Reference II will have the majority of its gameplay happening during the 6 Uptimes, which are live role-playing sessions conducted over Discord. These will be every other week, 19:00-22:00 BST on Tuesday evenings, beginning on the 14th of July and ending on the 22nd of September. Additionally, there will be an optional Character Creation session on Discord before the first Uptime, running 19:00-22:00 BST on 7th of July. This will be an opportunity to ask the GMs any questions you may still have about the game, and to come up with ideas for the character you will be playing in Reference II. After the final Uptime, there will be a Debrief session, where players and GMs will have an opportunity to talk about their characters and the plot of the game. For more information on when Sessions will be, please see the When and Where page.

If you know that you're likely to miss an Uptime, please let the GMs know in advance so that we can plan around your absence and let other players know that you won't be there. You'll still be able to send emails and write a Turnsheet (see Downtimes and Turnsheets) if you miss an uptime, though you may have to omit answers to some of the questions on the Turnsheet.

Uptimes in Reference II will represent the time that the player characters are allowed to use the Bookworms during the Exhibition. In-universe this will happen once a day, with the rest of the in-universe time being spent during Downtimes.

For an overview of how role-playing over Discord works during an Uptime, see this page. There are also a handful of special phrases called “uptime calls”, which will be used to convey information and instructions quickly. These can be found in the Glossary.

Reference II sees the player characters using the Bookworm to immerse themselves in the narrative and world of writing – whether fiction or non-fiction. These immersive experiences, known as Stories, will form the majority of the gameplay during Reference II Uptimes. GMs will primarily be playing NPCs and narrators within Stories, and the Player Characters in a Story will be able to interact with each other, the environment and the NPCs in that Story.

A Story will last for most of an Uptime, but will not resume in the following Uptime, with a different Story taking its place. During an Uptime in Reference II, there will be multiple Stories running at the same time. A character can only use one Bookworm at a time and to reflect this, players will only be able to see the Discord channels for one Story at a time. While it is expected that players will largely remain in a single Story during an Uptime, the option to switch Stories mid-Uptime does exist. For more information on how this will be managed OC, see here.

At the beginning and end of each Uptime, there will be a short period of time where PCs will be Out-of-Story in the Alusia Foundation's Café, which will lead into the email period of the upcoming Downtime. This is an opportunity for the PCs to interact outside of the settings of the Stories. It is expected that some conversations will be about that Uptime's Stories, though other topics of conversation are encouraged as well.

For more information on how Stories work in character, please see the Stories page.