Players, if you want to comment on it, can you stick them at the bottom. That was my first time GMing and my first time using the FATE system, so it was a bit of a bodge :). I know we all ended up a bit confused on the difference between Create an Advantage and Boosts for one thing.
“You are robotic crew members aboard a spaceship. Each of you awakens alone, with no memory of recent events, nor more than a cursory idea of who you are. The human crew are dead to the last spacer. It is up to you to uncover what went wrong, and to find a way home…”
PCs:
We had five PCs, none of whom knew their memories leading up to the point at which they wake. This was also a secret to the players, who started with mostly blank character sheets and had to uncover their PC’s skills and Aspects by trial and error. Error being a recurring feature. The Butlerbot for example knew that he was “Uncannily Humanoid”, and woke up in the Captain’s quarters. There was some theorising that he might be a sexbot. The mining ‘bot came round in a heavy equipment bay, surrounded by crewmembers who had been crushed by heavy objects. The Techie woke up in the engine room, the Cleaner in the toilets. The Securibot... under a pile of bodies.
Our Butler searches the room for records, finding none he locates the Captain’s old service bayonet, a few bottles of wine and a silver tray. Plying the door with booze to try and get it to open “It’s dangerous out there”, he makes his way into the flight deck, and finds the Autopilot gibbering in a cupboard. Unfortunately there’s no booze to offer it, the bottle having exploded due to lack of atmospheric pressure. Butler returns the Autopilot to the cupboard for now, reassures it, and leaves to find any more crew, and any more drinks to serve them.
The cleaner exits the toilets, finds a corridor full of bodies and proceeds to clean like crazy because it’s a horrible mess. Techiebot, who’d upgrades the engine’s sparkplugs but can’t find anyone to drive the ship, so starts scanning for radio signals. They agree to meet up. Prospectorbot saws a door open, finds the corridor full of MORE dead people and robots, and panics. It then notices a bigger door on the other side and drives a crane through it to get it open. Finding more bodies, it decides there’s nothing for it but to plod grimly onwards and look for anyone alive. Securibot picks up a laser and sword from the dead bodies and decides to get out of there, presumably before anyone blames him. He can’t help but feel that these weapons are a bit underwhelming.
On its way to meet Techiebot, Cleaner finds a giant space weevil in its nice clean vents, sprays it with bleach, then runs it over. It then sulks over the mess on its tracks until it gets a call from Techiebot, who agrees to meet it and do something about that. Steve the Securibot runs into a dangerous security threat in the form of a vacuuming/courier robot with a knife stuck to its head, which attempts to ram him in the ankles. Steve flips it over, breaks the knife off and loots a thumb drive from it. Just in case it’s a virus, he plugs it into the killer roomba. (It was a virus, but the roomba erased it to destroy the evidence. Whoops). Taking it out again, he reads it and finds it empty. Psychopathic appliance in hand, Steve gets a call from Cleaner who’s found him on a scan and wants him to join their group of survivors. To Protect and Serve, off he goes. Some Space Weevils object, and are shot into a fine paste by Steve, who has remembered that he’s got a built in laser cannon. They finally rendezvous, at which point Techiebot analyses the thumbdrive, recovering part of some sort of “Become A Mindless Killer” virus. The Roomba gets repurposed into extra processing power for Techie to work on the analysis. Cleanerbot ignores all this and relentlessly hoses down, scrubs and polishes the blood off Securibot.
Meanwhile, the Miner and the Butler have met up in the Galley and defeated a malevolent cocktail blender that was trying to hack into the Butler’s brain. The Miner was looking for survivors but was delayed slightly by a quadcopter trying to kill her. This went poorly for the little camera drone, as it got mining tooled into oblivion. The Butler was looking for wine. The chef’s in there, but sadly he’s been nailed to the wall and is rather dead. They do however find wine in the dark corners of the galley, but not before a Space Weevil has dropped on their head and promptly joined the chef in being nailed to a wall after Butler throws a bayonet at it.
The Butler decides it would be a good plan to look for the Security Barracks in order to find the missing captain, on account of it being the most defensible place on the ship and where Sir would be likely to go. I forget what the other group were looking for, possibly the environment controls but at this point they meet up with the rest of the party. After some discussion they all decide to go to check out Security. However, since the Butler only has one glass and it would be impolite to not calm the jangled nerves of the party with a tall glass of oil, they are going by way of the canteen.
The canteen sadly does not agree with this plan and registers its displeasure when a toaster fires a couple of red-hot data disks out of its slots. Valiantly shoving the butlerbot out the way, Steve returns fire and smokes the Toaster of Terror. As they enter, they find some mugs, which are good, and a vending machine full of Space Vimto and Oil. This is somewhat less good as it tries to squash the Techiebot. On the plus side, Prospector slices it up with her trusty cutting disk and hey! Free oil! Horrified by the escalating mess, Cleanerbot demands she be allowed to fix it, and sticks it back together with space tape. Since the more forward thinking party members have unplugged it, it just sits there under emergency power, a standby light blinking sullenly. They hear a rattling from a cupboard, and flinging it open, they uncover a cowering Chefbot with an outrageously bad French accent. Butler hands it a cup of oil and tells it to lock itself back in there and wait for them.
Having had a nice cup of oil themselves, the robots plan an expedition to security again. What they don’t plan for is another horde of weevils rushing them. This ends up with Steve being covered in oil and shot with a laserpistol by Prospector and Butler in order to burn off the bugs grappling him. This works, and the pained and confused bugs are then flung into a wall and go splat. Techiebot puts him out, but this manages to completely ruin Butler’s trousers with fire-extinguishing foam, necessitating a trip to the laundry to fix this state of affairs. Unwilling to compromise investigation for the sake of Style, Steve and Techiebot trundle off to Security on their lonesome while the rest of the party make their way to the Laundry.
The Laundry Squad hotwire and smash their way through various problems, squishing a couple of unlucky Space Weevils behind wreckage as they go. Entering the laundry, they find a wall of wondrous washing machines whirring and slamming their doors agitatedly. After smashing two up and turning off two more by pushing the power buttons with Cleaner’s mop, they decide they’d rather just give up on trying to fix the lethal laundromat and try the dark, cramped clothes racks at the back. They find a control panel for the laundry-delivery system. Butler takes the smart move of plugging himself into it to order up new trousers. The wardrobe computer delivers a pair of lime-green zebra print flares with black PVC braces, and hacks Butler’s brain into thinking this is a Good Fashion Choice. The Squad leave, then return shortly afterwards when Butler realises what he’s done and requires Suitable Attire, Dammit! Finding that one of the wayward washing machines has filled the room with suds as a sort of crude smokescreen, Cleaner leaps into action, washing, drying and pressing Butler’s stained trousers to as good, if not better than new.
Meanwhile, in security… Our intrepid investigators open the door and are greeted by an angry Securibot with baleful glowing red eyes and an even more baleful glowing red Laser Cannon. While Techie throws out its aim with her ninja hacking skills, Steve gets in there with his chainsword and deactivates it with extreme prejudice. He then feels like a traitor for stabbing up his former comrade. Eventually the party reunite, search the room and discover some Evidence in the security footage and by-now traditional Knee-Deep Bodies. Firstly, the ship seems to have suffered a mutiny, with the mutineers subverting robots in the loading bay and trying to hijack a shuttle. Secondly, that they’d dragged the Captain off to a thruster assembly. Thirdly, that a human Security Officer looked to have gone crazy and dismembered his colleagues with a giant pair of pneumatic mining shears. Most unusually, many of the mutineers looked to have blurred faces in the records, but not the ringleaders. Techie decides the amount of firepower is insufficient and jury-rigs a bomb out of half a dozen laser pistols.
Not to worry though, our Cleaner Knows Every Inch of the Ship and has plotted a way to the thruster! Surprising nobody, it’s via the janitorial ducts. Equally unsurprising is the fact that the giant Prospectorbot gets stuck in a corner. And since the Universe clearly hates out band of survivors, here come half a dozen Space Weevils to pin them in! With the other robots stuck two on each side of Prospector a desperate fight ensues, laser pistols and cutting arms against chittering mandibles. Prospector decides to cut herself free, neither knowing nor caring what’s around the vent. She gets free, but now the vent starts to become flooded with transmission fluid. Cleaner has one of the bugs stuck on the end of her mop and is waving it around trying to beat the others with it or stick it in front of Prospector’s cutting arm. After much stomping, Butler picks up the last, crippled bug and holds it out politely to Steve, who hacks it up with his chainsword.
The party have no time for celebration, because as the chainswords and cutting discs spin down, that ominous HUMMM in the background starts to become more apparent. And louder. Good news though, everyone now knows exactly which way to go to reach the thruster! It’s towards the rumbling… The party speed towards their objective, some speedier than others.
Far ahead of the rest, Securibot Steve arrives on the scene to see violently shuddering machinery he doesn’t understand and fluid all over the floor. He radios Techie, who points him at the Emergency Transmission Fluid tank. Hooking it up in a terrible, leaky manner he manages to cool down the thruster. Sadly it’s still going and he’s lost radio contact with Techie. Radioing the Cleaner for help, they manage to find the emergency shutoff and press it. This shuts off the thruster, but not the loud, complaining Fuel Injector. Butler then bursts in. He doesn’t have much of a clue either but he does have a selection of cups, which he places under the tank to catch the drips. Reckoning he’s onto something here, he then starts scooping fluid off the floor and into the fuel injector using his teatray. Prospector is close behind, and seeing a malfunctioning bit of heavy machinery, her ol’ Miner Instincts tell her a Lucky Whack should sort that right out! It doesn’t, but it does rip the cooling fan off and make the screams of tormented metal even louder. Cleanerbot suggests they try venting the room into space in case of fire. The only way they can see to do that is to rip a hole in the thruster outlet, so Steve gets out his chainsword and starts stabbing away. He fails miserably, jamming his sword in the metal. By the time Techie arrives, she is greeted by a confused looking miner staring at a smashed cooling fan, a furiously scooping butler, a securibot jammed in some delicate-looking machinery and the Cleaner trying to scrub the mess off the Emergency Tank. Looking aghast at the damage to her precious ship, she screams at the others “Why didn’t you just do an automated shutdown of the area?” (Answer: The others failed Lore Rolls :P) Despite a pressing lack of time before anything explodes Techie manages to turn off the room’s systems and unjam Steve.
Once the crew remember what they were supposed to be doing here in the first place, they investigate it to try and find out what happened. This is unsurprisingly a bit hard, as the area is covered in fluid leaks and messed around by Cleaner’s attempts to tidy up. They do locate a strange metal circle bolted to the floor. It’s got power hookups coming from the thruster, and a data port on the side. Techiebot plugs into it, finds no signal coming out, and figures it must be an antenna, although it’s a terrible design. As the party try and work out what such a rubbish antenna is for, a loading ‘bot comes in and tries to “fix” the engine clumsily with it’s massive claw. It demands to know if they are “loyal to the cause” and when Cleaner claims they are, it ignores them and keeps trying to repair the thruster. Techie tries to help out the loader by uploading a set of instructions via the “antenna”. That doesn’t seem to do anything. When she gets too close to it, it clobbers her with its claw. After a failed attempt by Cleaner and Techie to persuade the ‘bot, Prospector and Steve beat it up.
Finally! An incapacitated, hacked robot that’s not too badly damaged. Techie hooks into it and succeeds in pulling out a full copy of the virus. It includes orders to protect the “grid” and images that show the device that’s bolted to the floor. It also includes instructions to capture human crew and bring them to the grid. While examining the robot for information on the blurred faces, Techie notices that it’s specifically programmed to blur out a certain pattern. That of luminescent green worms moving behind the eyes of a human face. (It was at this point that it became utterly clear to the players that they were in a horror game. The players weren’t sure until after the fact, but I was using the Feeders in the Night and Summoning Grid from Charles Stross’s Laundry Files novels, which I knew some of them had read.). Techiebot then notices some funny-looking advanced mathematics and starts sending that through the summoning grid, which glows ominously. She then avoids making a terminally poor life choice by poking anything into it.
Shocked by the scale of this mayhem, the robots decided on a new plan. They’d go down to the computer room, grab all the records, fly out in a shuttle and self-destruct the ship. “Don’t be silly, why would there be a self-destruct on an expensive ship like this? You’re going to have to work out how to blow it up by yourselves”. Fine by the PCs, who figured they’d get the Pilot to plot a course into the nearest star before high-tailing it out of there. Oh their way to the computer room, they find the Chefbot running around with a meat cleaver and panicking. He recieves a drink and orders to go and hide in the cupboard again until they come and get him.
Reaching the server room, the PCs open the door, revealing a bigger summoning grid, two hacked robots, and the Captain’s dead body inside the grid. Unusually for a dead guy, he’s up and lumbering towards them. Since Stive had his cesnorware removed he confirms Captain Conrad has luminous green worms where his eyeballs should be. Cleanerbot has the bomb by now and flings it in, blowing up one ‘bot, damaging the other, and mildly singeing the zombiefied master of the ship. The players are made aware that he’s “Lumbering” and won’t reach them for another turn. “Helped” by Dave’s observation that things that take a while to reach you are Bloody Scary (Dave is now playing Prospector as Ellie had to leave), they start conspiring to stack up huge piles of Aspects on the Captain in order to do some real damage. The second ‘bot goes down in a shower of sparks and cannon blasts from Steve as the Cleaner hoses down the Captain with bleach and the Butler charges valiantly forward with a tray of drinks, hoping to confuse what’s left of his former boss by offering him wine. Prospectorbot grapples the Captain, locking him in place but making herself a prime target for an Eldritch Zombie Fist to the servos. Despite a hail of laser fire into her opponent’s back, it’s not going well for the ol’ miner, but aha! She spies a gantry above them, and decides that Dropping A Bridge On Him is totally the best way to kill a Captain! A couple of quick slices later, and the pair of them are trapped under the wreckage. With his limbs shattered and his body pinned in place, the ex-Captain Conrad has no chance to avoid his fate as Butler walks up, murmurs “Sorry, Sir!”, and blows the zombie’s head up with a laser beam. (Drac had invoked something like 3 Aspects on that shot to make sure, and he had a few more that the party had created).
The party grab the surveillance footage, and glean some better idea of what happened to the rest of the crew. They’d subverted robots and were using them to turn the crew into a zombie army to help them loot and run. What happened to them afterwards is unclear, though the party suspect that a Zombie Army of Eldritch Horrors may not have been the Brilliant Plan it was marketed as.They also realise that at least one, possibly two subverted loader bots are still hanging around the loading bay. Deciding that the easiest way to take all the evidence is to copy it onto one server, they do so, then rivet the server onto Prospectorbot’s back once she’s been cut free of the wreck.
As they finally make it to the bridge, they find the door shut, and a panicked autopilot refusing to let them in. Pilot is ultimately persuaded by both their cast-iron escape plan and the fairly solid argument that prospector has a whirring, smashy “key”, and unlocks the door. Pilot sets a course for the nearest sun, and the party slice up the flight controls to make sure that it stays that way. They also smash the door controls for the shuttle bay. However, because the designers read the Evil Overlord list, it jams the door open. Oh well. Pausing only to pull Ze Chef out of Ze Cupboard, our robot heroes rush to the landing bay. After some debate about how exactly they’ll deal with the giant loader bots, Steve says he’ll cover them, Butler suggests they’ll just run, and punches the door controls.
The party cheeses it towards the waiting shuttle, barrels flying at them from the single charging loader that had powered itself up. Steve frantically attempts to kneecap the loader, slowing it down enough that only Techie is threatened. As Butler reaches the shuttle, he realises that valet programming never prepared him for spaceship ignition sequences, fails to find the on button and tries to hack the loader instead. Steve is busily providing covering fire, and Prospector joins in once he’s clear of the pursuit, chucking some barrels right back at the killer crane. Cleaner whirrs clean away, but poor Techie is caught in a Grapple and starts getting crushed. Realising she has a remote-drone, she swaps her mind into that, transmits IGNORE MY BODY SAVE THE DRONE to Steve, and burns rubber away from her doomed chassis.
Cleaner zooms into the shuttle beside Prospector, who decides to take her own unique approach to boot-ups by punching the console. Fortunately for the crew, her mighty robofist lands on the IGNITION button and the shuttle starts powering up. Steve grabs Techie-Drone and runs for the shuttle, shoving the Chef and Pilot in front of them. Pilot jumps into the hot-seat and burns the shuttle out of there, making a dramatic exit as the doors open before them. The party sigh with relief, as they drift home with months of travel time to go, a tinkering obsessed Techie and a server full of security Footage and Eldritch Summoning Mathematics. Nothing could Possibly go Wrong!
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The player eventually dubbed the Cleaningbot Kryten, for obvious reasons. Many of the fight scenes (particularly against space vermin) were punctuated by cries of "Unclean!"
Some quotes I scribbled down:
"Yay! I was not outsmarted by a blender!"
"Does the chef, in fact, only speak Space French?"
"I have some cans of oil; would you like to cover them in oil and I'll set them on fire with the laser pistol?" "They're attached to Steve..." "He's a heavy-duty security robot, it'll be fine!"
"So, make fight rolls against two washing machines."
"Wine is not a substitute coolant."