Conflict in RPGing

[Grendel_Khan]

Without that procedure, I feel like people try and find places for these kinds of scenes, which can disrupt other modes of play. They also tend to be a lit less focused.

I guess this is a horribly obvious point, but I think the mechanical or at least procedural effects also apply some much-needed pressure for everyone to do at least take a swing at these types of scenes, including players who would never do so without that push.

I'm sure there are players who aren't interested in that sort of pressure, but to me it's not much different from presenting players with a particularly dangerous combat situation. It's just "Ok, what do you do?" in a more social and improvisational context.

(Plus, not sure if this was already brought up, applying mechanics or procedure reduces the risk of that one player unintentionally going hog-wild with consecutive roleplaying scenes while everyone else starts to drift)

 

[hawkeyefan]

I guess this is a horribly obvious point, but I think the mechanical or at least procedural effects also apply some much-needed pressure for everyone to do at least take a swing at these types of scenes, including players who would never do so without that push.

I'm sure there are players who aren't interested in that sort of pressure, but to me it's not much different from presenting players with a particularly dangerous combat situation. It's just "Ok, what do you do?" in a more social and improvisational context.

(Plus, not sure if this was already brought up, applying mechanics or procedure reduces the risk of that one player unintentionally going hog-wild with consecutive roleplaying scenes while everyone else starts to drift)

Yeah, for sure. That last bit you mentioned about going hog-wild is part of what I meant when I said they disrupt other modes of play and are less focused.

And I think if everyone knows there will be an appropriate time for that kind of stuff, they aren't as likely to try and shoehorn it into some other scene that has nothing to do with it.

I think your idea of putting pressure on folks is a good one. It's those moments that seem more likely to actually reveal something about a character rather than feeling like a prompt for a player to recite their character's backstory.

 

[uzirath]

Although I haven't played many of the games mentioned in this thread, I like the sound of how they implement these character-focused scenes. I've played at tables where we introduced play traditions around starting or ending sessions with flashbacks or other characterization. The only mechanical effect I've seen was attaching a bonus character point to it in GURPS. You could opt out if you weren't feeling it, and then you didn't earn the extra point. I often enjoyed the scenes, but didn't find the mechanic very satisfying.

I don't play much D&D, but I wonder if one could add a system to the long rest to implement this to some degree. Perhaps regaining your HP (something people love to debate) is connected to these "campfire conversations" somehow.

 

[Bluenose]

One thing I've done in Pendragon games is get a player to tell the story of why they're particularly (Energetic, Chaste, Sword-y) in the Winter Phase. Plenty of games have "downtime" periods, which are a great way to get flashback moments or emotional moments into the game.
Though I think I don't entirely agree with the initial premise of building up to the key conflict of a session. I'd at least put it slightly differently; you should build up to a Crisis. Sometimes that might be a conflict of some sort; sometimes it's before the conflict when you realise someone you thought was an ally is on the other side, sometimes it's afte that conflict when you discover something about your own side, and there's a reason people remember the phrase, "I am Lovuyus of Borg" is a phrase people still remember and misquote/adapt. It's worth occasionally using The Conflict as a setup for The Reveal.

 

[pemerton]

I feel like just that bit of established procedure tends to help focus those scenes so that you get to the meat of it quickly, with the intent that this will inform play going forward.

It's that inform play going forward bit that I feel is a bit undeveloped in Agon.

What is an interesting feature of Agon is the way three bits of play intersect:

(1) At the start of the campaign, and then during every Voyage (= transition, downtime etc phase) the players take part in a simple contest to determine who will be the leader for the next island. The leader (ie the player of that PC) gets to decide how the group of heroes will tackle any given scene/situation - though another hero can spend a Bond with the leader hero to "advise" them, which is to say that player can make the final decision instead.

(2) As the heroes approach an island, they see/experience the Signs of the Gods. To explain what this looks like, here's an illustration from the island I wrote up for the Not the Iron DM thread:

Signs of the Gods
Demeter (Goddess of Law): Her sign is the seal - promises made and obligations kept.

Hephaistos (God of Crafting): His sign is a star-shaped brooch wrought out of tin, the imposition of form onto the chaos of the natural world.

Zeus (Lord of the Sky): A storm rages and torrential rain is falling as your sailors dock your vessel.

The idea is that the scenario that follows implicates or in some way pertains to these signs - either literally, as in the storm that is raging as the heroes arrive at this island, or the agreements and debts that come to light later on in the scenario; or metaphorically, as in the role of industry and craft vs wild cultists and raging storms in this scenario.

(3) In the Voyage that follows - after the island scenario has come to its conclusion - the GM and players fill in the Vault of Heaven, which is a stylised star-chart and records the way the heroes pleased or angered the gods. Pleasing the gods helps the heroes find their way home - the system's endgame - and also earn various elements of character improvement or "fate point" style resources; angering the gods arouses their Wrath, which gives the GM bonus dice to include in appropriate opposition dice pools (this is the system's version of "levelling up" the opposition as the heroes "level up" on the player side). Filling the Vault of Heaven is collaborative, and the player who was the leader plays a key role in this, because it should reflect how that player interpreted the Signs of the Gods and then applied that interpretation in leading the heroes on the island.

So whereas play doesn't really make it important (in my experience so far) that a hero has Penelope and Telemachus waiting at home, it does centre what the heroes (as played by their players) think the gods do and don't want from them. (And some other aspects of the game further reinforce this.) Which I think is quite interesting.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

@pemerton Have you checked out the Chamber and Storm Furies playsets? I don't have a great grasp on Paragon, but looking at them, I'm having trouble figuring out how (or whether) those elements work in those. Asking in part because Agon's setting doesn't appeal to me, but those other two really do.

 

[pemerton]

@pemerton Have you checked out the Chamber and Storm Furies playsets? I don't have a great grasp on Paragon, but looking at them, I'm having trouble figuring out how (or whether) those elements work in those. Asking in part because Agon's setting doesn't appeal to me, but those other two really do.

Your post is the first I've heard of these things. I am now switching tabs to do some Googling!

EDIT: OK, so I've just learned that Paragon is a thing!

I had heard of Agon years ago in its first incarnation, and downloaded but never played it. (Maybe it was free to download?) I picked up the 2nd ed in hardcopy at my local games shop, and so hadn't realised there was this whole culture of Agon hacks.

I guess the challenge in a hack is to frame the random wandering coherently, and to set an overall endgame/success condition that parallels the Vault of Heaven: so achieving "wins" (ie pleasing the gods) in ways that are not arbitrary but make it hard to pile up all your wins at once (in Agon this is achieved by having 12 gods, whom you can't please all of all the time; but you have to fill 3 stars for each of 3 gods to find your way home) and also creates the possibility of Wrath.

I would assume that in Storm Furies all the wrath comes from the Forged? The description suggests that instead of Divine Favour there is Expressions which are passions/drives - so instead of pleasing gods, you have to make (sometimes hard) choices about which passion to cultivate and which to set aside? I'm not sure how Bonds with gods would work in this version (in Agon, a Bond allows you to include the Bonded character's name die in your pool, which is d6 to d10 for a PC or NPC, and d12 for a god).

 

[hawkeyefan]

It's that inform play going forward bit that I feel is a bit undeveloped in Agon.

What is an interesting feature of Agon is the way three bits of play intersect:

(1) At the start of the campaign, and then during every Voyage (= transition, downtime etc phase) the players take part in a simple contest to determine who will be the leader for the next island. The leader (ie the player of that PC) gets to decide how the group of heroes will tackle any given scene/situation - though another hero can spend a Bond with the leader hero to "advise" them, which is to say that player can make the final decision instead.

(2) As the heroes approach an island, they see/experience the Signs of the Gods. To explain what this looks like, here's an illustration from the island I wrote up for the Not the Iron DM thread:
The idea is that the scenario that follows implicates or in some way pertains to these signs - either literally, as in the storm that is raging as the heroes arrive at this island, or the agreements and debts that come to light later on in the scenario; or metaphorically, as in the role of industry and craft vs wild cultists and raging storms in this scenario.

(3) In the Voyage that follows - after the island scenario has come to its conclusion - the GM and players fill in the Vault of Heaven, which is a stylised star-chart and records the way the heroes pleased or angered the gods. Pleasing the gods helps the heroes find their way home - the system's endgame - and also earn various elements of character improvement or "fate point" style resources; angering the gods arouses their Wrath, which gives the GM bonus dice to include in appropriate opposition dice pools (this is the system's version of "levelling up" the opposition as the heroes "level up" on the player side). Filling the Vault of Heaven is collaborative, and the player who was the leader plays a key role in this, because it should reflect how that player interpreted the Signs of the Gods and then applied that interpretation in leading the heroes on the island.

So whereas play doesn't really make it important (in my experience so far) that a hero has Penelope and Telemachus waiting at home, it does centre what the heroes (as played by their players) think the gods do and don't want from them. (And some other aspects of the game further reinforce this.) Which I think is quite interesting.

I haven't yet played Agon, but I have read it. It's definitely a game I want to play, but I did remember feeling that some of the elements were a little disconnected, so I'm not surprised by your assessment. I have watched a bit of live play with Harper, and that gave me the impression of a bit more cohesion than just reading the book gave me (which is typically the case).

 

[pemerton]

I haven't yet played Agon, but I have read it. It's definitely a game I want to play, but I did remember feeling that some of the elements were a little disconnected, so I'm not surprised by your assessment. I have watched a bit of live play with Harper, and that gave me the impression of a bit more cohesion than just reading the book gave me (which is typically the case).

I think the intricate intersection of the various resource/advancement tracks is intriguing. They include:

* Pathos (both hp and a type of fate point; recovered fully during every Voyage, a bit like a modern D&D long rest);

* Divine Favour (both hp and a type of fate point, earned during the Voyage via the Sacrifice phase and also via the Vault of Heaven);

* Fate (both emergency back-up hp and a type of XP but on a one-way track to "death" of the PC);

* Glory (the main type of XP, earned by succeeding in contests, which are the main action of play);

* Bonds (a type of fate point, earned with other PCs via in-play decisions -including hanging back in a contest and providing support rather than participating - and also the Fellowship Phase; and earned with gods via in-play decisions and also the Vault of Heaven);

* The Vault of Heaven (an over-arching success track, which propels the game towards the endgame and generates Divine Favour, Bonds with the gods, and PC advancement independent of both Glory and Fate on the way through; as well as Wrath ie divine adversity).​

They generate real decision points in play, both mechanical/optimisation, but also fiction-oriented (both exploration/interpretation - Should I use my Divine Favour with Poseidon now, given I don't think I'll have another ocean-oriented contest on this island? or How will calling on a Bond with Ares at this point affect the Vault of Heaven - and also pro-active - How can I make this fight with a giant serpent into a contest of Craft & Reason, so I can spend a point of Pathos and bring my Craft & Reason die, which is bigger than my Blood & Valour die, into the contest?). And there is a healthy element of player-vs-player contest in the decision to spend Bond to assert leadership - because then you can shift the terrain of a contest onto your favoured terrain - and to get full Glory for a contest you have to not only succeed against the DC, but you have to be the best of the successful heroes.

So far, the only bit that has fallen a bit flat is the question-answer aspect of the Fellowship phase.

But in typing this I've had a little bit of a breakthrough!

One aspect of PC build is Epithet (which has a die rating) - eg a hero might be the Swift-footed (d6) Achilles. When departing an island, a player can change their hero's Epithet to reflect any change that occurred on the island - and in our last session one of the players did this. An aspect of character advancement is also gaining a second Epithet, which is a power-up because you can only include your Epithet in your pool if the fiction makes sense (eg being Swift-footed can help when running or in some fighting, but probably not in talking or performing a ceremony).

As presented in the rules, the decision about changing an epithet is made before the Fellowship phase. But it might make more sense to have it afterwards, so that the discussion in the Fellowship phase can feed directly into the sort of self-reflection involved in thinking about a change to one's epithet.

 

[GrahamWills]

So far, the only bit that has fallen a bit flat is the question-answer aspect of the Fellowship phase.

I do agree with you that the GM is expected to tie together many of the AGON pieces to make things more coherent.

My reading of the classic Greek mythologies indicates that there really should be quite important effects on the story based on the character's history, so I did a couple of things:

1. I modified islands quite significantly to incorporate character histories. One island invited one hero's help; another had ties to the family .. that sort of thing
2. I would note down the personal answers players gave and try to incorporate that into sessions.

My final session (when the heroes arrived home) was almost entirely based on notes I had taken from the players and their actions. The basic plot was that sea raiders (inspired by the characters' earlier actions) invaded the homelands of 2 of the characters with pillage and destriycion on their mind. The other 2 characters were involved by their deity connections.

But none of this is in the book -- not even advice to do so. It's very much left up to the GM