Glossary

Over the course of APERIS, you may come across words or phrases that you are unfamiliar with. This page mainly contains ORPGSoc Terms (information, events, places, and people which exist in the real world, i.e. outside the world of APERIS), but there are a few Setting Terms (terms which the refer to things in the world of APERIS), as well as some Uptime Terms, which are useful calls that may be used by a player or GM to convey important information or requests during Uptime.

A Faction is an organisation that has a presence at APERIS. All Factions are in a Faction Grouping. Player characters and NPCs in APERIS are generally members of these Factions.

A Faction Grouping is a collection of 2-3 Factions which may be allied with one another or share certain similarities. The Faction Groupings in APERIS are; NATO, JCP, Global Enviromentalist Network, and Independent Interests.

A term for roleplaying romantic or similarly emotionally intense relationships (including intense rivalries) between characters. This should be checked OC with other players or GMs involved before beginning. NPCs will not initiate romantic ballgowning with player characters unless they have the Romance Me Playstyle Quirk.

A form potential Players will fill to sign up to play APERIS, information from this form will be used to preform a ballot if there is not enough capacity in APERIS. Please see Start Here, for more information.

The CAMPaign Organiser, the person(s) responsible for coming up with the idea of a society game and consequently leading it. Our CAMPOs are GM Jack (CAMPO), GM Ben (CAMPO) and GM Ameal (CAMPO).

A form Players will fill in with information about the Character they will play in APERIS. Please see Character Creation, for more infomation.

Assistant gamerunners who take direction from the GMs, or people who want to play the game with less commitment than a full player. For our current crew, see the Crew List. Crew for APERIS will be email-only.

The debrief is an OC session after the game is over. In the debrief, the GMs and players discuss the game. Players will have the opportunity to share what they got up to during the game, and GMs can share 'behind the scenes' details about the game. This will take place in person after the final session. See When and Where for more details.

Downtime refers to the period of time between sessions, which will vary to match the peaks of anomalous activity occurring at APERIS although at game start will be expected to last about one month. During Downtime, you may finalise your plans with other characters by email if you wish, though the key part of Downtime is the Turnsheet. We strongly recommend taking a look at our Downtime page for more information.

Short for 'don't worry about it'—a tongue-in-cheek phrase commonly used in ORPGSoc as a light-hearted response to player questions that don’t require an answer, particularly useful when you want to leave them in just a little bit of doubt as to whether or not they really ought to worry about it.

A writeup by the GMs about what happens to a character after the end of the game. This includes broad-scale descriptions about the progress of the world and the characters' lives, as opposed to describing specific actions. Players are also welcome to submit their own writing about their character, to be displayed alongside the GM-written eternity, although these are subject to GM approval.

A term describing how a theme might be handled in Turnsheets meaning 'to be handled off-screen'. The theme may be referenced by the Turnsheet but it will provide no description.

Short for ‘find out in play’, a response you may get to questions to which the answer is intended to be found out in the course of playing APERIS.

The nine people who moderate the Uptime sessions, read through your Turnsheet submissions, keep the Wiki up to date, and generally run the game. Please get in touch with us if you have any questions, or take a look at our page if you'd like to learn more about us!

These terms are used to describe events, places, and people which exist within the world of APERIS (IC) or in real life (OC).

Can also be used to flag whether you're mentioning something out-of-character (OC) e.g. a question in an email to GMs, or indicating the emotional intensity of an email thread is becoming too much and you would like others to tone it down slightly. (In emails, typing text in [square brackets] indicates that text is out-of-character.)

The gesture for indicating that you are dropping OC during Uptime involves raising your index and middle fingers on one hand.

IC/OC Divide is used to describe the idea that IC and OC issues are kept apart from each other. See more in Conduct and Acceptable Themes Policy.

Metagaming is the practice of using OC knowledge to determine the course of your character's actions, for example by finding out a character's plans or schemes through a conversation at the chip van after a session. While we understand that such knowledge may be acquired unintentionally, we trust players not to abuse it.

Characters played by the GMs or by Crew members rather than by players. Some NPCs are listed here and in various setting pages on this wiki.

Short for physical representation, this term refers to accessories/outfits worn by players and GMs to represent their characters. In APERIS, as in all previous Society Games, physrep is completely optional.

Characters played by the players rather than the GMs or Crew members. You will be able to look through the PC list here once the GMs have processed your submissions.

Terms describing the types of conflict which a character may face. PvE (Player versus Environment) refers to conflict between a Player Character and the world around them, while PvP (Player versus Player) refers to conflict between individual player characters.

We expect PvP in APERIS. Players will be members of different factions with different goals, and conflict between these factions is expected to be a key theme of the game. Players should expect to be in conflict with another player at some point in this game. This conflict will typically be pragmatic and faction driven, with more personal conflict covered by Ballgowning. Physical PvP is primarily expected to occur in Downtimes, although it is possible for physical PvP to occur in Uptimes. This will, however, be exceptional, and will only happen after planning with GMs and the other player(s) involved. Physical PvP in emails should only occur with the OC consent of all GMs and Players involved.

The Discord Server which hosts character creations and general questions for APERIS. It has OC channels for general discussion, asking questions about game rules and tech support. You can navigate between Discord Servers using the leftmost Discord sidebar, where all the servers you are part of will be shown as square icons.

A piece of writing the players submits to GMs with information about their Downtime, and the plans for the remaining in-character period until the next Uptime. Templates for these can be found at the bottom of your user page, and should be completed by Thursday 11.59PM after an Uptime session, unless you have asked for and been given an extension by a GM. Each turnsheet will receive a writeup, detailing the events that happened in it.

For more about what is involved in a turnsheet, take a look here.

Uptime refers to the fortnightly sessions of APERIS, which will take place in person. During uptime, you will be roleplaying as your character in meetings in the Living Module of Antarctic Preservation, Exploration and Research International Station (APERIS). We strongly recommend taking a look at our Uptime and Sessions page for more information.

A call used by GMs at the start of session, or after 'time freeze' has been called, to indicate that everyone should begin acting in-character.

A call used by GMs at the end of a session to indicate that everyone should stop acting in-character.

Another call used by GMs to indicate that everyone should stop acting in-character and pay attention to the caller. This is used during a session if GMs need to get the whole playerbase's attention, address a problem OC, or describe something happening that cannot feasibly be acted out.

This is a safety call meaning 'tone it down', to be used when player interaction is getting too intense and you would like to signal to others to tone it down without shutting down the roleplay altogether. This is particularly important in angry, argument-based scenarios or highly emotional scenarios that deal with sensitive themes.

This is a safety call meaning that the user does not wish to further engage in this topic. Once this call is used, other players may carry on roleplaying, but should treat the player calling Out as if they are not/were never part of the interaction.

This is a safety call meaning that everyone in that conversation must stop roleplaying the current topic. All players hearing this call must stop roleplaying the topic in question. When used, this may indicate that the topic has strayed into themes which are forbidden in the game.