[Scenario Seed] Eric the robot

[Catsmate]

Nearly thirty years before Robby there was Eric...

Eric addresses the crowd.

Created by Alan Herbert Reffell (1895-1979) and Captain William H. Richards, Eric is today considered the "Grandfather of Robots". He was a 60kg, 1.5 metre, humanoid automaton constructed mainly of aluminium and resembled a medieval armoured knight. Eric had his public debut at the Exhibition of the Society of Model Engineers on 28 September 1928 in the Royal Horticultural Hall where he spoke for four minutes, opening the event due to the unavailability of the Duke of York.

• Reffell had served in the Royal Flying Corps (Sergeant pilot), and was a pilot, engineer and inventor (he patented improved flotation equipment for aircraft. He’d met Richards, an author and journalist, during the Great War when they’d served in the RFC. Together it took about six months to build Eric.

Eric with, Reffell (r) and Richards.


Eric’s eyes were white bulbs with red pupils painted on them and his feet were mounted on a wooden box which contained an electric motor and batteries; the torso contained another motor, electromagnets, gears, pulleys, cables, springs, gears, pumps, bellows and vast amounts of wiring.
He could move his arms and his head, and stand up. There were two methods of control; by the use of remote radio where a hidden person was able to answer the questions asked, and secondly (allegedly) by direct control of Eric's movements using voice control.
Eric in all his silvery majesty. The 'RUR' on his chest is a reference to Čapek's play which introduced the word 'robot' to the English language.


Eric travelled all over the world, visiting much of Europe, the United States, Australia and more. In 1932 Richards constructed an improved model named George that also toured the world.

Now quite a lot of Eric's abilities were faked; a radio link was used to answer some questions with Richards proving the response. However some degree of actual voice control did exist, though it's believed to be unreliable. An operator could speak numeric sequences to trigger certain responses from the robot, a series of wires inside Eric's torso would vibrate allowing electric circuits to trigger and determine the correct response. This was, it's believed, rather unreliable and susceptible to problems with different voices. While Eric couldn't see Richards experimented with selenium photocells for eyes and incorporated them into George. This would allow some perception of infra-red light.

Game use.
How Eric (and his inventors) fit into a game depends on what option the GM chooses.

1. Historically accurate.
Going with Eric as he existed in mundane reality opens a couple of possibilities. He could be a background event, seen by the PCs in passing. Perhaps they're stalking someone or have reason to visit the Society of Model Engineers, looking for an expert engineer perhaps. Or he could make a wonderful red herring to drag the PCs in; a silvery humanoid robot that talks? Obviously that's not possible!

• Ignorance of real historical capabilities and events can be very annoying.
  

A few suggestions of aliens and the players will be haring off after Eric and his inventors. Who'll probably get worried by these weird people with the strange accusations...

• Probably the first though of a Who gamer will be "Cyberman". Possibly followed by trying to shoot it with gold bullets... It's up to the individual GM to decide if this should be encouraged. Certainly it has possibilities for causing trouble for the PCs.
  

2. Anachronistic technology.
Maybe Eric isn't so mundane after all. The Whoniverse is littered with mad geniuses (like Fyodor Kerensky) who can achieve technological miracles far beyond what should be possible. Was Reffell or Richards such a person? Maybe they'd developed some device that actually allowed appropriate responses to voice queries, something still not perfected today.
Did they make it themselves, perhaps inspired by the lost journals of Jacques de Vaucanson or one of his supposedly destroyed creations? Or did a passing time traveller misplace some equipment that the pair found and incorporated into Eric?
Another possible source is the technology left behind by the Terileptils in 1666 and scavenged by Richard Mace, spare android parts perhaps?
Then there's Lady Me; could Ashildr have had a hand in Eric's creation? Why?

Can Reffell and Richards make more of these machines? What are their capabilities? Why do they not appear in recorded history?


3. Aliens.
For a more sinister (albeit obvious) option perhaps there's something inhuman inside Eric's polished aluminium body. Could it be a replacement survival suit for an injured Martian, his scout ship destroyed in a crash during World War One when he was found by a pair of RFC men; now he survives, barely, inside the metal body of Eric. Or was the scout ship for a more distant planet? Mondas perhaps? Or even Skaro?

• Did Thay and Jast really die in New York in 1930? Or did they time jump away?

How much control do Reffell and Richards have over their creation? What are Eric's capabilities? Are they planning an improved version, perhaps as a war machine? Does the creature inside Eric have plans of it's own? Escape? Vengeance? Or summoning an invasion fleet?



Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?


Links.
BBC article on a proposed reconstruction of Eric.
The Cybernetic Zoo has an article on Eric (and one on George) plus material on other early robots and automata
A brief film clip of Eric is available on YouTube.

[starkllr]

You could take the "Historically Accurate" approach and do a twist on it.

What if the PCs aren't the only time travellers on the scene at one of Eric's appearances? Maybe another Time Lord and companion(s) are there and THEY'RE the ones who mistake Eric for a Cyberman (or at least proto-Cyberman) and they go on to smash Eric, blow up Reffell & Richards' workshop or otherwise cause a huge mess and a panic. It could even be the Doctor, maybe the Second Doctor not long after his regeneration (so he'd be understandably leery of anything Cyberman-ish).

Or it could be the Meddling Monk, who sees what he takes to be a dangerous anachronistic threat and decides he simply MUST take action. So poor Eric is reduced to spare parts, Reffell and Richards are traumatized, and the Monk is caught by the authorities. To whom he begins blabbing about Cyberman, spaceships, aliens, time travel and all sorts of other things that it would be best he didn't speak of. Bonus points if the incident happens on the second world tour with newer model George, perhaps in Berlin in 1933 (it's worth fudging the dates to make the story work).

So George the fake (but still pretty cool) robot is no more. But the German police have a Time Lord as their prisoner, who's going on and on about advanced technology, outer space and so forth. And it's probably only a matter of time before he tells the police where his TARDIS is (or it's found by them on their own). Given Hitler's interest in the weird and occult, it's probably inevitable that word would get to him sooner rather than later, and, well, the horrible possibilities of Hitler with a captured Time Lord and a TARDIS really write themselves...

It would work similarly with a Time Agent, or simply a time tourist of some variety (imagine what might happen if someone like Mr. Copper fell into the hands of people in the 1930's who were prepared to take him and his stories seriously - and who would try to reverse-engineer any future gadgets he might have on him when he's caught)

[Catsmate]

May 16, 2016 13:31:12 GMT starkllr said:

You could take the "Historically Accurate" approach and do a twist on it.

What if the PCs aren't the only time travellers on the scene at one of Eric's appearances? Maybe another Time Lord and companion(s) are there and THEY'RE the ones who mistake Eric for a Cyberman (or at least proto-Cyberman) and they go on to smash Eric, blow up Reffell & Richards' workshop or otherwise cause a huge mess and a panic. It could even be the Doctor, maybe the Second Doctor not long after his regeneration (so he'd be understandably leery of anything Cyberman-ish).

Or it could be the Meddling Monk, who sees what he takes to be a dangerous anachronistic threat and decides he simply MUST take action. So poor Eric is reduced to spare parts, Reffell and Richards are traumatized, and the Monk is caught by the authorities. To whom he begins blabbing about Cyberman, spaceships, aliens, time travel and all sorts of other things that it would be best he didn't speak of. Bonus points if the incident happens on the second world tour with newer model George, perhaps in Berlin in 1933 (it's worth fudging the dates to make the story work).

So George the fake (but still pretty cool) robot is no more. But the German police have a Time Lord as their prisoner, who's going on and on about advanced technology, outer space and so forth. And it's probably only a matter of time before he tells the police where his TARDIS is (or it's found by them on their own). Given Hitler's interest in the weird and occult, it's probably inevitable that word would get to him sooner rather than later, and, well, the horrible possibilities of Hitler with a captured Time Lord and a TARDIS really write themselves...

It would work similarly with a Time Agent, or simply a time tourist of some variety (imagine what might happen if someone like Mr. Copper fell into the hands of people in the 1930's who were prepared to take him and his stories seriously - and who would try to reverse-engineer any future gadgets he might have on him when he's caught)

I like that! Yes, an inexperienced time traveller could easily overreact and screw things up in the process.

[starkllr]

Forgot to add...also check out Boilerplate.

The book is a fun exercise in alternate history, showing a prototype humanoid robot and his activities at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, Forrest Gump style.

[zebaroth]

i would have him be a living metal robot like the K-1 in robot. the question would be how did someone make him and waht will come of his being.
as for why only two of these robots were known is that experments were stoped after Alan Herbert Reffell relized the world was not ready for robots yet