Terminology

Audeo as a game has a small set of terms everyone at the table is expected to understand.

Navigation

*coming soon*

Definitions

Adventurers

Each player gets to play a character within the fiction of Audeo. These adventurous spirits are gifted or lucky people with the drive to dare the dangers posed by the world around them. The adventurers life is full of risk and reward, and sometimes they die trying to reach their goals. However, deaths are never random and each has meaning.

Each Adventurer is comprised of quite a few parts. Potential tells us what abilities they possess. Merits and Faults define their very nature. Means are resources they have at their disposal. Impression tells us important things about them that are apparent at first glance. Story links them into the fictional world in meaningful ways. These six things give us a solid idea of who they are and where they are going.

Learn more in: Creating the Adventurer

Aura

The Aura of each Adventurer is broken into three types: Protean, Shadow, and Brilliance. Each element of an Aura is one card of a given type, and an adventurer may have zero to five at any time. When six is reached, something dramatic will happen on their next roll, the Adventurer resolves Destiny. Truly there are only two types of aura, Shadow and Brilliance. The Protean type is possibly either, and when Destiny is resolved, they randomly align with Shadow and Brilliance.

Shadow aura is darkness, full of doubt and pain. While accumulating shadow is often bad for the adventurer immediately, it offers the most ability to develop them if they can endure the short term.

Brilliance aura is light, full of revelation and hope. While accumulating brilliance is often good for the adventurer immediately, it offers limited ability for them to develop in the long run.

Protean aura unknown until the moment of destiny, and then all of these cards will align with Shadow or Brilliance as determined by a single roll. It is far more likely they will align with the type of card the adventurer has more of at a moment of Destiny.

Learn more here: Aura and Destiny.

Dice

The game uses six-sided dice exclusively. When you are asked to roll them as a player, you will always be picking up one to ten of these and rolling them all at once. The goal is to get dice to come up six, each of these is called a hit. No hits on a roll? You lose. One or more hits on a roll? You win. The Narrator has some more complex rules for various circumstances, and rarely uses this simple system.

You can learn more about dice rolling here: Rolling the Dice.

Faults

Each Fault an Adventurer has is something that haunts and hinders them, they are character flaws of a broad nature. They must be broad in scope and not specific in any way. For example, “A weakness for cute kittens” is not a valid fault, but “Compassion” is great. The board scope of these allows the Narrator and other players to invoke an Adventurer's faults in a variety of situations. When invoked by another player, the Fault interacts with the Adventurer's aura to have an effect on the current situation, this is more complex than I'll go into here, just know that it can help or hinder the adventurer depending on the situation.

Learn more in: Playing Audeo and Aura and Destiny

Generalized Potential (GP)

There are five abilities for Adventurers in Audeo. Each is a very broad definition of their level of prowess in some facet of adventuring. Three of these are action abilities, and two strength abilities. They are scored with a number, higher meaning your Adventurer has more potential in that area. Note this is potential and not pure ability, you will assign ability from time to time as you wish but never exceeding the potential of said ability. This means if you have a potential of 3 in an ability, it will never be higher than that. Here are the action abilities with a brief definition:

Hurry: Physical speed and prowess all rolled into one. You use Hurry whenever your adventurer runs, jumps, swings, or otherwise does physical actions with haste.

Sharp: Mental speed and perception all rolled into one. You use Sharp whenever your adventurer thinks, looks, listens, or otherwise does mental actions with haste.

Trick: Not just the ability yo deceive, but to out-think and apply refined technique. You use Trick whenever your adventurer plans, talks, performs a trick, or otherwise applies genius to problems before them.

Here are the two force abilities with brief introduction:

Push: This is physical strength and hardiness. Push applies when your adventurer is faced with physical challenges.

Drive: This is mental strength and toughness. Drive applies when your adventurer is faced with mental challenges.

All of this is managed by two types of points: XP and IP, the former representing experience and the latter innate potential.

Learn more in: Playing Audeo, and Understanding Potential and Ability

Impression

Every character in fiction has a few details that define who they are, things you could see at just a glance. Sometimes even things we just 'know' about them because its clearly established early on in the fiction. These details about Adventurers fall under the category Impression in Audeo.

At the start of play, each player creates one such detail for their Adventurer, and then picks another player to create an additional one for their Adventurer.

When a detail from Impression acts in a positive way, reinforcing the action of the Adventurer, they may draw Aura and re-roll the dice, saying: “but, <detail>,”. For example, if your Adventurer had the detail, “Legendary Warrior of Cimmeria” and was attacking a snarling troll but rolled bad, you could say, “but, Legendary Warrior of Cimmeria right?” and draw Aura to roll again.

Means

Means are the important, broad resources of an Adventurer. Means, roughly defined, are each: an agency, instrument, or method used to attain an end. They are never specific, but broad ideas from which specific instances can be created in play. A sorcerer's means to slay her foes may be a fireball spell, but that would not be her means. That spell would be just a single instance of a much broader means, “Calling of Fire and Brimstone” for example. Regardless, the end result is that Means give more dice for you to roll for your Adventurer, making them more powerful and effective in whatever actions they support.

Learn more in: Means and Instances

Merits

Each Merit is something firmly defined (hard to change or lose) about an Adventurer that gives them power - advantage in specific situations. A Merit is generally a short phrase which describes some virtue of the Adventurer, but it does not always have to be what we think of classically as a virtue. It does however have to be something that motivates the Adventurer in their actions. “Rampant, Unchecked Greed” is a great example of a merit that doesn't fit the classic definition but works for Audeo.

A Merit always gives the player an extra die to roll when they apply, and they can be exploited for additional dice.

Learn more in: Playing Audeo.

Narrator

The Narrator is a player without an Adventurer in the game of Audeo. Instead, they run the world around the adventures and are responsible for the Pursuit itself. The Pursuit is really what they bring to the game, and try and tie everything going on to that meaningfully. There is more workload on the Narrator, make no mistake, but the rewards are greater too.

Learn more in: Narrating Audeo.

Pursuit

The Pursuit is the overarching ambition of play. The Narrator creates a generally defined Pursuit, and then the players spend the course of the game connecting that to their Adventurers. For example, “To Attain The Fabled Black Diamond of Amarath” would be a great Pursuit introduced by the Narrator. Then the players decide on how their Adventurers connect to the Pursuit broadly at first, and eventually giving more substance to this as play resolves. For instance, a player might elect to attach their Adventurer to the Pursuit like so at first “For Personal Wealth” and later expand on that during play.

Learn more in: Pursuits of Audeo.

Story

Every Adventurer has their story, and the current Pursuit is only the latest part of it. However, not all the parts of this story are important enough to make it on the Adventurer sheet. Instead, only the most sweeping and meaningful moments are placed there. These moments tie the Adventurer to the larger stories of the world in a meaningful way.

There are many ways to earn Aura in Audeo, but few ways to remove it. One of these ways to spend it is on creating a Story point, which is then recorded into this part of an Adventurer's sheet.

Learn more in: Aura and Destiny