Flaming Monkey

If you’re an Amber fan and you’ve been keeping up with threads on Story Games you’ve probably already seen this, but for those that haven’t, here’s a pretty good discussion of what’s good about roleplaying in Amber.

I’ve been reading Gencon reports (it sounds like most had a very good time), and there are a few new games that are getting quite a lot of buzz. I went and checked some of them out as best I could, so now I think there are at least two more games that I’ll probably be adding to my want list:

Agon

AGON is a competitive RPG set in a fantastic version of ancient Greece similar to that of the Illiad and the Odyssey. The heroes work together against the enemies and obstacles created by the Antagonist, but the players compete to win the most glory for their heroes.The player who earns the most glory wins the game.

Hero’s Banner: The Fury of Free Will

Hero’s Banner: The Fury of Free Will is a fantasy roleplaying game about making life choices in a world filled with expectation. Your character consists, primarily, of three “influences,” or possible life callings. These might include anything from choosing to marry for love instead of political gain to choosing the life of a soldier over that of a courtly diplomat. Whatever the character is struggling with, he spends his time forming alliances and developing other connections to each influence. But with choice comes loss. As your character slowly progresses towards an inevitable end he will lose friends and ability along the way. The more he specializes, the better he becomes, but also the more he must give up. And eventually, he will have to abandon two of his influences altogether — making one final choice.

I’ll have to keep an eye out for AP (Actual Play) posts, but what I’ve read about each game so far sounds pretty darned good.

Thor Olavsrud has posted an excellent behind-the-scenes series of posts about the making of Burning Empires, the new sci-fi game from the creators of Burning Wheel that’ll be available at this year’s Gencon.

Last week I posted about Brennan’s description of his process for writing Mortal Coil, and promised that I would give Burning Empires a similar treatment. Well, here’s where I start to deliver. It was such a long, intense process (I’ve been gathering notes and consulting with Luke about it for the past two days) that I’ve decided I need to break it down into multiple posts.

The series starts here, and it’s pretty interesting.