A couple months ago, I pre-ordered AGON, a brand-new TTRPG by John Harper (of Blades in the Dark fame) and Sean Nittner (whose work is less familiar to me). I've actually had the PDF since I put in the pre-order, but I decided to hold off on reading it through until I got my physical copy. I also want to say that the fact that I shelled out for a hard copy instead of just buying (or, god forbid, pirating) the PDF is a testament to how much I love John Harper's work. For a lot of reasons, some of which I'll be touching on here, I think he's a goddamn genius and probably the best RPG designer/writer currently working.
So, on to the game! AGON is a sword-and-sandals system with a very narrow focus: it's meant for playing stories of heroes of the type you'd find in Greek mythology. The game hews pretty closely to the conventions and tone found in those myths; the basic structure of the game is episodic, with each session consisting of the party arriving on a new island, figuring out what's what as far as the interpersonal and supernatural conflicts plaguing the inhabitants, trying to fix everything, and then fucking off back to their ship and cruising to the next island. If you've ever read the Odyssey and thought "I want to make a story like this with my friends," you're probably a massive dweeb but you'd definitely like this game.
And hey, there's a lot to like! Character creation is light and breezy, with just enough room to customize so that all the characters don't end up feeling samey. Every hero picks a name, an epithet (something like "Eagle-Eyed" or "Sure-Footed," a brief phrase that sums up their key feature), and a lineage (their notable heritage/ancestor). Once those are decided, you choose which stat ("Domain") you're strongest in: there are four, and they each start as 1d6 with one of your choosing upgraded to 1d8. You then pick which god of the pantheon your hero honors with their adventures, mark bonds with your fellow heroes, and you're good to go. The info you need for a basic character sheet can comfortably fit on half of an A4 sheet of paper, although you'll also want a longer sheet to mark the several progression clocks this game is constantly running.
The basic resolution mechanic here is the contest, and while the actual ins and outs of running a contest has quite a few steps the basic idea is fairly simple: the GM rolls a pool of dice for the NPC adversary based on its features and traits, the result (highest number) of which sets a challenge rating. Each player then rolls a pool of dice based on their character's features and traits; everybody gets to roll their name die, for example, which starts at a d6 and can grow as your character gains renown. Ditto for your epithet die; it grows over time and can be used in any contest where that trait applies. You also get to roll the dice for your Domain, and can burn resources like Pathos, Divine Favor, or Bonds to get extra dice. A player succeeds if their two highest dice meet or beat the challenge rating, with the player who reaches the highest number being designated "best" for that contest and getting extra Glory points.
Bigger conflicts are addressed via "battles," a series of three contests where each phase impacts the next. The game structure in general is pretty on-rails; every time you come to a new island there's an opening contest, two or three trials to advance the plot and allow the heroes to learn more, and then a climactic final battle to decide the fate of the island. Once that climactic battle is over, it's back to sea to resolve a few phases of downtime (things like having character scenes to earn new Bonds or making sacrifices to the Gods to regain points of Divine Favor.) This is also when you take out the cute constellation chart this game uses to represent the gods and mark which deities you pleased and displeased in your recent exploits. This also acts as the timer for the campaign: each god has a three-star constellation, and once you've filled a predetermined number of constellations (three for a short campaign, five for a long one,) your heroes finally find their way home from the war and cease their wandering heroism. The heroes themselves also expire eventually: failing in any conflict results in collecting Pathos, which results in marking Agony, which results in advancing your Fate tracker. Eventually, Fate fills up and your character is retired, passing into legend along with the records of their heroic deeds.
And that's the rules! This is a book that gets in and out pretty quick; all of the character creation, game rules, and GM advice (the latter of which is very solid reading for people running any story-forward game) take up only 84 pages, with the rest of the book devoted to islands you can use for sessions.
A lot of things in AGON remind me of other games I've read; the most obvious comparison is to Blades in the Dark, which is my biggest touchstone for this kind of enforced-episodic play. The Pathos→Agony pipeline also very much smacks of the Stress→Trauma progression in Blades, albeit they go about it in very different ways and with very different thematic goals. A game of AGON also has a similar trajectory to Blades, in that characters emphatically do not last forever (although this goes even further with this idea by giving the campaign itself a victory condition.) I was also reminded of Dogs in the Vineyard, particularly in the approach to character building (if you have a thing/skill/name, it's represented by a die. The cooler it is, the bigger the die) as well as in the conflict engine (although I'm willing to admit I can't justify this comparison much beyond "roll lots of dice of different denominations and see what your highest ones are"). The front of the book acknowledges D. Vincent Baker's games as an inspiration, so it's not crazy to think this is a borrowing rather than convergent evolution.
I also want to take a second to talk about things in this book that I really enjoyed and appreciated that don't fall under game design. First off: this is the first RPG book (and almost certainly the first book of any kind) that I've read that includes a land acknowledgement in the front of the book along with a pledge to donate part of the proceeds to the nations whose land it was published on. There's a lot of important discourse on whether or not land acknowledgements are worth anything in the process of reconciliation, and I'm going to leave that discussion to people who know what they're talking about but I was pleasantly surprised to see an American publisher (even a small one like EHP) make that gesture and back it up with some kind of financial contribution (although I wish I knew how much they were pledging). This is also the first time I've seen an RPG book explicitly say "choose your character's pronouns" as part of character creation, and the book does it without feeling the need to justify or explain why. That's nice. As a person with Gender, thanks guys. The book also makes passing reference in the Session Zero and GM Advice sections to "safety tools" like the X-Card, Lines and Veils, and Script Changes, which were totally new terminology for me (and, I expect, a lot of people who might read this book). These are strategies you can use at your table to ensure that everybody feels safe and comfortable, and I'm a really big fan. I wish the book went into more detail about them instead of expecting the reader to Google what an "X-Card" is, but hey, it's certainly better than nothing. And I'm also not explaining it here, so I guess I can't really complain.
So, here's the review part of the review: I really like AGON. I like that it's filling a niche I haven't seen filled before, I like that it's such a light and snappy system, and I like the sample islands they give in the back of the book (there's 12, and they're even split into beginner-friendly and more advanced ones). The structure of the game in terms of the contests and battles is foreign to me, and it makes me wonder how well it runs, but by now I've put enough time into Blades in the Dark and learned enough about how to make it work that I'm willing to trust John Harper and his book.
I'm so excited about this book that before I even finished reading it I started texting my friends to try and set up a one-shot so I can see how it runs. I've also become possessed with the idea that, with only some small edits, this could be a great system to run a campaign based on Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians. If I ever get around to executing on either of those ideas, expect a postmortem here!
Thanks for reading with me, heroes. Tune in next time when I talk about another ship-heavy system (either 7th Sea or Beat to Quarters, haven't decided yet but I need a pirate game).
Gamer girl content I needed!!!
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