Uptime and Sessions

Sessions are in-person 3-hour-long roleplay sessions on Wednesday evenings. For more info, see Ticketing, When, and Where.

Players will roleplay their characters attending the regular base-camp meeting on the island of Kythara, near the entrance of the Labyrinth. Uptime 1 will represent the first ever of these meetings, as the Labyrinth will have just recently appeared on the island. This meeting is the Order of Word-Keepers' way of maintaining peace despite the high tensions between the different factions living in the base-camp. The meeting is a key part of maintaining permission from the Word-Keepers to explore the Labyrinth. The start and end of session coincide with the start and end of the meeting IC.

Between the GMs calling TIME IN and TIME OUT, the room is continuously an in character roleplay area. Players will be talking and acting as their characters.

At the beginning of session, we'll give a short OC briefing. For the first session this will include an introduction segment where you'll have a chance to introduce both yourself and your character to everyone (including your and your character's name, pronouns, and your character's appearance).

GMs will alternate between playing different NPCs and being out of character. There will be a GM desk where you can come and ask us questions — if everyone is busy you can come and find a GM and ask them a question OC. We will be playing a variety of NPCs in session, but if you want to speak to a particular NPC feel free to ask and we'll accommodate it where we can (though this may not happen for various OC or IC reasons).

• Hand held up with two fingers in the air: represents that somebody is not currently playing their character. They are speaking OC and this may represent that nobody is there IC e.g. a GM answering a question. Anybody may use this at any time.
• STOP THE GAME or arms crossed over chest, hands on shoulders: Use this to immediately stop all roleplay. This is to be used for OC reasons e.g. a medical issue or if a player becomes too uncomfortable to continue. This is likely temporary and IC time will be resumed by the call of TIME IN by a GM.
• TIME IN: The roleplay session has started. Players are by default assumed to be IC unless they hold two fingers in the air.
• TIME FREEZE: Roleplay should stop. This is something happening that is likely to affect everyone, and we are unable to phys-rep it (e.g. the lights have all suddenly gone out). Roleplay will recommence when TIME IN is called. Due to the disruptive nature of this, we will keep this call to a minimum.
• TIME OUT: It's the end of session. Cease roleplay for the evening.

Physical contact IC should always be negotiated OC first (e.g. “Is it alright if I hold your hand?”)

There is no fighting in these roleplay sessions as we have no system for formally adjudicating combat. The IC reason is that the Order of Word-Keepers has banned all fighting at the base camp; as such fighting between characters should occur only in turnsheets.

Because of the OC limitations of the format, we expect an amount of buy-in for the conceit from you as players.

Costuming is entirely optional and we have no costume requirements, but some people enjoy making a costume for their character. Ideas for costumes can be found here.

We intend to take photographs in the first couple of sessions for the character biographies. Please see our Privacy Policy. These portraits will be displayed on your bio page, but will only be visible to logged in users (i.e. players and GMs), and the administrator of the wiki servers. You can opt-out of having your portrait displayed, or provide us with an alternative photo, at any time. On request, we will take down any photographs.

After a session, some of us will adjourn to a nearby ice-cream parlour. The option to roleplay via emails will be available until 21:00 on the Monday after session, with the turnsheet submission deadline at 23:59 that same evening. This is to give players a reasonable time in the evening to finalise their turnsheet after IC interactions have been concluded.