Prisoners of Memory

RPG system: LARP
Participants: 6 players

By

Be-Con (2023), Sheraton Suites Chicago Elk Grove, Illinois, United States, United States

Olivia Montoya

Description

Prisoners of Memory is a game about the price of immortality, and making difficult decisions with limited information. Characters will question everything about their lives as they regain access to forgotten memories.

In a world where medical science has advanced to the point of granting physical immortality with a single procedure available to all, but where understanding of the brain lags behind, memory is precious. It’s been hundreds of years since immortality became available to everyone, and hundreds of years since the discovery that the human mind can’t handle hundreds of years of memory. As a consequence, old memories begin to fade. Eventually, you can only remember the past ten years or so. Humanity has adapted. Society has adapted. But have you?

You are someone who lives in this society, going about your life as usual, when you receive a very old-looking letter in the mail, containing an invitation, a key, and coordinates. When the time comes you travel to that location and find an isolated cabin, and 5 strangers. Or at least they look like strangers to you… All six of you got an invitation. And based on what you discover inside the cabin, it seems that your past selves had something to hide.

Prisoners of Memory is a game set in a dystopian society where all characters have experienced and/or done horrible things that will be revealed during the game. This game is more about the reactions of those characters to these revelations than about those characters creating a new narrative, though players will have the opportunity to decide what their characters plan to do after the events of the game in a post-game epilogue. Please take note of the content warnings below if you are concerned about potentially triggering content, and note that they do include some spoilers.

During the game, players will have approximately 2.5 pages of reading.


Content Warnings
Amnesia, gaslighting/lying (by a player character in the past), brainwashing (not roleplayed in the game), non-consensual medical interventions (including reproductive) where recipients are unaware (and consented to something else), oppressive dystopian governments, conspiracies and conspiracy theories (note that none are intentionally modeled on real world theories), war (in the past), distortion of morality, imprisonment, sterility (reproductive), descriptions of brutal violence (by a player character in the past), descriptions of depression & medication for depression, pregnancy (in the past), descriptions of childhood bullying, children being taken from parents, scammy “business opportunity” recruitment (potentially roleplayed during game)

Played at