Introduction

The Freedom of Urr is the first fully Nijmegen creation of a megagame. Basically this game is a mixture of a role playing game and a board wargame.

It has aspects of a role playing game in the sense that every player has his/her own specific character to play, each according to his/her kind, and every character will receive a personal briefing (apart from the general briefing and apart from the team briefing) for this game.

It is also a board wargame with an open map system: all stacks of troops can be seen on the central map of the game, but only the top counter will be visible (until combat resolution). Of course, when trebuchets start flying chunks of stone on the walls of the city, the City Guard is quite aware where it is coming from: such hammering of the wall can hardly be ignored.

There are also political and diplomatic aspects in the game and relations between the peoples of the Vales and Mountains of Urr will undoubtably have changed after the game. This is by design: after several playtests of this game even we, the game designers, do not know what the actual outcome of the game will be. We know that there are two likely outcomes with practically equal probability to occur. For both outcomes, we already thought about a successor game to be played at a later time.

Thus, The Freedom of Urr defines a background for more than one megagame. All races in this game have their own pecularities, and we hope that you can rejoice in their differences.

The games of Urr are situated in the same universe as the Yendor games by Jim Wallman. Several of the peoples present in the game, in particular the Elves, Red Beards and Free Folk, have been cast as in the Yendor game series, although they may have been adjusted a bit for our games. We therefore thank Jim Wallman for inspiring us and giving us access to all his game material for Yendor.

We therefore invite you to our first megagame in this series, to be played on the 27^th of January 2018 in Wijkcentrum De Ark van Oost, Nijmegen.

If you have any, you can send your questions to urr18 at megagame-makers.nl (Slightly modified email address to obfuscate webbots).

The game will be staged in the Nijmegen municipal centre “De Ark van Oost”. Since this is a municipal centre, you are not allowed to bring your own drinks and food. The municipal centre's caretaker will remove bottles if he/she sees them around while inspecting the hall during the game.

The game will be played in hall 2.1 on the second floor of the venue: as it is the biggest hall in the whole venue, it should not be difficult to locate it. At the ground floor, a cantine is available that is exploited by a separate owner, who will be the supplier of coffee, tea, other drinks (Belgian beer included ), and around lunch time, rolls with cheese and/or ham, soup, etc. will be available.

At the end of the game, after the debriefing and cleanup, we will gather in the cantine on the ground floor for a well earned after game drink and we hope there will be lots of stories to tell, mostly different and some alike.

We will have turns of half an hour, with an exception for the first turn and expect that our time table will be as follows:

Whether turn 13 will be played or not will be judged by Game Control: this is to avoid last turn madness. Of course, if the City of Urr falls before this turn, this is an immediate end of the game. Having tested this game several times, we are not sure about the final game result and this is by design.

About 400 years ago, a number of merchants in the city of Yendor grew dissatisfied with having a king whose taxes on merchandise and other things increased in an extravagant way.

After several attempts to change the system, they decided that the only real solution to escape monarchy was to setup another city, remote from Yendor and make their own system of government, a republic.

They searched a while, found the Vales and then founded the City at the crossroads of two rivers and various caravan routes. Together, the City and Vales of Urr form The Free Republic of Urr. Since the City and Vales were almost equally important, these wise founders considered that a dual leadership, one for the City and one for the Vales would be best. Both leaders, called the Captain Regents were to have equal authority, short terms of office, and be responsible to an elected body, The Grand Council.

While the city was being founded, the settlers found that the mountains and hills near Urr were already inhabited by various Dwarven people. To the north of the city, the people of Urr also encountered an Elven tribe living in a large forest. Relations were quickly established between the Republic and its neighbours. Later, a nomadic people, that called themselves the Free Folk also entered the Vales.

The Founders never forgot their city of origin and trade relations with Yendor exist to this day.