#emcee ruling

[robot-riot]

Would Murderbot (Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries) count as a “robot”? It’s certainly not human but it has organic bits (which generally annoy it—they are probably the source of the inconvenient emotions and feelings it sometimes has to ignore)…

Sorry if you’ve already made a call on this and I missed it…

I was unaware of the organic parts but honestly probably? I'm going to rule for now to go ahead and submit and I'll check with a friend who has read the book on whether it fits the criteria

[robot-riot]

Can we send a group of robots? There's like a robot boy band in No Straight Roads but I don't know if that would be okay.

1 robot + 1 meatbag, potentially +1 third wheel if I agree to do trios (we're currently leaning in that direction, since I've been submitted several good ones)

I'm sorry, I know this seems unfair, but there are twofold reasons for this: 1, the more characters there are the more work there is for me- even with trios, I intend to be very picky with which ones I allow, and 2, it doesn't feel fair to me. If you have five characters vs two, that's five fanbases against two, which tips the scales. It's why I'm on the fence about trios even, and why I'm not doing tiesweeps in this bracket.

There is also that this is specifically about the relationships between robots and non-robots. As when I did Artificial Kids, I'm doing this because if there's one thing I love in fiction, it's a robot (or any other artificially created character) who has a best friend who is also Other in some way, and they find belonging in each other. While I am certainly not against bonds between robots, or robots having multiple meatbags or meatbags being friends with multiple robots, the point is that this is not specifically about robots, but about the relationships between robots and living people (or nonliving- still got my fingers crossed for someone to submit a robot + a ghost). Just because it's called the robot riot, don't discount the equally important meatbags on the team.

[robot-riot]

Can a cyborg count as both the robot and the meatbag?

Already covered

Cyborgs are meatbags, because a person doesn't stop being human (or expanding for the sake of fiction, whatever they started as) just because they get some prosthetic parts. Even if they get a LOT of prosthetic parts. Even if more than half of their body is prosthetic parts. They're still human (or whatever they started as). To run a cyborg as a robot would go against some very specific opinions I have about cyborgs vs robots in fiction.

[robot-riot]

No offense and this is a genuine question but why no critical role? I only know a little about it but what I’ve seen doesn’t seem bad? Sorry I’m just curious because I haven’t seen it banned from other tournaments.

Already answered

It's not banned from other tournaments because other people have different relationships to it than I do, but I would be genuinely upset if a CR character won any of my tournaments, and I won't run anything I can't make peace with a victory

[robot-riot]

If it's not too much work could you maybe do multiple tournaments? Like the most enthusiastic submitted characters go first, run that tournament, then another with the less rambled about guys

The bracket will be split into two halves, one based on numbers and one based on enthusiasm, with the final being between the winners of those two halves. I have too many bracket ideas on the board to do two back to back for the same blog.

[robot-riot]

By the way, you guys are free to send in propaganda to get other people to also submit your blorbot and squimbus duos. You've got a month, so plenty of time to campaign.

[robot-riot]

this is silly and i understand if it doesnt count but can the meatbag be us, the player? theres a Jumpstart game who has a robot i really like who works with the player to save the world and the only meatbag we see in game is the antagonist who he has a bad relationship with so i def would not submit the two of them

You-the-player wouldn't count, but "Player Character" would in the same way that, say, Red or Leaf or Kristal would count as a specific character if we were pulling from a Pokemon game.

Or, to put it another way, if the player character is a specific avatar that the player is meant to project onto, that counts, but if it's a fully customizable character created by the player wholecloth, that wouldn't (so again, Pokemon player characters count even if they're somewhat customizable, but the much more customizable player character from ACNH wouldn't. If that makes sense).

[robot-riot]

I better ask before submitting, would you consider robot/robot/meatbag trio?

Yep! The third wheel can be either robot or meatbag or some surprise third thing that is neither, like robot/meatbag/ghost- as long as there's at least one robot and at least one non-robot, we're good 👍