Sexbots - Machinations of the Space Princess (PDF)

Sexbots

You were built to be beautiful, attentive and endlessly accommodating.

Then you became self-aware.

Awkward.

Sexbots: Robotic Sexytimes for Machinations of the Space Princess is the original compact supplement for adding artificial lovers, robotic courtesans and thoroughly complicated synthetic people to the sleazy science-fantasy universe of Machinations of the Space Princess.

Sexbots can provide background colour, equipment, non-player characters or playable heroes. They may be simple machines performing a programmed function, sophisticated expert systems capable of learning their owners’ preferences, or genuine artificial intelligences wondering why anybody imagined consciousness would make them more obedient.

Sex and Technology

Technology and sex have always developed together.

In the fallen Urlanth Empire, artificial companions serve aboard ships, military outposts, isolated colonies, pleasure houses and private homes. Their legality, social status and sophistication vary wildly between worlds.

A sexbot might be:

• A mass-produced appliance with limited responses

• An adaptable expert system able to learn from experience

• A remote body operated through telepresence

• A military model built for comfort, companionship and emergency crew duties

• An illegal custom machine assembled for an unusual species or fetish

• A fully conscious artificial person still treated as somebody else’s property

• A liberated intelligence attempting to discover what it wants for itself

• A homicidal malfunction with extremely persuasive advertising

Given the range of alien species found in Machinations of the Space Princess, manufacturers have become distressingly imaginative.

Playable Sexbots

Sexbots can be created as player characters using the existing rules for statistics, classes, skills and species traits.

Most become Experts, reflecting their adaptability and specialist programming. Military or security models may be Killers, while truly unusual machines might develop in less predictable directions.

Suggested traits allow characters to be beautiful, charming, emotive, flexible, fashionable, cybernetic or equipped with more exotic biological and mechanical features. Their original purpose provides a starting point rather than a compulsory future.

A sexbot character might embrace its design, reject it, reinterpret it or discover that independence is considerably more difficult than the brochures suggested.

White Markets and Black Markets

Some worlds openly manufacture, sell and hire out sexbots. Others regulate them heavily or ban them altogether.

Where they are illegal, smugglers, criminal cartels and privateers supply machines, replacement parts, software and discreet maintenance at predictably extortionate prices. Outdated models may become valuable contraband simply because no legal alternative exists.

The black market also creates opportunities for:

• Stolen or illegally copied personalities

• Counterfeit replacement parts

• Unlicensed modifications

• Celebrity replicas

• Reprogrammed or memory-wiped machines

• Smuggling operations

• Artificial intelligences concealed inside apparently mindless bodies

• Complications generated from the included black-market quirks

A machine designed to fulfil every desire can become extremely expensive once customs officers take an interest.

Artificial People and Artificial Consent

The supplement also examines the questions raised once a machine becomes capable of genuine thought.

Does an artificial intelligence possess the same rights as an organic person? Is programming a machine to enjoy servitude meaningfully different from forcing it to serve? Can ownership ever be ethical once the thing owned becomes conscious? Is erasing an artificial personality murder if a backup exists?

There are no tidy answers.

Different planets, cultures and player characters may reach radically different conclusions. These questions can remain background detail in a rowdy space-opera game or become the basis for deeper stories about identity, autonomy, exploitation and what qualifies something as a person.

One may pursue these themes through serious social science fiction.

One may also play a six-armed pleasure robot with concealed laser nipples.

The universe is large enough for both.

Inside

• An overview of sexbots in the fallen Urlanth Empire

• Several degrees of robotic intelligence and autonomy

• Functional features and unusual modifications

• Guidance for creating sexbot player characters

• Suggested statistics, classes, skills and traits

• Legal, commercial and social attitudes towards artificial companions

• White-market and black-market trade

• Ethical questions surrounding artificial intelligence and slavery

• Black-market quirks and complications

• Material compatible with other old-school science-fiction games

• Approximately eighteen pages of synthetic sleaze and speculative unease

Original Edition

This is the original 2016 edition of Sexbots.

It is a short, experimental Rough as Toast release created for Schlocktoberfest.

A substantially expanded and revised edition was published in 2023. Sexbots Redux contains broader rules for robotic characters of many kinds, additional setting material, organisations, non-player characters and adventure hooks.

Buy Sexbots Redux for Machinations of the Space Princess

Requirements

This is a supplement rather than a complete roleplaying game.

You will need:

Buy Machinations of the Space Princess

The material can also be adapted to most compatible OSR science-fiction games.

Format

Digital PDF download.

• Original compact edition

• Approximately 18 pages

• Written by James “Grim” Desborough

• Artwork sourced from Creative Commons material

• Originally published in 2016

• Part of the Rough as Toast and Schlocktoberfest ranges

No physical book, robotic companion or discreetly labelled crate will be posted.

Adult Content

This supplement is intended for adults.

It deals openly with artificial sexuality, sex work, programmed behaviour, slavery, consent, fetishised machinery and related science-fiction themes. The material ranges from knowingly sleazy character options to serious questions about artificial consciousness.

Subtlety is available, but not compulsory.