It’s the hottest day of the year, and everyone in town is dreaming about ways to cool down. In the world of Triangle Agency, a new tabletop RPG from Haunted Table, these thoughts have an effect on reality itself. The next thing you know, a supernatural anomaly takes shape in the form of an ice cream truck that freezes people solid with its wares. That’s when the titular corporation deploys their agents to investigate.
While this thematic setup is enough to make Triangle Agency a compelling game, there’s so much to the mechanics, progression, and even the layout and writing of the book that make it something special.
Building Your Character
When building your character, you’ll pick three separate pieces to flesh them out: anomaly, reality, and competency. Your anomaly is the strange reality-warping entity that’s bonded with you, which gives you a set of three abilities that you can call upon. Each power has an effect that happens upon failure, ranging from hilarious to dangerous. Your reality is your history, which gives you a set of relationships, responsibilities, and ways to relieve burnout. Your competency ranges from standard jobs like PR to weirder roles like Clown or Gravedigger. Each of these components allows you to easily create compelling characters that are both fictionally flavorful and mechanically unique.
Game Mechanics
Unlike other TTRPGs, there are no generic skill checks in Triangle Agency. Failure is assumed of all agents unless you take extra measures that rely on bending reality itself. You’ll be rolling for two different types of things: asking the agency to alter reality or using your anomaly powers. Each roll can be affected by quality assurance points and burnout. Triscendence, a critical success, can occur if you roll three threes. Chaos is generated for each die that is not a three, which the GM uses to add problems for the players.
Missions and Anomalies
Players will also make sure they keep the amount of loose ends on a mission to a minimum. Mundane citizens will take note of strange happenings, and this will only strengthen the power of future anomalies. The book provides a robust section about how to build missions and anomalies for the players to encounter. Every anomaly in the game has a focus, impulse, and domain, making the search for these elements interesting and compelling.
The Rulebook and Beyond
The book itself is a stunning piece of art, presented as an in-fiction document about how to be a good employee at the Triangle Agency. It juggles the tone between horror and humor effortlessly, with an impressive GM section that plays with layout in innovative ways. From top to bottom, Triangle Agency is a special game that gives you the tools to build compelling characters and encourages creative problem-solving.
Triangle Agency can be purchased from its official itch.io site.