Triangle Agency (Part 2)

Bad things come in at three; telework request denied

You can find part 1 here.

5. Disassemble Engine

Games have a flow, which, when you hit, the game pretty much runs itself. It is extremely satisfying. After examining the interactions of game elements, we single out the most important - the one that sets the pace of sessions, or even campaigns. We focus on how that engine works, how it makes the game move along, and what to do to make it do what you want to do - and how to keep it running clean.

Ludo

There is no way around it; when you rotate Triangle Agency in your head, it becomes clear it is a Laser & Feelings hack. Which seems absurd, the game is nothing like it! How can there be a 300 pages Laser & Feelings hack! That would be illegal!

That is because it was purposefully designed. This is the result of sitting with the artform we have after over a decade of Laser & Feelings hacks and games in conversation with it, thinking about what they do and what not do. And after looking closely at it, takes its approach to instead of improv prompts, power a gamey-ass gamy game.

Triangle Agency looks at the engine of games of that sort and ask: how much can you get from this? How many filters can you can through this? And how much power can you get from this thing?

Every roll, for every character, is the same — in part because it is never your character doing things, but rather, channeling the resources of the Agency to reshape reality¹. Roll 6 d6s. 3s are successes. A single 3 is enough to change reality and get what you want; depending on your Anomaly abilities, you may find an use for extra successes.

However, most rolls generate Chaos — any dice that is not a 3s (after modification) or during Stability (3 3s, 3 of any number; after modification). This is where who your character and who they are come in: each roll is tied to a Quality, and an Anomaly; the Anomaly gives you extra uses for successes beyond the first, your mundane persona can cause you to ignore penalties and your corporate role can cause you to get penalties from your actions — and Qualities that you can use to turn dice into successes. This let’s dice rolls be simple, uniform, but between Chaos, keeps an ongoing conversation between Anomalies and their effect on Reality — PCs through the lens through which dice rolls pass through, antagonistic ones through spending of Chaos, as it is used as currency by the game master.

But this is not the engine; this is the fuel.

You would think the engine then is a simple, but well tested one: routine loop. Debrief, investigate, confront. Repeat.

Well, it is what the game wants you to think, that is, the game-in-the-persona-of-the-Agency. Sure the first session will be that; definitely will be your engine if you only encounter Triangle Agency as an one-shot.

Because its engine is Time.

Not just playing the game for longer, but also that. The truth about the Agency, Anomalies and your work is hidden behind layers of clues, unlocked through play from the game material. And you get those by spending Time — a resource that you get every session you play. You play more, you get Time, and you get to allocate to improving your Anomaly abilities, rising the corporate ladder or spending more time with your relationships. Loose ends accumulate as time (non resource) goes on, causing more cracks to form and more secrets to spill. Slowly, you are feed piecemeal information that make you question your mission. The routine loop is compromised. The ability to rewrite reality becomes less goofy and more terrifying. The walls close in, you do something stupid. And you keep going, because you need more Time to understand what is going on.

And then you run out. Because you have thirty units of Time.

Like XII before, the engine of Triangle Agency is time.

Brad

Triangle Agency is slim, a game that really boils down to a pretty simple dice pool mechanic… But don’t guess how deep the lake is from the clear blue surface. The game has an incredibly simple loop, but that’s not the engine. The engine is Advancement, you spend time to advance and as you advance the game changes little by little.

When I first started learning ttrpgs, people said “The game session one isn’t the same game at session twenty.” and on the one hand they were right for most games, not mechanically but the narrative has a huge impact, and as your numbers and capabilities went up it changed how you did things in the game. In Triangle Agency that adage is very, very true, you will change the game dramatically and in ways you might never expect.

As you grow and understand, so too does your character, and oh so dramatically does the world change around them. Will you help The Agency sell that change or dare to do something different?

6. Essentials For Session One

So, you got this game, you going to play it, but you don’t have the time to read everything. Or even worse, your have read it and now it is all jumbled together. Here we break down the things that you absolutely want to try to get right and/or hit during your first session, so you get the feeling of what makes this game stand out from similar art.

Lucrécia

For your first time playing, you don’t need much. In fact, you should disregard half the book.

Focus on character creation (pg.57). This has three steps:

• Get three abilities from picking an Anomaly (pg.60).

• Your Reality gives you a track about how you may fail your relationships and a situation where you can ignore penalties (pg. 80).

• Your Competency gives a taboo that gives you penalties if you perform, as well as nine points of Qualities to improve dice rolls (pg. 99).

And… remember the pages with the rules (pg 39-40) and that’s it! You set to go. If you have the Vault book, pick an Anomaly from the list. We had a lot of fun with Rom Dump as our first mission (pg. 44).

As the game master, you should be aware that the point of rolls is less to ask for successes, but to generate resources you can use. You want to get that Chaos.

Because of the way that resolution work in Triangle Agency, resolving contradictory actions requires to stand back from the ongoing scene for a dedicated procedure. You should familiarize yourself with it.

While the Agency would want neat and fast “identify Focus, find Domain, confront Anomaly”, for the hidden layers to work, players should be able to do things their bosses would not want them to do. It is good to before starting an Investigation, letting them do their stuff — and keep the dice away.

Brad

It’s very rare I will ever tell you this, but absolutely lean into the artifice and theatre of this little game, sell it as mundane and let the bits and then the slow dread build naturally. (Fun fact, I wore what I called my District Manager outfit for three sessions and insisted on speaking in a way that could kindly be called Corpo-Speak.)

I agree with Lu on all points including using the Vault book! (I used the first anomaly in there though) and otherwise give it a chance to do something wonderful!

7. Playing The Game Wrong

Games are played wrong. Rules will be misunderstood, interactions will be confused, the importance of certain tech disregarded; etc. This is good, and it is good to acknowledge for: you cannot have the designer at your time, and even if they were, they would be just another player - and entitled to play it wrong. After identifying stress points of the game, things that don’t connect that well, we think of the things that are more likely to be (our have been) “played wrong”. What happens when you forget a line in page 273 clearly saying this is impossible?

Lucrécia

Unlike enough TTRPGs that there is an entire system of belief around “Having to roll dice is already a fail-state”, Triangle Agency stands out in the assumption that anything you do without rolling dice is going to fail. So anything you do, it will have to be by working with bossman to rewrite reality — the good thing is that it is very likely going to work.

Probabilities and outcomes will get people by surprise if they are not careful. Success is pretty much guaranteed — with over 87% likelihood, unmodified, it looks good. However, it is also almost impossible to not generate Chaos; players have more fun if they are aware that the challenge is about managing Chaos and dealing with it/spending effort and Qualities in preventing it from accumulating. The space of play is one where you do the thing, reality changes but it never changes only the way you expected, and the game does an excellent job at putting you there at this gamespace. However, the probability extremes of rolling six dice every-time while seeking specific numbers can create other unconformable swings.

There is something that feels off when you roll three 3s in a dice roll; two things trigger, Stability and Triscendence. There is nothing straining the system with Stability; it means you never get Chaos from a roll, which is a nice breather. Having a dice roll result that also gives you zero Chaos at a much higher probability than rolling all 3s, and being able to manipulate results with Burnout and Qualities to hit both 3 3s or 6 3s is great for the game². However, unlike the former, Triscendence requires a “natural” roll of 3 3s, that is, before any modifiers³. The thing is, Triscendence is the only way to get more than six successes or to recover spent Qualities during a mission. It is a much needed and always welcomed second wind. However, with it being a thing that happens quite rarely (0.67% of the time, compare with even the 5% of a critical roll), once you know it is a possibility, you need it or you are spiralling, you start to wonder why it is even a mirage offered to you. It hits extremely bad when it happens early on, on a less significant roll and/or there is really nothing better than to pick the bonus Commendations — the neat, rare bonus grows bitter. Consider how you want to approach Triscendence; perhaps having a “Triscendence Charge” you can spend during the mission or cash in for Commendations at the end can at least avoid the sense of “misfiring” a rare opportunity. Alternatively, consider other ways which characters may benefit from a Quality refresher.

The reason why I mention refreshers of Quality is because most powerful character abilities require extremely low odds of result to activate (sometimes as low as 0.02%) ; between Burnout from failure (rare as it is), and managing Chaos, you will also have to use Qualities to make use of the unique characteristics of your Character. As players familiarize themselves with the odds and flow, they may be either reckless or afraid of spend this resource. Giving them a refresher to Qualities mid missions can be a good way to let players experiment.

And don’t forget: Anomalies in their Domain get triple the benefit from Chaos expenditure!

Brad

Make sure you know what your anomalies can do! They are big and complex and while the game helps where it can, you absolutely need to be confident there.

8. What to Steal

Experiencing good art is the most important step in making good art. We look back at the things that worked and did not work about this game, see what we learned for design work, interesting tech and just a general overview of things that we will take from this game and bring into others. Or more honestly: since many of us may not play this game and we have it in our library, this way we can get some use out of it.

Lucrécia

Triangle Agency is an amazing way to have a mystery that is not known to game facilitators, or players and is not entirely created at the table, fully managing to surprise everyone. Better I keep this short not to disrupt the fun — and lesson.

Other than that, Triangle Agency can teach a lot about the many assumptions that have been replicated so many times in media, internet culture and indie TTRPGs — and manage to give them a new spin.

Brad

The value of a secret is only valuable as long as it’s a secret, but perhaps we have become friends over all these critiques so I’ll tell you a little bit of it.

You should steal Triangle Agency’s willingness to innovate, because friend lemme tell you something, it takes a huge swing and hits. Love of a source material, or devotion to mechanics will always carry you far and it has those in spades, but steal a willingness to risk it all for one big fat wild swing.

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1. Nothing sinister here! Just an excuse to do bits! Trust me!

2. Almost always. While often it can feel like a catch-up/comeback mechanic after serious Burnout, it can also sometimes spiral, specially after a string of failed rolls.

3. In other words, the equivalent to rolling Lasers AND Feelings by rolling exactly your number.