
Jim’s note: a version of this article appeared on the TEETH RPG newsletter. As I see other games created with this system the more convinced I am of its genius. However, I am aware that has earned significantly less fanfare than Blades In The Dark, despite sort of being the game which really proves that the designer of both systems, John Harper, is a wizard. I can both understand this (the fantasy and reality of the game is somehow less commanding) but also find myself disappointed by it, because it’s a fantastic experience that I got a great deal out of. Creating a game that hacks this system is well up my list of things to do in TTRPGs.
So yes, rewind back to the summer of 2020, and The Catfail Club (our Tuesday night group formed in the shadow of Covid) are playing AGON, hosted by Failbetter’s Chris Gardiner.
AGON is a game of Greek myth and legend, but it is, more abstractly and, arguably more importantly, a co-operative game about Who Is Best.
So who is best? And why? Well, it’s at this point where I begin to be convinced that John Harper (and Sean Nittner, in this instance) has in fact made some sort of crossroads pact to understand the link between narrative systems and mechanical systems better than anyone else, because the underlying theme of AGON (explored for different themes and settings in a couple of other playbooks) is one that can be separated from the main system (Paragon, notably in DEATHMATCH ISLAND, which we will also talk about soon) but also absolutely articulates and enables that fiction to a point that I found startling.
The ruleset facilitates the idea of playing a myth-person of antiquity via a bunch of procedure that I initially found daunting and then found vital: to my delight we had created Greek heroes and the legend they were moving through within a few questions from the “Strife” player (GM). Now, perhaps that was easier because we were all of us forever GMs who were ready with tales and Greek myth knowledge at hand, but it didn’t seem so to me. By the start of our actual quest we had already razed Carthage and become lost in the Mediterranean, each of us already in thrall of our various patron gods. The game sets all this up with some ripe questions, and prompts that bring the Greek hero stuff out with a gleam.
AGON is, like Blades In The Dark, a dice-pool type game where you describe your actions based on roll you made. But how and when that description happens is not quite like Forged In The Dark type games. Nor is it doing things with a faintly conservative fistful of d6 this time, no, because the various dice are upgraded through d8 and its larger platonic cousins, to give you greater capacity to roll high individual numbers as the game moves forward. Nor are these dice linked solely to trad type ability stats, but instead are also linked to your name, your standing with the gods, your relationships with other players, and so on. In taking an action you will, as you might expect, end up describing your actions, but the structure here is one in which we describe after the dice roll, because how well each character did actually matters for deciding Who Is Best, which also defines the order in which the descriptions are made.
For example: we fought some harpies, as you might when you stumble across a cursed isle in the Balearic blue, and that action saw two of us succeed, and one fail. Of those that succeeded, one rolled highest, and that hero was best. (The failure was one of standing: my hero embarrassing herself as she tried to match the others.) So although we worked together to defeat our enemy, and did defeat them, it was that player (I think in that particular case James Hewitt’s robust warrior Kyriakos) who finally vanquished the monsters, and who took the glory. He got to describe his ultimate victory, after we had done the setup of Not Quite Managing It, so that they other characters were, for that scene, relegated to supporting actors in the scene which made Kyriakos into the hero he believed he was.
Who did what and how really matters to the round-by-round action of AGON, just as it does in the telling of oh, say, a Greek epic. And why that matters is that glory is XP: it eventually allows your character to develop more, and to unlock better dice. If you are Best, then you become better, and the tale becomes more yours.
That might sound exponential, but there are so many other moving parts, and so many different structures through which players pass (and resources which they can expend, such as calling on the various gods to assist them in their moment of need) that it ended up (for us, at least) being a fairly close-run thing, with each of the heroes having quite a different approach by still contributing to overcoming the Strife they faced each time.
As I said last time, I think the exciting thing for me about Harper’s rule systems is that he’s adept at building frameworks which match the kind of story, theme, and action that the games are about, and AGON feels like an extremely coherent and competent example of that. It’s supremely rulesy, with procedural diagrams for the big moments of facing off against the story’s major challenges (be that monsters, or landslides, or social dilemmas) and an intricate web of cost and reward, angering gods, and earning a better name for yourself, which you map on your playbooks as you go. But the end result, the feed which the computation spews out, as it were, really feels Greekly mythological in a way that completely surprised and captivated me.
All that said I recommend AGON with reservation. Not because it’s not absolutely great, because it is, but it’s a lot, and both the GM and the players will be doing some work to make it sing, but the pay-off for that work and buy-in is magnificent.
I also wonder about Who Is Best. We found it hugely amusing to compete with each other, but I can see how some groups might not gel with this motif. There’s a certain type of character you have to take on to make this work: brilliant for tropes that lean into competition, like ancient Greek heroes, but such tropes aren’t for everyone. (We later did our own competitive RPG, False Kingdom, and while we loved the concept and execution, it’s fair to say the response to it was muted in a way we didn’t expect: people just want to work together!)
And did AGON influence the development of TEETH overall? Perhaps a little, in the way in which we’ve asked players to think about their personal agendas in the game world, but also in stewing on what co-op (and competition) means in such games really did give me a fresh perspective on the dynamics of a group, and how personal glory (and individual victories achieved as part of a group) might factor in to how the story finally comes to pass.
(And hell, I am truly anxious to see where Harper goes next.)
Further Jim note: since this was written Harper released a PWYW game/add-on called Chamber, based on the Paragon system.
Lost in the hills of Somerset, this Rossignol searches for meaning among the clattering of small plastic bones.