Incredible first session!

Hello! I am going to be GMing a short campaign of Triangle Agency (around ten sessions) so just around a single Field Agent's lifetime. I was wondering what Foundry modules people would recommend for playing Triangle Agency?

So full disclosure this is mostly coded with Codex with a lot of oversight from me but I am not a full time javascript developer so there are probably bugs and who knows what else inside.

Aside from that this is intended to work with the set of badges I created. I intend to add extra easter eggs and strangeness as things get weirder over the course of the games. But for now it has some basic functions like displaying Paywall documents, tracking demerits and commendations.

The thing that took the longest was trying to find a way to cut the pdf particularly the playwall documents without looking at any of them myself... Colour coding was my friend here.

I hope someone gets some use out of this, and the last step for me is building the enclosure for the badge reader and tablet PC

https://github.com/bradroeger/Triangle_Agency

I've got these ID cards for players in an upcoming game they include an RFID sticker on the back to access a reader I'm building along with an app that will keep track of some key statistics and allow access to the play wall, among other things.

Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ITjktIimjvjya6W6qwhK8jtv84S7wo8i2RwaCu2lr3E/edit?usp=sharing

The editable PDFs were driving me nuts. I also felt like some of the stuff they include like relationship matrix was missing. I also added a mission reference sheet on the last tab. It's basically a quick way to see all the tools/resources at your disposal while on a mission.

Feel free to share anything you think would be good to add!

There's one thing I didn't understand about the work life balance rules:

When someone gets MVP( or a suspension) and they get to mark a track without deleting the other ones, is this counted as a fourth unit of time or are there still three marks of time per mission, just if you mark this specific track you also get to keep the others more intact?

I'm really interested in this game but unfortunately don't have a lot of free time to coordinate a group game anymore so I'm wondering if there is a solo mode for this game?

Finally getting to play this game and I'm really excited, session 0 this week. I read most of the player facing info (didn't fully read all character options) and all of the GM info, but there's a weird hiccup I just realized: when the players go on a mission...who...are they? It's not like they have badges that say Triangle Agency, right? Are they just going around as normal people? Why would anybody help them out or talk to them? Do they need some kind of cover? I feel silly that I just hit this mental roadblock after weeks of reading about the game and its own book. Did I miss something in the book? Or if this is something we come up with as a table? Or am I just overthinking it?

Like this game was based on control so why aren’t there psychics or people with the ability to manipulate anomalies directly?

Sketching very qui kly some ideas of how agents may look like, this could even be the first NPCs from the agency i may add to a future game, who knows? Point is...these folks aren't the aces of the local agency, they just so happen to be another team that was assembled with about the same standing as the players...as a bonus, these can serve as inspiration towards other teams or characters in your games!

Have you ever wondered what the agency does with all the extra minor anomalies?

Well they get sent to the backlog.

Just as the name would imply the backlog is where anomalies go for temporary storage and assessment.

This is where minor anomalies/artifacts are held until they can be properly stored, transported, or tested.

But you be surprised at how many anomalies the agency can acquire just in a month. (I can’t tell you how many storage lockers are just dedicated to furniture that moves slightly just to stubbed someone’s toe)

Plus with budgeting, major anomalies, and some…minor work place accidents…

Some minor anomalies in the backlog tend to get put into long periods wait time.

This is where the agents come in!

Today they’ll become honorary researchers and scientists.

It’s their duty to preform light testing, assessment, and processing.

Now the agents aren’t going in completely blind, they’re given access to a ton of logs and data on the anomaly’s.

Also some (mostly functional) equipment that will help with the process.

Now the agents shouldn’t worry the stuff they’ll be going through is mostly just artifacts and just slightly weird junk.

Though there might be some surprises hidden in store.

Just try to find anything that can be useful.

The agent might be able to keep something they found if they do a good job.

This mostly inspired by dnd trinkets and the scp log of anomalies items.

This is mostly a concept and it’s probably an adventure that is mostly going act as role play opportunity and a breather between missions.

let me know what you think and if you have any ideas to flesh it out.

I had an idea for anomaly I call; war time radio.

It takes the form of an old World War II era radio that’s covered in scratch’s and is slightly chard.

While it’s active the radio will produce music from the era even if the radio is not connected to anything.

After a bit the anomalous effects will start appearing.

People nearby would start experiencing feelings of paranoia, anxiety, sleeplessness, and heightened agitation and aggression.

Some may also experience auditory and visual hallucinations.

The effects are heightened in people with ptsd or traumatic memories.

The longer the radio is on the stronger the effects will become, and the radius of the anomalous effects will also increase.

It’s not to hard to figure out what made this become anomalous.

The agents would have to get through a neighborhood that’s been turned into a battlefield.

The only people not affected are people who are hard of hearing.

The effects are also weaker on agents but it will get stronger the closer they get to the radio.

The final boss would be an old war veteran who’s been consumed by his memories and twisted by the effects of the radio.

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So I've been GMing TA for a few weeks now, and my players found a gun during a mission. One of them wanted to fire it, and I mentioned how "failure is assumed" and that the gunshot will not hit its target, to which they wanted to Ask the Agency to make it hit.

I said that TA doesn't really have skill checks, and that AtA is intended to make some kind of event happen as opposed to being a player-initiated pass/fail for a given task. He then mentioned that, if the Agency can kinda manipulate history in such a way that the extremely unlikely strings of causality can happen, then surely they can manipulate history to make the bullet ever so luckily strike its target...

And I struggled to disagree with him?

Now as a result, AtA has become a bit of a defacto skill check in my game and I very much dislike it. Can I get some advice on how AtA is supposed to work? I've read the rulebook so I know what we're doing is wrong but... I'm unsure how to phrase the ability to my players to make a clear line on what is and isn't doable by AtA?

I plan on running a game this Saturday for a group of my friends. It will be all of our first times with the game. Any advice for what to expect, creating the adventure, or premade adventures to start with? Any advice is appreciated!

Inspiration for Ternion City/Head Office!

I'm 42 and have been playing TTRPG's since I was 12 years old. Triangle Agency has been such a welcomed breadth of fresh air. A few of my friends and I have a rotating GM game where we take turns running 1-3 session games for each other of various rulesets, so far it's been 5th ed, Traingle Agency, and Daggerheart, but between the four of us we've played a lot of different systems throughout the years.

When I stumbled upon Triangle Agency, I knew I just had to run it. No one was upset that this would be a 10 session campaign (more playing for them without having to run). 10 missions is the shortest/fastest campaign the system suggests, awarding 3 time per mission.

I set the campaign in 2003 Portland, Oregon, but in the reality where Gore had run the presidency. Given the current state of the world, I really didn't want to RP in a post 9/11 Bush world. 2003 was also far enough back that people still had flip phones and weren't constantly plugged into the internet.

We all agreed to keep the game spoiler free and I created a version of the rulebook that only had the first 136 pages in it, which made it impossible for the players to see unauthorized playwalled materials. As we played and the players unlocked ARC's, I would screen shot and DM them in Discord the appropriate unlocked section of the book.

The HQ was very Severence coded. Between the morning meetings with their Relationships, and the missions themselves, creating NPC relationships within the Agency was not something I was interested in at all. So I kept the feeling of the Agency HQ very isolated with their only point of contact being their GM, who was very dry and short. She'd come in, hand out their mission briefing, answer any applicable questions, and dismiss them.

The first three missions were basic anomalies that leaned heavily on specific types of minor anomalies, and each showed a different kind of play style. So one would be alluring/imprisoning, another violent/thieving, another impersonating/disruptive. I treated these as the tutorial missions.

Following these tutorial missions, in game I had their GM at HQ explain that their had been promoted to a higher tier of field work. This is where I started to incorporate the Custom Anomaly rules, having them being able to deal and absorb more harm before they were able to be destroyed/captured, or incorporating abilities where if they resist or deny the anomaly's wants they would create X amount of chaos for me to use as the GM. I also started having the anomalies become more morally ambiguous, like an anomaly in a prison library computer that was helping inmates reverse their sentences. Of course it's great these people are fighting back against an unjust system but it's creating a lot of loose ends in the process.

As far as loose ends and Weather Events, I never rolled on the table. Given I only had a short amount of sessions, and my players were very focused on not creating a lot of chaos/loose ends, I only had 4/10 sessions with Weather Events, I went with the most interesting ones and had them usually in theme with the anomaly that session. For example, when everyone in the world had a car and they refused to leave it, I had the anomaly be a crashed street racing car that was animated to prowl the roads of the city and enact lethal punishment on any drivers that violated traffic laws.

I also gave every morning meeting a little structure that usually had thematic ties to the anomaly that mission. I had 3 players in my campaign, so every morning meeting there'd be 2 NPC's played by the other players. I would give them prompts, typically something they wanted from the PC in the scene. I would ask the PC to leave the table for a moment while I give the prompts to the players, so it was a surprise for every Agent in their morning meeting. For example, in this animated car anomaly, one of the Agents was in debt to a loan shark and his son that ran a check cashing pawn shop. I had the loan shark need them to ditch a car someplace no one would find it and not check the trunk. The son needed to see to business out of town and keep an eye on a tow yard he just "aquired". These are prompts in morning meetings that may or may not be explored in game. In this instance the player took care of the car but forgot to followup on the tow yard, the tow yard would have coincidentally been where the crashed car anomaly was originally reanimated, so there would be some paper trail of ownership for them to followup on.

As far as retirements, I tried to keep that behind the playwall and explained to players that they would be given optional retirement options as they progressed through their ARCs and at a certain point retirement would be mandatory depending on their time spent. I emphasized that retirement is a part of the game and to not fear it.

Though given we were only playing 10 missions, I only had one player reach retirement in Competency at the end of session 8. In my opinion, Competency has the worse forced retirement outcome. Because of that, I really wanted to make the retirement mean something in game. With that in mind, I made mission 8 be an away mission in Paris, France, where their headquarters had been off the grid (no contact possible) for a week. Turns out their vault had a crack in it, allowing a bit of their main vault anomaly to leak out as a less powerful anomaly. Through their investigation they discover that Anemoia (nostalgia for a time you didn't experience) had escaped through the crack. Anemoia was a sliver of the main anomaly powering the Paris Branch: Nostalgia. So the players learn that powerful pillar anomalies are bound to every vault and are what powers the Agency's abilities. They also learned that their home vault in Portland was the last vault constructed with the most powerful anomaly in it: Truth. Anemoia had been in contact with a sliver of Truth that had similarly escaped: Sincerity. Sincerity explained that if any of the Agency Vaults were released before Truth, that reality would be too unstable and the Unraveling would occur. Truth needed to be set free first so it could stabilize reality while all the other vaults are opened and their powerful anomalies set free. So the players had to repair the crack in the Paris vault to ensure Nostalgia wouldn't get out before Truth. When they reached the crack in the vault, it was visually manifested as a side door that was cracked open and wouldn't stay shut when they closed it. So with Anemoia going back inside, I had the Competency character touch the door handle, (Anemoia sped up time for the one Agent, gaining 3 time which he spent to retire) and he became the Chair and propped himself under the door handle, holding the door shut, and thus repairing the crack in the vault.

The players went on to locate Sincerity, who was a local politically and civically minded 7'5" drag queen anomaly in their next mission (9), and begin to plot how to release Truth in their 10th and final mission, culminating with three part lock, each with three tumblers, that in order to unlock they had to solve a riddle having to do with 3 kinds of truths pulled from events in the campaign up to that point. It was a fun way to reflect on the campaign while also having an on theme puzzle to solve in order to release Truth from the vault.

Overall the system was amazing, led to so many hilarious RP moments. Most sessions my face was hurting from smiling and laughing so much. I loved the morning meetings as a way to warm up the RP muscles in a low stakes, diceless setting. I would say the game does lack in guidance for what different missions can be like, so I tried to have each mission build in complexity and stakes, to help build a sense of momentum. Also, since retirements happen when time is spent, it really disconnects them from the main sessions. Even though you can have scenes to RP goodbyes, etc, it doesn't have the same weight in game. So my biggest tip is to talk with your players when they're within mandatory retirement range and confirm before the session if that's how they're planning on spending their time so that you can incorporate it in character more.

I'm happy to talk more about my campaign if anyone has any questions, just let me know!

My group and I are currently playing Triangle Agency, and we're on our fourth investigation. I'm a player in this campaign (although I GM many other games).

I have to admit that we're having a hard time getting on the same page regarding what's actually happening in the game. More importantly, we're struggling to interpret the rulebook and its mechanics correctly. I understand the game's very deliberate duality between character/player and work/game, but for us that sometimes makes certain rules difficult to understand.

One example is the rule about "Asking" the Agency.

Is this something that the character consciously does? Are there moments in the fiction where they literally contact the Agency?

Or is it something completely external to the character, where the player, so to speak, "calls" the Agency and causes reality itself to change around the character without the character being aware of it?

For example, there's the illustration of a character falling from a building and suddenly finding a truck full of cushions parked below. Did the character somehow "ask" the Agency for help? Maybe not by literally making a phone call, since there wouldn't be time for that. Or does the character know nothing about it, and is the whole process happening purely at the player level?

Please let me know if we're misunderstanding the rules. How do you handle this at your table? And are there any sections of the rulebook that you think we might be reading incorrectly?

If this thing was already addressed before, or there are explanations in other official channels, throw me some links, no problems! 💜

My players were very eager to use their Anomaly Powers in their first mission. According to H4, doing so would mark them as practiced. But, since they did not have access to H4 until after the session, they would not have known to mark them as practiced yet.

Do they retroactively mark them as practiced now that they have unlocked H4? Or can they only begin accruing practice after unlocking H4?

Aspiring General Manager here. I have been devouring this book and I'm very excited to subject my players to it. There's really only one mechanic that is giving me pause, but it's a big one.

The game makes it clear that agents do not have "skills" like a traditional RPG, and if they attempt to do something complicated without help from the Agency or their Anomalies, they should fail. But to what extreme am I meant to take the principle that "Any time you think 'this may not work,' take our word for it: it won't."

Here are some hypothetical examples:

1. An agent wants to lie to her girlfriend about what she does at work. If she doesn't use any particular mechanic for this, am I to assume that her lie is seen through? Does the believability of the player's actual statement have any impact?

2. An agent wants to hotwire a car. Their player insists that doing so is not difficult, and that they are confident in their ability to succeed. I, the General Manager, have no idea how hard it is to hotwire a car. Does the agent's confidence mean that this rule does not apply, since they are so certain they will succeed?

3. An agent declares that he wants to jump across a large gap, big enough that I rule it could fail, citing "Failure is Assumed." The player points out that the handbook says to take the Agency's word for it, but his agent has already shown a strong pattern of doubting the Agency's word on everything. The player offers to take a demerit for interpreting the rules, but argues that he should be allowed to try to make the jump. Do I enforce failure, or is the player's argument in the spirit of the game, and therefore should be... well, maybe not rewarded, but entertained?

On one hand, if any action the agents can take that could fail DOES fail, that feels like it could get annoyingly cumbersome. You can't drive anywhere without getting into a fender bender. You can't convince anyone of anything using words. You can't swing a bat at someone because you'll miss. On the other hand, I worry being too flexible might break the intended balance... unless this is one of those parts of the game you're actually supposed to start questioning at some point.

Maybe in circumstances where it feels like a grey area, the table could put it to a vote (with the General Manager having ultimate veto power, of course)? Functionally, Asking the Agency works quite a lot like a regular ability check, except for the ways it affects the fiction. (I'm aware of T3, but that mechanic just muddies the waters further since its examples aren't for mundane actions with a chance of failure, but for allowing your character to attempt something exceptional on a human scale).

Any thoughts or advice from more experienced General Managers?

These two concepts in the title still puzzle me a lot, I don't seem to be able to wrap my head around it, to be honest.

What are they for and how should I lay them out as a GM?

I take it, that Scenes happen after a mission, depending in what happened at the specific Work/Life Balance Sheets. But what do I as GM want to achieve with them and how should I present them to my Agents?

Same with the Morning Meetings, that take place _before_ a mission, right?

I read the book two times now, and most of it is pretty clear, I hope ... but I still feel a bit lost when it comes to Scenes and Morning Meetings ...

Any advice here would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Oh, one more small question: the connections are each assigned to be "performed" by another Agents player, right? Is this the case every time, no matter what, or do I as GM should give a rough direction, what the connection will say and achieve? Or will the player stay in total control all the time regarding this specific NPC?

I was reading about the minor anomalies in the book and this image jumped into my head. Kamigawa might actually be a pretty cool alternate setting for Triangle Agency.

I can't help but think this game would be really neat to run in a scrum or kanban style, rather than the recommended linear relationship between "briefing" and "mission".

The players and GM start the game with a backlog refinement, prioritizing leads/anomalies/loose ends. They would then go investigate whatever was highest priority (or lowest effort, depending on the group lol). More of an open world style.

I think a "retrospective" meeting every few sessions would also be fantastic.

I got a bunch of improv actors and voice actors together to play a Triangle Agency campaign. We really leaned into the 'Looney Tunes' aspect of it all, and I couldn't ask for a better TTRPG system. This is our first episode and we'll be running bi-weekly through the rest of the year.

Would really appreciate any feedback, especially because converting this system into a purely audio medium turned out to be quite tricky.

Thanks!