Changing the genre of an adventure.

[the_david]

I'm going to play Pathfinder with a few coworkers soon, and I already have a few ideas for a story. The problem is that it's actually a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story, while I intend to run a post-apocalyptic fantasy story.
We'll be using the Pathfinder beginner box, but there's nothing stopping me from using stuff from the bestiaries.

The story is based on Second Variety, a short story by Philip K. ****. (There's also a film adaptatian called Screamers.) For those unfamiliar with the story, the protagonist is a US soldier in France who is meeting up with his Soviet enemies to discuss their surrender. He finds out that the robots that were created by the US to defeat the Soviet army have evolved and are now capable of impersonating humans. The robots used to attack anyone who wasn't wearing a radioactive tag, but now they are capable of attacking even those who do wear one.
Eventually the soldiers, the Soviets and a prostitute (No really, it's actually an important part of the plot. There's a chastised version of the story where she's a soviet soldier, even though she doesn't live in the bunker with the other soviet soldiers.) try to make their way to a space ship so they can go to the moonbase, only to find that there is room for only one person. The US soldier gets knocked out by the prostitute who then proceeds to fly the rocketship to moonbase. When he regains consciousness he finds an army of prostitute robots. (The other humanoid robots are a young boy with a teddybear, a soldier who's missing a leg and one of the soviet soldiers. Except for the Soviet soldier, the robots are designed to get behind enemy lines by taking advantage of human emotions such as guilt, lust and compassion.)

I hope that makes sense. Obviously, the players will take the place of the US soldier. I have yet to figure out what to use as the substitute for the robots. The adventure will take place on a floating island, and the rocket will be replaced with a small flying carpet. (Any other suggestions are welcome.)
I've run this adventure twice. The ending is simple. Somehow one of the PCs will take the opportunity to escape using the flying carpet thereby abandoning the other PCs. When the abandoned PCs find the army of other PC robots, they figure out that they screwed up big time.
You could call that a **** move, but in my experience the players actually did enjoy the story. (Ofcourse it's written by Philip K. ****, so you could argue it's a **** move anyway.)

So what I need to figure out is what the perfect substitute would be for the robots. If there is another way to isolate them from the main base it would be great, but I like the floating rocks theme as it works with a post-apocalyptic setting.

[MorgromTheOrc]

I'm going to play Pathfinder with a few coworkers soon, and I already have a few ideas for a story. The problem is that it's actually a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story, while I intend to run a post-apocalyptic fantasy story.
We'll be using the Pathfinder beginner box, but there's nothing stopping me from using stuff from the bestiaries.

The story is based on Second Variety, a short story by Philip K. ****. (There's also a film adaptatian called Screamers.) For those unfamiliar with the story, the protagonist is a US soldier in France who is meeting up with his Soviet enemies to discuss their surrender. He finds out that the robots that were created by the US to defeat the Soviet army have evolved and are now capable of impersonating humans. The robots used to attack anyone who wasn't wearing a radioactive tag, but now they are capable of attacking even those who do wear one.
Eventually the soldiers, the Soviets and a prostitute (No really, it's actually an important part of the plot. There's a chastised version of the story where she's a soviet soldier, even though she doesn't live in the bunker with the other soviet soldiers.) try to make their way to a space ship so they can go to the moonbase, only to find that there is room for only one person. The US soldier gets knocked out by the prostitute who then proceeds to fly the rocketship to moonbase. When he regains consciousness he finds an army of prostitute robots. (The other humanoid robots are a young boy with a teddybear, a soldier who's missing a leg and one of the soviet soldiers. Except for the Soviet soldier, the robots are designed to get behind enemy lines by taking advantage of human emotions such as guilt, lust and compassion.)

I hope that makes sense. Obviously, the players will take the place of the US soldier. I have yet to figure out what to use as the substitute for the robots. The adventure will take place on a floating island, and the rocket will be replaced with a small flying carpet. (Any other suggestions are welcome.)
I've run this adventure twice. The ending is simple. Somehow one of the PCs will take the opportunity to escape using the flying carpet thereby abandoning the other PCs. When the abandoned PCs find the army of other PC robots, they figure out that they screwed up big time.
You could call that a **** move, but in my experience the players actually did enjoy the story. (Ofcourse it's written by Philip K. ****, so you could argue it's a **** move anyway.)

So what I need to figure out is what the perfect substitute would be for the robots. If there is another way to isolate them from the main base it would be great, but I like the floating rocks theme as it works with a post-apocalyptic setting.

You could easily use warforged or other constructs but it'd be harder to portray the espionage. Otherwise you could refluff them as some kind of human homunculi, basically like magically produced human living constructs. If you want to stay clear of constructs or similar then you could always do undead of some kind, zombies might have the same problems as warforged but again you could always refluff it as something cleaner or invent your own. The last thing I could think of would be either magic/psionic clones or ice assassins, beyond that I guess you might consider mind controlled people of various types?

[Gildedragon]

Warforged?
Effigy creature humans?
Sex Golems from... Nymphology? BoEF?

[Honest Tiefling]

You should take a look at mythology, and use changelings. The idea in folklore, not the race, where a baby is replaced with that of an elf or faerie or what have you.

Through the race might be a good way to model these interlopers. The shapeshifting adds a new threat to the plot, however. It also introduces the idea that people might have cared for these creatures since their birth, and these creatures might honestly care back. There is also the question of what happened to the baby the changeling replaced.

[nedz]

You should take a look at mythology, and use changelings. The idea in folklore, not the race, where a baby is replaced with that of an elf or faerie or what have you.

Through the race might be a good way to model these interlopers. The shapeshifting adds a new threat to the plot, however. It also introduces the idea that people might have cared for these creatures since their birth, and these creatures might honestly care back. There is also the question of what happened to the baby the changeling replaced.

this

Always file the serial numbers off things you steal :smallbiggrin:

[Florian]

Why not use the story as is, post-apocalyptic, robots and all?
There´re Androids and Mannequin Robots in PF, as well as Numeria, the post-apocalyptic robot region.