Have you ever looked at someone and wondered, what is going on inside their head? – Inside out

Welcome to Brainwave, a game about exploring the human mind. To get started on character creations, check out Character Creation for instructions on building a Brainwave psychic or Sample Characters for inspiration. If you have any questions, feel free to contact the GMs at gm@brainwave.oxfordrpg.com, or message a specific GM via Discord or via their email.

Every session of Brainwave will run from 7-10pm BST on a Tuesday.

Brainwave is a game about two worlds. The magical, often frantic, adventures that we can create for ourselves inside our own minds, contrasted with the modern, down-to-earth adventures that our real lives can take us on. Adventures no less quirky, but far more grounded in the strangeness of the mundane.

Players will be psychics, people possessing the ability to project an avatar into the minds of other people and interact with their innermost mental workings, thoughts and emotions. Anyone without psychic powers is called a Receptive, so called because they are capable of receiving psychic signals, but can't emit them, whereas psychics can emit psychic signals but not receive them. Psychic power can be used recreationally, but is also utilised to aid people in coping with mental problems they might be experiencing.

However, all psychics are immune to any exercise of psychic power. As much as you can enjoy exploring other people's minds, you can never know your own in the same way, nor can you be helped in this way. Brainwave thrives on this divide, the utilisation of the out of the ordinary, the fantastic and the absurd contrasting with the tangible, the normal and the plausible.

Brainwave will aim to provide an environment where players can explore this contrast, as well as the themes of mental health, imagination and emotion that arises out of this setting. The game incentivises and encourages the balancing of the two worlds, and will aim to explore the consequences stemming from a lack of imagination, and an excess of it.

Brainwave has 3 parts:

• Uptime in which players roleplay their characters’ interactions and describe their actions over Discord text channels in real time. This will include the opportunity to interact with NPCs played by GMs, and to plan downtime actions
• Downtime, which consists of:
  • Emails, using the game's email system, in which players may continue to communicate after Uptime has ended until an hour before the Turnsheet deadline. This may be used for last minute planning before writing Turnsheets, as well as any other communication or roleplay players wish to engage in. Players are asked to not use any other means for IC communication during Downtime, as GMs are able to read all emails sent via this system. This is important for the moderation of the game.
  • Turnsheets, in which players submit a summary of what they plan to achieve during Downtime to the wiki. This will be read by the GM team who will provide a written response before the next session.

For more information, see Intro to the Wiki System or Playing the Game.

To complement the themes of the game, this game will have players submit two actions for their turnsheet (see above). These are called Primary and Secondary Actions. As their name might imply, Primary Actions are your main objective for the week between conference sessions. This should be understood in a story and flavour sense, as Primary Actions will receive a full, and more flavourful, write up of roughly 400 words. Secondary Actions are not necessarily smaller in scope, but should be used as actions that you'd prefer to receive a write up closer to a list of your achievements and summary of goings on, than a full description of events. Secondary Actions are best used for research, setting up plots, or laying groundwork for future Primary Actions.

Unfortunately, as we have limited GMs and time, we are capping the number of players in Brainwave to 16 players. If we receive more submissions than that, places will be allocated in this order of priority-

1. Current students who have not played a society game before.
2. Current students who have played a society game before.
3. Former students and other non-student OURPGsoc members.

If it is not possible to allocate spaces to all of the people in a given category, names will be selected at random from that category until 16 spaces are filled.

Character creation deadline is 10pm BST on Friday 12th August 2022. Shortly after this, there will be an announcement as to whether a ballot is necessary. If that comes to pass, we will do the ballot in our GM meeting on Saturday, and everyone will be emailed to let them know if they have a place or not by the end of Saturday evening.

It's important to note that it's not vital to read and memorise everything on this wiki! If you find it overwhelming or don't have the time, Character Creation, Psychics and Museford have the basic information you would need to get started. It is also recommended to read Style and Tone and Conduct and Themes Policy to get an idea of the tone of the game and which potentially sensitive themes might appear in it. Otherwise, read what catches your eye! If you have any questions, feel free to contact the GMs at gm@brainwave.oxfordrpg.com.

To read about the Setting, try the pages under the Setting sidebar or Museford.

To get started on character creation, try Character Creation.

When you're ready to submit a character do so using this form.