I promised in my first blog post that I might write something Agon and why I liked it so much. This is that post. Two of the other players in the Agon campaign I played in wrote their own reviews. You can find those here and here.
In early 2020, I had the opportunity to join an Agon game as a player. Mythic Greece isn’t squarely in my nerd wheelhouse, but at the time I was itching to play some games as something other than the GM, and I hadn’t had a chance to play anything with GM Gary in a while. Agon’s concept of Mythic Grecian heroes wasn’t intimidating though, and there wasn’t lots of background I was worried about reading. The barrier to entry was definitely low.
I ended up having a fantastic time, and while a part of that was a good GM and a good group, there were definitely aspects of the system and game concept that fueled it too. I don’t think any of those aspects are entirely unique to Agon, so while this post functions as an endorsement of the game, one or more of these points can probably be carried into other RPGs.
Playing a larger than life character makes in character dialogue easier. I’m probably the last person to learn this, but as someone whose lion’s share of RPG play has involved playing characters that tend toward being matter-of-fact and affable, it was surprising how much talking like a sincere, quixotic hero made it easier to slip into talking in character. It felt within genre for our characters to regularly have frank heart to hearts, and to make bold statements to NPCs. Because my character spoke and thought very differently to me, the line between ‘Alex as narrating his character’ and ‘Alex talking as his character’ was very clear, and I found this to be the case for the other players too. Particularly useful for those of us that don’t tend to adopt accents when speaking in character This benefit does require a group who are willing to dive in and embrace the larger than life heroes that Agon wants you to embody, but if this is the case, (or if the GM can lead them there) the roleplaying opportunities are rife.
Lack of holistic problem solving helped us get to the good stuff. Here I use the term 'holistic problem solving’ to mean a situation in an RPG where the player characters get really hands on with a practical problem, considering all of the details and the approaches they have available to them. A straightforward example might be that they need to reach the top of a sheer rock face, with a broken down rickety pulley system as the intended egress. They can consider fixing said pulley system, improvising some new climbing method, or maybe using skills and abilities unique to them to overcome the issue. They likely have to spend some time with the GM ascertaining specific details; “how high is this cliff, what’s caused the pulley to break down”, and so forth.
I don’t always hate these situations in RPGs, and I’ll probably continue to GM and play in games that involve them. I was first drawn to tabletop RPGs because of this style of problem solving as adventure; I liked the idea that I could play a game that resembled the computer RPGs I’d played so much as a teenager, but with the options available to me limited by my imagination instead of what the designers had programmed. However, I do think they still have a little too much prominence in the traditional RPG space. They often resemble fairly dull logistical problems, and at this point in my RPG playing life I tend to find them less interesting than scenes of dialogue, dramatic action or fraught decision making. They slow play down too, as the players have to go back and forth considering their options and checking in with the GM to make sure the picture of the situation they have in their head matches, such that their approach will work. I’m particularly wary of such scenes in online play, where pace matters even more and a discussion between the GM and one player that gets further and further into the weeds will cause the other players to tab over to check Twitter, or fiddle with their desktop.
When you face a challenge in Agon, you describe your approach according to one of the game’s four broad domains (such as Blood & Valour or Craft & Reason), invoke any additional bonuses or favour with the gods you have, and roll. Because it doesn’t concern itself with equipment lists or room sizes, and simply asks its players to pick their approach to a challenge and describe both the details and how their character succeeds or fails in overcoming them, this problem solving aspect is almost entirely absent. You ask the bigger, more interesting questions; “should we rebuild this pulley or just climb the rock”, but only get into the details of the answers in so far as you provide them in your own description, and the outcome of the challenge as described by the GM. Our Agon game kept up a fantastic pace as we went from compelling dialogue to dramatic challenge to perilous battle, without having to wait to play more while we checked exactly how many square feet the room we were in was.
The challenges in the game are also more engaging because Agon’s structure gives players more control over their failure. I already detailed this issue in my 2020 summary, but I’ll repeat it here with more context. Any time you roll dice to achieve something in Agon (called a contest in the parlance of the game) it's decided which of the broad domains it falls under, each player decides if they’re taking part, assembles their dice pool and then rolls against a target number set by the GM. Any who roll under the target fail, any who roll equal to or over succeed, and the highest successful roller succeeds in a particularly dramatic way. Players then describe their actions, with those that failed going first and describing why they failed, the succeeders going next, and the highest roller capping it off. This procedure provides a lovely rhythm to the game, with descriptions of challenges getting more dramatic and glorious as they go.
This setup encourages players to describe their own failures, and because Agon doesn’t concern itself with the nitty gritty or logistics of the challenges the players are facing, it enables a lot of agency for deciding why your approach failed. It's up to the player if the encroaching band of centaurs was too ferocious or coordinated for them to best in combat. Maybe they wish to describe their characters' hubris in engaging them head on.
I think it's good practice as GM to avoid describing player failure being the result of slapstick style errors or obliviousness, because that can feel demeaning for their player, and move the character concept they had away from the reality of the game. Handing descriptions of failure to players not only helps avoid GM descriptions making the character look silly, but puts it back on the table if the player does desire it. As a GM I’m unlikely to describe a character failing to fight centaurs because they slipped over in perilous terrain, but as a player that might be something that allows me to express my character’s overconfidence in an obvious way.
The Glory system matters until it doesn’t. I’ve seen some negative reactions online to Agon’s ‘Glory’ system. As part of play, players earn Glory when they successfully accomplish tasks, with the most impressive success earning extra. These Glory points act as a ranking of who is the most glorious, and at certain Glory thresholds you get a slightly higher dice to roll whenever you take part in challenges.
This does lead to a setup where the players that roll best in challenges improve their characters at a slightly higher rate, but it wasn’t pronounced enough for a runaway leader issue to develop in the game we played. It's also balanced by the Fate track; when characters fail challenges and suffer they start to mark Fate, and while the final Fate mark removes your character from play, every other milestone on this track is beneficial, giving you bigger dice to roll or more options.
I’ve got little interest in playing RPGs competitively, but this Glory system did improve my experience of the game. During our early sessions of Agon, with little established fiction to build off, Glory felt like an expression of my character’s worth. I lagged behind on Glory early and wished I was rolling better dice. Once we got some sessions under our belt however, I grew more and more invested in whether our heroes were doing more good than ill on the islands they visited, and whether I’d be able to help my companion heroes embrace their better selves. The Glory track faded into the background. I didn’t care who succeeded in our final battles or most testing moments, just that one of us did.
As our heroes took advancements we became more specialised, more able to function as a well coordinated unit than we were as five competing glory hounds. Soon the measure of Glory was an artifact to remind me of my past narcissism. This was a very particular experience with the rules, and maybe to other players these points will continue to function as a high score right up to the end. I didn’t find this to be the case, and I’m particularly enamoured with a mechanic that, at first, seems like everything, but eventually shrinks down to irrelevance.
Agon acknowledges the games and mechanics that influenced it in its front cover, which I also like
Art credit
All art is taken from the Agon rulebook, illustrated by John Harper
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