Channel 455

Purpose

CHANNEL 455 a rules-light TTRPG intended to implicitly teach players about the key capabilities of different types of robots, and the inherent risks that come with those capabilities.

Tone

CHANNEL 455 explores key tensions in robotics: the tension between a vision of robots that “think on their own” and a reality of robots that primarily pursue the aims of their designers; and the tension between a vision of robots “for social good” and a reality of robots that inevitably cause social harms. The robots you will play in CHANNEL 455 strive earnestly to do good and be their best selves, but are inevitably constrained by their designers’ limitations and the difficulty of “doing good” while serving as a mobile surveillance device.

Robots

In CHANNEL 455, you play a robot: a physical technological device that can sense, think, act, and socially interact. You are the product of your designer: a lone tinkerer, corporate engineer, or academic researcher, who decided what and who you would be. You are simultaneously the servant of your owner: a consumer, business, or community who acquired and deployed you for a particular reason.

You know that using your core capabilities are inherently dangerous, and puts the humans whose world you inhabit at risk. But you also know that if you’re careful, you may be able to help those humans in your own small way.

Fate

In CHANNEL 455, you are not doomed to failure, but you know that success is unlikely, and that your group’s performance will be inevitably marred in some way.

Materials

To play CHANNEL 455, you will need at least one d6 (i.e., a six-sided die), but ideally each player should have at least four six-sided dice for their own use throughout the game. Each player will also need a physically printed character sheet, and a pencil or pen.

CHANNEL 455 should take approximately two hours to play.

CHANNEL 455 Playtest version 0.2 was created by Alexandra Bejarano, Mark Higger, Terran Mott, Rafael Sousa Silva, Tom Williams, and Rena Zhu (ordered alphabetically)