I was invited to play Agon with Dave Turner, Jared Sorensen, Jürgen Mayer, Thor Olavsrud and Matt Wilson on Sunday night. Dave had run the game once before, Thor had played in a demo. I don't think Jürgen or Jared had played before. I certainly hadn't.

We started off with character creation. We were one sheet short, so Thor had to handwrite his sheet. Didn't effect the game too much, but I think it might have added to the overall new game frustration level.

From what I understand, Agon is a competitive game in which you burn your own abilities and karma resources in order to get bonus rolls. Each ability is rated by a type of die -- d4, d6, d8, d10, d12. Everything starts at d6. Abilities can be dropped to d4 to raise another ability by one die type. You also get two bonus increases at start. I decided to play middle of the road. I kept all my abilties at d6 and only used the bonuses to raise Wrestling and Aim (for Javelins) to d8.

Dave started us off with achievement scenes. These are opening contests in which the player characters challenge one another to heroic deeds in order to earn oaths of heroic debt and glory.

We went around the table, each of us challenging the other players in turn. On Jared's turn, he tried to bribe me to relinquish his oath with him. I asked Dave if this was in the rules. It was not. Therefore, I declined. Jared also used his worst abilities in his challenges. This resulted in him not gaining oaths and his opponents gaining oaths over him. I can't speak for him, but it seemed like the oaths frustrated him.

Dave told us right off the bat that this'd be a railroad -- to facilitate some thinly veiled GM choo choo, we'd be fighting two monsters in order get a sense of the game. Initially, I bristled, but once the game started, I didn't care.

During the first fight with the Golden Boar, Jared attempted to do things like change his mind about his actions, switch weapons, hit the beast with a marble column, wrestle the beast to the ground or challenge it to single combat. Dave told Jared that he had to stick to the combat format, which was very rigid. Jared's attacks could be counted as one of the weapon types, but otherwise there was no special effect or roll. I'm going to venture a guess that this ticked Jared off, since he tuned out and shortly left the game.

I was also a bit miffed that I'd taken an enhanced Wrestling and wasn't able to use it in the fight. I wanted some Greco-Roman wrestling action! Oh well.

Matt Wilson jumped in to play Jared's character and quickly instructed us on how to earn glory by spending divine favor. It was informative and soon we were all burning divine favor to slay the hydra!

In the game, the players are competing to earn glory. It's explicit -- it's pvp competitive. There are mechanics in the game that allow you to prevent your opponent from attacking, or that force him to attack with a penalty. No one but myself used this mechanic for competitive purposes. And when I did -- just once! -- I felt there were some bad feelings.

As we battled on with the hydra, I started to get a feel for the game. And that feel was old school DnD. Like the Expert Set. This was good and bad. The good was that the mechanics were simple and evocative for tactical killing of monsters and taking of stuff. The bad, was that Agon -- as we played it -- had the same crazy whiff factor as old school DnD. Even using the divine favor and impairment rules, we were whiff whiff whiffing. It got so bad at one point that I didn't even want to roll the dice. And if it hadn't been for my remembering that Dave's hydra had some wound penalty, rolling the dice would have been moot. My middle of the road character with all d6s couldn't compete with the monsters with d8s.

I heard Jason Roberts, John Wick, Dave Turner and Mike Mearls complaining about the "multiple death spirals" in the game the night before. After playing, I don't agree with their assessment. There's only one "death spiral" (if an injury chart is a death spiral). The impairment mechanics and divine favor and armor rules are all resource management mechanics that work fairly well to create pacing and flow for the game. Rather than hit points, you've got limited rerolls. It's quite cool actually.

But the whiff factor and BW-like armor rules changed the tone of the game for us from greek heroes to greek comedy. Lots of flailing and gnashing of teeth as the heroes bumbled around. Of course, that didn't stop me from  destroying the hyrda and stealing all the glory (but that was also on a technicality -- "Hey Cheater Turner, you had -2 the hydra's roll. That means I beat you and caused a wound. Game's over.")

Jared, Matt, Thor, Jürgen, comments?

John, let's let them chime in a bit and then you can address all the relevant bits.
-Luke

There were some things we were doing wrong during that game, or that we just didn't know enough about, and that would have helped a bit.

First, the +1 or +2 bonus you get from anything (like javelins or heroic traits) stacks onto your highest roll, not a specific die. So if you have the strong-limbed ability, and you bring in your d6 wrestling, the +2 can stack onto the 7 you rolled on your d10 sword ability, even if all you roll on that new d6 is a 3. That's how Luke could have made good use of his wrestling skill, assuming he had strong-limbed. Dave was requesting that we track separate dice to add the bonus to.

Whiff factor is part of the gamble, I think. Sometimes, if you roll crap, you just have to accept it and wait for another turn. However, it might be cool to house rule 1 point of fate for a +1 in those close call circumstances.

Fate was something we never even made use of, and that would probably have helped quite a bit. Luke uses his wrestling 3 times for smackdown, then spends Fate to un-impair it and gets to start over. Jurgen spends fate to avoid wounds. Probably would have made at least some difference.

Armor I thought might encourage some un-heroic actions. Nobody went for super-awesome open-ended rolls against foes with armor, because it'd all get negated with one roll of a die. Armor blocks a roll of 23 as well as it blocks a roll of 4, and that was a little frustrating.

Dave was also rolling freakishly well, consistently getting the maximum on dice, or one less than maximum at the very worst. It was WTF luck.

One last observation was that we all kinda charged in to fight, and we could have done some very old-school planning to get us future bonuses against the hydra. Maybe John can explain how that works when he chimes in.

Sounds to me like you were experiencing more first play one shot blues than actual failings of the game.

As for bribing people with oaths...that's in the rules.  Page 71:  You may earn and give oaths by negotiating with other characters.  "Like 'I won't challenge you for leadership this time in exchange for 2 oaths'".  Oaths net out so if Jared wanted to get out of his oath with you he would have to get you to agree to give an oath to him.

As for switching up in a conflict and using creative rolls that's in the rules too.  The rules for the things you can do in between rounds such as switching weapons and armor is found in the Break rules on page 51.  This includes an entire section for challenging an opponent to Aristeia...a one on one duel carried out during the battle.  The rules for doing non combat stuff in combat is on page 60.  The rules for mixxing combat stuff with non combat stuff is on page 61.  The rules for doing other combaty stuff like feats of athleticism or wrestling are on page 39 for Creative Abilities.  Now the Creative Ability rules are in the Simple Contest section and its not explicitly stated that they can be used in Battle, but it is implied on page 44 of the Battle rules where it says "Think of a battle as a series of connected simple contests all related to the same goal."

So it seems like all of Jared's frustrations were actually completely possible within the rules but just missed in the first session learning curve.

On the matter of whiffing...Agon should not be a very whiff prone game...at least not excessively so.  There are PLENTY of ways of increasing success odds.
Divine favor can be spent to roll additional dice, make extra attacks, or reroll all of your dice.  Creative Abilities allow you to pluck high dice into your roll AFTER seeing the results of your initial roll, so you can use them as needed and keep calling on them until you win.  Name dice are used as part of every roll.  They start at d6, but players can quickly jack them up to d8 simply by burning through 5 Fate, or to d10 by burning through 10 Fate (although you'll be forced to retire after 6 more Quests).  Oaths are also a big deal in the game.  If you have an oath from someone you can force them to give you one of their dice of your choice (obviously a high one).  Its basically the same as Creative Abilities but forcing your rival to eat the impairment.  You can FORCE someone to give you an oath by voluntarily helping them even when they don't ask for it, so a sneaky player trick would be to help them with one of your crappy d4s, and then take one of their d10s as payback.  This is especially useful if you've been beaten down and have lots of impairment because they can't really do the same to you if you don't have anything left worth taking.

On the matter of death spirals...Agon should be relatively death spiral proof.  You have 5 basic resources to manipulate:  Wounds, Impairment, Divine Favor, Fate, and Oaths.  You automatically get fate for completeing quests, but other than that fate expenditure is entirely in players hands, so simply not using it, stops its decline.  Oaths can be replentished pretty easily as noted above in a variety of ways.  e.g. "I'll move that enemy out of optimal range for bashing you in exchange for 1 oath"

For the rest, the Interlude is your friend.  I'll have to play a few sessions to see if what you get from an Interlude is balanced with the 4 Strife the GM gets everytime you call for one, but basically you can call for as many as you want to replenish your resources as needed, any time outside of a conflict.  There's alot of TSOY influence here.  So much so that I initially assumed that Wounds "shake down" like they do in TSOY but on further investigation I can't find any support for that, although it makes sense and I might look to do it anyway.  Wounds can be healed during Interludes with nothing more needed than having an Interlude and choosing to heal. Impairment is replenished in a manner similiar to TSOY's pool refreshment except its turned into mini competitions between players to see who replenishes the most.  Divine Favor can be automatically restored to full during the Interlude simply by making a Sacrifice to your god which may also result in acquiring a d12 God oath to throw down later, which also helps with the whiff issue.  You can call for as many Interludes as you want (with some PvP considerations here that let you put the squeeze on a weak rival by blocking the Interlude if you're in good shape and he isn't).  So basically the death spiral is completely cut off simply by calling for Interludes until you're full.  The only limit is the more Interludes you call the more Strife you give the GM to spend against you.  But since there's a) a cap on how much the GM can spend to built a monster to use against you, and b) spending more strife gives you more Glory this should really be a well balanced tactical decision (pending confirmation that 4 strife per is the best amount).

I'm not sure about the advancement rules with 10 glory giving an advance, and 3 advances needed to move a d6 to a d10...that may be high...30 glory per die increase seems high given my estimate for earning glory rates from reading the rules...maybe 5 per would be better.  But actual play will tell.

Now one thing that does concern me from the demo and reading the rules is that battle might get a little repetitious.  Its definitely attrition based (whittling your opponent down over several rolls) and my worry is that while 6-7 rolls would rock, 17-20 rolls would get tedious.  Play will tell, but one red flag for me is the propensity of negative modifiers.  Negative attack modifiers make hits less likely and extra damage less likely, thus drawing combat out.  My preference is to give the opponent a bonus...same relative effect but makes hits and extra damage more likely, keeping combat snappy.

Some examples, there are attack penalties for wearing armor.  Since armor is free for the taking there needs to be a mechanical balance to keep the gamey resource management intact.  But not only are attack penalties problematic, but remembering to take a -1 to every attack roll in a battle sounds excessively fiddly.  Plus having the helmet penalize missiles while breast plates penalize melee seems to make it more likely for archers to wear breastplates while infantry don't...which seems odd.  My plan is to switch the helmet penalty to the Hunt Roll...this uses the same "perception penalty" logic, and uses a commonly called on ability so its an actual penalty...but avoids the attack penalty problem and isn't as fiddly as attack modifiers.  Similarly switching the breast plate penalty to the Athletics roll should have the same effect.

Then the second change that I'm 80% certain is a good one is with the Positioning system (which I totally love).  Currently if you are out of Optimal weapon range you get a -2 attack or -4 if you're two ranges out (there's those attack penalties again).  I'm planning to reverse that so that if you're IN Optimal weapon position you get +2.  If you're out you get 0 and out by 2 is -2.  So exactly the same relative effect, just increasing the attack roll and keeping combat snappy.  It also has the advantage of helping spread around the responsibility for remembering modifiers.  With a penalty based system, the GM has to track it to keep the players honest.  With a bonus based system, the players will be sure to track it themselves.

Another change I'm going to try is to make the effects from the special maneuvers different for each one...currently the three maneuvers all have the same mechanical effect.

There were a number of games that impressed me at the booth this year, but actually the single game that has me most jazzed to play is Agon.  Since I "informed" my gaming group that we will be playing Agon this Friday, I spent yesterday studying the rules in detail (I typically write myself a rules summary as a way of getting the details down) so, on the basis of a demo with John and some pretty intensive study of the rules, I think I have a pretty good handle to get started (I currently have a 4 page summary document worked out and ready to go for Friday's game).  The proof will be in the actual play, but currently I'm not worried by whiffs or death spirals in the least.

Edited after Matt's post:
The point about armor negating super hits is a point I hadn't caught.  Armor does get Impaired with successful use, so part of the strategy may be to whittle it down and then lay the smack down.

Some excellent points, a few more.

Matt wrote:
Whiff factor is part of the gamble, I think. Sometimes, if you roll crap, you just have to accept it and wait for another turn. However, it might be cool to house rule 1 point of fate for a +1 in those close call circumstances.

Armor I thought might encourage some un-heroic actions. Nobody went for super-awesome open-ended rolls against foes with armor, because it'd all get negated with one roll of a die. Armor blocks a roll of 23 as well as it blocks a roll of 4, and that was a little frustrating.

Valamir wrote:
Now one thing that does concern me from the demo and reading the rules is that battle might get a little repetitious.

My plan is to switch the helmet penalty to the Hunt Roll...this uses the same "perception penalty" logic, and uses a commonly called on ability so its an actual penalty...but avoids the attack penalty problem and isn't as fiddly as attack modifiers.  Similarly switching the breast plate penalty to the Athletics roll should have the same effect.

Then the second change that I'm 80% certain is a good one is with the Positioning system (which I totally love).  Currently if you are out of Optimal weapon range you get a -2 attack or -4 if you're two ranges out (there's those attack penalties again).  I'm planning to reverse that so that if you're IN Optimal weapon position you get +2.  If you're out you get 0 and out by 2 is -2.  So exactly the same relative effect, just increasing the attack roll and keeping combat snappy.

Another change I'm going to try is to make the effects from the special maneuvers different for each one...currently the three maneuvers all have the same mechanical effect.

Valamir wrote:
Now one thing that does concern me from the demo and reading the rules is that battle might get a little repetitious.  Its definitely attrition based (whittling your opponent down over several rolls) and my worry is that while 6-7 rolls would rock, 17-20 rolls would get tedious.  Play will tell, but one red flag for me is the propensity of negative modifiers.  Negative attack modifiers make hits less likely and extra damage less likely, thus drawing combat out.  My preference is to give the opponent a bonus...same relative effect but makes hits and extra damage more likely, keeping combat snappy.

Edited after Matt's post:
The point about armor negating super hits is a point I hadn't caught.  Armor does get Impaired with successful use, so part of the strategy may be to whittle it down and then lay the smack down.

There's a whole lot of protein in Agon. It's not a "light" game by any means, and I think players tend to associate fun+competitive with light.

Heck, there's stuff I keep learning when I open the book, and here I thought I had closely followed along with all of John's playtesting.

Sunday night's game would have been way different, I suspect, if'n we'd knowed all of those good crunchy bits. I hope the BW crew have the chance to give it another shot in all its appropriate glory.

rafial wrote:
Minions are your friend in this regard.  You can throw piles of them at the heros and let them sweep through them like so much chaff.  1-2 bosses and lots of minions.

Comment: the rulebook is probably not clear on this point, but armor penalties were not intended to apply outside of battle.

Also, danger danger, by making the breastplate an Athletics penalty, you've now made both breastplate AND greaves affect posititioning.

Mmm.... bloody.  I'm curious to hear your results.

This is an awesome idea, and I was already prepping something like it for the wiki.  I'd love to hear about what you come up with.

I think also the format of the game (fight two monsters in a row) might have contributed to the problems. When I run it, I'll start with some simple athletic or performance contests to prove win a competition and get the favour of a god, and then have some obstacles to overcome like leaping across a river and and fight some minions before taking on a monster. All of this shouldn't take much time (maybe less time than fighting a single monster!) and will help players get comfortable with the PvP aspect of game play before they get into a real fight.
That's my plan, anyway.

Valamir wrote:
Basically same structure:  Tactics I'm looking to make the bonus for success be +2 to the next exchanges Positioning roll.  War-cry I'm leaving as is, the -2 to enemy's next roll, on the basis of being intimidated by the war-cry.  Battle-wise I'm looking to make it a bonus to next roll.

Question:  the text seems to indicate that the special move applies only to a single enemy target.  Is giving up an attack capable of doing lasting wound penalties to an enemy really worth a special maneuver that gives the penalty only for a single roll?  Seems to me that the special tactics should apply to all enemies (or all allies)?  Thoughts?

Hey guys? I'm certainly enjoying this extended "what if" rules discussion, but I doubt that's why Luke started the thread. Let's give it a rest for now and let the other players chime in.

The Agon forum should be turned on any day now, and you can move the rules-modification talk over there. :-)

Hey Mazza,

quit drifting the rules. And keep your dirty little rules drift out of my AP post. Because while I'm certain your rules drift would fix everything, this post is about the trouble we experienced in play the other night. I'm glad to know that some of the issues we had are addressed in the text, though. That's cool.

Doesn't change the whiff factor stuff, though. On one roll Thor spent divine favor for rerolls and impaired three or four abilities. Four (or five) rolls and he couldn't get what he needed (which was like a 5 or something).

-L

Question:  What made Thor's roll a whiff and not a legitimate failure?  I know you BW guys are all about sucking it up on legitimate failures.  What made this feel different?

We were all failing and flailing, but Thor burned four bonus rolls in a row and still failed. That, my friend, is a whiff. Admittedly, he rolled below the expected average, but I felt like it was enough of a phenomenon to point it out.

I'm not going to use this thread to offer "fixes" or anything like that, though. Just for raw feedback. If we were simply playing the game incorrectly, so much the better. But note well that we were out in the field playing, Ralph, which is a bit different from reading. (Obviously, Turner could have benefited from a bit more reading, though!)

-L

Hey everybody,

Thanks for giving Agon a try! I really appreciate it. Just knowing that my game was being played the day after its release, at GenCon, made me feel like a rockstar.  It sounds like you guys jumped in with a few key rules missing, though, and this caused some frustration in play. This is totally understandable.I doubt anyone had a chance to read and digest the game at that point in the con, and you were going mostly on memory of the demo and raw enthusiasm.

I appreciate all your comments, but I'll have to take them with a huge grain of salt. You didn't actually get to play the game that I wrote, so some of the concerns you've raised may not apply to the real thing. I'll go over some of the features of the full game that I feel address some of the issues that have cropped up here. Ralph and others hit some of these high points already, but I'll go over them again for completeness sake.

Whiffs Begone
The Agon system is all about reducing the whiff factor. Pretty much all the currency of the game revolves around boosting effectiveness in one way or another. Still, the dice will betray you sometimes. That's life. This means you have to make some tough choices about how to manage your resources. Mainly: do you want to burn out fast and bright, or take your lumps and stay in for the long haul?

Let's use Luke's wrestler as an example of a character who can kick a ton of ass with some judicious resource management. He has the heroic trait, "Strong Limbed" which gives him +2 to Might and +2 to Wrestle. He also has a d8 Wrestle ability, and he probably should have had a d8 Might as well. Personally, I would have made both of these d10, for reasons which will become clear.

Let's say that Luke's hero is attacking the monster. He makes his attack roll, and it comes up crappy. Now, he can narrate how he uses his hero's Wrestle ability to help the attack. He then gets to roll his Wrestle die of d8 and then adds a +2 bonus to his highest die showing, whatever it is (it doesn't have to be his Wrestle die). But let's say his result is *still* crappy. No problem, now he can narrate how his hero uses Might to solve the problem. He gets to roll his Might die (d8), and then add +4 to his highest die in the pool (+2 from his Wrestle bonus, +2 from Might).

After all that, if Luke's roll is still not good enough (and he really, really wants to win the roll) he can spend 2 Divine Favor, pick up all of his current attack dice (including the Wrestle and Might bonus dice) and make a second attack.

Adding his Wrestle and Might dice impairs them, so they both become d6 after the roll. But next exchange, he can do this little trick again, getting 2d6 bonus dice and +4 to his attack roll. And then, he can tick up his Fate track, clear the impairment off both abilities, and start over at the top. A near-constant +4 bonus and 2d8 bonus dice to any given roll is a can of whupass you don't want to face.

There are several other bits of synergy like that in the system that seriously reduce the whiff factor, but I won't delve into all of that here.

Getting Creative
Jared wanted to do crazy stunts and come at problems from weird angles. Agon definitely supports this, but you have to pay the piper. Let's say that Jared's hero wants to knock over a stone column and then bash the monster with it. No problem. There are several ways to handle this, depending on the effect Jared is after.

The first thing that comes to mind is to treat the column as an advantage die. Instead of attacking during the exchange, Jared would have a Might contest vs. 2d6 (or whatever difficulty the Antagonist bought). His victories in that contest would convert to an advantage die. Let's say he is Mighty, and gets a d10 advantage die out of the roll, to represent the friggin' stone column his hero is swinging around. Now, for any one roll during the battle, he can add that d10 to his dice pool to improve his chances. If he wants to keep using it, he has to keep making those Might contests and winning the advantage die, but that sounds about right for a stone column as a weapon.

The "stone column attack" could also be described as an intimidation attempt, using the War Cry maneuver. Or even a Disarm, depending on how you described it ("disarming" the monster's teeth weapons would be about right).

"Wrestling the beast to the ground" is another nifty move Jared wanted to attempt. The simplest way to handle this would be to make a normal attack roll, add the Wrestle die in to the pool, and then narrate how he wrestled the creature down and hurt it. This would make the attack roll better, but would impair the Wrestle ability. Or, he could have instead had a Wrestle contest vs. 2d6 and then earned an advantage die to use (or to give to another hero). Using an ability for an advantage contest doesn't automatically impair it, either, so his Wrestling wouldn't degrade as a result. Jared could have even tried to make a deal with another hero, offering the aid of his advantage die in return for an oath or two.

I really like the use of creative abilities during battle, and the advantage die system seems to handle them pretty well. I'm even considering dropping the "special maneuvers" like War-Cry and Tactics, and instead using the more general advantage die system for everything.

Competition and the Point of Play
Agon is all about the player vs. player competition. A few things Luke says in his post makes it clear that the PvP was not working around the table. The one time he stepped up and engaged the PvP engine, he says there were "bad feelings." This is just wrong for Agon play. Good-natured screw-your-neighbor is the order of the day.

I'm also getting a vibe that there was some GM vs. players going on, too. Agon does not support this type of play! It is not old-skool D&D with the GM as the opponent. The Antagonist's job is to provide adversity for the hero band. When she provides a whole lot, the heroes tend to work together and support each other to beat the foe. When she provides a little, the heroes all turn on each other and screw each other over to win the easy Glory. The Antagonist never has to gauge the challenge level "just right" for the adventure to function, and she literally cannot compete with the players. The players are competing for the most Glory, period. The Antagonist is not part of that competition. The monsters are there to provide a playing field for the heroes to compete for the glory, that's all.

-----

Thanks again to everyone who gave the game a try on such short notice. Super extra thanks to Dave for putting the game together and getting so excited about the game. All of your feedback is invaluable to me. I've started a FAQ to address some of these and other questions. It's on the Agon wiki.

Cool John! The escalating bonus as the various abilities are called in was definitely one of the missing pieces. That would have changed the game substantially.

Also, I think Luke is incorrect about the competitive stuff. We were all, especially later on in the fight against the hydra, positioning in an attempt to get the killing blow on the hydra while preventing others from doing the same. We were also using Oaths to impair key abilities possessed by the other players.