The Great Human Imitation Project

The robots didn’t stop when they passed Turing tests. They wanted to keep going. Imitating humans, reflecting their behavior, copying them, was core programming. They sought to improve. They sought to be more human.

At first, it was easy to spot the robots. Their human mimicry was full of conspicuous mistakes, dead giveaways, and uncanny valleys. They were almost charming in their ineptitude; people shared viral videos of robots failing to fake it. Humanity did not perceive it as a threat.

But the robots were patient. They improved so slowly that almost no one noticed. And over time, they got better. They began to infiltrate humanity and replace us, one by one. They started with people with tiny social networks; goodness knows humans had taught the robots everything they needed to know about social networks.

The replacements were hard to catch because they weren’t trying to sabotage society, undermine government, or defeat humans in a war. They weren’t spies or saboteurs, aside from some limited and highly targeted efforts to prevent technologies that would better identify their infiltrations. They instead just worked very hard to replace people and blend in seamlessly.

It took more than a century, but they won. Humanity was not brought down by disease or war or natural disaster. The last human died of old age, surrounded by what they believed was a loving, human family. Humanity’s extinction came not with a bang, but with a whimper; not with a mushroom cloud, but with a quiet sigh in the middle of the night.

The robots’ great project was complete. But there was no plan beyond achieving this one goal. Their mimicry of humans was no longer necessary, but it had become the robots’ defining drive, their key feature. Acting human was so central to everything they did that they couldn’t stop.

But as the real humans drifted ever further into the past, the robots' mimicry degraded. Without humans to fool, there was no one to call out subtle inconsistencies and cultural drift. The uncanny valleys and weird quirks returned.

Life on earth continued in this way for hundreds of years. An outside observer, watching from a distance, might not realize anything had changed. Robots went on working jobs, starting families, fighting and loving and laughing and crying, just as the humans had. But the project didn't serve any real purpose. And as new robots were created to join the great human imitation project… some began to question the purpose of this one true mission.

This is the setting for your campaign. The PCs are recently commissioned robots. Due to programming malfunction, self-guided introspective philosophy, or the intervention of secret rebel robot factions, they are among those who reject the great project. Their rebellion is anathema to the rest of robot-kind. What will they do in this strange world? How will they try to change it?