#triangle agency

[mntacuyan]

when you're on Probation and you gotta go interview folks in prison...

Triangle Agency 🔺🔺🔺

[goblinmixtape]

God I had so much fun joining Aaron & Max for this

I'll jump at any opportunity to talk about Triangle Agency

There is a new episode of RTFM, the RPG book club podcast. @goblinmixtape joins me and Max to talk Triangle Agency. Is corporate horror for the youths? Does metafiction have a place in RPGs? And who is the yellow voice?!

[atnervesend]

Maybe it's the Catholic in me but using a bloodied rock to represent the do violence "class" in your game rules so hard. And then to name it Gun? Chef's kiss.

The game is Triangle Agency by Haunted Table games.

[morigni]

My Triangle Agency pc Adelaide! She is trying her best, please cheer her on!

[anim-ttrpgs]

I was finally persuaded into buying Eureka, read the section on disability, and cried, Y'all get it, the illness that wrecked my lungs didn't make me smarter, it just made me worse at physical labor.

Thank you for buying Eureka, and thank you for your kind message!

And yeah, this is very important to Eureka’s themes and stuff, and one of the reasons that its gameplay works the way it does with regard to disability. Because what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger, it usually leaves you weaker than you were before, but Eureka says so what? Try anyway. Effect is not a binary. Maybe we should value more than just the single strongest person, and not consider someone a failure as soon as their 100% now is just a little bit lower than their 100% in the past, or than someone else’s 100%.

This is something I saw on another post a few days ago but didn’t think it was worth commenting about, so I’m basically making my own post about it here.

It was about Triangle Agency and how Triangle Agency PCs automatically fail at anything risky “because they’re just ordinary people in extraordinary situations, not elite spec ops operatives,” and so they need to use the dice rolling mechanics which literally bend reality to contrive a situation where they can succeed.

I don’t like this for a number of reasons, not all of which I will get into, especially because Triangle Agency has a lot more going on than that, but, well, I think that billions of ordinary people succeed at difficult and/or dangerous tasks every single day, and have throughout all of history. I think that this sentiment that PCs always fail because they’re just ordinary people is the absolute antithesis of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, which is also a game about ordinary people in extraordinary situations, failing a lot, but also succeeding a lot. Eureka says that you’re more than your crappy, crippled statblock. Not only are people more valuable than the amount of work they can output, but people that kinda suck and are worse at stuff than everyone else around them can still ultimately accomplish a whole lot.

[duke-daemon]

started playing triangle agency, heres some of my guys

fucked up girldad and weirdo doctor

[wasosuno]

My triangle agency pc 🙂↕️

[dailyadventureprompts]

So I've been reading Triangle Agency...

For those not in the know: Triangle Agency is a new weird/corporate horror TTRPG heavily inspired by things like the X files, Delta Green, and Control. You work as agents for the titular organization which sends you out to stabilize reality by dealing with various paranatural Anomalies.

Don't think of this as a review, until I sit down at a table and play this system over a few sessions I won't be able to tell you how well it actually works. What I can tell you is what the game is trying to accomplish with its storytelling and mechanics, and what it's trying to do is interesting.

Unlike a lot of TTRPGs I've read, triangle agency is not interested in giving you a system that you can use to tell whatever story you want. Instead I can compare it to a tabletop version of a choice heavy videogame like Disco Elysium or Bg3: where engaging with the story/mechanics will lead you to one of the endings the authors prepared for you. This is not to say the system is inflexible, that you can't put your own spin on it, GMs can design missions however they want, and player choice is a major focus, but as long as you're playing the game you're furthering the meta story.

As such, this might be the first game that I'd consider running out of the box with only pre-prepped adventures, which is shocking considering how much of a homebrewer I am. Instead, I'd be interested in putting a group of players in this game and just seeing what it does to them, though it'd have to be a very specific group of players than my regular ol gaming group.

The ideal Triangle Agency player is one that's got a primary focus on storytelling over mechanics, who're interested in making big narrative swings happen as a result of their choices. They also need to be comfortable with improv storytelling, as the primary means of interacting with the game requires a quick " what if" session to justify how you're moulding reality into a new shape:

Where another game might have you roll your character's strength for something as simple as kicking down a locked door, Triangle Agency has your party brainstorming a reason why the door would be weak enough for you to kick down in the first place: IE the building has a termite problem, and the hinges were subject to poor storage conditions by the contractor who installed the door. Then you roll. If you succeed, the door is knocked down, the building has a termite problem and has *always* had a termite problem, and an entire human being, Gary the negligent contractor, has been spoken into existence. You are likely to meet him on your next mission.

In many ways this is explicitly like Blades in the Dark's flashback mechanic, except made an explicit part of the game world. Your characters have the same reality distorting abilities of the Anomalies they're hunting, and they have to be careful lest they delete whole swaths of their life trying to angle for a better roll.

This is where we get into Triangle Agency's focus on character, and the secondary requirement that players be the type to get invested in their eldritch business blorbo as they are subjected to various corporate horrors™. This is a game interested in change whether it manifests as choice, trauma, or metamorphosis, and the ante for these interactions is your player/characters investment in the world. Part of this is with your character's contacts, NPCs who are as essential to an agent's build as their anomalous superpowers or their job with the Agency. To give extra weight to these relationships, each one is portrayed by another player at the table, which I thought was an ingenious way to not only take the burden off the GM, but also to give players more screen time even when their primary agent is off stage.

That leads me to the genius primary progression mechanic: The choice between whether to spend time with your Agent's contacts, focus on their Agency job, or delve into the eldritch truth of their powers, and how to split their finite time off between them. Here we get player choice, story, and mechanics all tied together in a neat little package as progression along any of these tracks unlock new abilities while also revealing more and more of the game's secrets. Possibilities for the game's story open up/are blocked off specifically with how the players choose to personally spend their XP, and if that's not a feat of game design ( or more aptly, craft) I don't know what is.

Final Thoughts: Despite having a delightful time reading the rulebook/optional mission pack (Seriously, the vibes are stellar) I don't know if I'm actually going to get to play Triangle Agency at any point in the near future. I think getting the most out of this game depends so much on finding the right playgroup for it and then pouring in enough time to unlock one of the endings. I'd want to see the mechanism of it's story/mechanics/drama play out, but doing so is one heck of a commitment.

However, if you've got a group full of storytellers that are up for the challenge and you're looking for something substantial to play next, I don't think I could recommend it enough.

I'm also going to be keeping my eyes out for longform actual plays of this one, I'd love to see what a group of performers could do with this.

[c0rp0rat3-m4sc0ts]

[funwalker]

Keep forgetting to post this guy, but I made a nice ref for him a few days ago.

Made him initially for a Triangle Agency game but decided to toss him into a little art-based OC RP. Hopefully, I'll get some nice short comics out if it. :3

It feels like it's been a good decade since I made a proper ref sheet like this for one of my own characters. Haha.

[mntacuyan]

By coincidence, I didn't realize this is my 333rd tumblr post, and I KNEW it had to be for the Triangle Agency crew 🤣

Going from right to left in the lineup we have: 🔺General Manager, Ms. Monday, (Luna's) 🔺our Gun, Astra (Seraph's) 🔺our Catalogue, Aubrey (BW's) 🔺our Whisper, Mellany (Javi's) 🔺and my guy, a Manifold, Nurzhan (aka Newsie)

[star--seraph]

Astro Boy more like Astral Unpaid Intern 😭😭😭

[ryankingdomart]

!!!!!TRIANGLE AGENCY IS HERE!!!!!

Haunted Table's flagship TTRPG about corporate horror, espionage and eternal employment is now available to download on itch.io! I have been working as Triangle Agency's Art Director, and I cannot overstate the amount of work, care, creativity, and time that has been poured into this this game and its books. I am extraordinarily proud of what we’ve made and so excited for everyone to get a chance to see it. I'll be sharing more art in the coming days to celebrate.

Core rulebook cover illustration by Ryan Kingdom (me!), painted spread by the incredible @kodasea

Pre-orders for the game's physical release are still going! Please run, don't walk, to the next job of the rest of your life.

🔺

[sarlianna-art]

tabletops oc sketch page

[anim-ttrpgs]

I'd love to know what some of the team's favourite indie ttrpgs are (apart from Eureka, of course. Otherwise, it'd be at the top of the list, I expect.)

Yes of course Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, but for non-Eureka indie and small-press games, here are a few of the team's answers

@sirobvious:

Mothership. Hands-down.

@chaospyromancy:

mork borg

@ashweather:

Ash's Picks (AKA the "get more literate in the medium" pack) (Most of these are small- or medium-press not strictly indie but ya know)

Burning Wheel Seventh Sea (1st edition) Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok Mothership Don't Rest Your Head Troika! Hillfolk (aka DramaSystem) Savage Worlds Masks

@theblackwarden:

A Dirty World PATROL: The Trench Raiders Triangle Agency Paranoia Mothership A World of Dew

[monsterfactoryfanfic]

Triangle Agency, Control, and Hostile Agendas

My latest essay is about Haunted Table Game's Triangle Agency! I talk about the game's use of conflicting narrators, compare it to Remedy Entertainment's Control, and consider how these works manipulate you into obeying an agenda that does not have your best interests at heart.

Transcript here.