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 Contingency Terminology (terms relevant to this game in particular), ORPGSoc Terminology (terms commonly used in ORPGSoc 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 Contingency will run).
The name given to the mechanical system through which players can handle crises faced.
More information about Crisis Mitigation can be found here.
The finalising procedure that turns a negative into a Mind. One negative can be instantiated multiple times, even with gaps of time in-between, to make as many Minds as needed. Instantiating is unique to the Contingency.
The copying procedure that takes a snapshot of a consenting and asleep Nassian’s mind, creating a single negative. Imaging is unique to the Contingency.
Sapient artificial intelligences that are the end product of instantiating a negative. They share the mindset and memories of their respective Nassian at the time of imaging, placed into larger scale forms. All player characters will be Minds.
More information about Minds can be found here.
The home planet of the Nassians.
More information about Mythhaler can be found here.
Nassian (singular); Nassians (plural); Nassian (adjectival)
The term for the collective population of Nassigussa and Nassoids. The Nassians are the ones responsible for the creation of both Minds and the Contingency.
More information about the Nassians can be found here.
Nassigussa (singular); Nassigussa (plural); Nassigussan (adjectival)
The primary sapient organic species players will encounter in Contingency. They are the original creators of, and now fully live alongside, Nassoids.
More information about the Nassigussa, specifically, can be found here.
Nassoid (singular); Nassoids (plural); Nassoid (adjectival)
The name given to the robotic lifeforms originally created by the Nassigussa, resembling their serpent forms.
More information about Nassoids, specifically, can be found here.
What is produced at the end of imaging a Nassian. A negative contains a digital map of a Nassigussa’s neurons, or a direct copy of a Nassoid’s code, paused at the moment of imaging — akin to a still image. These negatives are neither conscious nor sapient.
An organisation developed to protect Mythhaler from times of crisis.
More information about the Contingency can be found here.
To slither with a tail along the ground. Similar terms (e.g. step, stand, stride) also take on this meaning, as it is an attempt at translating the Nassian word into human English; after all, Nassians have no legs.
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 CAMPaign Organiser, the person responsible for coming up with the idea of a society game and consequently leading it. Our CAMPO is Ben O-R.
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.
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.
Short for 'don't worry about it' – a tongue-in-cheek phrase commonly used in ORPGSoc 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.
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 Contingency.
The eight 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 Contingency (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 an IC 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 (e.g. finding out info about a character 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.
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.
A piece of writing the players submits to GMs with information about their Downtime.
Uptime refers to the bi-weekly sessions of Contingency, 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 typically represent virtual locations across the Contingency network, or occasionally distinct physical locations in Mythhaler, depending on the crisis. 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 Contingency. 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 Contingency server, see the Uptime and 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 Contingency in such a way that your experience will not be negatively impacted by needing to do so to the greatest extent possible.