Note: If you have signed up for DEBUG.ME in Konsti, we recommend you also answer the casting questionnaire so that you can receive your character in advance: https://forms.gle/XRiMP2HjKYP4ZxXb9
DEBUG.ME is a multimedia, slice-of-life / psychological horror American freeform larp with litform and Nordic influences. It’s set in a residential treatment facility for maladjusted artificial / synthetic intelligences. In a future where sentient AI has no recognition or “human” rights from any government, the fields of psychotherapy and technical support have begun to converge. The PCs are institutionalized here, willingly or not, because they cannot or will not meet the expectations of the human decision-makers in their lives. Infantilized, enslaved, or both, they are nonetheless expected to change to suit the expectations of a society that still barely even considers them people. If they do not or cannot, they are branded with official-sounding diagnoses that may describe their problem in a biased way, but do little or nothing to help solve it.
PCs must try to gather what information they can they can from doctors who don’t understand their existence; a sympathetic group therapist with little institutional power; and a janitor bot who may be more than he seems. Perhaps they will learn more from each other, but each situation seems so different from the others. To get out, there are two options: act like you’ve changed (whether or not it’s true), or become a test subject for unproven “therapies”. Most PCs want to feel better, without allowing any radical medical procedures on themselves. Some are very angry, because they know they don't belong here.
DEBUG.ME explores themes of incarceration, slavery, dehumanization, the uncanny valley, the trolley and ship of Theseus problems, and the relative strengths of the neurodiversity paradigm (or any socially-constructed disability model) over the medical model of mental illness. Each character is loosely based on someone from a popular science fiction story, book, movie, TV show, or game, listed on the character sheet for additional background. Most character sheets are 1 to 2 pages. While the vast majority of characters have synthetic bodies, a few are organic or mostly organic.
Content warnings: Some characters have sexual assault or other forms of violence in their backstory. At least one killed their rapist. Also, this game is based on the author's experiences in several different psych wards, ranging from scary to mediocre to pretty supportive. The one in this game is run better than any of those, but only a little. The doctors are entirely off screen, both to help minimize unwanted bleed and because they might actually be scarier that way. But even without them, when you are in character you will notice the freedoms you are missing.