[Agon] - So-so'ing our way around the Island of Lycophon
Darcy Burgess:
Hi,
Last week, I got together with Glenn W, Glenn H and Jason S to get muddy, bloody and dusty in the Mediterranean. A few years back, we'd pulled together an Agon one-shot when Jason was back for the holidays (he'd been overseas teaching English). Since the last session was so far in the past, the guys (mostly) forgave me for losing the character sheets.
I love Agon, but I have a hard time running it. That's what I want to talk about.
The session was, well, flat. Part of the reason is definitely that I don't have the killer instinct necessary for crafting truly challenging NPCs. The Strife limit seems too low, and the die-management is too intense to field more than one NPC.
That's all small potatoes.
What Agon doesn't have, at all, is an ingrained system that promotes a vivid shared imagined space. There are moments of true sharing, where everyone gets on the same page (calling for a divine weapon is a good example - "Hera, guide my blade!") It's all too easy to fall into the rut of position-hit-damage-position when we play. It's so easy to focus on the nuts and bolts (all of which are great), that it's easy to lose track of the act of creating a vivid verbal stage.
I have some thoughts regarding systems that do actively promote the SIS, but I want to open this topic up before that.
Thoughts?
D
Filip Luszczyk:
Darcy,
I've never played Agon, but I have some experience with combat heavy D&D and some other stuff that provides a roughly similar sort of gaming experience, I believe.
Hence, the question: Does the game actually need more SIS than that? Why so?
Darcy Burgess:
Hey Filip,
Well, if you don't need a SIS, you might as well just play a board game. That's not meant as a slam against board games; board games do some things really well (and fiddly combat happens to be one of them). Another thing that board games do well is (for the most part) do away with a need for an imagined space -- the space is right there in front of you.
If you're roleplaying, then your play space is imagined; without it, you and the other players have nowhere to interact. By extension, if the SIS isn't vivid, the session starts to fall flat.
Yeah?
D
Filip Luszczyk:
Essentially, yes, that's the root of my question. What you describe sounds largely like what would make a pretty enjoyable game in, say, D&D 4e.
Why doesn't this particular game defend itself as a tactical board game alone? Why do you feel it needs to be more than a board game? Why isn't any imagined space enough? Why does it need to be shared?
Would you be, otherwise, willing to play an actual board game with a very similar ruleset, but not a single word about role-playing in the manual?
Here's why I'm curious: Agon, like D&D, is marketed as a role-playing game, right? I suspect it might be all about expectations created by the label. In my experience, many people tend to accept board games and such as they all out of the box. Add an ill-defined and often confusing "rpg" label, though, and these very same people start to measure against their idealized role-playing experience, regardless of the actual type of experience intended by the designer and hopefully conveyed through the ruleset.
Filip Luszczyk:
Oh, also, since all I know about Agon comes from reading the demo version some years ago, what is the minimum level of imagination sharing required for the rulest to function at all? Do you think you've met this level in your game?
(I find that various games labeled as "rpgs" have different prerequisite minimums. Contenders, for instance, can be played in a very boardgamey manner, with a low investment of effort into the whole "imagination sharing" business, whereas games like Beast Hunters or IAWA seem rather demanding in this regard.)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page