Glossary

Depending on your level of gaming experience (or a million other things) you may hear certain terms on the podcast that you don't recognize. Hopefully this will help, if we've missed something feel free to hit the Contact Us link and let us know. Alternately, many of these terms are described (often in more detail) in the rules for Glowing Portal.

Apocalypse Engine (AE) - Both the name of the website and the group of people involved in it.

Advancement - Also called leveling up, this is one possible method used in a roleplaying game to allow players to increase their character's abilities after gaining some experience. During an advancement, the game master gives the players more points to spend to improve their characters. Players never think advancements come often enough, game masters think they're too much work and wish they never had to do them.

Defensive Value (DV) - A number derived from the target's size, used to determine how hard it is to hit (I.E. mice are much harder to hit than tractors).

Evasive Value (EV) - This number represents how good a character is at avoiding attacks. EV is added to your character's Defensive Value if someone is attempting to hit you.

Full Dodge - A character may elect to sacrifice a Turn's worth of actions to concentrate on dodging (making him harder to hit).

"Fwa" - Often times when one of us wishes to gloss over some unimportant bit of data in a game, we'll replace part of what we're describing with "fwa". For example, "After Ms. Pac-Man's dark work was finished, she concealed the corpse within an old pile of mulch behind the abandoned warehouse down on Fwa Street." The implication here is that the while Ms, Pac-Man and any other characters involved have the specific street name, it's not important enough to burden the listener with that level of detail. Good luck Ms. Pac-Man.

Game Master (GM) - AKA Ego McMuffin. This is the person in charge of a specific game, he or she runs the game / story / adventure and is (barring very pushy players) generally considered the final authority on rules disagreements. The GM often writes the story as well.

Glowing Portal - This is a rule system used to help arbitrate the running of a roleplaying game. There are many like it, this one is ours.

Imago - Imago is the name of the first roleplaying game that we at Apocalypse Engine are running / playing in / podcasting.

Non-Player Character (NPC) - This term simply means any character in a game that is controlled / created / and run by the Game Master.

Numina / Numina Reserve - A character's Numina Reserve is what he or she uses to fuel their powers. Once drained some time must pass before they're up for more.

Offensive Value (OV) - This number determines how good a character is at striking a target (different OVs exist for different kinds of attacks). One's OV is usually combined with a roll of 3D6.

Player Character (PC) - This term denotes any of the characters controlled and usually created by the people who've shown up to play in the Game Master's game.

Podcast - A podcast is basically like a radio show, but on the Internet. Ours can be listened to here, found on iTunes, the Zune Marketplace, or from unicorn piddle. Still unclear? Contact us, we're ready to believe you.

Roll Initiative - This means everyone rolls dice (then modified by certain character values) and compares them to determine who-goes-when in a coming scene, most often but not strictly combat.

Roleplaying Game - This is a game like Dungeons and Dragons or Mazes and Monsters. They usually involve a group of people, each controlling a specific character playing through a story or adventure of some sort. These games are usually aided by dice and someone's basement.

Suck it - I highly respect the job your mother did raising you.

Three D Six (3D6) - This means three, six-sided dice. So "roll 3D6" means to roll three six-sided dice (and then usually add the dice up and modify that result by certain character values).