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[Agon] Earning Strife and other questions

Started by cdr, September 03, 2008, 01:00:06 AM

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cdr

I ran Beast of Kolkoris at ConQuest SF last weekend and the three players and I had a great time, but afterwards I have a question on earning strife.

1) On p78 it says "When the Antagonist beats any hero in a simple contest, she earns one Strife token."  Is that one token per hero beaten, or one token no matter how many heroes are beaten, as long as at least one was?  I did it using method one, but am now thinking maybe method two is more correct.

2) In discussions with Paul Strack afterwards, he suggested that heroes not only get Glory equal to the highest wound they scored on a named opponent, but also Glory equal to the highest wound they suffered, to take some of the sting out of it if the bad guys pick them to chew on.  Tactically it seems most effective for foes to concentrate on one target to wear down their armor and get wound penalties on them, but maybe culturally it would be more proper to stick with one-on-one battles.

3) We only had four hours, so I provided 5 pre-gen characters to choose from, and didn't go into Hubris.
To avoid people in a one-shot burning all 16 Fate on avoiding wounds and restoring divine favor for nigh-infinite flurry of attacks, I explained how Fate worked and gave everyone one fate they could use if desired, then at the end calculated what their likely ending Legend score would be given how much Glory they earned vs. how much fate they had used (including the one fate for completing a quest).  They liked that, although recognizing that
it wasn't an exact answer because you probably earn more glory per quest in later quests when your Name and skills are higher.

Many thanks to John Harper for writing Agon and to Ben Robbins for writing Beast of Kolkoris. I look forward to running it again, and to running Temple of Hera sometime.


Mel White

I'm trying to avoid reading too much about Beast of Kolkoris so that I can play it one of these days! 
As far as your questions/points:
1) I claim strife per hero beaten--the way you did it.
2) Heroes have not been taking Glory based on wounds received.  I don't think that's official, but I kind of like it--it inspires daring and heroism.  I may start doing this in my games. 
3) Another way to take Fate use into account without restricting its use is to use the 'One Shot Scoring' rules from the Agon wiki (http://random-average.com/Agon/OneShotScoring).  One shot scoring establishes a Glory Multiplier equal to (Starting Fate)/(Fate Used + 1), so that the more Fate a character uses, the smaller the Glory Multiplier.  The players have to be aware of the Scoring rules at the start of play so that they can make the choice between using Fate at the risk of less final glory. 
Mel 
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