Make sure that everyone is watching you."
[]Tiny Loan
"It's just one project" the woman said "Really. One project and all of this is yours. Enough to get you started. No more." "Why me?" "Because you're not a big name yet. Because no one's watching you. Because you're cute. Take your pick"
[]No loan
Return to vote as to which doctor you're working for.
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[x]Large Loan
Having our own school sounds like fun. Lots of projects, get to know students, and learn a lot ourselves.
Having our own school sounds like fun. Lots of projects, get to know students, and learn a lot ourselves.
Solarstream
It's all in the cards
- Location
- Zombie World
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[x]Large Loan
- Location
- PA
[]Large Loan
This has a curious ring to it, in terms of both the price paid and the paths we must walk...
[]Small Loan
But this sounds neat too, creating a singular heroic figure...
[X]Small Loan
I wonder about SV's questing competence as a singular operator, so I'm going this route.
This has a curious ring to it, in terms of both the price paid and the paths we must walk...
[]Small Loan
But this sounds neat too, creating a singular heroic figure...
[X]Small Loan
I wonder about SV's questing competence as a singular operator, so I'm going this route.
KnightDisciple
Brotherhood. Unity. Peace.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
[x]Small Loan