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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8447145" data-attributes="member: 42582">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.</blockquote>

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