Aude is a roleplaying game about travelling around a fictional countryside solving the type of problems one might find in chivalric tales of medieval France. It is narrative-focused with elements of strategy, as your ability to accomplish your goals hinges on how many of your resources you have spent earlier in the story.

This game was created for the Board Games Reimagined TTRPG Jam, and is inspired by Carcassonne.

Please use safety tools when playing Aude. My recommendation is the use of Lines & Veils, as well as an X-Card or similar.

Key features

• Narrative focus: the game is a story you create through conversation
• Resource management: players must decide when to spend or save their meeples
• No rolling to hit: player characters deal damage based on meeples spent and who is engaged in the fight
  
• Bigotry-free low-fantasy: Aude takes place in a world where knights of all genders ride against foul dragons, and diversity is a normal fact of life

Gameplay progresses as a conversation between the Jongleur (or Game Master) and the players, who may number from 2 to 5. The players describe their characters' actions, and the Jongleur describes the response of their surroundings and supporting cast. However, when a situation comes up that strains the main characters' capabilities, a challenge is upon them, and they must spend meeples to overcome it.

Meeples are tokens each player has, and they must balance the spending of meeples with the stress gained from adventures and conflicts. Challenges require that the players spend a certain number of meeples to overcome them, with the potential for critical successes if they overspend. Characters also have special abilities that allow them unique ways to gain or lose meeples or stress, among other things.

The Jongleur adjudicates and describes the result of challenges, and guides the story of the game − without being solely responsible. Aude relies on the creativity of all its participants, and the Jongleur might think of themself as the 'creative director', working with the other players to tell a story of grand adventure. 

What you get

• The complete rules for the game, including:
  • Character creation rules
  • Advice for the person running the game
  • A Bestiary of NPC statistics
  • A Treasury of magic items
• Printable tokens you can cut out for in-person play

The future

I fully intend to release an expansion, containing the following:

• More abilities for Classes, to allow upgraded characters more variety
• More beings for the Bestiary
• More artefacts for the Treasury
• Advice on adapting the system to other settings

Also in the works is a short adventure to be run as a single game session.

Special thanks go to:

• Eengry
• Emps
• Hawke
• Jehan
• JorvikDave
• June
• Nisviik
• The delightful people in the TTRPG Collective Discord