Dingbot Communication { Special Ability }

Special Disability: Dingbot Communication

You don't talk like meaty people -- after all, you don't have a mouth like they do. Instead, you communicate through a combination of gesture and internal noises that you make with your gears. So most people can't fully understand you.

The only person you can talk with normally is Mistress: she built you, and the two of you understand each other well. You still don't talk like a meaty person, but you can converse at a low voice. You can somewhat talk with the Cat, who has been trying to learn how to talk to you, but you can't speak in ordinary sentences with him -- you should only use sentence fragments. (Both of them have relevant Special Abilities, and you should check that you are talking to the player with the Special Ability before doing so.)

With everyone else, you are limited to communicating emotionally. You have a set of icon cards, representing particular emotional states: to express an emotion, hold the appropriate card above your head and make whatever noises seem appropriate. See a GM if you would like to make additional cards. And obviously, you can gesture in simple ways, but you shouldn't try to play full Charades, which is a little too close to meaty-people speech.

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Characters In Game: Dingbot Prime

All Characters: Dingbot Prime

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Historical Notes

The following are notes made while this was in development. They do not necessarily represent the current state of this ability.

It might be worth giving those who can talk with Dingbot Prime short abilities (eg, "You can communicate with Dingbot Prime. Not very well - but better than most."), for two reasons:

• There's that whole confusing "more than one Mistress" thing going, and one of 'em won't understand a lick of what DP is saying;
• If Dingbot Prime can talk with anyone, it should be crystal-clear who can and can't understand what's being said - otherwise, when DP is talking to Agatha, passers-by won't necessarily realize that this is only-between-them conversation, and DP will have to explain it repeatedly. (I've played in games with poorly-thought-out language mechanics that ran into this problem.) A "YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHAT I SAY (unless you have a special ability)" button would make it pretty clear.

Justin: Okay -- created special abilities for Krosp and Agatha.