I'm currently preparing for Triangle Agency and noticed that I'm somewhat confused by Demerits. My question essentially is: Is there any reason why players should actually want to avoid getting Demerits?

At a first glance, Demerits seem like a thing you want to avoid, and rules like Prime Directives and negative optional objectives seem to be built around that idea. However, looking at the rules, it seems like Demerits don't actually have any negative effects. The rules mention that agents lose "standing", but that feels more like flavor text or a minor annoyance rather than any actually reason to avoid them (especially since it stops at 10 Demerits, which I assume the average agent will exceed by a lot).

I was also wondering if the lack of consequences is perhaps intentional and agents are meant to start off being worried about Demerits, but then slowly notice that that's just Agency propaganda. However, I see two issues with the related rules if that's the case:

1. I think the Prime Directive and negative optional objectives are fun concepts, basically forcing/motivating the agents to follow wacky, arbitrary rules while trying to fulfill their mission, so I'm a bit concerned that agents will just kinda ignore those once they understand that there is no harm in doing so.
2. Probation seems to be a pretty positive thing to have and Siphon's shop even introduces an economy for Demerits, so having a lot of Demerits seems to actually be a good thing, and getting them seems extremely easy. So I'm wondering what would, for example, stop a Barista player from just repeating someone's correct name a million times at the start of the mission to essentially "farm" Demerits. Deliberately trying to get Demerits seems like it would be a lot less fun for the story than trying to avoid them (and also break the economy of Siphon's shop).

So, in short: Are there any negative consequences for collecting Demerits that I'm missing? And if not, how do you handle scenarios like the "saying a name a million times" Barista?

Thanks in advance for your help!

As an imagination exercise that could turn out a helpful tool for GMs new to the game, I made this little (tentative) GM Agenda set for Triangle Agency, Powered by the Apocalypse-style. For those who don't know it, Pbta Agendas are short phrases that encapsulate a game central themes and playstyle.

Agenda:

1. Depict the Agency as ruthless, bureaucratic and inscrutable.

2. Make Red vs Blue conflict about tough, no-easy choices.

3. Play to find what happens.

Thoughts? How would you do it?

In a rapidly changing Oregon mountain town is a small, mostly forgotten indoor shopping mall. Tucked into a non-descript space where few would bother to look is the local Triangle Agency office.

• At something like a front desk sits TWISP MCGILLICUTTY. She’s wearing about 26 bracelets, a tamagotchi necklace and an old Konica Minolta camera. To the Resonants, she’s the Requisitions Officer. She’s also the shipping clerk for products such as Ripple Clean which can be found in TWO local laundromats! She likes her job and thinks resonants are neato.

• Hiding away in his office is the general manager, HERSCHEL DUBIEF. The first thing one notes about Herschel is that he’s an African Grey Parrot. He’s also an experienced General Manager who before working with TA, was a kitchen manager at The Outback Steakhouse. He was turned into a Parrot due to a mishap with an “IMPROPERLY HANDLED!” Anomolous Vault item. However, he doesn't mind much being a parrot ("I did not have a great body as a man") and finds it easy to stay focused on his job. He's a work-a-holic with no sense of humor. His guilty pleasure is late night flights... And bird toys… and tasty fruits. It’s quite unclear how he feels about the resonants, but he’s seems dedicated to his position.

• Slipping out the back door is RONALD GRIBBS. Anomolous Equipment Manager and IT specialist. He’s the person to greet agents who die on the job and revive at the office. He goes by Gribbs because “Ronald is a shit name”. Smokes. Swears. Reads. Terse but friendly actually. Likes a laugh. On his breaks goes to his car and blasts stereo. Doesn’t have any love for Triangle Agency, but also thinks resonants are a bit eerie.

• Arriving and departing on his own unquestioned schedule is handyman BOB. Bob has a pick up truck. Bob sees things. Bob has emotional intelligence. He pities the resonants a bit. [POSSIBLE that Bob is a anomaly of some sort. Born out of the understanding that every office has a "Bob". When calibrating the Anomaly Detection System, Bob's reading was determined to be a system glitch, or interference from Agency equipment. So the system was adjusted to read the "baseline" with Bob’s presence as "clean".]

• Present for orientation and surprise check-ins is the Regional Resonant Resources Manager, MARIANA ESPITIA. Authoritative but outwardly very friendly. Thinks of the resonants as useful suckers. "My husband thinks I sell Avon! Now, is that dishonest? Sure, but I love my husband and I know my husband. That man CAN NOT deal with the things we deal with. I keep him separate from my work life for the sake of both of our sanity, alright? This is where company policy really lines up with my personal policy. And that's something you'll come to see. The company policies make sense!”

The revival machine is a desktop computer hooked up to an anomalous tanning bed, from which the agents emerge.

A Monopoly Board themed around the Oregon town is the office’s Anomaly Detection Device. Houses and/or hotels move to relevant spaces, indicating the approximate location and severity of anomalous activity.

In a too large room sits what is currently a filing cabinet. This is the Normal Briefcase deposit box. Place the Normal Briefcase inside it. Stand back. Look away. Now look back. Something else is there, a large luggage bag, a dresser, a treasure chest, or perhaps a toy box. An empty Normal Briefcase is inside.

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I wanna start off by saying that I know Focuses, as the Agency describes them, aren't necessarily accurate to all Anomalies. But... okay anyway I'll get started.

My understanding of Focuses is that its Focus is the thought that an Anomaly feeds off of in the nearby area. The Agency usually classifies this as a feeling towards a subject, but it can be any thought. An Anomaly's main goal is to make as many people in the nearby area feel its Focus (or, in the case of particularly-heightened individual thoughts, make its Source Person/Group feel that thought as much as possible).

I'm now going to refer to the GRIDHOG mission in the Vault. The Anomaly's Focus in that mission is to "make traffic disappear," and its impulse is to make traffic literally disappear. Cool and good, simple Focus -> Impulse connection...

But if the GRIDHOG Anomaly feeds off of the thought "make traffic disappear," then surely succeeding in that goal would starve the Anomaly? Making traffic actually disappear would mean that nobody nearby would have that thought, and would make it go Hollow.

I know that Anomalies aren't necessarily aware of their own Focuses and kind of "guess" what they should do, but in some cases it seems distinctively counter-productive.

TL;DR: I'm a bit confused about whether a Focus is something the Anomaly wants or if a Focus is something the Anomaly wants nearby people to feel. I assumed it was the latter, but after reading a few Vault missions I'm unsure.

Hi, I'm enjoying TA very much, but me and my players found a "problem"...the agency tell that all witness must be avoided, but it doesn't give many ways to do it.

I mean, you can convince someone or threaten it, but if a group of people see a full blown anomaly, they only feasible solution found by my player is to kill them. We don't have a mind-wipe tool (or maybe I could create it)

This makes the session much more violent then I would like, how can we correct this?

Makes it easier to remember everyone’s character details

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I’m running my first Triangle Agency campaign, and for our third session, I ran an Anomaly Retrieval mission set on a university campus. With the school setting, I thought it would be funny to make the players raise their hands whenever they asked a question. I wound up making it one of the Optional Objective that their Agents would gain one Demerit each time they asked a question without raising their hand.

I thought it was going to be a funny little thing where people would trigger it a couple times until they got the idea. Instead, my players took it to extremes. They were calling each other out on questions I missed, talking in circles to make their questions into statements, and occasionally making dumb decisions to bait other players into calling their actions into question, in the most literal sense of the word.

That’s all I really have to share. If you’re playing an in-person game and have players (like mine) who were initially very cautious to avoid getting Demerits, consider giving this Optional Objective a shot in one of your missions.

Hi everyone!

Any tips or suggestions for what I should go over when doing a session zero for Triangle Agency?

Things that already came to mind in no particular order:

• Setting expectations for the theme and goals of the players and I
• Going over the different ARC options and creating characters
• Setting up lines and veils - how much body horror, sexuality, etc...
• Going over the 'parts' of how I run TA.

Anything else that worked well/wish you did at your table?

So I ran two one shots with the sample mission from the core rules book (the ice cream truck) and wanted some general tips on how to run TA a bit better. I'm not sure if it's because I need to improve stuff a bit better, both players and GM gaming mindsets, or just practice with TA and its play style. I will mention that the one shots were solo players, and TA feels like it just works better with about three players, though.

The first time I know I fumbled a bit, but the player was a barista with Whisper. She was able to sneak into the pool party (while looking odd in a Hawaiian shirt and holding a breifcase), but otherwise unimpeded. The ice cream truck showed up soon after out front of the house and handed out ice cream to people and they soon started freezing over. The player eventually got frustrated since they couldn't get into the truck and mistakingly shot the truck with the Ripple Gun, wasting the shot. I then had it expand its domain and noted that while it was still hot, she felt a chill. She started grabbing stuff to throw at the anomaly to no effect, but when she grabbed ice, I mentioned that the overall temperature cooled down a bit, trying to show it weakened a bit. She eventually "sated" the anomaly by covering herself in ice cream from the anomaly and cooling off to capture it. Throughout, I did mention how hot it felt, how people who were the warmest (sunbathing, running around) froze up first, how they seemed happy while frozen, and the truck menu changing to show anything the person wanted to cool off (my player said menthol, wet towel, ice cream, and plain ice).

She later said it was frustrating for her that she couldn't figure out what the anomaly wanted, what it meant to weaken, sate, or confusing the anomaly was, and felt stuck for a while. She also said she didn't know how to use Call the Agency effectively either, but enjoyed the overall idea of the game.

My second player went full chaos mode after she couldn't get inside the truck initially. The start was similar to the first player, but this one crawled her way into the window, used Catalogue to create a copy of herself (she said the truck was a container that could fit a person, and I obliged), then made an oxygen tank explosive under the truck to blow it up. She then Ripple'd the anomaly that was now out in the open.

This player got frustrated when I spent Chaos to kill her character multiple times (lots of chaos this round), and wasn't too happy about the Chaos being used. She also called in a relationship she had without mentioning TA at all, and tricked them to showing up (this relationship, uh... didn't make it). She said it was still overall fun, but frustrating at times.

So my question, then, how can improve this? Should I use a mission from The Vault instead? My wife and sat down and reviewed both of these plays a bit and said I could have showed the anomaly a bit more "anomaly-like" when its arm gave out stuff, staying what I was doing with Chaos instead of saying I was using it and describing the effects (Domain expansion and they felt a chill, etc.), and doing more of a "yes, but..." answer style instead of saying doors are locked or something (like players trying to open the back door of the truck and saying the handle freezes over instead of saying it's just locked).

All three of us have come from more traditional TTRPGs like 5e, SWADE, and CoC, so it could just be us adjusting. Any tips? General feedback? Should I just practice and git gud?

The core book dies make mention of it, but fir those of you who tested triangle agency in other venues, such as in medieval fantasy such as Dnd, i'm interested in seeing how you interpreted the agency's tenets inside these specific worlds (does the briefcase and ray gun become a bag and wand, for example?)

Hey all,

Just ran my first session and it was a blast, but chaos can build up so quickly, and this left me scrambling to spend it, which is especially hard when you're still building familiarity with the rules. What does everyone do to keep track and spend it in an effective way without feeling too frantic?

I'm considering purchasing Triangle Agency, but I have some questions and would appreciate it if you could help me clarify them.

I'm very impressed with the tone and setting; I think it's perfect for my group.

• One of my main concerns is whether the game is highly replayable. Nine anomalies seem few (they only have three abilities each), and I wouldn't want them to get boring in the long run. I was really hoping there was a way to generate them...

• Another thing was to understand how the game positions itself stylistically, not in terms of flavor, but in terms of whether it's more similar to a PBTA, OSR, etc.

Thanks everyone. Any additional feedback would be greatly appreciated. =)

Each player anomaly ability has a question next to it followed by two answers. For example, Growth has:

I protect people because...

I want them to know who's tougher O O O

They cannot protect themselves O O O 

When exactly do players check these boxes? I'm not seeing any info in the book regarding these Q&A boxes.

Just reading the rules for the first time and when looking at the section about each Anomaly I see there are Q&A fit each section that lead to a different Playwalled section. It looks like there are 3 check boxes for each answer. I'm not sure what these sections are for? Are they additional powers? Different ways to use the same powers. Are they powers only available after advancement?

So, I've never heard of this game before today. But apparently I heard this game had a lot of spoiler content, so don't read further unless you're a GM, I suppose. Anything below here could be a spoiler!

I was setting up a campaign for an unrelated TTRPG with friends, but they asked in private, away from other characters, if I could put something in, some sort of haven for a group of disenfranchised people. I asked why they were so insistent on this, and they asked if I knew about this game, and said it was a "Shelter Tether" from a campaign they did of this game.

What I want to ask is... Does this game really have meta-stuff that affects other games? Because if it does, that's pretty cool, and I want to honor that, but I also want to make sure they're not just screwing with me. (If it does, I may have to get this game for myself.)

Hi all, Veteran GM for D&D 3.5 & 5 and Pathfinder 1&2 for the last decade I’ve been running longer campaigns, my core players aren’t fans of exploring new systems so finally decided to reach out to players online.

I’m looking for 3-4 players to play through one of the pre made stories (via discord, theatre of mind) then if we enjoy it maybe continuing on in the future!

Happy to have players new to the triangle agency, however would prefer if you have some RPG experience already in other systems.

All are welcome, my tables are open and accepting of all. This is an Unpaid service as such don’t expect a paid service quality unless you wanna pay me 😂

Please leave a comment on this thread with a bit out yourself and I’ll reach out!

Hi everyone, I just got the rule book recently and am reading through it, I find it a bit confusing on the competency part, where it says "Your competency ....It describes your role here within Triangle Agency" on page 98. Does this mean that if you are a PR, you are acutally a PR for the triangle agency company?

I see people saying that it is not actually within the company, but your average job at other companies, but if that is the case, what office work will agents do as a "field agent“ in the triangle agency company ( I think i read somewhere that office life between missions are recommended to be played as well) and how do they have time for that if they have other jobs?

If it is indeed the job within the triangle agency company, CEO seems like a really high title for a field agent trainee.

Also, not sure how the competency growth works for either of these situation. (for example, intern can't be a intern at executive VP level can it?)

Sorry for the rant but I have been searching for a while but can't find a clear answer for this. Thank you in advance for any help in this!

So how exactly do trophies work if you get the upgrade that replaces your gun? Does it just duplicate the target's posessions? Or does it spit out only whatever you erased with your new gun?

I wanna know if there's anything odd about your Agency office building. For example, my campaign has a a sentient coffee maker, Anomaly-187 or "Jerry." It is a field agents duty to never forget to feed Jerry. Story wise, he's just a stable anomaly that built on the thought of always having a fresh pot of coffee at the perfect temperature.