Over the course of Happy Campers, you may come across words or phrases that you are unfamiliar with. This page mainly contains Out of Character terms (information, events, places and people which exist in the real world, i.e. outside the world of Happy Campers), but there are a few In Character terms (terms which the refer to things in the world of Happy Campers) as well.

This is the country where Camp Ohiocester is located. A mix of American and British landscapes and culture characterise the country. With GM discretion, almost any combination of British and American items is possible. For example, the Yellowcliffs of Dovermont are a very popular tourist attraction, and shops in Britmerica include Walko and John Costco.

This is the name of the programme you have been signed up to, and is taking place at Camp Ohiocester. Students of any subject can take part in the course (if you can justify it to the college administration—though that's not very difficult to do…)

A term for roleplaying romantic or similarly emotionally intense relationships between characters. If you're interested in having a romantic ballgown with someone's character, be sure to get their OC consent first, and pay attention to their communication and comfort, as ballgowning can be particularly intense.

If you want there to be a possibility of NPCs initiating a ballgown with your character, consider taking the Romance Me Playstyle Quirk (see Quirks).

The CAMPaign Organiser; the person responsible for coming up with the idea for a society game and consequently leading it. Our CAMPO is Rei.

Downtime refers to the period of time between sessions, which will last one week in character. There will be an emailing period for which the deadline will be Wednesdays at 11:00 pm BST, and you will also submit a Turnsheet which details what you wish for you character to do for the remaining part of the week—the deadline for this Wednesdays at 11:59 pm BST. We strongly recommend taking a look at our Downtimes & Turnsheets page for more information.

After the final session of Happy Campers, players will be asked to submit a Graduation (otherwise known as 'Eternities') instead of a conventional Turnsheet. The GM write-up for this will give an impression of how each character is affected by the aftermath of the game, rather than detailing a short-term action.

A term for the non-mechanical and non-plot aspects of a game which add flavour and nuance. Think along the lines of character backstories, casual interactions between characters, and building up your personal narrative around the basic mechanics of the game.

The people who play NPCs, write Turnsheet responses, 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 the GMs and NPCs page to get to know more about us!

“IC” is used to refer to information, events, places, and characters which exist in game.

“OC” or “OOC” refers to things outside of the game.

Characters played by the GMs rather than you, the players. You can look through the NPC list here.

Characters played by you, the players, rather than the GMs. You can look through the PC list (once they're submitted) here.

PvP refers to conflict between individual player characters. Whilst we don't expect PvP to be a very big part of the game, it would occur through Turnsheets and only with mutual OC consent, at which point the GMs will try and write something that is fun and fulfilling for both players.

To be clear, we do not expect IC physical PvP combat to come up in Happy Campers. Verbal PvP interactions may occur, but should comply with the CAT policy.

PvE refers to conflict between a player character and the world around them. PvE also primarily takes place in Turnsheets, so it can get a proper narrative description. In extreme cases, PvE may take place in Uptime, but it will be harder for GMs to rule, as we'll be busy. We strongly advise saving any PvE actions for turnsheet submissions, if possible.

The Discord server which hosts character creations and general questions for Happy Campers. It has OC channels for general discussion, game rules and tech support. You can navigate between Discord servers using the leftmost Discord sidebar. More information about how to use the Discord server can be found in the Playing a Discord Game page. To access the Happy Campers server, click here ↗.

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.

It will be denoted by [Time In]

A call used by GMs to indicate that the session has ended, and everyone should stop acting in character and pay attention to the caller.

It will be denoted by [Time Out]

A call used by GMs to interrupt RP time with an announcement, usually something occurring in the game that would be too involved to act out.

It will be denoted by [Time Freeze]

There are a number of safety calls that can be used by players at any point to act as formalised ways to remove yourself from situations involving uncomfortable topics.

You needn't use these if you prefer to simply talk any issues out using the OC message (denoted with square brackets, or sometimes spoiler tags (You can spoiler tag a message with ||text||), but these provide an agreed upon system to help navigate the sensitive topics that can arise during RP.

A short piece of writing completed by players each week, used to let the GMs know what each player character is doing during Downtime. You can find templates for each Turnsheet at the bottom of your user page, and will need to create and then edit the template according to the guidelines found here. Your Turnsheet can be freely edited up until 23:59 on the Wednesday following the session, at which point (unless a GM has agreed to give you a Turnsheet extension) it will be taken as final. The GM team will then read each Turnsheet, discuss what happens during Downtime, and write up a response for each player. You can find an example Turnsheet here. It is worth noting both what the player writes and what the GMs write in response are called Turnsheets.

Uptime refers to the live sessions of Happy Campers, which will take place online on our Discord server (see When and Where). During Uptime, you communicate with other player characters and non-player characters and react to the world around you. We strongly recommend taking a look at our Uptime page for more information.