Agon at SatCon 1

Agon was tremendous fun and ran even better than I had imagined it would.  The scenario was simplistic, but captured many themes of heroic tragedy.  The system played beautifully.  Simple contests were quick to resolve, with success granting narration rights.  Combat took a little time for us to fully grasp, but once we did, the fights zipped along.  The competitive aspect means that there is a very pleasing game element to Agon.  It's certainly a system that rewards clever interaction with its mechanics.  I particularly liked the way in which the Antagonist (GM) gets nothing for free.  Every challenge thrown at the PCs must be paid for by the Antagonist from his Strife pool.  In practice what this means is that I spent approximately half of my Strife allocation prior to the session, for things such as challenges I already knew that I wanted and for specific monsters, beasts and NPCs.  The remainder of the Strife pool I used in play to make challenges more difficult, as need and drama dictated.  I spent all of my Strife, although the game notes that the Antagonist who finishes a quest with Strife remaining is doing a very good job.  I will spend it more intelligently next time. 

I'd love to play this game because it feels perfect for my somewhat hammy play style.  I'll just have to hope that someone runs it at Continuum.  Overall it stands out as the best of the game-focused RPGs I've run thus far.