When you want Bob without the Bob

[Rechan]

I had an idea for a way to recreate Bob's "occult computer" for wizards, while keeping it small scale and different. Before I do, let me give you a frame of reference.

Think of a book you read maybe last year or the year before. Try to recall all the information you remember. It's probably decent but not great - you may recall most of it or the gist, but not many specific details. You probably can't remember a certain character's name, or let's say the exact numbers of a statistic.

Now think of a book you just read; it's fresh in your mind, and you can recall all that information. You could remember what happened point by point, but you still have to think about it, walking down the chain of events, or your brain follows connections. You think of a Character's name and all relevant information to that character comes up, and you have to go through it before you remember a specific thing you're thinking of. Or if you want a specific info, you brainstorm and it pops up. Also, while your mind wanders, tidbits pop up naturally - while in the shower you realize something that didn't make sense, and you have to ponder it out, or an unrelated thing reminds you of something from the book.

A Dresden-related example of this is Small Favor; Harry is trying to find out what were those goat-faeries that attacked him. He had to go through many books.

Now that's over, here's the idea:

Imagine taking every book you own and downloading it into your brain. All that information would not be immediate and photographic, you'd have to do the above like you just read it and are trying to recall one important fact. The strength of this is in cross-referencing: If Harry had known the name gruffs and page number, it would have been faster to grab the book and look it up the old fashioned way. But having a pool of 'goat-related faeries', it would have made things much faster for him since the pool of knowledge was small and in one place, not spread out.

This would probably reduce the amount of time for Lore or Scholarship rolls within someone's library.

The flaw here is that this mental database has to be in the room with all your books; you can't take it with you. Oh sure, the info is in your head now, but it's like the first instance at the top of this opst: there's real holes in your recall.

[Haru]

In the sense of the novels, Bob is there to have Harry do something else then saying "and again I sat in my lab for hours to read up on the things I need to know". He makes gathering information about magic a lot more interesting, just because you get to have a conversation in the process. Sure you can take a power, that lets you recall every book you ever read, but that would mostly be a convenient library and little else.

Gamewise, Bob and those like him have the advantage of your character being able to for example use a mediocre resources roll to offset a much higher lore roll (in this case buying erotic novels for Bob).

So what I'm trying to say: while a power or stunt like that would sure be practical, it makes for very little interesting story, so I would personally try to do it another way.

[Rechan]

Well it's another way of answering "So, what do wizards who DON'T have Bob do?"

So it might be useful for an NPC to just demonstrate "Hey, I have a Bob too". It's magical windowdressing.

[Lanodantheon]

I too have wanted to try a character with his own version of Bob or a some equivilant.

Barring the obvious choice of a stuffed bear vessel for a similar spirit named Theodore, I did have a few ideas for "Occult computers" without the Spirit of Intellect or cheating with a "Computer made of magic instead of electricity" because that's cheating and lame.

1. The Search Engine

For the sake of make research easier you type up all of your books and notes using a special typewriter and type set plates(like on an old printing press). Make some thaumatalurgical connections and you make yourself a Thaumatalurgical Search engine. The spell linked to it will highlight (Quite literally) the words in question that you are looking for. It would work best if you used ink that was all from the same supply and written on the same machine, but it would act like a search engine.

2. The Container of Memories

Take the Magic of Memory and put it into containers, quite literally. One part Harry Potter and one part Coppermind Feruchemy from the Mistborn Series. Probably not the most stable form of storage though since you are dealing with just globs of raw magical energy in containers. Tapping said knowledge might be dangerous too since you're dealing with raw data. But, you could get a lot of knowledge in a small space.

3. The "Don't Try This Ever" Method of Study

In the vein of Rechan's original idea of downloading all your study materials into your brain, I did this one for a puzzle for a campaign I ran.

Step 1: Create a liquid that can be written with and has Magic inherent in it.

Step 2: Transcribe the information to be memorized onto large pieces of writing Material that have been magically sterilized.

Step 3: Magically sterilize a large room. Get rid of every piece of Psychic staining or anything. Wash it down or whatever.

Step 4: Make ready previously mentioned study boards

Step 5: Open The Sight

Step 6: Study said study boards, whose writing should show up nicely in The Sight. Looking at each board enough to allow to read the information in a controlled manner.

Step 7: Close the Sight if you can

Step 8: You should now be able to recall said study materials which have been written into your memory in indeliable ink by The Sight.

If you are still sane you should be able to remember said information. If insane, you'll make a great villain for the next adventure. Either way, you're welcome 

[JayTee]

Call me silly, but if you want to have a good memory/database, I think all you need is something along the lines of a stunt:

Eidetic Memory Spend a FATE point to perfectly recall information your character could have reasonably learned in the past. May be subject to GM Approval.

A bit of a rough draft so you might make some changes too it, but it just goes to show you don't ALWAYS need to resort to magic 

[Haru]

Well, different forms of Bob should not be any kind of problem. For example a spirit of water residing inside an old fishbowl, with a plastic fish inside, that it uses as a face, when it is communicating with someone. Or a spirit of fire, residing imside a fireplace, like in Howl's moving castle.

More abstract concepts could be done aswell. A book containing every book you link it to, which has sort of a concions itself, imagine Bobs comments in the rpg books, when you are looking things up in it. Or a swarm of intelligent fireflies, that can write the information in the air in front of you, kind of like the floating letters in the tv series.

Then there is the more indirect approach, where you have for example a fae informant or a deamon you tricked into service.

All in all, outsourcing the knowledge a bit is a great way for interaction, even for an npc. If you don't want that, just give him a high lore skill plus maybe a stunt and he does not need to rely on any outside sources. On the other hand, it is a great way to take away a chunk of power from both a pc and npc. Like what Cowl and Kumori did with bob in Dead Beat.

That idea with the sight is pretty nasty and should probably be compelled a lot if done too often, but I like it nontheless.

[Team8Mum]

and on the "I want a Bob" front. From Spirit of the century game.

✪ Spirit Companion [Mysteries] (Would be Lore in DFRPG)

You have a companion with three advances (see below). This companion is vulnerable to the flux of the spiritual aether, however, and must be summoned into your presence – either pay a fate point to get his immediate manifestation or take roughly a minute to roll Mysteries against a target equal to the companion’s quality as a more gentle summoning.

This companion can never act in physical conflict, but may be visible to others; this may limit what skills he can use with the Skilled advance. He automatically gains the Independent advance as well. The companion will need to take Skilled (Stealth) if he wishes to be undetectable on occasion; otherwise, visible or not, his presence in a location is an immediate call for people to roll Mysteries to notice something amiss.

If you take this stunt a second time (the maximum) you may provide another three advances to your companion. If you have not yet increased the companion’s quality to at least Fair, you must spend one of your advances to do so.

An advance can do one of the following:

Quality
    Improve the quality of a companion by one step (from Average to Fair, Fair to Good, and so on). This advance may be taken several times up to the companion’s maximum quality, one step lower than that of her partner. (characters usually top out at Superb, so the most one of their companions could be is Great.)
Scope
    Improve the scope of a companion, allowing them to assist in an additional type of conflict (e.g., Physical and Mental, Physical and Social, Social and Mental). This may be taken twice, allowing the companion to be effective in all three scopes.
Independent
    The companion is able to act independently of her partner, allowing the character to send the companion off to perform tasks. An independent companion is treated as a minion if she’s caught out on her own (quality in this case indicates her capacity for stress), and is not useful for much unless she’s also skilled (see below).
Skilled
    The companion may buy skills of her own. If attached, the companion may use these skills on behalf of her partner, instead of the partner using his skill at his rating. If the companion has also taken the Independent advance (above), the Skilled advance the companion can also use these skills when not attached. One advance can buy one skill at the companion’s quality, two skills at quality -1, or three skills at quality -2. The Skilled advance can be bought multiple times, but a different skill or set of skills must be chosen each time.
Keeping up
    If the companion’s patron has a means of locomotion or stealth that makes it hard for the companion to keep up with him, then the companion with this advance has a similar ability, but it is useful only for keeping up with her patron when attached, and for no other purpose.
Communication
    The companion has some means of communicating with her patron in even the strangest of circumstances – using secret decoder rings, ancient Atlantean secrets of telepathic trances, or what-have-you. This isn’t a guarantee, and without an aspect invested in a companion, a player isn’t going to get compensated on the occasion that the GM decides to short out the method of communication. Still, GMs should think twice before cutting off a character from his companion, when this advance is in play.

While characters are not obliged to take their companion as an aspect, it is highly recommended. Companions are the first people villains choose as hostages and targets, and by choosing to take an appropriate aspect, the player ensures that he’ll be rewarded for the inconvenience.

[CottbusFiles]

My groups wizard did summon up a mist-spirit last session and as a reward for helping him he offered the spirit a  water pipe  to live in.
I want to make that spirit into a jamaican, stoner like personality that can be bribed with dope.

It's something like Bob but with a really different feel

[Lanodantheon]

Well, different forms of Bob should not be any kind of problem. For example a spirit of water residing inside an old fishbowl, with a plastic fish inside, that it uses as a face, when it is communicating with someone. Or a spirit of fire, residing imside a fireplace, like in Howl's moving castle.

More abstract concepts could be done aswell. A book containing every book you link it to, which has sort of a concions itself, imagine Bobs comments in the rpg books, when you are looking things up in it. Or a swarm of intelligent fireflies, that can write the information in the air in front of you, kind of like the floating letters in the tv series.

Then there is the more indirect approach, where you have for example a fae informant or a deamon you tricked into service.

All in all, outsourcing the knowledge a bit is a great way for interaction, even for an npc. If you don't want that, just give him a high lore skill plus maybe a stunt and he does not need to rely on any outside sources. On the other hand, it is a great way to take away a chunk of power from both a pc and npc. Like what Cowl and Kumori did with bob in Dead Beat.

That idea with the sight is pretty nasty and should probably be compelled a lot if done too often, but I like it nontheless.

The other rationale for using a spirit to do all the work is that...a spirit is doing all the work. It's automating the whole process. A Spirit lets you have an Occult computer with Personality.

Truth be told, you probably could just make a mass of Intellect energy that is quite literally "Magical Artificial Intelligence" because contrary to popular folklore, Sentient machines are not what AI refers to except in the far end of the research spectrum and there's a lot of room between. AIs at its most basic level is stuff like intelligent vacuum cleaners that learn to avoid hazards.

As long as it was within your Magical Paradigm and you spent enough time on it, you could make a Magical Apparatus that stores, examines and interprets data without being a true Spirit.

But just summoning and bargaining without a Spirit or a Gaurdian Daemon would be far cheaper to create. It would only require a skull, fishbowl, fireplace, crystal or teddy bear start up AND it probably run on Romance novels.

[Set Abominae]

I've been considering "cloning" Bob for my game. I think the inevitable trouble of Harry and Bob finding out Bob has a "brother" could make for some fun for my PC's. Fun being a flexible term, ahem.

[ways and means]

I am of the opinion that their must be many spirits of intelect and so if you summon one and make a deal with him you can have your own spirit of intelect to do your research.

[Becq]

3. The "Don't Try This Ever" Method of Study
[...snip...]
If you are still sane you should be able to remember said information. If insane, you'll make a great villain for the next adventure. Either way, you're welcome 

I think the last part is operative.  Also, you might want to consider that while everything you view with The Sight remains perfectly clear in your memory, you will have a MASSIVE number of such tidbits cluttering up your perfect memory, and it might take a very, VERY long time to sort through it.  Like, maybe, as long or longer than it would to actually perform the research. 

Assuming, of course, that you remained sane to begin with (as you mentioned).

[Becq]

Call me silly, but if you want to have a good memory/database, I think all you need is something along the lines of a stunt:

Eidetic Memory Spend a FATE point to perfectly recall information your character could have reasonably learned in the past. May be subject to GM Approval.

A bit of a rough draft so you might make some changes too it, but it just goes to show you don't ALWAYS need to resort to magic 

This could also be a character aspect ("I remember ... everything!"), which could be invoked for effect with similar results.

[Lanodantheon]

I think the last part is operative.  Also, you might want to consider that while everything you view with The Sight remains perfectly clear in your memory, you will have a MASSIVE number of such tidbits cluttering up your perfect memory, and it might take a very, VERY long time to sort through it.  Like, maybe, as long or longer than it would to actually perform the research. 

You might be able to get around that clutter if you organized the information with indexes and numbered slides and diagrams.

Given how you have to be exposed to the information, it would probably be best not for reading stuff in text but for visual diagrams, which is the puzzle I used it for in the adventure I ran. Things like step-by-step blueprints, monochrome drawings of monsters, mathematical models of magical energies, stuff like that.

That method was never designed to hold up under close scrutiny, it was just clever at the time I thought of it.

[Becq]

Maybe, but then again, EVERYTHING that is imprinted on your memory via the sight is equally Powerful (with a capital P), which might make it very difficult to filter through to get to the specific bit of information you want to find.