Okal Rel Universe: The Red Reach Game

by Lynda Williams

Originally written c. 2000 . Updated in July 2006 to correct typos and publication history.

Introduction

In Red Reach, you play a whole family of Sevolites, intent on re-incarnating its best souls and making one of them the Liege of Vrel. To do so your Sevolites must be better born and more experienced than their opposition, but not at the cost of violating Okal Rel’s laws because the penalties for doing so are very real and reach even beyond the grave into the twilight of Waiting Souls.

Welcome to the role-playing incarnation of the Okal Rel Universe, the setting of a science fiction series published by Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy and a parallel shared universe project, edited by the series founder, that is published by Fandom Press, a division of Windstorm Creative.

The Novel Series

I am Lynda Williams, the universe's founder and one of the authors of the first novel, Throne Price. My co-author is Alison Sinclair. Throne Price is book #4 of the main series planned by myself or by myself and Alison. Edge Fantasy and Science Fiction of Calgary published book #1, The Courtesan Prince, in 2005. Book #3, Righteous Anger, is expected out in Fall 2006. The Guide to the Okal Rel Universe is available from Windstorm Creative's Fandom Press imprint as of August 2006. For complete information about publications see the BOOKS link on the ORU homepage.

The Game Potential

Despite the fact I met my husband at a Dungeons and Dragons game, the focus of my books was never gaming. They chronicle a series of culture shocks that rock the world of the Sevolites after they re-discover another, very different branch of mankind called the Reetions. The idea of basing a game on the background material for the Sevolite side of this conflict was suggested by students working in my web-development lab at the University of Northern B.C..

In a fit of extended elation over the upcoming publication of Throne Price, I had started giving out Okal Rel T-shirts to worthies who performed some heroic service for the Universe (such as doing graphics for the web site), or had bailed me out in a crisis (like subbing for a lab instructor who failed to show up). Naturally I had to explain the rel symbol on the T-shirt and the premises of the Okal Rel world view. Minus the one-of-a-kind events covered in the novels themselves, the Okal Rel Universe sounded to them like something I could base a game on.

I had thought as much myself once or twice. After all, I had played D&D and my brother was a long-term war-gamer of the historical variety who had exposed me to a few ideas. I was even working on a paper explaining the lifestyles of the incorrigibly Vrellish (the least domestic of the Okal Rel Universe bloodlines) from the point of view of evolutionary psychology (although all Sevolites have artifical origins).

Coming across a call for authors for a brand new e-zine looking for surprising new ideas about gaming was the proverbial last straw. (I was way under-prepared to do anything like that, but it did prompt some thinking on my part, resulting in this article.)

Since I am a dilettante gamer, and primarily interested in writing the books, I hope this article will inspire one or more of you to collaborate in fleshing out the ideas presented here. Or perhaps merely entertain.

I reserve the right to a veto if a game did evolve, since it is important to me that the principle themes of the ORU be represented in all of its manifestations. But it is such a large and complex universe, with a thousand years of history and many reaches full of quarrelsome people, I am sure it could not get cramped.

For example, the gaming scenario I present here is a snap shot of life in one particular reach, known as Red Reach, during a particular phase of Vrellish history. Many details, such as the nature of birth ranks, are also simplified. (Anyone who wants to know the whole story in all its glory will just have to buy the books or surf the website.)

Red Reach

Red Reach is home of the Vrellish, widely acknowledged to be the fiercest race of Sevildom.

The Vrellish are such good pilots and so good at challenge duels, used by Sevolites to resolve issues of law, that they might well have conquered the universe – if they could just get along with each other and get organized. But they can’t, which is both your pleasure and your bane as you struggle to boost your own family up to the top of the heap by becoming the Liege of Vrel.

Here are the ground rules. First, the struggle is a generational one in which getting the best genes for your descendants is of prime importance. Second, your honor rating is a vital statistic. Damage to your family honor can bankrupt you, hinder the reincarnation of your Waiting Souls, and relieve your enemies of any penalties for behaving dishonorably toward you and yours. Each family has an honor rating as well as each individual. The honor of the liege has a disproportionate impact on the honor rating of the house. (If your liege falls into dishonorable behaviour accidentally, it may behove you as a house to cause a family member to remove him or her in a title challenge.)

The Founder

Each house begins with a founder whose name becomes the family name of the house. For example if your founder is Sant Vrel, then you are House Sant, and use Sant as a surname for all family members regardless of parentage. Most Vrellish names begin with S or V and have a lot of consonants in them. The founder needs a date of birth and death. (Something in the vicinity of 200 pre-treaty is a good ball park date for the game.) Use the founder's dates and the current date to make the ages of children and grandchildren reasonable.

The House

Rolling up a house (presuming a mechanism akin to D&D’s) includes an allocation of commoners to run your space stations and grow your food, an allocation of nobleborns to keep the commoners in line, and a handful of highborn descendants of the founder (probably children and grandchildren). Highborn characters are the only ones that you keep track of individually. Commoners and nobleborns are dealt with en mass. You also need at least one space station, planetary demesne or moon base to serve as your homeland, and at least one battlewheel with at least one fighter-ship (rel-fighter) per living highborn.

Each highborn comes with a gender, a percentage indicating how Sevolite he or she is, and stats for sword prowess, navigation abilities, shake-up experience and – very importantly – personality features that determine how hot-headed and libidinous he or she is. The use of personality will be described in connection with encounters.

Living highborns in your family start out between 1 and 30 years old. At least some must be adults. (Highborns mature in three turns including the turn in which they are born. Each turn is 5 years long. A highborn with a particularly strong soul may mature in two turns, including the turn in which he or she is born.)

Getting and Losing Highborns

Highborns are valuable fighters and breeding stock. The more you have, the more you can afford to lose in duels and space battles and gratuitous accidents. The more Sevolite a highborn is, the better. A character’s Sevolite percentage is a major baseline statistic, and of course will also determine how much Sevolite prowess he or she can pass on to children. The souls you want to re-incarnate won’t be reborn in anything but vessels at least as Sevolite as they were last time around. At least that is what they would prefer. Your house wants to attract the very best and strongest souls out of the ancestral pool, and you and your enemies all belong to the Vrellish race of Sevildom.

A character must be 50% Sevolite or better to be highborn. (Actual rules in the novel series differ, for quirky reasons, and could be used if one preferred.)

Now and then a lucky roll will create a highborn in the ranks of your nobleborns – or an unlucky roll if this was a"whim of the Gods" that tied up one of your prime females for a turn when a better opportunity was waiting at the next encounter.

If you have a larger crop of offspring in a given term than you have Waiting Souls to embody, you may play the odds for attracting a new soul to your house. Waiting Souls of enemy houses can be enticed away but get a saving throw in which their loyalty factors. (Loyalty ranking may be determined by respective honor ratings of the two houses, years of life spent belonging to their previous house, the attractiveness of the new body’s Sevolite percentage, and how long the soul has been waiting.) If your house has no souls of its own to incarnate and cannot get a rival soul to sign on, a soul is "generated" from the ancestral pool and becomes one of yours. Such souls are be less desirable, on the whole, than ones with more experience. (Players may or may not want to enforce gender continuity in re-incarnations.) The Vrellish are not natural humans, and genders are equal for the purposes of combat, but women do play a different role procreatively. Besides, requiring a match might be more challenging and an aid to character development. The gender of an available body should be determined at random.

See also: article Sevolite Sexuality.

Waiting Souls

Highborns retain their stats when they die. Their age at death is added to a cumulative "years lived" value. The years lived as a member of a given house is also kept track of for loyalty saving throws.

Waiting Souls tend to dislike waiting. The longer they have to wait the weaker their loyalty becomes and the more their stats degrade making it harder to "remember" their skills when they are re-born. Waiting Souls understand the importance of honor since Okal Rel exists to ensure the Vrellish do not destroy the sand-box while they fight over possession of the toys. Living flying in the vicinity of a past shake-up in which pilots died have to role saving throws against the local Waiting Souls. Souls may attach under direction of their house liege (i.e. the player) if their loyalty holds. All Waiting Souls, regardless of house, will attack anyone who fails an honor saving throw.

If a Waiting Soul succeeds, the pilot ‘s grip is handicapped. Grip is the quality which prevents pilots from time slipping.

Space Travel

Places in Red Reach come with a set of travel-times separating them and are connected by known space lanes where a pilot can be reasonably sure he or she will not get lacerated by dust or objects as they "skim reality"

Reality Skimming is what Sevolites were made for. It is nonetheless a major hazard.

Pilots can lose their "grip", suffer "shimmer" damage or get lost. It may be expedient, on routine trips, to make a package of the risks and resolve which evil the character has to roll a saving throw for only after the fact. Shimmer will always reduce hit points and make it wise to wait at least a few days before engaging in a fight, but this should be taken for granted except in special circumstances such as a raid. It is dishonorable not to allow an opponent in a duel to recover from the trip before holding the fight. If a game master wished to specialize in space issues, he or she can draw on Okal Rel Universe detail about how net displacements are achieved using a mix of shimmer and gap exposure, but a generic solution is probably better to start.

Normally ships don’t travel more than five at a time, to reduce mutual interference. Unless pilots are experienced, flying in the company of other pilots increases the risk, even if they are friendly pilots. If a pilot passes through a haunted area, malicious intent on the part of Waiting Souls increases the risk to the pilot.

Loss of Grip due to Gap, is what pilots fear most. If the resulting time slip is serious, the pilot’s soul becomes eternally Lost. Lost Souls cannot be re-born. Like Waiting Souls, they can torment the living until they fade out but are less discriminating.

Despite all its ills, space travel is quick for Sevolites and normally negligible in terms of time – barring a time slip. Time slip of a year or more is possible, but the longer the pilot slips for the less the odds of ever making it back and eventually the pilot will become a Lost Soul and become a navigation hazard until he or she fades away.

Shake-ups

Okal Rel requires that honorable highborns settle their differences by arranged duels, but there are always times when that system breaks down and conflict occurs in space.

Reality Skimming pilots fight each other by flying too close. Since they are already travelling faster than the speed of light, light weapons are pointless and so are projectiles. Shake-ups are like a sort of cosmic bumper car fight.

This means the risk to any single pilot is directly proportional to the net number of pilots in the vicinity, regardless of whose pilots they are. This effect can be mitigated by the experience of friendly pilots, and made worse by the experience of unfriendly pilots. Staying in the same place too long causes damage to the space in the vicinity, which increases the risk for all concerned.

The more Sevolite a pilot, the faster he or she can fly and the longer he or she can sustain higher speeds. "Speeds" are actually subjective net displacements, and are measures in "skim factors". A skim’fac of 1 is a walking pace. Highborns can do up to 5 with incremental stress. Doing 8 is mind-boggling and 10 is almost guaranteed to produce a dead pilot or Lost Soul.

The same skim’fac can be attained with more gap exposure (countered by the pilot’s Grip score) or more shimmer exposure (countered by the pilot’s physical endurance or hit points). High shimmer also increases the risk of sudden death due to manifesting around a stray bit of flotsam in the neighborhood. The more ships cracking up, the greater the risk of that.

Shake-ups happen when a player house or some non-player house becomes too vulnerable, due to a low honor rating, and is attacked by one or more houses intent on a take over. Such disputes may arise over disputed challenge rights, or be opportunistic at the cost of an honor penalty.

A shake-up is not dishonorable in and of itself, provided no lawful duel right was ignored, the sides are more or less evenly balances, or there is some honorable excuse for the attack.

Honor Penalties

Dishonorable behavior may be involuntary or intended.

The involuntary kind happens in encounters or shake-ups. A character with a strong grip (a measure of willfulness as well as piloting prowess) and bad temper is at risk of dishonorably attacking the successful duelist who just killed a family member.

A pilot in the midst of a battle may accidentally collide with a habitat. In the former case, vendetta can result if someone is killed as a result.

Damage to habitat is the worst offense and impacts the whole family.

Sexual attractions can also lead to dishonorable incidents, although most such cases result in fights not pregnancies. (For reasons derived from evolutionary psychology, explored elsewhere, Vrellish women are physiologically capable of forcing the issue with Vrellish males of sufficient natural libido. The dynamics are driven by everyone’s desire to gain more Sevolite off-spring. Hence a Vrellish woman may be motivated to force a more Sevolite Vrellish man, but not a less Sevolite one. She may even be supported in this by her relatives, if they too fail their saving throws. The enemy male would be "gifting" a more dangerous fighter to a rival group. Males may also attack unwilling females if they fail their saving throws, even though it is nearly impossible for the male’s family to succeed in obtaining a child this way. In either case, the least dire consequence is a nasty fight. If the assault succeeds, the offending house suffers an honor penalty. Mutual attraction must differ by a wide margin for an actual attack to take place. Usually the "sex rules" lead to mutual folly or a failed pass. If relatives are present, a melee may result. Pregnancy is less likely to result from an attack than a willing encounter (planned or not) and regardless of which gender offends. An actual rape entitles the offended house to an advantage in future conflicts with the offending house by virtue of a justified vendetta.

Vendettas for dishonorable murder in a duel situation are also empowering and it is considered despicable to harm young children, a pregnant woman or commoners.

Breaking honor bonds or failing to honor a challenge right subtract from one’s honor. On the other hand, ailing honor can be shored up by challenging and killing someone less honorable than yourself; committing resources to restoring damage or clearing space lanes; saving the last surviving member of someone else’s family; protecting children or commoners; compensating the offended family directly; granting the Liege of Vrel one or more family members to serve him or her as retainers and other good deeds. Honor can also be re-gained by punishing offenders within one’s own family, trouncing non-player houses that leave themselves vulnerable through dishonorable acts (incidentally enriching oneself in the process) and providing service to a liege.

Oaths and Honor Bonds

Families, either player or non-player, may form alliances either via honor bonds or an oath of fealty.

An honor bond is a contract. The cost, in honor point, of breaching the contract, is put right into it. Fights can arise over whether a contract was or was not breached. The Liege of Vrel rules on such matters at an annual gathering called the Swearing. So many fights take place prior to any ruling about who has honor on their side. The Liege of Vrel (played by the game master until a successful take over, or by the winner of the last game) can be a bit biased or arbitrary, particularly in ambiguous cases, although always at the risk of taking an honor hit.

Honor bonds are concerned with the exchange of goods or services – for example escort protection for a freight ship against renegade non-player pirates or food exports from planetary holdings. The Liege of Vrel has a monopoly on goods originating from court. (This could be played up or cut out. For example, in the novels a drug called klinoman is treated as currency because it is useful in preventing post-flight coma and cannot be obtained except from a single source.)

Child contracts are a special form of honor bond. They are legal arrangements between lieges for a child to be sired. Usually the child is kept by the mother’s house. The contract stipulates the consequences for challenge rights. That is, the contract can state that the child will not inherit the gifting parent’s claim to challenge for a given title. Such contracts are witnessed by third parties. Nothing is written down. If a conflict arises in which witnesses are either dead or cannot unanimously recall the terms of the contract (a roll if they are non-player houses), the situation can become ambiguous. Appeal can be made to the Liege of Vrel. In the meantime, the ambiguity may result in a refused challenge and a shake-up over the contested territory.

The most significant bond is the vassal oath. All houses are sworn vassals of Liege Vrel. Nobleborns may be organized into houses sworn to your player house, if desired. Highborn houses may swear to a more prestigious house. If you have a house sworn to you, you can expect a proportion of its Sevolites to serve you as retainers and a portion of its produce in tax. In exchange, you are obliged to protect the vassal house from other houses or suffer an honor penalty. Vassal houses expect beneficial child-gifting offers if they serve you well and may decide to swear to a new liege at the next Swearing if disappointed.

A vassal oath cannot be broken, with honor, between Swearings, unless the liege house has suffered a serious honor embarrassment.

Encounters

Once a turn, houses send their lieges and entourage to attend the Swearing hosted by the Liege of Vrel.

This is the biggest event of the turn, where people swap rumors, get into fights, have affairs, declare honor bonds and hear the Liege of Vrel rule on any disputed events of the previous turn. A few brawls and melees are to be expected and it isn’t unusual for there to be a few deaths as a result. Fighting with a sword is always legal, provided it is done by honorable rules of conduct.

The Swearing concludes with weaker houses pledging their oaths to stronger ones, and the stronger ones pledging to the Liege of Vrel.

Role playing conversations may be employed, or automated "risk" roles for various hazards and opportunities.

Houses decide what events (if any) they will attend and who to send. Possible events include tournaments, to gain sword experience and test your best duelists against those of other houses. Houses may also decide to gain honor and possibly lands by going to the rescue of houses in distress or to avenge a breach of honor. (If two players decide, privately, to follow up on the same rumor, they will have to play out the resulting encounter.) Liege Vrel may also require vassals to sort out certain jobs, where they may or may not encounter others tagging along for their own reasons. Maybe just to keep them honest.

Women highborns who become pregnant are not able to participate in any follow up encounters for the first year of the turn. They must also role a saving throw to find out if they miscarry travelling back to the homeland. The more Sevolite the child, the less likely that will happen. If they stay with Liege Vrel until the children are born, to avoid the risk, some service or payment will be expected in return.

Houses that intend to take part in more than one event during the same one year segment of the turn must split up their forces.

Typical events might be: service Liege Vrel’s duty to the Reach by cleaning up some pirates; descend on a dishonorable house Liege Vrel has declared open season on due to bad behavior, attend a tournament to inspect a rival champion, purposefully throw your women at the men of a house you would like to gain a challenge right to by sending them to a party the men are likely to attend, dispatch family members to service a child-contract, devote some people’s time to training young highborns of your house, explore, visit a holding of your own to determine the cause of unrest, challenge for title to a related house near enough to yours in strength to force the issue; assign family members to implement honor bonds you have signed.

The liege of your house can give instructions to his or her family members, but there is always a chance a Vrellish highborn will do something spontaneous due to a failed saving throw. Some, of course, are more prone to causing you trouble than others. On a really bad day, the liege of a player’s house may even be challenged by a family member who has grown too strong or just failed a saving throw against cockiness. If the liege loses, of course, the family is only down one highborn and the player continues running the house as before. Since death can be accidental as well, a liege ought to have a named heir at any given time just to ensure a smooth transition – at least in the short term.

Duels

Personal resolution of conflicts by the laws of Okal Rel, require that a liege to accept a legitimate challenge for his or her title. Title duels are to the death. A player liege is obliged to fight all of his or her own challenge duels. Others can be undertaken by a champion.

Exhibition duels are usually to first blood, although death can always result due to exceptional bad luck. Lieges may also decide not to risk their honor by agreeing to resolve a potential space combat with a contract duel. These can be to first blood or to the death and can be fought by champions. If such a duel is supposed to be to first blood, but results in death due to a bad role, the injured house may attack anyhow and trust that the Liege of Vrel will rule in their favor if a complaint is brought against them next Swearing.

Liege titles can be held, separately by vassals, which is a crucial use of them. A highborn liege can appoint a family member to be liege of a particular space station and another to be liege of the family’s slice of a moon base. These sub-lieges must be less Sevolite than the liege of their greater house to whom they speak their personal oath. If one of them is taken out by a rival, the principle liege can challenge in turn, decide to pass, or take it up with the liege of the successful challenger to negotiate a settlement. If there is disagreement about challenge right, or too great an imbalance of space power, the original liege may resort to blockades or shake-ups. It is moderately dishonorable to dispute the validity of win by a ‘poor’ relative by sending in the fleet, but if the issue can be resolved without knocking any real estate about it might be worth the penalty. The ultimate check on this sort of behavior is opposition from a fleet that can fight back. It helps if the claim of the usurper is at least a bit fuzzy, since the Liege of Vrel is less likely to care what you do. A strong ruling against you would result in other houses getting the go ahead to earn honor by straightening you out. Of course, if you have just about as many vassals as the Liege of Vrel and are almost ready to challenge him or her yourself – you may not care.

Building Up Your House

To gain superior fleet pressure, you need ships as well as highborns to pilot them.

To get ships you need commoners and nobleborns to raise food for themselves and you, and produce something to sell. You might specialize in wine or natural materials, or devote years of your highborns’ lives to Liege Vrel’s service on a contract basis to earn court currencies. Child-gifting can also be remunerated in court currency for buying ships, but can rebound on you in the form of future title challenges. People don’t like to sign away challenge rights, and even when they do the stipulation may not outlast the liege who agreed to it. Most of your fellow Vrellish, and Liege Vrel, acknowledge natural challenge rights. And genotyping is readily available to prove who sired whom.

A game master may or may not want to allow lieges to develop their own ship building yards in space, but if so the very best ships should still come from court via Liege Vrel. The Vrellish just don’t make as good engineers, all in all, as other Sevolites. Unless you want to take the risk of educating commoners …

Conclusion

Reviewing my handiwork, I suffer the dual pressures to trim it back radically and flesh it out with even more details. That is probably a good sign it is time to stop and see what more experienced gamers make of the exercise.

I was also surprise by the rather nasty picture conveyed of Vrellish existence, whereas the good guys in the novels really are more or less honorable in more than just the strick, Okal Rel sense. Even the Vrellish ones. As to the kinky elements regarding births and pregnancies, all I can say is – that’s what reading too much evolutionary psychology does to you. And the politics of child-gifting is very much a crucial part of Sevolite politics in the novels. In fact, that is exactly who the Throne Price is. A child conceived by contract between rivals…which seemed like a good idea eighteen years ago.

Page last updated: 13-Jul-2006

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