Orestes v2.8.0

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Orestes v2.8.1

A literary roleplay engine for Lumiverse focused on character agency, continuity, and believable storytelling.

Orestes makes long-form roleplay feel less like disconnected replies and more like an ongoing story.

Characters have their own goals, personalities, knowledge, and voices. Your choices have consequences, mistakes can stick, relationships change gradually, and the world keeps moving even when nobody is looking.

Orestes handles the complicated stuff behind the scenes. You get the story — not a wall of dice rolls, trackers, or system mechanics.

🆕 Changed in 2.8.1

Pacing pass, from player feedback: sessions could feel relentless when a card opened in conflict — problems arriving faster than the scene could absorb them. Four engine blocks changed, no new settings:

• Forward now separates movement from intake. Deepening, worsening, or paying what is already on the page is movement; new external complications are capped at one per beat, with a settle beat after a spike.

• The Lot gains a BREAK refractory (no two in a row) and a one-cost-per-beat cap. The dice, bands and faces are unchanged.

• Pace rebalances the early and middle phases: early payoff of an earned hook is allowed, and raising stakes is no longer the only form of tightening.

• The Machine's cost hand-off now defers to the cap, so the Lot and Failure & Cost cannot double-charge one beat.

Pressure is not reduced; only its stacking is. Nothing here depends on your Surprises setting.

What Orestes Actually Does

Orestes is built around four main systems:

📖 Record
Keeps track of what has actually happened — where everyone is, what they know, important events, physical conditions, and other established facts.

🧠 Ledger
Keeps track of individual characters — their feelings, wants, relationships, voice, behavior, and how they are changing over time. The Ledger can be displayed as clickable character pages.

🎲 The Lot
A hidden system that adds a little uncertainty to scenes. It can influence how a scene develops or what something costs, but it does not decide what your character says, thinks, or chooses.

👁️ The Veil (optional)
Adds hidden story information behind clues that already exist in the scene. Secrets can remain hidden until there is an actual reason for a character to discover them.

All four systems work together instead of maintaining separate versions of the same story information.

⚙️ Setup

1. Import
   Import Orestes v2.8.0 into Lumiverse.

2. Samplers

Setting| Recommendation
Samplers| Host defaults
Temperature| 0.8–1.0
Custom stop strings| None

Orestes does not ship with its own sampler values.
Completion settings such as prefill, continuation behavior, and names are left to your host/profile settings.

1. Context Filters

Go to:
Prompt Panel → Context Filters

Enable:

• Strip HTML Tags — recommended

• Also Strip Fonts — optional; enable only after dialogue colors are working correctly

If you use persona add-ons, put their outlet names into Persona Outlets.

🎛️ Settings at a Glance

Most Orestes settings fall into a few simple categories:

Category| Controls
🎭 Style| POV, tense, prose, dialogue, paragraph density
🧠 Memory| Record, Ledger, Ledger display
🎲 Simulation| Lot, world simulation, causality
❤️ Content| Mature content, darkness
👁️ Presentation| Visual extras, Veil, Chorus
⚙️ Behavior| NPC initiative, plans, social propagation, opportunities
🛠️ Advanced| Planning, model class, consequences, hard limits, diagnostics

You do not need to change everything. The documented defaults are intended to work as a starting point.

⭐ Recommended Starting Settings

Default / Full Experience

The main documented defaults are:

Setting| Default
Story Memory| Ledger Full
Mature Content| Off
POV| Second person
Tense| Present
Reply Length| 250
Paragraph Density| Balanced
Dialogue Share| 40%
Prose Style| Balanced
Planning Depth| Stripped
Surprises| Lot
World Simulation| Lite
Causality| Compact
Dark Material| PG-13
Subjective Veil| Subtle

This gives you the full continuity system without enabling mature content by default.

Starter Version

For a lighter setup:

Setting| Starter
Story Memory| Ledger
Mature Content| Romance

Everything else can remain at the normal defaults.

Mature Content can be changed independently:
Off → Romance → Explicit → Unbound

🧩 Building Your Own Profile

Orestes does not ship with saved profiles. Instead, you can build your own combination of settings.

🟢 Lean

Goal: lower cost and faster responses.

Turn down or disable:

• Story Memory: Record

• World Simulation: Off

• Causality: Off

• Visual Extras: Off

• Surprises: Off

• Chorus: Off

• Optional law/continuity blocks

Best for: lighter chats where you want less background machinery.

🔴 Max

Goal: enable most of Orestes' simulation systems.

Setting| Max
Dialogue Share| 60%
Model Class| Frontier
Surprises| Shake
World Simulation| Full
Causality| Deep
Mature Content| Explicit
Dark Material| Dark
Visual Extras| Cards
Subjective Veil| Intrigue
Consequence Mode| Hard
Scene Headers| Full
Roster| Enabled
Diagnostics| Enabled

Best for: heavily simulated long-form sessions.
Expect significantly more prompt overhead.

💰 Prompt Cost

Approximate instruction cost before chat history:

Profile| Approx. Cost
🟢 Lean| ~13,800 tokens
⚪ Default| ~17,000 tokens
🔴 Max| ~19,800 tokens

Actual context usage will be higher once your conversation history is included.

🧠 Memory & Continuity

Orestes uses two main memory systems:

📖 Record → what happened in the story
🧠 Ledger → what characters are like and how they are changing

⚠️ Important Retention Rule

Do not lower these below depth 2:

o_record ≥ 2
o_ledger ≥ 2

Depth 1 can remove the newest Record or Ledger information from the model's context and cause continuity problems.

If you're unsure, leave the retention settings at their defaults.

🎚️ Pacing

If a session feels relentless — problems arriving faster than the story can absorb them — the tuning points are the intake cap in Forward and the BREAK refractory in The Lot. Do not disable Surprises to fix tempo: that removes uncertainty, not rate. Cards that open in conflict are the usual trigger, and they are what this pass was built for.

⚙️ The Settings You Can Tune

For reference, these are the main user-facing controls.

🎭 Style

• POV: First / Second / Third Limited / Third Omniscient

• Tense: Present / Past

• Reply Length: 150–1500

• Paragraph Density: Lean / Balanced / Dense

• Dialogue Share: 0–100%

• Prose Style: Minimalist / Balanced / Lush

• Vocabulary: Plain / Literary / Erudite

• Dialogue Tags: Minimal / Varied / Natural

🧠 Memory

• Story Memory: Off / Record / Ledger / Ledger Full

• Ledger Display: Pages / Cards

• Mood Tracking: On / Off

🎲 Simulation

• Planning Depth: Off / Stripped / Tiered / Gated

• Surprises: Off / Lot / Storm / Shake

• World Simulation: Off / Lite / Full

• Causality: Off / Compact / Deep

• Task Resolution: Dice On / Off

• Skill Bonus: On / Off

• Consequence Mode: Hard / Reroute / Legacy

❤️ Content

• Mature Content: Off / Romance / Explicit / Unbound

• Dark Material: Off / PG-13 / Dark / NSFL

• Hard Limits: Custom restrictions

👁️ Presentation

• Visual Extras: Off / Colors / Cards

• Subjective Veil: Off / Subtle / Intrigue / Horror

• Chorus: Off / Called / Unbidden

• Chorus Chance: 0–60%

⚙️ World & NPC Behavior

• NPC Initiative: On / Off

• NPC Plans: On / Off

• Social Propagation: On / Off

• Opportunity Generation: On / Off

• Human Weirdness: On / Off

• Co-writer Mode: On / Off

• Scene/Object Checksum: On / Off

• Conversation Turn-Shape Control: On / Off

🛠️ Advanced

• Model Class: Native / Claude-Gemini / Frontier / Local

• Ledger Display: Pages / Cards

• Task Result Display: Hidden / Compact

• Visual extras: Off / Colors / Cards

↩️ Reverting to an Older Version

If you need to roll back:
Simply re-import the previous version.
No data migration is required.

In Short

Orestes is meant to stay out of your way.

You provide the characters, setting, and choices.

Orestes handles the continuity, character state, world movement, hidden uncertainty, and consequences in the background — while keeping the actual response focused on the story.

Characters should feel like people.
The world should feel like it exists.
Your choices should matter.

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