[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.)

[Darcy Burgess]

Hey Filip,

I don't want to veer off into expectation-land too much, but here's why Agon would make a pretty shitty board game: as designed, I'd have to do too much work to get ready to play.  Part of a board game's appeal is that it's ready to go out of the box.  Agon, and any edition of D&D I've ever played (mostly 1st AD&D with a smattering of 3.5) are most definitely not ready to rock when you open the book.

RPGs pay off differently than Boardgames, I think, because of the SIS.  When the SIS is really, really cooking, it's an experience like no other. The SIS doesn't come out of nothing, however -- you have to create it.

So, here's a specific instance of where I have trouble with Agon.  Let's say we're in a proper battle (actual fighting with hit rolls and stuff) It's very easy to fall into the trap of rushing on to the next step of the procedure -- the next hit roll, or calculating damage, or whatever -- without taking the time to feed and update the SIS.  That's what I'm talking about when I say there's no ingrained system for creating a vivid SIS.  The design relies on the attentiveness and discipline of the participants more or less exclusively.  Incidentally, this is probably true of most RPGs as well.

D

[Filip Luszczyk]

So, here's a specific instance of where I have trouble with Agon.  Let's say we're in a proper battle (actual fighting with hit rolls and stuff) It's very easy to fall into the trap of rushing on to the next step of the procedure -- the next hit roll, or calculating damage, or whatever -- without taking the time to feed and update the SIS.  That's what I'm talking about when I say there's no ingrained system for creating a vivid SIS.  The design relies on the attentiveness and discipline of the participants more or less exclusively.  Incidentally, this is probably true of most RPGs as well.

Well, this seems consistent with my experiences. Games with a heavily tactical combat tend to look like that: lots of purely procedural play, lots of focus on the board, cards or what have you, with some rare moments of "imagination sharing" thrown in. That was the case with all versions of D&D I played, with certain combat heavy RPGs like Warhammer or Legend of the Five Ringsp, and also in Contenders and even in our recent Mouse Guard. However it was also the case with straight miniature games like Mordheim, and with card or board games occassionally as well.

I like this playstyle. A lot. I guess it's something you just need to like.

Hence, the issue of expectations. I don't suppose it can be avoided here, it's clearly a preference thing. As you mention, the whole thing is true of most games labeled as "rpgs", and it's also true of many games that are not labeled as such, but lend themselves to a very similar gaming experience. It seems to me like this is where the whole "role-playing game" label is really failing. It's like your problem wasn't that Agon doesn't produce enough role-playing, but rather that it's too much like a "role-playing game" and not enough like, say, a "story game". I guess the old derogatory "roll-playing" label fits much better than that, I'd say, sans the derogatory connotations.

Now, there's one thing such "roll-playing games" excell at, I think. The moments of "imagination sharing", while rare, emerge very naturally in certain critical points of play, tend to be very short and to the point, and extremely vivid. You move your tokens and roll your dice, and suddenly someone rises from the table to shout "By the power of Greyskull!" or goes on how this particular critical hit must have looked like in the fiction. Compared to the constant and steady imagination flow a more typical role-playing game like Call of Cthulhu or a story game like IAWA, it's like a sudden injection of condensed imagination. "Roll-playing games" have a narrative flow of their own, rewarding in their own way.

The difference between a "roll-playing game" and a straight board game is that the latter is limited to tactical play exclusively, whereas the former intertwines tactical sequences and exploration/interaction sequences. Combat felt very similar both in our D&D and Mordheim. In Mordheim, however, the only thing we did in between skirmishes was engaging various resource management procedures, like advancement and shopping. In D&D, we were just walking around the place, doing stuff and talking to NPCs, and those were the parts that involved more typical "role-playing."

Obviously, in this mode of play one needs to be ready that in few hours of tactical combat only a few moments of "imagination injection" are going to emerge naturally. Which means one needs to be able to immerse in the tactical aspect strongly enough, otherwise things would be boring.

So, I believe you might be expecting Agon to provide you with a different gaming experience than the ruleset produces naturally as designed. Do you have any experience with Beast Hunters, by the way? I guess that one might be much closer to what you seem to be looking for.

[Noclue]

Darcy, I've ran Agon twice, neither time as well as I would like, but I'm learning a few things. First, I think you're underestimating the effect the combats have on Agon gameplay. Making challenges that are interesting goes a long way towards improving the experience because it forces the players to call on oaths and use tactics. To that end, fix the NPC encounters. One thing I've found is that fights that feature an NPC and several minions are more fun. Straight up minion battles are a just a slog.

Play up the oaths and the hunt for glory. Prod the players. Ask them if they are going to let the other heroes have all the glory. Remind them that these guys owe them oaths.

Lastly, you're right that the game doesn't enforce the SIS and you can easily fall into lazy "rolling to hit" play. You're going to have to watch that and demand narrative description from both yourself and the players.

Hope that helps.

[Callan S.]

Hi Darcy,

The design relies on the attentiveness and discipline of the participants more or less exclusively.

I would add 'inclination' to that as well.

Are the other players inclined toward making an SIS - or to be more exact, updating the SIS as frequently as you'd prefer, Darcy?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi,

Callan, you nailed it.

Warning: Big Model content permeates what I'm about to say. When I talk about Exploration, or nigh-synonymously, the SIS, I always stress that System is one of its five components. The SIS as a whole is best understood as imaginative engagement and communication about a fiction-in-development, including time and consequences in its fictional content.

When people say, "System is whatever happens in play," they can confuse themselves into thinking that System oversees and subsumes all of the SIS. It doesn't. System is a component, the part that introduces time and consequences into the otherwise-static features of Character, Setting, and Situation. SIS is the bigger thing.

What am I trying to say with this diagrammatic babble? I am saying that the inclination to engage with the SIS is not System-based. You literally cannot design a game which makes a person participate.

That said, it's clear that any one of the five components of Exploration, or any combination of any of them, can play an inspirational role. I'm a big proponent of Color actually being the most crucial of these, but as many of you know, I've been advocating for System to be recognized as well for a long time (as opposed to being some kind of obstructive, best-"ignored" thing). So yes, given features of a System can well be inspirational to a person already-inclined to receive that particular sort of excitement. That's why it matters.

But that is all. It matters, which I think is true. That's not the same thing as saying that a given System will instantly and automatically produce the Most-Teh-Awesome role-playing Evah (and make you, the person who brought it to the group, their Best Friend For-Evah), which I think is emphatically false.

Best, Ron

[lumpley]

(This thread has been frustrating me, so I've been avoiding it. This morning I love the Forge, though.)

I think that Callan has fundamentally and crucially not nailed it.

It may be that Agon is a bad design match for what Darcy's group wanted it for, no harm there. But Callan's take is "you could have gotten what you wanted from Agon, if only your group had wanted it enough to put in the required extra effort."

Maybe it's true, but it's a view that rejects game analysis and design.

Hold on, and maybe it's not even true. Expecting a group to put in the required extra effort in order to get what it wants, when a game isn't well-designed to provide it - it's unsustainable. In fact it's the old familiar unsustainable thing.

Anyway, analysis and design! I'm interested to hear Darcy's thoughts about systems that actively support richer, and better-shared, in-fiction color.

-Vincent

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi,

Just so it's been said, I think that an inclination to enrich the SIS is not a prerequisite to roleplaying, it is the prerequisite.  All the other stuff is the tools that you do it with.  I don't think that I'm disagreeing with Callan or Ron (maybe with Vincent, but I can't tell, because I'm confused by what he wrote).

Phrased differently, a play in two acts:

Act I
Me: Hi, do you want to enrich the SIS with me?
You: No, I have no interest in such piffle.

Act II
Me: Hey, wanna play D&D?
You: Yes! I will be in the garage changing the oil in my car.

This is, of course, the worst play ever; Act I is identical to Act II.

Cheers,
D

[lumpley]

Huh! I can try to be less confusing, but no promises.

Up top you said

What Agon doesn't have, at all, is an ingrained system that promotes a vivid shared imagined space. ... 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 think that you're right that this is a quality of Agon's design (and not Agon's exclusively). I think that it'll be fruitful and illuminating to approach it as, crucially, a design problem.

I think that Callan's wrong that it's a quality foremost of your group - yes, the design relies on attentiveness and discipline, but since your group's sitting down to play a roleplaying game, not a boardgame, I think we can and should take your intent as given.

That's all!

-Vincent

[RPL]

Hi,

So I've been reading this thread and being a bit reluctant to participate, mostly because I don't know for sure if my account is going to be relevant to your point Darcy.

But anyway here it goes.

Some time ago I've GMed Agon for a gaming group of mine. This group also has a running D&D 3.5ed campaign and two of them also play in a D&D 4ed game with me. Also I've played a whole bunch of successful and story/character powerful games with them, like PTA, DitV, TSoY.

(don't know if this background is important, but here it stands).

When we play we try to focus on the point of play, so if the game requires colourful/meaningful scene descriptions like PTA or more colourful/meaningful action descriptions like DitV, we all go for it like mad dogs and make a real effort to pull it of.

However when we play games like Agon or D&D that have a very detailed combat mechanic, which can last for a considerable number of rounds when it starts, we tend to not be so colourful in our descriptions, mainly because it's tiresome, honestly there are only so many ways to describe and attack and when you have something like 15 to 30 attack rolls in one combat it can get pretty exhausting trying to colour all of them, trying will only slow the game down and doesn't bring all that much juice to the game it self.

Sometimes it does happen, I remember in Agon a combat we had were I created a Labyrinth has the enemy NPC and when they tried to cross it we made it just like a normal combat, the Labyrinth attacked them with falling rocks, shifting walls, pits, etc. Also in D&D 4ed, some use of powers or creatures can stir up very cinematic imagery.

But mostly there aren't a lot of colourful descriptions during combats, just dice rolling, it's not that we want to get the fight out of the way, we are just really involved and focused in the mechanics and tactics involved and are having fun with that. That also doesn't mean we leave the SIS on the side, every player creates and participates in it with their characters moves and tactical options, and we can all imagine when a player uses his sword or spear and chooses to make a disarm or an attack, we just aren't that colourful about it.

We leave most of the playacting and such to the other moments of play reaching a new island, talking to the NPCs and figuring out what's going on, deciding a course of action to take or just having the characters kick around during refreshment scenes, and some of them are really cool, like a player I have that always made a musical-instrument-playing-gesture when we was using music for something.

So to sum up, outside of combat the players participate in the SIS with very rich descriptions of their characters actions and showing them of, however when the fighting starts the participation relies mostly in kind of dry descriptions and using their mechanical options and moves to convey what their characters are doing.

I'm not making any judgment about right or wrong styles of play or SIS input, it's just the way we play. Is this helpful?


All the best,
D.

[Filip Luszczyk]

Vincent,

I think that Callan's wrong that it's a quality foremost of your group - yes, the design relies on attentiveness and discipline, but since your group's sitting down to play a roleplaying game, not a boardgame, I think we can and should take your intent as given.

I'd say you are underestimating the possibility of there being no clear consensus of what a "role-playing game" is, as opposed to a board game or whatever, among the group.

I've been in a number of groups where everyone wanted to play an entirely different game. Some players came to the session to role-play their characters within the story, some wanted more input in the story, others wanted character optimization or tactical roll-playing almost exclusively, often there were some who just wanted to participate in the game without any meaningful input at all, etc. However, they were all coming to the session to play what they individually though was a "role-playing game". Worse yet, in trad gaming especially, the game could go on for weeks or months like that before it crashed, rarely being fully satisfying for everyone involved. That was rarely the case with highly focused games like D&D 3-4 or most Forge-style designs, where heavy focus on non-conventional mechanics often scared incompatible players right away (however, that doesn't work with casual gamers who don't really care, it seems).

Other than a substantial number of gamers seem to suffer from communication problems paired with some weird masochistic tendencies, my conclusion is that there is no given.

Relying on some universal concept of a "role-playing game" is a very slippery common ground, I'd say. Group tradition or the game manual are more solid, but the former might prove incompatible with the latter. It seems to me a gaming group has two options, basically. The group can rely on their common tradition of how one plays a "role-playing game", disregarding or houseruling parts of the design, or perhaps relying on that discipline thing in case of incompatibilities. Otherwise, the group can try to play the game as is, disregarding their "role-playing" preconceptions and trying to adjust their playstyle to the ruleset (and it's either going to be fun for them or not). Outside those two ways, streets tend to be cobbled with disfunction.

Based on the data provided by Darcy, it's hard to assess this particular case.

Darcy,

Consequently, could you provide us with more details about the members of your group and your gaming history?

Also, my question about Beast Hunters stays. If you had a chance to try it out, I'm very curious about how it compares with Agon in terms of both role- and roll-playing experience and expectations.