Over the course of playing this game, you may come across words or phrases that you are unfamiliar with. We've separated this page into That’s All Folks! Terminology (terms relevant to this game in particular), OURPGSoc Terminology (terms commonly used in OURPGSoc that you may come across in the course of playing this game, and Discord Terminology (terms related to Discord, the social media platform over which That’s All Folks! will run).
A type of Mechanic reflecting what a character can be expected to be able to do. See Mechanics and Abilities for more details. Ability types include Beef, Gorm, Gumption, Prestige, Sneakiness, STEAM, and Wit.
A type of Ability describing a character's physical prowess.
A type of Ability describing a character's senses.
A type of Ability describing a character's durability.
A type of Ability describing a character's social position.
A type of Ability describing a character's stealth.
Stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Maths. A type of Ability describing a character's technical aptitude.
A type of Ability describing a character's mental abilities.
Mechanics that come from the character's interaction with Cartoon Physics, being abilities that are not possible or are nonsensical in the real world. See Mechanics and Cartoon Logics.
A type of Item used to make other Items. See Items for more details.
The term for a mechanical effect which acts on a character for a specified duration (e.g. 1 hour, 1 scene, the whole session). See Core Rules for more details.
The term for mechanics used to determine the outcome of PvP in most cases. See Core Rules for more details.
A special Scene in which a character leaves the show. See Curtain Calls for more details.
The most frequent type of Condition, an Injury represents a negative consequence a character has suffered. These may be physical or psychological in nature. See Injuries for more details.
An IC resource representing an object a character has which is significant enough to have mechanical effects. See Items for more details.
The standard unit of time for mechanical effects with duration in That's All Folks!, which covers a sensible narrative event and is tracked using the Scene bot. See Core Rules for more details.
Writing Conventions provide additional effects that don't come from innate character abilities, but rather, from how the character is generally portrayed in The Show. These tend to be more narrative in nature, and can help a character lean into the bittersweet elements of the game. The effects of these are most obvious when assessing the feasibility of your future plans, but may arise naturally in Uptime.. See Mechanics for more background information, and Writing Conventions for the list of Writing Conventions options to choose from.
An OC resource that reflects how close a character is to their Curtain Call. Zip is intended for particularly spectacular, impressive, or significant moments for the character. These do not have to be “big” acts which change the game; they could just be things that have small-yet-significant meaning for the character and their arc.
Zip is spent on Mechanics. See Zip for more details.
A term for roleplaying romantic or similarly emotionally intense relationships between characters.
Someone who serves the role of GM but either in a more limited capacity, for fewer sessions, or both. The list of cameo GMs can be found here.
The CAMPaign Organiser, the person responsible for coming up with the idea of a society game and consequently leading it. Our CAMPO is Conor W.
Assistant gamerunners who take direction from the GMs. They usually play NPCs, adjudicate players' interactions with the world and rules and suggest ideas to the GMs. For more information on what crew might get up to, see Crewing. For our current crew, see the Crew List.
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 over Discord after the final session. See When and Where for more details.
An opportunity for players to submit descriptions to GMs, briefly describing what their character wants to do in the next session.
In That's All Folks! this takes the form of plans for the next Uptime rather than actions the character will take “off screen”, as is normal for Society Games.
Short for 'don't worry about it' - a tongue-in-cheek phrase commonly used in OURPGSoc 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. As the show the characters are in will end at the end of the game, character Eternities will not feature in That's All Folks!.
A term for the non-mechanical 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.
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 That’s All Folks!.
The seven people who moderate the Discord Uptime sessions, read through your downtime 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 That’s All Folks! (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 a location channel to GMs, or indicating the emotional intensity of a scene is getting too much and could others please tone it down slightly.
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 location or alliances through their player's Discord roles. 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 current players. Some NPCS are listed here and in various setting pages on this wiki.
Characters played by the players rather than the GMs or crew members. You can look through the PC list here.
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. Please take a look at our PvE and PvP page for information on how the crew or GMs will respond to PvE and PvP, and our guidance to players who may wish to engage in it.
A piece of writing the players submits to GMs with information about their Downtime. In the context of That's All Folks! this may also be referred to as the Downtime.
Uptime refers to the weekly sessions of That's All Folks!, which will take place over Discord. During uptime, you may use text channels to communicate with other online Player Characters and Non-Player Characters. We strongly recommend taking a look at our Uptime and Sessions page for more information on how we will be using the Discord format.
A term for the separate chat 'rooms' within a Discord server. In-game, these will usually represent distinct locations in Pencilvania. There will also be out-of-character channels for GM announcements, player-to-GM communication, your specific player channel accessible only to you, the GMs and the crew, etc.
Some channels may be read-only, meaning that you can receive but not send messages there, and some may be entirely hidden from you, only accessible to certain players. With appropriate actions in game uptimes, perhaps these hidden channels will not be hidden from you forever…
A feature of Discord which allows an admin to easily control permissions, such as access to hidden channels, and the ability to send messages rather than simply reading them. This is a strictly OC feature of the game, and should not be used to gain IC information about other characters (e.g. their whereabouts, alliances or abilities).
The Discord server which hosts Uptime sessions of That's All Folks!. It includes both OC channels (for general discussion, game rules and tech support) and IC channels (where the roleplaying will happen). You can navigate between Discord servers using the leftmost Discord sidebar, where all the servers you are part of will be shown as circular icons. For information on accessing the That's All Folks! server, see the Uptime & Sessions page.
Uptime calls are specific phrases that may be used by a player or GM during uptime to succinctly convey something of OC significance.
The use of safety calls in roleplaying is important to help ensure that everyone is able to feel comfortable engaging in a range of IC scenarios with a wide array of people. We strongly encourage you to familiarise yourself with the safety calls below so that you are able to recognise or use them as required.
As uptime will be conducted over Discord, we have also included a range of calls related to players needing to disconnect temporarily. When using a call during an IC interaction, we encourage the use of square brackets to distinguish them as OC calls!
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 to indicate that everyone should stop acting in character and pay attention to the caller. This may be used during a session if GMs need to get the whole playerbase's attention or address a problem OC.
A call used by GMs to indicate the end of the session. Once [Time Out] is called, everyone should stop acting in character.
This is a safety call meaning that everyone in that channel must stop roleplaying the current topic. All players seeing this call must stop roleplaying the topic in question. When used by a GM, this may indicate that the topic has strayed into themes which are forbidden in the game.
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 should 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 '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 indicates during a high-stress or time-sensitive situation that you would like to pause to look something up or ask a GM about something. This call will hold for a maximum of 5 minutes, after which it is automatically void.
This call can be made after any other call to indicate that it is all good now, you are ready to jump back into the roleplay and the IC situation can proceed as normal.
Short for 'be right back', 'got to go,' and 'away from keyboard', respectively, and are used to indicate that a player needs to drop out of play for OC reasons.
[BRB] is used when you need to leave your keyboard briefly but intend to be back soon, especially if you anticipate returning before a particular interaction or scene has ended.
[GTG] indicates that the user is logging off or needs to leave, either for an extended period of time or for the rest of session. Others will not wait for you to continue roleplaying but will not assume that your character has disappeared IC.
[AFK] can be used to indicate that a player is stepping away from their keyboard for a moment. This may be because they are feeling uncomfortable or overwhelmed, because they notice their internet quality dropping, or simply because they need to take care of something away from their keyboard. As GMs, we are aware that there are many reasons players may need to disconnect temporarily, and we aim to run That's All Folks! in such a way that your experience will not be negatively impacted by needing to do so to the greatest extent possible.