FLRP Acronyms, Abbreviations & Jargon

FLRP Acronyms & Abbreviations

• RP / rp: 'RolePlay' - used as both a noun and a verb.
• LRP: 'Live RolePlay' - Hopefully if you're here then you already know a bit about what roleplaying is. Live roleplaying is where, rather than sit around a table or someone's room describing their actions, those involved take the part of their character and physically act out their actions and conversations. Some LRPs include combat, but most will use various systems to decide the outcome of combat without people actually swinging phys-rep weaponry around.
• LARP: 'Live Action RolePlay' - This is a LRP in which combat definitely does take the form of people fighting each other with padded latex weaponry. The Nocturne FLRP is a LARP game.
• FLRP: 'Fantasy Live RolePlay' - There are live roleplaying games of many, many genres - this specifies that the game in question is one set in a mythical fantasy world, which will generally mean that it contains magick, weird and wonderful creatures and races, and mediæval level technology, which usually won't include gunpowder.
• OURPGSoc / RPGSoc: 'the Oxford University RolePlaying Games Society' - This is the university society under whose auspices FLRP officially runs. You don't have to be a member of this society to come along and FLRP, nor do you have to have ever been a member of Oxford University to FLRP or to join the society, but it is from RPGSoc that we get most of our membership, and we share some resources with them (such as mailing list provision and advertising).
• IC: 'In Character' - Stuff which happens within the gameworld, as opposed to 'Out Of Character', stuff which happens in the real world. People are said to be In Character when pretending to be a character and Out Of Character when they're being who they are in real life.
  For example: Out Of Character - Bob, playing the mighty guardian Alexandor, has hit Larry, playing a weedy goblin, 5 times with his sword. Larry has run out of hits, and falls to the ground pretending to be dead. In Character, Alexandor the guardian has just dealt the goblin a series of blows with his sword, slaying the annoying creature.
• OoC / OOC: 'Out Of Character' - See 'IC' (In Character) above.
• IRL: 'In Real Life' - As opposed to in a roleplaying game. Essentially means the same thing and as OoC, but generally used in slightly different contexts.
• PC: 'Player Character' - This is a character which has been created by a player and is played by that same player through a whole series of adventures.
• NPC: 'Non-Player Character' - This is a character created by the FLRP Organiser or by a GM, who is there to fill a role in the background or in a particular adventure. Many NPCs only turn up during one adventure and are never seen again, while others are fairly permanent fixtures in the gameworld. A recurring NPC will often be played by a different GM or monster each time you meet them, but IC it's still the same person.
• GM: 'Game Master' - This is the person who writes and runs an adventure. Each time you go out FLRPing, there'll likely be a different person as the GM.
• XP / xp: 'Experience Points' - Each time you go on a Nocturne FLRP game you will receive a number of experience points, which can be spent on improving your PC.
• hx: 'hexa' - Hexagonal coins made of a strange black metal known as blackalt, hexa form the currency of Outpost and Nocturne.

FLRP Jargon

• Battleboard: This is a sheet or two of paper on which a record is kept of how many hits, power points, skill uses, potions, etc. each of the players has, which is regularly updated during the course of the adventure. At the end of most encounters, the GM or someone else acting on the GM's behalf will call the players together and ask them how many hits they took, how many power points and skills they used, etc. and note down the changes on the battleboard. This is known as 'battleboarding'.
• Encounter: An adventure is split into a number of individual encounters. Each encounter starts when "Time-In!" is called, and ends when "Time-Out!" is called, and usually takes place in a different part of both Shotover OoC and the gameworld IC.
• FLRP Organiser: The person in overall charge of stuff. The FLRP Organiser looks after the weapons and the props and (occasionally) the money, organises transport, sorts out who's going to be the GM for each FLRP, etc. A new FLRP Organiser is elected annually by the membership of OURPGSoc at the end of each Hilary Term.
• Monster: ...whereas a monster will play various different creatures and NPCs as assigned by the GM, usually a new one for each encounter (although often something fairly generic such as 'a zombie' or 'a wolf'). In most encounters, most of the monsters will end up dying or running away.
• Phys-rep: This stands for 'physical replica'. Basically, this is a prop, anything used OoC to represent an object that exists within the gameworld. Phys-reps range from the realistic (e.g. a bottle full of coloured liquid as a phys-rep for a potion) to the more imagination-requiring (e.g. a large piece of paper with a stick figure drawn on it as a phys-rep for a priceless painting in an ornate antique frame).
• Player: During an adventure, the participants are split into two groups. A player plays their own personal heroic character throughout the adventure...
• Time-In: During Time-In, players are playing the parts of their characters, and monsters are playing whichever parts they have for that encounter, and IC stuff happens.
• Time-Out: During Time-Out, everyone is OoC as themselves and no IC stuff happens.

If there are any other FLRP-related or LRP-related acronyms, abbreviations or pieces of jargon which you find confusing, you'd like explained or you think should be included on this page, then please let me know and I'll add them on.