Hm, okay, so looking at a couple of reviews of AGON second edition, it seems that they took out the player-v-player aspect. Which is fair, it was kind of underdeveloped.
In AGON (first edition), the PCs are Greek heroes, sailing around an archipelago, exploring strange islands, meeting interesting people and monsters, and beating them up, For Glory. The PvP aspect comes into play in a couple of ways. First, you're explicitly trying to score Glory (functionally, XPs) to be more awesome and a better-remembered hero: you score Glory by killing monsters and overcoming various obstacles. Specifically, by dealing the killing blow, or by rolling the best in a non-combat challenge. Second, during downtime you can recuperate by calling for a contest among the heroes, using your various skills. Everyone regenerates a little bit, the winner regenerates more, and the loser owes the winner a favor (typically the loan of a die during a later challenge).
I don't remember much about RUNE except that it was explicitly players-vs-GM and had a rotating GM, changing every encounter.
Amber Diceless is the game of my heart. The central conceit is that the PCs are from the Really Real reality of Amber, and as such are inherently superior in every way to anything they might encounter in the multiverse of Shadow... so the only real conflict is with their peers, other Amberites. Note that there are also 'elder Amberites,' their parents' generation, who can generally kick the snot out of the PCs... but they're still only human, so they can be outmaneuvered. Amber games usually involve some sort of existential threat to Amber and/or the Courts of Chaos, and often a lot of political maneuvering for the throne of Amber itself.
Characters have four attributes: Psyche (magic prowess), Strength (physical prowess, unarmed combat), Endurance (not dying), and Warfare (sort of mental prowess, and also all physical conflict other than fisticuffs). Attributes have values, but only the relative ranks matter: "I'm second-ranked in Psyche, so I can out-magic anybody but Frank, but I'm low ranked in Strength so if anyone punches me before I can magic them I'm toast." Attributes are initially doled out in an auction, and players can then secretly spend character points to buy up their attributes, so that they're slightly less good than that rank ("I bought up to first rank in Warfare, so now I'm a little less good than Chris, but better than everyone else... unless they also bought up Warfare").
Conflict resolution is entirely narrative, and adjudicated by the GM. In general you're not going to beat someone who's way better than you, without some extreme trickery. (Or changing the terms of the engagement: making it into a Strength conflict instead of Psyche, as above.) In a close contest, Endurance is often the deciding factor: "You're a little better than me in Warfare but I'm three ranks higher in Endurance, so I just have to not die before you exhaust yourself."
Amber is a weird, weird artifact of a game. Erick Wujick, the designer, is better known for his work on Rifts, aka "the 1980s teenaged boy powertrip RPG." The Amber rules mix complex and technical magic systems and magic item creation with the freewheeling conflict resolution I describe above. In practice I steer players away from the weirder magic stuff and the overpowered items, and towards the attribute auction, because that's where the fun is.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2022-07-20 05:09 am (UTC)In AGON (first edition), the PCs are Greek heroes, sailing around an archipelago, exploring strange islands, meeting interesting people and monsters, and beating them up, For Glory. The PvP aspect comes into play in a couple of ways. First, you're explicitly trying to score Glory (functionally, XPs) to be more awesome and a better-remembered hero: you score Glory by killing monsters and overcoming various obstacles. Specifically, by dealing the killing blow, or by rolling the best in a non-combat challenge. Second, during downtime you can recuperate by calling for a contest among the heroes, using your various skills. Everyone regenerates a little bit, the winner regenerates more, and the loser owes the winner a favor (typically the loan of a die during a later challenge).
I don't remember much about RUNE except that it was explicitly players-vs-GM and had a rotating GM, changing every encounter.
Amber Diceless is the game of my heart. The central conceit is that the PCs are from the Really Real reality of Amber, and as such are inherently superior in every way to anything they might encounter in the multiverse of Shadow... so the only real conflict is with their peers, other Amberites. Note that there are also 'elder Amberites,' their parents' generation, who can generally kick the snot out of the PCs... but they're still only human, so they can be outmaneuvered. Amber games usually involve some sort of existential threat to Amber and/or the Courts of Chaos, and often a lot of political maneuvering for the throne of Amber itself.
Characters have four attributes: Psyche (magic prowess), Strength (physical prowess, unarmed combat), Endurance (not dying), and Warfare (sort of mental prowess, and also all physical conflict other than fisticuffs). Attributes have values, but only the relative ranks matter: "I'm second-ranked in Psyche, so I can out-magic anybody but Frank, but I'm low ranked in Strength so if anyone punches me before I can magic them I'm toast." Attributes are initially doled out in an auction, and players can then secretly spend character points to buy up their attributes, so that they're slightly less good than that rank ("I bought up to first rank in Warfare, so now I'm a little less good than Chris, but better than everyone else... unless they also bought up Warfare").
Conflict resolution is entirely narrative, and adjudicated by the GM. In general you're not going to beat someone who's way better than you, without some extreme trickery. (Or changing the terms of the engagement: making it into a Strength conflict instead of Psyche, as above.) In a close contest, Endurance is often the deciding factor: "You're a little better than me in Warfare but I'm three ranks higher in Endurance, so I just have to not die before you exhaust yourself."
Amber is a weird, weird artifact of a game. Erick Wujick, the designer, is better known for his work on Rifts, aka "the 1980s teenaged boy powertrip RPG." The Amber rules mix complex and technical magic systems and magic item creation with the freewheeling conflict resolution I describe above. In practice I steer players away from the weirder magic stuff and the overpowered items, and towards the attribute auction, because that's where the fun is.