A roleplaying game is somewhere between amateur dramatics and collaborative storytelling. You turn up, create a character to play, and play them! There are no scripts or lines, no set outcomes to what will happen – just a setting, a bunch of other characters to interact with, and some GMs to make sure it all runs smoothly.
Most importantly, roleplaying is about having fun and creating stories with other players. Absolutely no experience is required to play a 'Society Game' (indeed, it's designed to offer an easy route in for new roleplayers), and there will be plenty of supportive people on hand to help you out if you're confused about any aspect of the game. Turn up and enjoy yourself!
Unlike many traditional roleplaying games, Brainwave has no mechanical system for calculating success or failure, apart from what makes a good story for all involved.
As with other Society Games, the game is divided between Uptime and Downtime. In the weekly sessions that make up Uptime, the PCs interact in real-time over the text channels of a Discord server. In those sessions the players will act out their interactions at the Cranium Conference taking place in Cassidy's head.
'Downtime' takes place over one week both IC and OC. Over the next two OC days (until 23:00 on the Thursday after each session) there is an opportunity to have any useful conversations by sending other players in-character emails, as you prepare your Turnsheet. A Turnsheet is an outline of what your character plans to do over the next IC week; you submit it to the GMs, and we write up a description of how your plans play out. This includes both dealing with mundane issues in Breadspace (the world of Museford outside of people's minds) and in Headspace (the world inside someone's mind).
There is a system for these Turnsheet actions, detailed here – but don't feel you need to memorise it all; we're more than happy to help you out if you're having trouble working out what you want to do in the early weeks!
We'd suggest starting in the following places:
The Setting pages: Your character can be aware of anything in this section, and it hopefully contains a lot of things that can inspire character ideas.
Intro to the Wiki System: If you are new to Society games, and want to be brought up to speed on how the wiki works.
Creating a Character: When you want to start putting together your character for the game.
Style and Tone: To get some initial idea about the feel of the game, without reading through every page on the wiki.
Playing the Game: This will get you up to speed on how the Discord system, email and Turnsheets work, if you don't yet know.
If you haven't roleplayed before, or you have but not in this kind of game, then there are a few things to keep in mind.
OURPGSoc has a Conduct and Themes (CAT) Policy, which specifies which themes are and aren't allowed to come up in the game (or in some cases themes that can only be handled in certain contexts/need careful signposting). This is to ensure the comfort of everyone involved, so please familiarise yourself with it.
In the time between sessions there will inevitably be lots of talk between players, such as in the optional chats on the OURPGSoc Discord after each session. If you find out any information OC that your character wouldn't have access to IC, then please do your best to avoid using it. Ideally, you should only act on things that your character knows. Doing otherwise is called metagaming.
When roleplaying, getting into character is always fun. However, it is easy to take quarrels and disputes with another character out of sessions and into the real world. Hostility towards other people out of sessions is not what this game is about, so try to remember characters and players are two different things.
Further detail on this can be found in the Conduct and Themes policy.