Listen to this episode here.
I bet you’ve heard of this game Triangle Agency. Big exciting Kickstarter, super flashy product design, a game with… spoilers in the back? It’s corporate horror, it’s packed gorgeous art, it’s a game I spent 20 sessions with in 2025. And I… had a pretty frustrating time with the game. There is so much I love and admire about Triangle Agency, but also so much I struggled with, and I wanted to break it all down on the show.
And I didn’t want to do that without bringing on someone who could unabashedly sing this game’s praises, because I think the game deserves that too. So today I’m joined by the general manager of my campaign, moderator of the Dice Exploder discord, my friend Seraphina Garcia Ramirez, to talk about the voice of Triangle Agency's game text and really the whole game at large.
It's the longest episode of Dice Exploder ever. Let's go.
Further Reading
Triangle Agency by Caleb Zane Huett and Sean Ireland
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Credits
Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.
Transcript
Sam: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop mechanic and try to coax it into a magical briefcase. My name is Sam Dunna Walt, and my co-host today is Seraphina Garcia Ramirez. I bet you’ve heard of this Game Triangle Agency. Big, exciting Kickstarter, super flashy product design.
A ravenous community of fans who adore it. A game with. Spoilers in the back. It’s corporate horror. It’s packed with gorgeous art. It’s a game I spent 20 sessions with in 2025, and I had a pretty frustrating time with the game. There is so much I love and admire about triangle agency, but also so much I struggled with in my time as a player.
I adore the look and feel the idea of a book with locked sections, the story this game wants to tell of working for a horrific corporation and wrestling with your place in the world, the way it blends its themes, all the way down into even the act of reading the book. and also I kept finding myself wanting to stop playing. Some games just aren’t for everyone. You know, even great games and that’s fine.
But I did want to talk about Triangle Agency on this show. There’s just so much to say, so much I find so fascinating and compelling about this game, and I did spend so much time with it. I wanted to just process all of that, and I didn’t wanna do all that processing without bringing on someone who could unabashedly sing this game’s praises, because I think the game deserves that too.
So today I’m joined by the general manager of my campaign, moderator of the Dice Exploiter Discord, and returning champion Seraphina Garcia Ramirez. We wanted to pick a pretty broad mechanic today so we could get into as many different parts of Triangle Agency as we could, and we landed on the voice of the text because Triangle Agency is written in three very distinct authorial voices, all of whom also exist as characters within the world of your campaign. That’s so cool. But it also sometimes felt to me like it obscured parts of the game because these voices are regularly lying to you even as they teach you how to play. Isn’t that cool? Doesn’t that sound kind of frustrating for learning how to play? But what if that’s the point?
Alright, enough intro. This is a huge episode already, I’m sure you can see from the runtime. Thanks to everyone who support Dice Exploder on Patreon. And here is Seraphina with the voice of the text of Triangle Agency.
. Seina, welcome back to DYS Splitter.
Nice to have you on the main feed.
Sera: Yeah. Great to be on with you on the main feed for the first time.
Sam: Yeah. What are we doing here today? What are we talking about?
Sera: We’re talking about triangle agency a
Sam: We sure are.
Sera: Caleb Zane Hewitt and Sean Ireland. And the mechanic we’re specifically starting with
is the voice of the text or the voices of the text as the
Sam: Yeah. And I think it’s probably worth noting immediately upfront that we’re kind of most interested in having a broader conversation than one mechanic here. Like I, I am trying desperately to make dice explode a show that returns to the format of talking about one mechanic.
But here, like, I think we’re really interested in talking about the topic of friction within this game, and I think the voices of the text are great in to that larger conversation. But I wanna like flag that for people as we get into this too, that friction between player and text is a huge component of this game, and like that’s what we are here to talk about more broadly.
Sera: Yeah, I think like this game has a lot going on, but like I, when I talk about this game to people, I think one of the first things I want to flag is if you are the kind of person who likes the game, that very plainly explains to you what’s going on and how to do things, this is not going to be an easy experience for you.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. And we’ll, we’ll get into my experience with exactly that. Yeah.
Sera: Yeah. And like, one of the things that most interests me about about the game. If anyone has listened to me talk about games at all in the past couple of years, it’s very transparent. I’m, I’m a fan girl for triangle agency.
I think one clear reason for that is not interested in doing things the easy way on any level, and I’m a sucker for that.
Sam: Yeah. Well, let’s start more broadly with what EA is, triangle Agency, like what is the premise of this game?
Sera: Yeah. So Triangle Agency as players, you are agents for the agency. The Triangle Agency in question is sort of like a cross between Johnson and Johnson and the S and the Federal Bureau of Control from Control. You are hired as employees of this organization. You have regular day jobs for the company or one of the subsidiaries, and then every once in a while you are told that there is an anomaly out there anomalies being these things that arise from aberrant or outside of normal human thought. essentially sentient bits of like, what if your obsession about a video game was a monster?
And you’re told, Hey, go capture this thing and bring it in so we can, on the face of it, keep everyone safe from it. And also, you know, maybe, maybe make some profit, maybe throw it into a cage and do experiments on it, whatever you want. And if you do that, then you’re, you’re doing good at your job. Complicating that is the fact that as field agents, you’re also bonded to anomalies, right?
you’re, you have your own little personal weird thing that you’ve, you’ve bonded to that gives you extra normal abilities which the agency says makes you anomalies too. And yeah, the games just, you know, go out, try to capture an anomaly, come back home, and there’s definitely nothing more going on than that.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, it feels very much like corporate. The XFiles to me is sort of how I would pitch it, where you’re, you also have superpowers, but the superpowers make you one of the XFiles. The corporation doesn’t like you because of that. Yeah.
Right?
Sera: think like if I were to like, bang two pieces of media together, It’s control meets severance, right? It’s
doing the corporate humor thing, and it’s also trying to be weird and scary.
Sam: Yeah
Sera: I also think probably in case it’s not already evidently aware, this is a book with
spoilers. This is a book with a
Sam: yeah,
Sera: and like,
Sam: yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sera: know that if you’re listening to this. But I will flag, I personally think if you want to get, like, if you want to see what this game is about, I encourage you to read it on your own and then come back or listen to this and then come back. I think probably we’ll have a conversation later on whether or not people should avoid spoilers before engaging with them.
Sam: Yeah, and I really went outta my way. One of the reasons I haven’t covered this game in the past couple of years is I went outta my way to play the game as I understood it, to be intended to be played, which is like, you don’t read more of the book than you are supposed to, and you sit down and you play the game the way the book is written.
that the game itself, like engaging with the book in that way is a lot of what is exciting about the game. You know, like one of the very first things that it says in the book is like, it’s written like a implo. We’re getting into the mechanic now, right? Like the voice of the book as it begins, is a corporate handbook that diagetically exists within the game, the fiction of the game from the agency.
And one of the things that tells you is that you can gain demerits for doing bad shit, and you can receive commendations for doing good shit. And also if you read the book out of order, you are going to get demerits. And in fact, if you, if you so much as glance at a page out of order, you will receive a demerit and
Yeah,
Sera: the very first actual page of the book I think tells you like, like, like after the credits and
whatnot, tells you if you go so far as interpreting the book, like
Sam: yeah,
Sera: of the rules.
Sam: yeah, yeah.
Sera: like, yeah, I think that’s, I don’t know, like definitely an immediate hook, right?
Like immediately it gets you this, this this weird premise of like, it’s not, it, well it’s variably an like a, a focus, but like from the book’s perspective, it tells you, yeah, agents were having a rough time separating their job from their personal feelings. So we’ve subconsciously hypnotized you into viewing all of this as a game to make your job easier.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. So I, I wanna just like start on this terms and conditions page that we’re already kind of talking about. Like already you’ve got so much going on, like there’s this great visual identity from the game right? That says, Hey, you’re reading a corporate handbook. Like, right. It just looks like that, but it also looks fun and poppy.
and then it says, reading pages out of order is dangerous Attempt at your own risk reading numberless pages is forbidden and hazardous to your continued employment. Okay, great. And the text in this volume may not be interpreted. You may only read and execute its contents as intended by the triangle agency, which is just obviously impossible.
And like a lie, like immediate, like the book is immediately telling you that it’s gonna be lying to you, and it’s also immediately telling you that it’s gonna be pretty funny, you know, like that it’s,
Sera: And, and, and, like going to try to avoid making this episode too much. I read straight outta the book.
Sam: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. like right below that, there’s also the immediate flag. It tells you like continued reading is considered an agreement that all eyes, ears, thoughts, and digits involved in the consumption of this information also belong to the Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Sera: like you, you, you can sign if you want, but you don’t have to sign yeah, yeah, By reading this, you’ve already agreed to the contract that the agency has put down here. Yeah. Which is like, like it’s, it is wearing the, like, paranoia influence Right. On its sleeve. Right. And what I love about this also like it a little more subtly, there’s this idea that goes around sometimes about, is reading the game text of a game, part of play.
Sam: You know, like in, in some ways I pick up like any given Jason Morningstar game, and it doesn’t feel that way, you know, he really likes a game that feels like a technical manual, you know, that it’s, it’s a laid out set of instructions for how to play the game. But you’re not, like, you take that and then you show up to the table with that set of like very technical tools with that blueprint. And the game is then playing. It comes out of that thing.
Whereas this is like, okay, so if you read this book out of order, a rule says that you have to go to your general manager, the GM of the game and tell them so they can give you demerits. Right. And if you catch someone else doing the same, you can rat on them to give them debars and give yourself commendations.
Like it’s, it’s very in fiction immediately saying that reading the text of the game is part of your campaign of triangle agency.
Sera: Yeah. like when we talk about reading as play, I think one question that comes to mind for me is like, does that make like just reading a novel play
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: like there’s the answer yes. But then like, beyond that, I think there’s an interesting question. Like my personal answer is probably if reading it feels playful, then yes.
And like I would have a hard time sitting down and reading this book without feeling like I’m engaging playfully,
Sam: Yeah, yeah,
Sera: like whether I’m choosing to obey the rules or not obey them. Like there’s a section, like a point in the middle, like of the field agent manual where it gives you a little quiz about, about, about the rules so far. And then like the, the third question in the quiz, if you get it right, it says, well, you get a demerit 'cause we haven’t actually told you that yet. So, bad job.
Sam: yeah, yeah. I love You’ve gotten the outline here from the Kickstarter page, a list of the games influences, and one of them is the classic children’s book, the monster at the end of this book, right? Which is where Grover from Sesame Street is saying, no, there’s a monster at the end of this book.
You can’t keep reading this book. Please stop reading this book. And like every page is like him getting more and more flustered until at the end he realizes he’s the monster at the end of this book. And isn’t that so warm and fun, but like it’s, it’s exactly the same vibe. Like I love that influence on this, and it makes the.
You can’t do all of that without the voice of the text, right? Like, to, to kick things off here, I think it is very clear we love the voice of the text for what it is doing here. That it is making, reading the book this playful act, that it is immediately like putting you into the mindset that the game wants you to have while engaging with the game at large of like questioning how things work or like playing this, you know, like one of the first things that happened in our campaign to be clear, Sarah ran this game for me last year.
We played like 20 sessions of it with a small group. And thing you get as a character is like something you’re not allowed to do. Like, someone in our group was not allowed to say anyone’s name correctly because of their day job.
so as soon as they start saying someone’s name correctly, everyone else is like, oh, demerit for you. And like that little mini game, like everyone’s trying to call each other on their, Ooh, I got you on this thing. Like that is
Sera: Yeah.
Sam: built into reading the book, like training you to get into that mindset and then like you play that little mini game like that, it doesn’t have like explicit, it’s the, the game doesn’t say, like, also you play this little mini game where you try to call each other out on this shit. It just sort of implies that, and then that like emerges from the text and like, that’s a little microcosm of what the book is attempting to do at large with its voice, you know, with the voice of the text.
Sera: Yeah, I, so I, I run this game for three separate groups right
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Sera: it for your table, Sam, and, and our friends. I ran it for some friends at home and I ran it once at a con. And the, i running it at the con, I dedicated extra time to it, and I like tried to like imbue my, my teach with some of the personality of the book.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: fundamentally, this is a different experience if everyone at the table hasn’t read the player facing stuff, right?
like this probably a conversation people have had a lot times before about like, does everyone at the table have to read the book?
And I think like that’s varying levels of true, depending on the game, beyond like the mechanics here I think this is a very different experience if you don’t read the text, right? I
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: you every rule of this game, and you’ll have a very different experience than if you read it for yourself.
Sam: Yeah. Okay, so as you read the book, two other voices emerge within the text, right? You’ve got the like corporate handbook voice, and then slowly second blue voice. The, the Corporate handbook voice is like red the branding of the Triangle Agency, and then the second voice is blue, we’re gonna fully spoil out this fucking book, by the way, so if you haven’t read it, go do the thing. The second voice you come to learn is from a anomaly And that voice is like, Hey, this triangle agency, Red Voice is bullshit, right? Like, isn’t it like kind of like, like super cringe and like you shouldn’t listen to it.
Sera: like t tonally, the default of the book is corporate, right?
Sam: HR manual.
Yeah.
Sera: there’s, a humor to it. Certainly. But like, it’s, it’s an intimidating dry humor.
the urgency, which is what this like the, the, the blue voice is called it’s deep, deep in the book. this came up in the haunted table discord in conversation. But like, like, like it’s hinted at in the book, the only access it’s had to the world for a while is the internet.
Sam: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Sera: is like Tumblr queer.
it’s, I I’m absolutely in love.
Sam: Yeah, it’s fun. It’s like, like playful and an asshole and like immediately representative of, I think a thing that is implicit from just the bits we were reading earlier, right? With this sort of like terms of service page where like the book is, its voice is saying you have to follow all these rules, but like, it’s very obvious like, are you kidding me? Like, you’re, you are kidding me. Like the designer of this game is writing this way because they are kidding me, right?
And then the urgency, the blue voice shows up and is like, yeah, we’re kidding you. Like, like, that shit fucking sucks and you shouldn’t do it. But also like is a diegetic character in the game in and of itself, and is playing around with the layout too.
Like, it’ll like invade a page and like scrap some portion of the layout or like twist it around 360 degrees or whatever. Like it, it starts fucking around with the book.
Sera: I, I think this is, this is an interesting point to get into, like where the friction comes in.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: All the actual like substantive intrusions by the urgency happen in the GM section. The section
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: player are explicitly told, don’t read this. You’re not allowed to read this. Right. Like whether or not you listen to that, like the agency’s telling you it is against the rules for you to read this bit. And that also happens to be the bit that tells you playing this game means breaking the rules and not listening to the agency.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, I think like that is true, although I think it’s like very clear that like it has substantial layout breaks within the player facing section at the start. It’ll come in for like one word at a time or something to just like leave a sarcastic comments like it, it is much less intrusive until you get to the, GM section or to the play walled section at the back of the book.
Like, you know, one of the things that happens in the game is like you go on missions and then you get downtime. And on downtime you spend units of time either on the agency and doing corporate stuff or on your personal life with your friends and family or on your anomaly and with the urgency and with the blue voice of the game.
And when you do that, it starts talking to you a lot more explicitly too. But I do think like it’s impossible to read this initial section of the game and not sort of be aware of the urgency’s presence and that it thinks what you are reading is dumb.
Sera: I think that’s true, but also like, thinking back to our game. I remember like post session one when a couple of you unlocked that first real time when urgent talks to you, I remember at least one person on the table made the comment of like, this isn’t what I expected the game to be about. Like, I
Sam: Oh, interesting.
Sera: like, I, I expected the game to be corporate satire, and I expected like, oh, we’re working for a company that’s obviously bad, but fighting back against it. that being textually supported was unexpected to someone at our table. And like, I don’t,
Sam: yeah, yeah,
Sera: think that’s probably a more common experience at tables here than it might be like certainly when I read it, I agree with you. I think like page one, starting with interpreting this text forbidden to me obviously flags you should be breaking the rules here, right?
Sam: yeah, yeah,
Sera: but like that was my initial experience reading the book, and I’ve heard from people, people who, who, who, who are, have engaged with games seriously and read a bunch of games that that was still unexpected to them.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Sera: text. the fact that like, like that on some level the book expected it the player to break its own rules was surprising to the people reading the book, which is not something I expected to be clear. Like, when I first read the book, I had the same impression. You just expressed Sam, like, oh, it’s
Sam: Well,
Sera: yeah.
Sam: I wanna be clear where I’m coming from that like, I think because I have such a particular orientation towards games and that that orientation, as I’ve said on the show a bunch of times, is like, I wanna play the game as written until I’m comfortable with fucking with it because like, I don’t know, like I think of games as like watches. You know, if you take out one gear, you’re fucking around with the game. Like, like it’s not gonna work anymore. You know, like, or like it’s gonna work differently or who knows what you are doing until you understand the whole system. And like, I trust a designer to understand the whole system and so I wanna play the game as the designer intended.
So, to me, coming into the book here, I did have that experience when it came to the actual rules of the game, right? But to me, the, the existence of the urgency voice and the anomaly, made it very clear that the game was going to be in part about pushing back against the agency on a fictional level.
Right? Like, like my first experience of like, when I, my first experience playing this game was like sitting down reading the book and deciding like, what kind of character do I wanna play? And I decided I wanted to play a guy who was just like fully loyal to the agency and then see if anything would like tear him away from that eventually.
And so the first thing that I did was I got to page 44 in the book where the urgency really starts, like fucking around with the layout of a particular page to try to like communicate with you non-verbally. And I was like, oh, there’s all this stuff that I’m not supposed to be seeing in this book. I will simply use Adobe Acrobat to delete that stuff from my PDF so that I don’t have to see it. And the, the thing is normal again.
And then I showed up at the first session, told you that, and you were like, I think that means you get a demerit. And like, that to me was the game, right? Like, it was like, like the, part of the game is telling you to push back, but also like push back is discouraged by the rules. And like that was gonna be the push and pull inside the rule system that the game had created.
And then like, as we learned, as we played, or as I learned as we played, that the game wants you to push back more than that, right?
Sera: Yeah. And it wants you to, and it’s simultaneously like, it’s hampering itself by choosing, like, I’ve seen other games doing meta stuff, doing commentary on commentary. Often there’s a section that’s, Hey, this is me, the author speaking directly about you. let, let’s break the K Abe for a second.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: going on. Triangle Agency, never does
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: of this book that is, we’re going to fully step outta the fiction and just talk to you. There’s some
Sam: yeah,
Sera: section that get really close, right? They’re like, Hey, I’m gonna talk to you and acknowledge that this is a game. But the voice is always still there. Right?
Sam: yeah,
Sera: It, I think there’s some commentary about, I don’t
want to get too high falutin and philoso philosophical here. I think one of the big levers, triangle agency is pulling, is comparing games and game design to real world systems.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Sera: like certainly there’s a lot the text has to say about incentives, the way that
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: and commendations are pushing and pulling you to behave in certain ways. There’s been a lot of talk lately and for years about the role incentives play in video games, and there’s been a lot of talk in the world about the, the role incentives play in our daily lives, right?
My understanding of the text is rooted in, like I mentioned, that framing device earlier of like the agency has subconsciously convinced you that you’re playing a game. Right? But really this is all actually happening, right? Like a lot of how I understand the rest of the text is framed through the agency is best served by you following the rules of the game, and what does that mean and what are the implications of that?
Sam: Yeah. Couple things. First of all the idea of like the game never breaking kayfabe, that caleb and Sean never speak to you directly. They’re always speaking to you through one of the voices of the text, I think makes the text like pure, it makes it look more beautiful to me. like, I love the feeling of a game that feels like it has like the smoothest polish on it. Like it’s all pure, nice, shiny edges and like, I feel like it, it creates a more perfect piece of art for my taste that way.
And also makes it harder to engage with as a game. Like it makes it harder to do the thing that they as designers hope that you do with the text. I think it’s fair to say that like their goals are for you to do that rule breaking, right? To like push more directly against the bounds of the game itself from having heard them on other podcasts and stuff and like, when they never say that explicitly, it’s just that’s not what you’re taught to do culturally with a game. Right?
And so I think a lot of people, including myself, have a lot of reluctance to do that.
Sera: Yeah. It’s like it is a choice, right? Like, and it,
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: a choice that, that like reverberates throughout the entire text. And like, keeping all this from you, like, there’s been a lot of conversations. You had a conversation here on this podcast, I think with Jason Morningstar, about transparency, right?
About this idea
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: games are stronger when we’re all on the same page about what’s going on. And we’re not like, keeping secrets from each other about like, what we’re trying to do, right? Because then we can all work
Sam: yeah.
Sera: and we, and like trying Triangle latency does not do that, right? Like, you can choose to do that. You can all choose as a table we’re gonna read the entire book and screw all the, all the secrecy stuff, right?
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: The voice of the text is telling you, no, you don’t get to read this part. And so myself, as a gm, I could feel that we were all aimed in the same direction, but I am operating with some background knowledge of like where I’m pushing things. But if we’re trying to be as faithful to the text as possible, which is not like a, that, like, that is a loaded dis decision to make, considering like the text is a corporate entity.
there’s a section in the text somewhere in the GM section that talks about like, don’t tell your players this is happening. And this is from the voice of the, of the urgency. Right? Like the big voice trying to tell you to break the game tells you, don’t tell your players about any of this stuff. Their choices matter more if they make them of their own accord.
Sam: I was gonna bring up exactly this thing next. Yeah. That, like, the way I read it was like, when they figure out they should be breaking the rules of the game themselves, it’s gonna hit harder. Right. It’s gonna be more, not just emotionally impactful, but like I read Triangle Agency as a text, as like, it wants you to have the Galaxy Brain Neo seeing the matrix moment of like, I don’t have to care about these stupid rules. Not just about the game, but about your real fucking life. You know, like that’s what the goal is here.
And to see the way that you are caught in the system or any number of systems of corporate control among other kinds of control, you know, and you don’t get to have that revelation in exactly the right way if, if you don’t keep it from the players, but also like players are then much more likely to struggle for a long time and or never have the revelation if you never call it out.
Sera: yeah, like some of the moments in our campaign were the most special to me we’re when you as players decided to stop following the rules. Right?
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: Something like we’ve talked about is the downtime system in this game gives you three options for spending your time. You can spend your time more at your job, working overtime, and brownie points for that. You can spend your free time exploring your own personal anomaly and breaking the rules and like developing yourself as an anoma entity.
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: spend your free time with your personal friends outside of work, right? Like you can, you can go have a life, right?
None of those three options are, you can go have a lunch or a dinner with one of your coworkers, right? That’s
Sam: yeah,
Sera: not an option the game gives you. like fairly explicitly, like, there’s a joke earlier in the text about like multiple people picking the same competency and the book calls that union behavior and recommends you go visit the vault for your free pizza party.
Sam: yeah, yeah, yeah. The vault being like a, a, inter-dimensional locker that like jail, that like you probably will never be retrieved from Yeah.
Sera: like the rules of the game don’t want you to spend time with your coworkers, right?
Sam: outside of missions at least.
Sera: of mission, out outside of doing your job.
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: was like a lot of fun
when you Sam decided, screw that. I’m gonna spend time Gryph. I’m gonna spend time, I’m, I’m gonna spend time with my coworker.
and then I, as the GM have to be like, well, technically you’re not allowed to do that. And you said
basically screw you and did it anyway.
Sam: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because like by that point I’d like figured out what the game’s bit was, you know, like, I also think like something I found really interesting about that specific breaking of the rules in particular was that like after the campaign was effectively over, I went back and read the book cover to cover.
And in the GM section, it seemed to really expect that you would be doing that kind of socializing with your coworkers on missions. That like missions were going to be the time when you were like, conspiring with each other to be like, well, so we kind of like hate the agency, right? Like, what’s going, what’s going on here? Exactly. Like, what are we doing?
And that, that was just so antithetical to my experience of missions.
Sera: Yeah, like, so, like, so this is something I was really looking forward to talking to you about.
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: So like, we’ve talked a lot about like reading the game and your, your appreciation for it on an aesthetic level.
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: What was it like actually playing for you?
Sam: yeah. So, okay. So I, I was looking to get into this. I’ll do my like, main spiel about triangle agency, which is, as I said, I find it to be a remarkable work of art. I really admire it. I think it’s a beautiful work.
I also found it really frustrating to play, like over and over. It was really consistently after every downtime session I would be like this is one of the best games I’ve ever played in my life. And then after every mission session, I’d be like, I don’t wanna keep playing this game. Can we be done after the next mission? Like, I, like, I don’t wanna do this anymore. I just find this so frustrating.
And like, part of that I think was the game working as intended that like, the game really wants you to run up against a lot of friction. We’ve seen that, we’ve talked about the ways in which it is like training you to do that in the voice of the text, right?
But I also think that there existed a lot of ways in which either the game was not intending me to have friction there, or like, that was just like not fun and not like, I just didn’t want to do that. You know? Like I, it’s not how I want to be spending my time.
So I find the game very frustrating because. I find it very hard to express that to people like you, to people who really love the game and not have them come back with. Right. That’s the point. You know, that like the game is intending for you to have that frustrating experience because it wants to teach you these things.
But I felt like I was looking at the game and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve all, we’ve all stopped bullets with our mind. Like we’ve all, we’ve all like seen the time knife, like, I get it. I’m here anyway. What do you want me to do now? And like just being frustrated over and over with facets of the game as a result
So like I find talking about this game obnoxious because I feel like my criticisms of it are met consistently with. Yeah. And like, that’s so frustrating to me. Like, because they’re real criticisms, right? Like, I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy. Like I, like, like I, I, so I’m, I’m caught between like appreciating the ways in which like, yeah, that’s the game working as intended. That’s really cool. And, but I had a terrible time. Like, I like o over and over again.
And like, like there’s, there’s one, this is the last part of this, I promise. Like, there was one interview I heard with Caleb in particular where he talked about how if the end of your game of triangle agency is after six sessions you sit down as a group and you’re like, yeah, this game isn’t really doing it for us, and you like, put it down. Then he considers that like a big win.
And like, I feel like that is a big win to like, give up on a game like that. But to me, like I just, why do that to me? Like, I just don’t, like, I, I want, I wanted, I, I don’t know, I just felt so frustrated over and over.
Sera: Yeah.
Sam: Ask me your questions. I’m not afraid.
Sera: I find it really compelling that this is not the first time me and you have the conversation, but also you’re not the only person I’ve had this conversation with.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: seems to inspire a deep frustration which comes from this feeling that like, this game should be for me, and it
Sam: Yeah, yeah,
Sera: And like, that’s really interesting to me.
like,
I don’t, I don’t know if we’re gonna unpack that here, but like, I think on an artistic level, any game that inspires those deep feelings, I call it success. Whether or not you have fun, right?
Sam: Sure. Yeah,
Sera: like, I’m on the same page a lot. Like setting that aside. You also chose, like, we had 23, 3 and a half hour sessions of this game. You spent a not inconsiderable part of your life playing this game.
Sam: yeah,
Sera: that the experience wasn’t what you wanted it to be. Right?
Sam: yeah,
Sera: that is notable and that should not be dismissed, right? Like we’re
Sam: yeah,
Sera: here for, for a finite amount of time on this earth.
Sam: yeah,
Sera: I think like, breaking this down step by step, you know, like you mentioned at the beginning, we’ve all stopped with our mind. We’ve all recognized that we’re living in a, in a fake world, right? No one at the table broke the rules or pushed the boundaries of reality as much as I was expecting them to.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: Like, one of the core abilities of the game is ask the agency. Like you get to describe a Rube Goldberg series of events as long as all the events could theoretically happen in regular reality. If you succeed in your role, which like you have like an 80% plus chance of happening, the effect you want happens, right?
Like let’s say there’s a crowd of mobsters in front of you and they all have guns trained on ru. You can ask the agency, well what if a truck was transporting 20 grand pianos overhead, just right now, because there’s a symposium of piano tuners happening across town and what if that truck hasn’t been repaired in, in like 25 years because the insurance company that maintains it hasn’t checked or whatever. And so right now the actual snaps and 20 grand pianos fall from the sky and crush these mops in front of me, right?
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: roll and you succeed. And that just happens, right?
And like setting aside every other ability in the game, and there are a lot of broken abilities in this game, that is the most powerful thing I’ve seen in a standard roleplaying game ever. Right? Like an ability that your character has.
And you guys didn’t use it a lot. You guys didn’t use it a lot. And like, I think some of that is the missions we had, but also like we’re talking about you are stuck under the heel of the agency. You feel like the agency has so much power over you. And yet whenever I look at your character sheets and look at what the game lets you do, I was really surprised that like. The pushback seem to be small and subtle and like clever, but I’m very curious why. maybe you’ve, maybe you have a different characterization of this, but I’ll characterize it as why didn’t you push back against the agency harder?
Sam: Well, part of that for me was that I think I made this poor decision to play a character who was fully loyal to the agency at the start. That like, I was excited to do that, to like lean into being a goodie two shoes and like see if I ran into any problems. But that meant that like my character wasn’t invested in what I quickly realized would be the, like, part of the game I found fun of like doing that. Right?
And so then I feel like I spent a lot of sessions struggling with like, okay, how can I like turn this guy into the character I’m interested in playing now without it feeling just like completely out of left field. And I don’t think I ever was good at doing that. You know, like I, I don’t, I, I never like found a clear way through.
I also like it, it doesn’t feel the, the ability that you were describing there is called Ask the agency, right? It like you ask the agency to set up reality, to do this thing for you. Like canonically, the thing that you are doing is like calling, it’s not like using your abilities in strange ways. It is calling up the company and asking them to modify reality for you.
And it did not occur to me that like I might be able to use that ability to fuck over the agency and that they would go for it. You know? Um, Maybe they would, maybe we could have played it that way, but like that when I was looking eventually to then push back against the agency, that did not feel like one of my avenues to do so.
Sera: And like, that is interesting to me, right? I think like, I, so like, I bought this game, I backed the Kickstarter as soon as I could. I read the entire thing. I broke
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Sera: I read it cover to cover. so like any like impression I have of like, why didn’t you guys do this thing is fundamentally informed by, I peeked behind the curtain, right?
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: I, saw literally everything the game has to offer. I read through the entire thing
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: and like, when we talk about the friction of the text, right? like you mentioned
that like you went into this wanting the intended experience. You didn’t read the whole thing, then in, in preparing for this conversation, you went through and you read the GM section and, and you skimm through like the, wall section.
my follow up question then is to you, like, how do you feel now about the decision to have not read all of it ahead of time?
Sam: I like, I mean, see previous rants like I. I like playing games the way the designer intended. That is how I like playing games. I don’t want to have to do the work of designing my own fucking game. Like, I don’t want to like do prep. I don’t, I wanna sit down and I wanna play your game.
Like, I like the way that I wanna engage with games is you, as the designer, did a bunch of like, really admirable and hard work for me to have a good time so I don’t have to do that fucking work. Like that. That’s what I want your job to be.
And so I don’t regret how I played this game. Like, this is how I play games. This is how I enjoy playing games. You know, like I really loved also the like, engaging with the play wall portion of this game because like, as my character did start fucking around, and like pushing back against the agency and like my guy, his arc was sort of not towards like. The agency is evil actually. But it was more sort of like, what if the agency is like not fully right? What if it’s my peer instead of my boss? You know, like, as I started reading ahead on some of the anomaly tracks when I wasn’t supposed to be, or like checking in on like what abilities I might gain if I did certain things or like reading some of the like larger flavor about what was going on with the urgency like before I got there, I enjoyed the like, subversiveness of doing that.
But it also like, it didn’t, like one of the reasons that I was I’m, I’m rambling off in another direction now, but here we go. Like I feel like Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve all seen the time knife. I know my boss fucking hates me. Like I know that the government is bad. Like I, like, the reason I didn’t push back against the rules of the game as much is because like. I don’t, I, I know to do that. Like, I don’t, like what am I learning by doing? Like, I’m, I’m interested in like consuming art by being like, drawn down a track that the designer’s putting out in front of me. Like, I love movies. I wanna go to the theater and be swept away into like someone else’s dream, you know?
And when, what I feel like triangle agency was asking of me, it was sort of like, here’s our weird dream, but like, what we want you to do is to take it and tear it down and build your own back in its place.
And that’s fucking work. That’s my job. Like, I’m a screenwriter. Like I’m, I don’t wanna do that while I’m like, I wanna like have the fun with my friends. But like that it was,
it feels like a macro version of the thing to me where like, it’s hard to sit down and play a solo journaling game because journaling is just kind of work, you know? Like, I love Void 1680 am because it’s a solo game where I can just make a playlist instead. And even that game, I have like a, an activation energy to like get me started playing it.
And here it’s like fighting back against the agency mechanically. Like fictionally, yeah, I started pushing back against the agency, but slowly because I didn’t want them to kill me. And, you know, for all like a, any number of reasons, you know, but like fighting back against them mechanically, like designing my own system to like fight back against them is like something I started like combining abilities to do even if I was not doing that, sort of like publicly, but it’s not like I don’t, it’s not what I’m here to do. Like I just don’t, that’s not the thing I want to do.
Sera: I, I, I think this is an interesting moment to talk about like what this game is within the culture of games we’re, we’re coming from,
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Sera: Like, I think glancing at it and reading through it, there’s some, okay, lemme first preface this with game cultures are fake, taxonomies are fake. We all, like, I hope everyone listening to this knows that I’m going to use these words anyway 'cause it’s easier.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah.
Sera: like aesthetically, I think this game bears some resemblance to story games, right? It bears some resemblance to the sort of thing you’re talking about, which like these carefully designed experiences that pull you all on a track and deliver to you on artistic reward. and then like, I play it and I think like in play, it looks a lot more OSR to me.
Sam: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Sera: more like play this like your blorbo and like use the toys you’ve been given and mess around in a world. then like we talk about the text and like doing prep or not. And I see a lot of resemblances to like, I think this game’s a lot more D&D shaped than maybe it might seem on the surface.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: And of that comes together to be an experience, which is like you’d mentioned before, like looking at this game, it seems like it should be your shit. Right? It seems like
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: be exactly what you’re looking for. And then you played it and it wasn’t quite what you wanted. Right?
And like, I think there’s a lot of that coming in, which like, it’s bringing all these sensibilities together and like, I’ll take a brief aside to like call out. I’m really fascinated by the way, like the heart of the game in my eye is the play wall, right? It’s all these documents in the back of the book that as individual players, you end up deciding which parts of it you see more or less of.
I think there’s some really interesting parallels you can draw between like the anomaly section of like the back of the book, which it contains a lot of moves, right? A lot of very PBTA looking moves. A lot of very narrative powers. And then contrasting that with the agency section, which has a lot of like, here are your new trad powers and like, and toys and I, and like magical items essentially you get
Sam: yeah. Yeah.
Sera: and then the reality section, which is a lot of like, here are these new freeform NPCs that you can play with. And here are these new ways to engage with these freeform play NPCs. like as a side note to everything else you’re talking about, I think triangle agency, if you’re listening to this and you are a sicko about games and game design, there’s so much here to chew into, right?
Sam: A hundred percent.
Sera: it’s, in conversation with so many different corners of the scene at the same time. And part of that is like, in my experience, I think there’s a lot of friction here the game from a story game stance.
This is a thesis I’ve been working on for a while in my head. Like we, like we’ve had some conversation before. I still haven’t quite fleshed it out,
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: there’s a part of my brain that very much feels like if you come into this having thoughts like, well what do I want my character arc to be? Right? And like, what is the designer intending my experience to be? are going to have a harder time. Like, I, I don’t think abso, I, I’ll walk that back a little bit. I don’t think absolutely you are, but like certainly in my experience I’ve seen decent amount of that. Right. Like
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: before into this wanting to have the intended experience and you drew a sort of implicit connection between the author’s Intended experience is you don’t peak at the back of the book. I’m not sure that Sean and Caleb would agree with you there. Right.
Sam: yeah, yeah. yeah.
Sera: like certainly the agency and the agency voice wants you to not look, but we’ve already established, we like, yes, we all know that corporations are bad. Why are we listening to the agency? Right.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: and it’s like, it’s fascinating to me that like, you know that Right. Obviously you know that, and yet still we trust the narrative voice of the book. Well, the narrative voice of the book tells me I shouldn’t be looking at the back so I won’t look at the back. Right. Even as we simultaneously know, well, obviously this narrative voice is bad and evil because it’s a giant corporation whose only motivation is profit and power.
Sam: And, and like all the nonsense it was saying on that terms of service page. Yeah,
Sera: Like, like it tells you page one, don’t look at pages out of order. We laugh and say, that’s super silly, and then we don’t do it.
Sam: yeah, yeah. Well, but that’s the thing. It’s like, because I, I was thinking about the, like j Dragon, like rules are a cage and I’m a puppy girl theory piece, right? That is like what she’s arguing in that piece is like, the fun of games is put yourself in a box, the rules of the game, and then like, struggle against the rules.
And I feel like maybe a useful metaphor for my experience with Triangle Agency is I feel like what I want to do is go in the box and like play around, right? And what it feels like triangle agency is asking me to do is like, disassemble the cage and like build something else and like walk around, you know?
And like that’s hard to do and not what I’m here to do with, like, I, like I more power to people who want to do that. And like, the reason I think the game is like an incredible work of art is because that’s super cool, right? Like, I find that like really compelling, but also like, if a game is an action figure and you hand me an action figure and then you say, actually what I want you to do with this action figure is to tear off all its limbs and like, make something else out of it. I’m like, I kind of like it as like an actually, it seems like a cohesive thing for, you know, like I, I want, like, I don’t want a pile of limbs, I want an action figure. You know, like, I wanna be in the box. I wanna like be struggling against the cage not to have the bars like fall away in my hands.
And yeah, like maybe, maybe that means it is less for me, but it’s also, it’s, I find it, do feel like the thing that this game, the platonic ideal of like, what I want this game to be at its most beautiful is that thing we were talking about earlier of like withholding the matrix neo reveal of like, the rules are a lie and you can do whatever you want. And then like, having someone come to understand that is like, that feels incredible to me. Like I, I want to have experienced that, you know? I want to be at a table where someone experiences that.
And also, like, I don’t want to do that, like that with, with games, you know? Like I, yeah,
Sera: the, this is where I think I, wanna bring in another aspect of our experience, which is, like you mentioned, we played this like, like we, we did this game for 20 sessions last year, 23, 3 hour sessions and change. And like, of that was conversation and whatnot, but like, let, let, let’s estimate. We spent 60 hours with this game.
Sam: yeah,
Sera: played an accelerated campaign.
We ended up cutting it, short is the wrong word, but like, our campaign ended with all of the agents kind of deciding of their own volition before they had to, to retire in various ways.
there was this really interesting buildup where like the last few sessions were this buildup of were all coming on the same page. The agency is kind of fucked, and we’re coming to the same page. Like we, like, we should probably do something about that. And engaging with NPCs and having those conversations.
And then I remember the very last session, you had a conversation with one of the core, like urgency aligned NPCs Shon this weird phish transparent person, phenomenal to play. We had a scene where you asked them, to address some of these con like your concerns about like, well, what happens when we break reality? Right.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: And their response was, I don’t remember exactly how I played it, but like, kind of angry at you of like, that you were considering not doing that. Right.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: Kinda like, my friends are being hunted by the agency. We’re being torn, like
the agency wants to shove us into a box and tear off our limbs and make products out of us. And your concern is, well what if actually the agency is, is right and we should like leave reality alone this way. And like it got like Shon, they got really mad at you.
And then like you walked out of that. And I mean like, I, this is me externally being an audience member to that scene. It seemed like your character was like, I think I’m done. I think I’m done with this. Like, I think I decide like that I don’t want to be in the middle of this war anymore and I’m gonna go retire.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: and like middle of a karaoke bar, you just do that.
And then the two other agents that were left are kind of having to sit with their friend just vanished. And then they will both also both kind of decide, I guess this is the end, I guess we’re done. that was beautiful.
Sam: Yeah, I wanna, I wanna, like highlight a specific detail in there. So the thing that happened was I’d had that interaction with various people including Shon up to that point. And then I’m in the karaoke bar and like my character was a, had been displaced in time, he was a time traveler and he summoned Shon to be like, Hey, I want you to create an ability for me that will allow me to return to my original time so I don’t have to deal with any of this shit anymore.
And that was what Sihon in that moment was really pissed at me about, was like, you are running away. You are abandoning us. And I was like. Yeah, tough. Like that’s, that is what I’m gonna do though, you know? Like, because I deserve that personal happiness. Like, I’m not convinced that any one side of this war is like, not going to, like, I think the urgency side of the war is better, but I’m not convinced they’re not also going to destroy reality as I love it, you know?
And that was the best moment of the campaign for me because like, I really learned something about myself. You know, like I, I felt both like siphon si, you know, we’re recording this after I’ve spent three weeks in Minneapolis while ICE has invaded the city, you know, and like, I have really wrestled for a decade now if not longer but a part and in particular the last three weeks with like, am I doing enough? What am I doing to like, protect the people I love and protect my neighbors and my community? And what do I, how can I contribute like when I feel so helpless?
And I both really understood Shan’s point of like, fuck you for not doing anything, you know? And I also felt like I really had a lot of empathy for my character to be like, why would I not opt out of this? Like, this is miserable and everyone is making it worse. Like, I don’t know what to do. And that was really compelling to me.
Sera: I, I think it’s really notable, like your character, so like every character comes with three relationships they have in the city, right?
Sam: Yeah, yeah,
Sera: And one of the other characters had like an ex and a, like a college roommate and, and the character had like their stage mom and, and, and, and their recent partner. And you had a couple of relationships that we barely touched by your
Sam: yeah. We did nothing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Absolutely.
Sera: like, part of downtime is you decide when you spend time with those people and you naturally, and like, I think it made sense for the character. It was like, yeah, goose is isn’t gonna spend time with people. He’s gonna either put his head into his work or explore his own anomaly.
And like, that feels like there’s a, it feels like there’s a direct line between Goose had no real connections to his
Sam: Yes.
Sera: Goose decided he wasn’t interested in the suffering of trying to push through and fight this war.
Sam: Right. Yeah. Yeah, and like he felt like, you know, he, I was putting the gun playbook, but we’d kind of modified it to be like, so the gun has this ability, you can just like eliminate people from reality and like maybe later you could bring it back if you upgrade it in the right way. And we had determined that the way Goose is specific gun worked is that it like randomly displaced people in time like sort of weeping angels, Dr. Who style.
And I felt like what he was actually feeling was not like, I’m not going to contribute at all, but like, the way I’m going to contribute is to go back home and then spend years undoing all the people that I’ve eliminated and like bringing them back to their original time because he’d like gained the ability to do that also, that like he was going to contribute by undoing the harm that he had personally caused and was responsible for.
But I also think like your point, that he had no connection to the his community is really good. Like, I think this game would’ve been stronger for me if I had made really different character creation choices. I think if I had been someone who was like not interested or reluctantly a part of the agency to begin with, I think that would’ve been much more interesting for me. I think if I’d had someone who was sort of like tied to their community and felt beholden to the agency because like mom is disabled at home and I needed to bring in a paycheck in, you know, like that would’ve been a much more interesting place for me to be as a player than the place I found myself in.
And so I, I also really wanna recognize the ways that, like my frustration with this game is in part due to the character creation choices I made at the beginning.
Sera: yeah. I, I, I think I also like want to tie that back to like, we, we only did 20 sessions.
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: think this game, like there’s a part of me that thinks this game wants to be a beer and pretzels thing. You play for a
year or two, a year and a half on and off, right?
Sam: yeah.
Sera: Like, like we played fairly accelerated. We didn’t even get through one the career of
one set of agents.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: the game, like the text itself kind of implies you, like, you’re not gonna see everything unless you play maybe a couple of careers back to back. I’m really curious about, and I’ve not had this experience. I think I, I like, I know there are tables out there doing this who are playing this more in the D&D style of like,
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: like, what wacky adventure we’re gonna have this week. Like this week your job is to capture a sharknado, right?
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: and really focus on the monster hunting element and really give a lot more time for like, things to slowly develop.
I am really interested in like the ways that our experience being accelerated played into some of these things. Like fundamentally, maybe if Goose is around for another 20 sessions and we’re playing a little slower, he develops some of those connections.
Sam: yeah.
Sera: maybe he, maybe he figures out something that matters to him
Sam: Or maybe I like bail on playing him a lot earlier and like bring in a character that fits better, which is I think in retrospect what I should have done.
Sera: Yeah. But like, like you mentioned, like you think it would’ve been a more satisfying experience to you playing a different kind of person than Goose was like, I am. Goose, one of one of my favorite characters of all time, truly in a game that I’ve played, like I Goose was fascinating and weird, and as much as I playing Shon in that moment, like Shon was pissed at Goose. I, Sarah like, yeah, I get it. Like,
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sera: have, kind of been shitty for Goose and the only tool he’s been given for handling everything is essentially a gun. And
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: And like that’s a bad environment to be in. Um, you mentioned early in this recording that there are two additional voices in this text
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: like, like besides, and we, we, we talked a bunch about the urgency, which is like the anomaly coded one There’s one more which is barely in the book, like page count wise. It only really appears if you spend time on your reality and it’s this voice that never really explains who it is or like what its involvement in this scenario is, but it derives both the urgency and the agency as like self-interested parts of the game, right?
It’s a voice that recognizes the game as a game most,
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: and it encourages you in the few moments it does talk to you. says to you like, Hey, the agency doesn’t care about the people around you. It just wants its power and control. The urgency also doesn’t care about the people around you. It just wants to escape and be free. Right?
Sam: yeah,
Sera: You should care about the people around you. You should care about your friends and family. Screw the anomalies, screw the agency, do that. And like, I think it’s easy on the surface level when you see that, those parts of the game to be like, oh, this is the true ending. Right? Like, this is what I’m supposed to be doing. Right.
Sam: yeah.
Sera: don’t think it’s that simple. I think
Sam: I agree.
Sera: yeah, I think like a lot of the text does a lot to humanize anomalies, like, as like, sure anomalies are not human, but like the agency tells you they’re not people. They very clearly are alive. Right. They very clearly have their hopes to dreams. Are they hurting people by existing? Yeah. Probably. Maybe. Does that mean you get to throw them in jail and kill them? Like the agency certainly thinks so. Right?
But this third voice, this voice that tells you care about the people in your life, one of the first powers it gives you is yeah, when you kill anomalies, I’ll give you more power anomalies make life more dangerous.
They make life harder. They make like, like they put your family in danger. When you kill them, I’ll give you more power. And certainly puts a wrinkle in, oh, is the hero of the book that wants you to care about your family. Right?
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Sera: Like, like, like we we’re talking about what the past few weeks have been like living in America. And like I certainly have had very little I’ve been able to do about what’s happening in the world, right? Personally.
Sam: yeah.
Sera: I have been pushed to focus on what can I do for my loved ones, what can I do for my family? And I like to think I’ve been able to bring some joy to myself and to them. Right?
I don’t think it can be as simple as that’s the only thing I should care about, right? Is me and myself and the people around me. Like there are people out there who are hurting a lot and who are suffering a lot. And does my personal happiness and security matter more than that? Like certainly there are people making the very brave decision to put their own wellbeings at risk and put themselves in danger and make their own lives harder because they want to speak up for others, right?
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: for the people that the powers that be say don’t matter. And that’s not an uncomplicated choice. There’s a lot of people being hurt by those decisions as well. Even if certainly I don’t, to be very clear, like I think people who are doing that are doing something noble, right?
Sam: yeah.
Sera: But not something simple. I don’t think it’s a simple decision. And I think that’s a lot of what we saw in our game was like, there came a moment close to the end of our game where several people simultaneously unlocked this document that was the agency telling you, Hey, if you keep breaking the rules, we’re going to eliminate the relationship you’re least close with from reality, they’re gonna be gone, right? and. For you, there was a bit of a comical moment where we’d established that um,
Sam: My, the closest relationship for me, was uh, Joe Rogan style podcaster that I listened to, and so we determined that actually reality would probably be better off that happened.
Sera: yeah, yeah. and then the other people involved weren’t put in danger within the time we still had in the, in the, in the campaign. But like, don’t think triangle agency as a text easy answers to that question, right?
Sam: yeah. Totally.
Sera: it gives you a couple of like, here are some ways the game can end and they all kind of suck. And they’re all kind of like, if, like, so like fully spoiling the book, like we’ve already mentioned before, the game presents two clear, like world ending ways the game can end, right?
If you align with the agency enough, eventually a agency gets strong enough that it can completely eliminate anomalies forever. And
Sam: And fundamentally control like reality and history like and everything. Yeah.
Sera: And like, and like the rest of everyone’s lives forever are, you clock in And you clock out and you work right. pretty unambiguously a bad ending.
Sam: Yeah. Not great.
Sera: and then the urgency has an ending, which is like, if you give the urgency enough power over the course of a couple of campaigns, it breaks free. And this corner of reality stops existing in any sort of consensus manner, right? Like buildings melt into eyes and everyone exists as concepts and the world as you know, it ceases to exist. Is that a good ending? I don’t know. Right?
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: like certainly we live in a world that is full of structures and consensus, and I think there’s a lot of solid arguments that we should tear down those structures and a lot of counter arguments of like, oh, well, without these structures, things would be chaotic and bad and worse. And I, I don’t have, like, I have not come out clear on either side of that, right? Like, I’m still wrestling with what does it mean to tear down all the systems? I don’t know.
Sam: Yeah.
Well, I do, this is one of the things that I really love and appreciate about the game is I think it does do a good, like a great job of conveying exactly this sort of like moral dilemma and like, and asking and inviting you to create your own right, to create something else, to find some other ending.
Like all to me, all the voice of the text stuff, all of the like friction stuff, all of the like push against the rules of the game stuff is in service of trying to get you to go come up with something better.
Like, I feel like if I was the author of this game, my dream is that some player of the game would find some ending that they could share with me, that I could use in my real life to make my real life better and less fucking miserable. You know, it feels almost like a plea in that way.
And also, if those better things existed, I think someone in real life would’ve figured them out already. You know? But like, but like, they must, you know? And, and this is the conversation that like, makes the game great and it’s like that conversation, like wrapped up in candy is like what the game is.
And that’s cool, but also frustrating because like, it sucks in real life, you know, like, I dunno what to say. Like it something I had in the outline here was like, some of my friction with this game, some of my frustration with this game is clearly rooted in the ways that this game intentionally makes you feel helpless.
Like, it became clear over the course of the campaign that like I had infinite God-like power, like I discovered about halfway through our play that like even within the rules of the game, like setting aside, ask the agency or whatever, like I could summon siphon and do whatever I wanted at any moment.
And I I. Like the, I couldn’t come up with anything better. I, where was I going with this? Like, I like the, what do you do with that? Like, I don’t know, like, that’s an interesting question, but it also, like, you’re still gonna end up like somewhere kind of miserable because of how the world works.
And like, this is where I was going is like the, in some ways this is not a power fantasy, right? It’s like a helplessness nightmare. Like it’s a, it’s like you can have all the power of the world and like still you are stuck in this fucking horrible place to be like, what can you do? And like, you know, I eventually found this answer for Goose of see ya. Which is something I fantasize about in real life, you know, of like completely checking out instead of what I did yesterday of like going to the DSA meeting.
You know, like, I like, but I don’t, is that what I wanna be doing with my RPG time? Maybe. I don’t know.
Sera: like, I find a lot of catharsis in
Sam: that kind
Sera: of helplessness, right.
and, and, and really getting to play with a comical, like, parody version of what it’s like to have a corporate job, right?
Sam: yeah. Yeah.
Sera: one of the big elements of the game is like, from the top, the game tells you you break the rules, you get demerits and demerits are bad, so don’t break the rules. And you were all trying your best to avoid breaking the rules for a while. Right.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it was kind of fun, like, I don’t know like yeah,
Sera: yeah. And and like, and for the most part
also like, a lot of the rules are like, oh, don’t say someone’s name. Right. Okay. It’s fun to say people’s names wrong a bunch. Right?
Sam: yeah,
Sera: that, that, that’s funny. I don’t know when this became apparent, there are not a lot of consequences in the text to getting a lot of demerits. Demerits are in most ways toothless.
Sam: yeah,
Sera: and like, that feels instructive, right? Like, certainly I’ve had a lot of jobs that were shitty and bad and hard and I still followed the rules. And something that like is empowering to me for those jobs is like, is thinking back and being like, oh, if I broke those rules, like if they’d fired me, they would’ve been screwed. Right? like, they could not have fired me. So why was I so concerned with not breaking those rules?
Right.
Sam: yeah.
Sera: certainly on a like larger scale, there’s still this pressure even within the game. Like the, the, the actual pressure in the
game comes from the agency tells you if like while you work for us, we keep you stable, we keep you mostly human, we keep you from continuing to devolve into this conceptual creature.
Right?
Um, and so like if it’s like, if we ever fire you, you will no longer be stable. You’ll become one of these out of control anomalies, right?
And so like, in the same way, like, yeah, I know if I break enough rules, eventually they will hire someone else and fire me and like, I will not be able to pay rent and I’ll be evicted and I’ll starve to death. You know, that, that there’s a whole, the whole doom spiral that comes.
And so there is this like catharsis, I think within the game of like, yes, you are in a lot of ways helpless in a lot of ways, even with infinite power. The agency is so big that like, what can you do even as a single person with unfathomable power? And the answer is sometimes like, you do what you can.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Sera: even Goose who ultimately decided, fuck this, I leave. The very last real mission we had was on a space station and you guys managed to like essentially capture the anomaly, but there were like 45 something witnesses, right? Witnesses who very clearly saw that stuff that is impossible happened, right? And the, and like the book, one of the, one of the main mechanics of the book is these loose ends, right?
Sam: yeah.
Sera: that like, as more loose ends arise and are documented, consensus reality starts to break down.
And like, I’ll take a second as, as an aside to mention this as one of the most fun parts of the game. Like as, as we kept playing,
Sam: I agree. Yeah.
Sera: as you guys started coming more loose ends, more weather events started to happen. And I think it started, I think the very first one was people were reluctant to leave their cars.
and that was just weird. And it was interesting. we had played one more mission, I rolled what our next weather events would be.
next session would’ve been everyone wakes up as an anthropomorphic car. And like that’s only like, and like there, there are 19 other of these things that are like, there’s one that like, if it keeps spiraling outta control enough, a giant ice bird comes and snows in the entire city.
There’s another, like, everyone turns into animals. Like there’s one that, like you relive an older mission. You had like, like you wake up on the morning of a previous mission and you have to do it all again with, with all your current knowledge.
Sam: Wow.
Sera: cannot communicate how much weird, fun shit is in this book.
But ultimately if you accumulate enough loose ends, the agency tells you, listen, rather than risk, reality completely unraveling, we’ll just delete the city. We will just delete the city from existence. And you guys were pretty close to that line near the end of the game, right? So like,
Sam: And you’d warned us of the fact, so we were very aware of this. Yeah.
Sera: And like very, very aware that like if you leave these 45 people alive, the agency’s just gonna delete the Okay. than risk reality completely unraveling. And very, very cleverly like I think you pull off a good move, which was like you just uncovered that like you can bring a person back usually on a role of this ability that like, that’s like a little bit risky, but not that risky.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: so what you decided to do was eliminate all 45 people on that space station from reality. Which was horrifying in the moment. Like you gather them all up, you rolled some dice, you didn’t even break any rules, but you rolled some dice and you rolled well enough that you were just within the rules. Yeah. You can select unlimited targets and you remove all 42 people here, besides the three people you care about the most, from reality.
And so like you mentioned before fucking off back to 1880, whatever part of your plan was I get to bring these, these, these 40 something people back to life and
like
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: Are they stuck in a time they’re not familiar with? Yes, but they’re alive
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: and like, so I think there is an answer you can come to with the game, which is like, there is a power fantasy of like, Ultimately there’s the, there’s the catharsis of living through this reality that you’re trapped in. But also we’re gonna give you these incredible powers, which let you to save people from a corporation with, uh, withs of your fingers.
Sam: Yeah. And it was really compelling to like have that moment happen and have my fellow players turn to me like, what the fuck? And me, like as both a player and as the character Goose being like, of obviously, what are you talking about? Like, of course we’re gonna like murder 42 people so they don’t delete a city from reality. Like, I, it is just math, like, what are you talking about?
And like, yeah, it’s horrible, but like we’ve already figured out that the corporation is like a shitty genocide machine. Like, I don’t know what to tell you. Like, yeah. And those kinds of moments are like where the game really, really shined for me.
Sera: Yeah. And I do wanna talk to 'em about like, that were like talking about, like the friction of the voices here.
Sam: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Sera: to talk about missions for a second.
So I’ll first try to like plainly explain to the audience what a mission tri agency is. you are briefed that there is an anomaly out there. An anomaly is a creature that is born when someone or a group of someones have a thought intensely enough. And so the anomaly is this creature. That is sustained by the thought. It feeds off of the thought. So it behaves in a way to create more of that thought.
So the, the example of the book gives is like, this employee at a subway is really obsessed with making the perfect sandwich. And so an anomalies born and it terrorizes this guy by every time this guy messes up a sandwich, it turns someone inside out, right? Like, and so it’s turning people inside out.
But the, like, all the agents know is, hey, three people have been turned inside out at the sandwich shop. Right? Go there, investigate, figure out what’s going on, and then do something about it, right?
And then you’re given three options essentially for what you can do about it, right? You can appease this anomaly by giving it more of this like, obsession with making a perfect sandwich. You can frustrate it by removing its focus, by like destroying the sandwich shop or whatever. Or you can confuse it by making, it’s like making it confused, right? Like telling it well, by making this person terrified, you’re moving the artistry of a perfect sandwich. So actually it’s impossible for this guy to make a perfect sandwich. Or you can just beat the thing up a bunch or you can just shoot it with your gun, right?
But
Sam: Yep.
Sera: and all this and tells you, go do something about it.
So
Sam: Yep.
Sera: that is my best effort to explain how an a, a mission works. Sam, what was your experience with missions in this game?
Sam: Disaster.
Yeah, like, this is another place where I feel like the game is sort of operating as intended in this like, really admirable way in the abstract, but like, it’s very frustrating in reality. Which is that like, it, lays all that out That sounds like fair. I feel like I more or less get that and then you like, get your hands dirty in reality and it doesn’t work like that at all. Right?
And like, that’s the point the game’s trying to make. And also, so how does it work? What the fuck are we supposed to be doing? Like, it, it felt very very frustrating in the moment.
Like to me, the conversation I feel like we landed on that I kept coming back to here was like in an investigation game, right? Like we’re, we’re doing a murder mystery. I come in, I know what the tropes are of that genre. I know how reality works, you know, like I know what the rules of the world are very explicitly because it’s real life. You like, know what the rules of the game are.
And Triangle Agency also feels like it is presenting you with a case of the week style puzzle on missions, right? It is saying, Hey, here’s an anomaly. Here’s like roughly the rules of how this like anomaly like functions and exists in the world. And then here are the ways you can approach dealing with it.
But because anomalies aren’t real, I found it excruciatingly frustrating every time I had to approach a mission because I think from the books side of things, from the general manager side of things, it is often like very clear what’s going on with the anomaly, right? Like in the example of the sandwich shop, right? Like the anomaly really wants to make a perfect sandwich. I think like even now, it’s like slipping out of my brain. What did that anomaly want? Why is it killing people at a sandwich shop? And like, it feels so hard to like pinpoint what that thing is.
And then on the player side, my experience was, forget about it. Like I, I’m gonna like figure out like the rough ballpark of like, you know, we did this, this ice cream mission, right? Where like, this is the sample mission in the book. The players show up and there’s like a popup ice cream stand with an anomaly that’s like handing out ice cream and also like freezing people to death. And it’s unclear why it’s freezing people to death.
And my experience of what is supposed to be this like very, very simple standard mission is like, where’s the anomaly? What’s going on? Okay. The anomalies in the truck. Are we supposed to talk to it? How do we talk to it? How do we convince to something that is communicating with us only through trying to give us ice cream that like it can’t do that anymore. Like how do You actually get in there and like convince this thing to get in the briefcase? What are the circumstances that are required for that?
And like, those are vague. They are not clear to me even now. Like I don’t think we ever figured this shit out. I think that that is as intended, but I think maybe it’s too much, like more than is intended that like it felt so hard. And so like my solution was just like, well, I’ll just shoot the anomaly every time. And like, that was a mess. And yeah. I don’t know.
Sera: I, I, think like setting aside whether or not it was satisfying to experience this, I think there’s some really obvious parallels there to policing, right?
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: like, essentially the job you’re given is deescalate this person and convince them to go to prison. And you can do that by making them happy. And you can do that by making 'em sad, or you can do that by befuddling them, Or you can just, shoot them and kill them. Right? And like, certainly there’s something really, really apparent about how in practice you found it much easier to kill the thing, the things you were after than to capture them.
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: and like now bringing back in, whether that’s satisfying to play through or not. I think ultimately this comes back to like the voice of the text, right? Which is that like the agency wants you to capture these people, these anomalies or barr and capture them. It wants you to destroy them. At least. At least if you destroy them, they’re not out there making reality more fragile. Right?
Sam: yeah, yeah,
Sera: But like from the top, you’re told. Yeah. Theoretically the mission can also end with the anomaly escaping. But the agency tells you, well, that’s bad, and you, you don’t want that,
Sam: yeah.
Sera: But like could have been how every mission went, right? Every mission could have ended with you all helping an anomaly, esca, evade notice and escape.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Sera: and like, certainly that’s not necessarily simpler, but I think it’s more straightforward, right?
Sam: Sure.
Sera: Certainly there’s a, there’s, there’s a more straightforward path to how do we like push this ice cream guy to leave the city, right?
but again, I think there’s simultaneously this truth of like, it’s less meaningful for you to rebel in that way if the game makes it really obvious that you you can intentionally choose for that to happen. And also the meaningful reality of it seemed like it felt bad for you guys, that it was hard to get the quote unquote good ending, right?
Sam: Yeah. Yeah.
so a couple of things. it, it was like not immediately obvious to me that you could let anomalies go, right? Like when, once they started being person shaped, it was much more clear that you could like have a conversation with them and let them do their own thing. But like before that point, like the agency says you’re not supposed to do that.
We know that the agency isn’t trustworthy, but it’s not like immediately obvious that we should be questioning like literally everything the agency says, right? Because we’re doing that like. W we’re like here to play a game. And if the agency is explaining that game to us, if we question literally everything the agency says, then we’re not playing the game anymore. And like, why are we playing triangle agency? You d Like if we ignore the game entirely, like what are we doing here? You know, but, but like, I think all that is like kind of part of the point the game is trying to make. That’s like the Neo Matrix thing we talked about earlier.
Like the bigger issue here for me is that my problem was less about like, how do I get the good ending of missions? It was more like there’s this really interesting hard choice at the end of missions that I wanted to wrestle with. Like that part was really exciting. I wanted to get to that thing, but to get to that choice I had to like push through a bunch of like Gonzo puzzle solving that I had no interest in, and like didn’t understand the bounds on, like, I didn’t know what was expected of me in those moments,
Like, this is how a lot of 'em are described in the book, like the way the book describes on the GM side players approaching missions is like uh, what if you like, round up all the cheese in the city and put it in one place and set it on fire so our like cheese based anomaly is like freaked out and I’m like. I just don’t care. Like, I don’t know, like that’s just not, it’s, it’s like a really, that I,
I’ve been, you know, at the like every other week one shot’s meetup that I’ve been playing at for the past couple of years, the kind of game like Honey Heist does really well at this meetup where you come in and it’s like you’re a bear in a hat and you’re stealing honey, and like, let’s go have fun for two hours like, riffing on that essentially. Right? Because that’s what a game like Honey Heist is like, there’s not like a ton of prep there. You’re just kind of like riffing and being goofy and like, it, it, it feels like cotton candy to me, like playing a game like that
People love that shit. And like, that’s kind of what this part of Triangle Agency felt like to me. And like, I don’t love that shit. And so I, all of those things together made it where like, the end of missions was really compelling to me. Getting there was a fucking slog, I think as much for like taste reasons, as like practical reasons. And then we end up there and I’m like, okay, this decision is cool, but I’m fucking exhausted.
And that was my experience with missions.
Sera: Yeah, I think broadly, I’m on the same page as you in terms of like, what was the issue here with like, at our table for you. And that was a big, big part of like a large portion of table time was devoted to play that just wasn’t engaging to you. Right. and it’s that gonzo off the walls solving problems like creating chaos, like resolving issues up to the big climactic finale. Right.
I think my take on that is partially like the game is doing a comic horror tone and genre, and I think a lot of that serves as like a very useful purpose in terms of creating variety, right? I think if the game was back to back hard choices, you would lose some of the impact of that. Right? I think having that time where you’re not doing that is important to the structure of the game. And I also think, like I get what you’re saying when you describe it as cotton candy, like it’s fun, right? It’s supposed to be fun. We’re playing a
game.
Um, yeah.
Sam: to put it. Right. And like cotton candy is fucking delicious. You know, like I, I’m not trying to like be derogatory
Sera: Hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. And like, I don’t know, I, I don’t know how well I pulled this off. I think part of what the book wants to happen is you’re sneaking some medicine in with that cotton candy, right? Like, the, the museum mission you mentioned the buildup to the finality of that mission is a bunch of going around a art gallery and like, there’s like different people you gotta find and they’re all causing these different kinds of, of chaotic problems.
But at the same time, they’re like putting on an art show about like a utopian future for the city. And so like as you’re going through, you’re like, oh, here are these art pieces and this one’s anomalous. We gotta take care of it. But also it’s showing how industrialization has impacted this community and, and, and crush things, right?
Or, oh, this giant mural. If, if, if, if everyone signs it, it’ll turn the entire city a little weird. And they’ll create a bunch of loose ends. But also the mural is like earnestly trying to portray a version of what the city could be outside of like the forces of capitalism and outside the forces of the police, right?
Like there’s so much that is trying to like come at you at the same time, right? There’s that comic element, there’s that gonzo element, and then there’s also the real horror and like heavy themes of the game. And like I definitely agree that part of what happened in our game was a lot of screen time was spent on the other stuff. Right.
And like, like I could, I think as a side note, there’s element of like, I set you guys up with a couple of like less humanoid anomalies early and like my intent was like, oh, then it’ll be interesting when we transition away from that. I think I could have jumped straight to the more interesting like humanoid anomalies earlier on, I think for our table, just like at a purely subjective experience, like we could have jumped to that point. Right.
But also there’s this interesting element of like as a table and like you and I the two of us thematically, we’re both like on board with the game’s doing right. And not only on board, like actively interested, that’s why we picked the game up. And then the game takes this particular approach, which is the Gonzo, comic horror mix of oh, everyone’s turning into popcorn and also, oh, everyone includes this mother who’s left her child with without, like, without parents. Right. And how like, I don’t know, it’s a question I’m still figuring out like, what do you do when half of a game is a lot more interesting to you personally than the other half, but they’re tied together really intrinsically.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, totally. and for me, like, you know, you talk about like sneaking in medicine with the cotton candy, and I’m like, no, no, no. That medicine is like the juice. Like that’s, that’s the like delicious part for me is like, and like that, that was consistently true in the missions too, like. For me, the reason that museum mission was frustrating was because I had to like carve my way through the fucking gonzo shit.
And I think that this was the other thing that I was saying before, right, is like I think if Triangle Agency was a well established genre that I was very familiar with, then I think I would’ve understood the rules of the genre well enough to get through that stuff in a, like, pretty short amount of time where I felt like I had a grasp of what the game was asking of me and like where the limits were on, like how much I could be flexible or like, you know, what kinds of silly ideas like, could I bring here? How big could I go here? All of that kind of stuff. Just having a better sense of the expectations for me in the problem solving part of the mission specifically, I think would’ve allowed me to then get through that part and get to that like emotional thematic like juice that I think, again, was really consistently good when we got to it, it just like every time we got to that point, I was immensely frustrated by all the like logistical problems that I felt like I was having.
Sera: Yeah, I, I think like on a practical level, I think I figured out pretty early on that I needed to make focuses like really obvious. And to the extent that, like, did, do you guys know exactly what the focus was every time? No, but consistently by the end of every mission, when you guys were talking about what the focus is, you were on the right track, right? Like you, you knew enough to theoretically act on that information. The thing I think I, my, my practical advice wise would be my, like, guidance for other GMs running this is, I think there’s a lot of room to go a step further and not only make obvious like what the focus is, but make obvious the options for attack approaching that right.
Like if we’re talking about the ice cream anomaly, I think there’s, there’s room for Yeah. Like as the gm. Okay. You guys figured out that this anomaly really wants to make people cold. I think you have a couple options here. You could burn everyone to death in the neighborhood and that would certainly starve like starve it. You could freeze everyone like in some freak accident, and it would be satisfied and it, it would, it would cool out, right? Or you could try to have a really hard conversation with this inhuman thing, explaining to it that in fact, freezing people to death is not making them chill and, and uncomfortable.
Sam: Yeah. I almost want the, like agency’s clippy to show up in my my hud you know, on my smart glasses and be able to lay out those options for me. Yeah. I, I mean, but also like coming up with those is like allegedly fun for, for a lot of people, you know, like I think that this is the meat of the game for a lot of people.
Sera: But like, it, it’s also an easy slider, right? Like if I, if, if, if you’re at a table that’s like, has a lot of fun trying to figure out what to do with that as a gm, you just sit back and you, you let them try things, right? if I’m, if I’m on a table that doesn’t enjoy that, to come in and have agency clippy come in and be like, here are the agencies completely out their ideas and maybe that gives you a better idea for what to do
Sam: A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And 'cause that’s totally what would’ve happened. Like the, why don’t you just burn everyone to death in the neighborhood? I would’ve been like, oh. Right. We could burn everyone to death in the neighborhood. Okay. Let’s talk about look like, look, that’s, that’s a starting place to like get my, my juices. That, that’s showing me like, one of the walls I felt like I could have, could have gone for here.
I do still think that like the clarity would’ve been an issue for me because, you know, the ice cream one, it’s like, okay, the thing, the anomaly wants to make people cold. We can like deal with that. Right?
Our second mission was like. Clearly there was an anomaly that was interested in nostalgia somehow, that like it had rounded up some people in the neighborhood and put them in a basement and there was like a TV down there that was like old TV playing memories from childhood kind of stuff. And even now, I don’t know what that anomalies focus was. Maybe it was grief related, maybe it was nostalgia related. I don’t know what it was. Maybe we could have zapped the people who were captured in the basement, like out of there and made the anomaly sad that way, and I just, I, I, I never had the
Sera: Yeah, and and like there’s a gap here that I want to unpack because like in the moment, in that session, I remember what you guys did, which was you played a little kid game with the anomaly and the other, and the other victim that was down there. Right? Like you didn’t know exactly what, what, what the solution was, but you knew enough to be like, okay, if it wants nostalgia, let’s give it nostalgia, right? Which like to me was like, okay, they’re, they’re figuring it out.
And then like, I think as a gm, like that particular mission had some fuzziness and like if things fell apart there, but like zooming into the moment of figure out what the focus is and address it from an exterior perspective you guys had that. But very importantly, you didn’t feel that way. Right. And I think that like, that, like it ma, that matters. It matters that even, even if you were taking the correct action that didn’t feel like we’ve solved it. Let’s act on that. That felt like stabbing in the dark for you.
Sam: A hundred percent.
To kind of bring this back to our like marquee topic here of like the voice of the text.
Do you feel like the voice of the text was a hindrance or a help or like a non-entity in regards to like helping you learn how to run missions and like Like accommodate all this stuff, like relative to how that would’ve gone in a game that didn’t have like a really voicey text.
Sera: I am gonna take a second to think about that. I think the answer is gonna be, it’s complicated, right? but
Sam: that. What, what’s our runtime at here right now? Like an hour and 40 minutes, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I
Sera: yeah. Um, yeah, I think like certainly there’s a version of this that is very plainly written that is probably easier for me to understand on a practical level. Right. But the tone and the voice brought a lot to me in terms of, okay, beyond the practical structure of of a mission, how should the game feel? Right? Like, I think that’s the big thing that like the different voices conveyed to me is like, what should it feel like to engage with each of these on an emotional aesthetic level, right?
So like when you guys are engaging with the agency, a more practical text might have made some of the missions go a little smoother. But it wouldn’t have given me like the sort of context to like, oh yeah, I’m gonna do an office space kind of person for my GM character. Right. when we’re doing morning, like morning meetings that are in the a in the agency, what’s the kind of corporate satire I’m aiming for here?
and then on the other side of things, when you guys started meeting some of the urgents, some of the like non-agency Allied Anomalous people. what’s the kind of vibe they give off? And like I had a great touchstone for that because the GM section was so much of the urgency talking to me, right? So I’m like, okay, like this is a crowd that’s like pretty internet savvy, like they’re cool in the sense that like they think you’re all a bunch of squares, right? And like that was useful to me and I think that made the scenes where we were doing those things engaging and fun and like I, I, I think like those are some of the moments where the game sang the most.
And a text that was flatter and drier, like, could it have given me advice of like, here’s here are the agency’s principles in a scene. Right? Yeah, of course. I think that would’ve been infinitely less helpful than spending the time I did reviewing the text, constantly being immersed in like what the sort of aesthetic juice the game is navigating.
Sam: I mean, yeah. That’s just the thing that’s, that’s like the thesis of how voice of the text works, right? Like maybe you sacrifice a little clarity, but you gain a ton of tone. Like that. I, I feel like that’s kind of what we’re we’re saying and like the tone of this game, fucking rips. I don’t know, like
Sera: it, it, it it rips and like, it’s a big part of like. When we deconstruct games, like pretty often on this show, we’re deconstructing mechanics, right? We’re deconstructing like rules that tell us to do things. And certainly like voice of the text if anything has ever been, is a stretch of a mechanic, right?
But it does easily as much work for the overall experience of the game as the mission structure or the D four pool, right? Or any of these other things.
Sam: I mean, this has always been the fucking thesis of this show. Like I we’re coming off of this this Lightning Barriers episode with Nova about how, like, yeah, the fiction of your game, like really affects play as much or more than the mechanics. And this, this, now that you’re saying, this feels like an extension of that conversation, right. Of like what else really defines the experience of play at the table beyond the rules?
Sera: Yeah. and like, and, and I know this, like, this is a conversation we’ve been having on the, on the server for a long time, right? and like, like I remember cutting back to like, like bandaid and bullet holes. Like I remember we, you and I were having a conversation about, like some stuff you were like figuring out with that game about like why doesn’t everyone just give like other people what they want? Every scene, right? And like, you, like you had a direct rule for that and then it wasn’t really working. And then like, what you eventually cracked was the laws of heaven, right? Like, okay, like there’s an organization in the fiction that says, no, you gotta do things our way and like solves that problem in such a fantastic way. Like in terms of like aesthetically, that feels a lot better than being told a rule of this game is, you can’t say yet.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, totally.
Sera: I think there’s a very obvious dream we all have when we play games, which is like, we pick the perfect game and then it goes perfectly and we have the intended experience, right. And we’re all
Sam: yeah.
Sera: it. And like, I don’t know, you’ve watched a movie and not liked it. Right.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Sera: like, or like I’ve read a book and not liked it and, but like, certainly this is a conversation I have with my friends who read books. When do you decide not to finish a book? Right.
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: like personally do you decide? No, it’s actually really important that even though I’m having an absolute terrible time, I finish reading this book. And if I don’t finish reading it, the experience has failed. Right?
Sam: yeah.
Sera: having a terrible time or like with a game, right? Like, you came into this from what you’ve told me, like excited and like you like the book and you’re passionate about it as, as a work. Then playing it you weren’t having the experience you wanted, you weren’t even having an experience you particularly wanted to keep having at certain points,
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: And like, and like it danced back and forth around that edge. like, I think we found a good ending to that, which is that tension was channeled into the characters. The characters responded to that tension. We had a really cathartic final session where all the characters sort of wrestled with we’ve been through a lot of shitty stuff, right?
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: I think probably we all could have gotten there sooner. like I, I think I wanted to keep pushing forward 'cause I, because like, I wanted to like, because many, how many, how many chances am I gonna get to play a full campaign at this game, right? Like, I’m gonna run it again, but how hard, how hard is it to make that happen? Right? So like,
Sam: yeah,
Sera: to push forward at that. I know you told me like after a session later on, that like, part of the reason you were pushing forward was that you wanted me to have that experience, right? And
Sam: yeah, yeah.
Sera: that experience.
Sam: This is something I really wanted to bring up, like, in my first initial, like screet about the game, I was like, I felt I felt like my criticisms of the game were baked in and like part of the problem but I also felt like I was trapped in playing the game. Like when I decide I don’t wanna read a novel is like, you know, after a while of not having a good time, you know. Like I novels like come and go for me. Like, it depends on the book. You know, sometimes you really love the like first third and the last third and you don’t like the middle, but like, maybe it’s worth pushing through. Or like a movie, like maybe I’ll just like keep it on 'cause it’s only two hours, but then like, play video games at the same time or something, right. If I start getting bored.
But like with this game. It takes 60 hours to play a truncated version of the game. And it’s not just me deciding for myself. Like, yes, at any point all my friends would’ve still loved me if I had said, you know what? I’m not having a good time. I don’t wanna do this anymore. But it would, it’s not like a snap decision that I can make on my own because I feel a real life social responsibility to the people I’m playing the game with.
And so it, it doesn’t feel as trivial to leave when I can see that you are having a good time when other people in the group are having a good time or at least a good enough time that they want to keep going. And I don’t want to disrupt that and I do want to spend time with my friends, you know, like this is the excuse that we currently have to spend time together. Right.
And so that all makes it a lot harder, I think, to turn off a game like this when you’re not having fun with it.
Sera: Yeah. Yeah. I, I like, one of the things I really appreciate about the conversations we had about this is like, really, really emphasizing the subjectivity of games. Like,
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: of the artistic experience. Like, I will talk anyone’s ear off about games as art, right? Like, I think, I think it is fairly obvious to me that games are an artistic medium have value from a lens of viewing them as art. Right?
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: like, certainly that’s a longer conversation than we, than we can possibly have here. But I will do that endlessly, but I think something I have to accept as part of that is sometimes I’m going to love a piece of art that my friend is not going to love. Right.
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: And like, I,
Sam: relationship must deal with the fact that, you know, my partner doesn’t like catch 22 or whatever. Like Yeah, yeah,
Sera: I can sit here endlessly and talk about the decisions. I think were brilliant about it. And you can come to me and talk to me about like how you’re having a really frustrating time and maybe I respond with, that’s the point.
Sam: That
Sera: has to come with the asterisk of, that’s the point for me, right?
Sam: yeah, yeah, yeah,
Sera: like, like for me, reading Triangulate agency, the point is that it’s hard to navigate. The point is that it’s up to you. The point is that if you want any sort of good ending, whether it be on a micro or macro scale, the game demands you do work to get that.
Sam: yeah,
Sera: And for me, that’s compelling and exciting and makes this one of the best games I’ve ever read or played.
Sam: yeah,
Sera: But if I’m going to acknowledge this as not just a technical thing, but an artistic thing, I have to acknowledge that those things are gonna be less compelling to other people sometimes.
Sam: Right. And for me, I think that that is so compelling in the abstract and then in this specific, I think, look, I think I would’ve had a much better time with Triangle Agency if I had understood all of that better in advance and like, like had more context with which I could make choices upfront, you know? just something being different.
And like, I think that’s fine and good. Like, it’s great if I really admire this game as an abstract piece of art and like don’t have a good time playing it. I, I, I, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I also just, I wish I had gotten there sooner and figured out a different way to engage with the game for myself.
Sera: Yeah. I like, we have picked a, a medium to engage with that is possibly one of the one, like one with the most friction, right?
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Sera: uh, I remember there being conversation around when Tri Latency won several congrats again to Caleb and Sean. As people were having the conversation about awards shows and Ttrp Gs and uh, and that whole spiel, conversation of like triangle agency as a specific example. Sure. The judges read it a very, very likely, they, they didn’t play a full campaign of it, right? Like, there’s not enough time in the world to play a full campaign of every single game that gets submitted to the Nies, right? It’s mathematically impossible,
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Sera: but it’s like, it’s still won awards and I think it’s deserves those awards. How do you evaluate a text like that? Right? Like even when you’re not a judge for an awards show, you’re just picking up a game and deciding, do I ask my friends if they’re willing to spend three hours a week for the next year playing this with me, how do you feel confident about a decision like that? Especially with a text that’s being so upfront that, hey, this text is not like, we’re not even going to take the step of explaining to you what you’re supposed to do from a, from a neutral standpoint,
Sam: Yep, yep, yep. Yeah. It’s asking a lot. It’s asking a lot of you. And this is also why I like one shot games and why I want people to make more one shot games, like
Sera: yeah, and like, that’s conversation too, right? like when I ran as a one shot at a con, it was a roaring success. I picked the anomaly from the Vault book that was a pizza monster that wanted to make a bunch of pizza. And we played that for a session and it was a wacky, wild adventure. And it worked as a one shot, right?
Sam: yeah.
Sera: It had almost none of the layers that we’ve talked about in this
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: right? It was fun on the level of monster of the week, kind of fun and like, that was great. I really enjoyed that and my table was really excited by the game. I think it was a good taste. Is there a way to have the experience we waxed eloquent about on here in this game any way other than it is, right? Like if we’re talking about this from a critical perspective, are there choices you could make differently that would deliver the same experience?
Sam: Yeah.
yeah. I don’t know. I mean, like, you can certainly have a adjacent experience, I think, in a smaller amount of time, but it’s gonna be different. Yeah. Like I,
yeah, yeah, yeah,
Sera: e even the choice of like, so much of the book is hidden behind the play wall and the play wall is I would argue that there are ways that it is easier and harder to navigate. Certainly it would be easier if it was a fully transparent, Hey, we’re gonna put all the stuff that is in the anomaly section linearly in one chapter, right?
Sam: yeah,
Sera: as opposed to you gotta hop back and forth between alpha numeric coded like bits of text, right?
Sam: yeah,
Sera: But like, it was fun watching you guys do that. It was fun having that moment downtime session of, let me go read this document. While you’re reading that, lemme do another scene. Hey Sam, you read the document. Do you have any questions about the
Sam: yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Sera: you’ve ever read? And
Sam: It’s, it’s also like fun, like peeking at the page next door that I’m not supposed to be looking at, you know, and, and that kind of stuff. Right? Like, and we’ve already covered all of that stuff, I feel like, but yeah.
Sera: and like, so many things that can only exist in a book like this. Like,
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: we
had a conversation like just prior to starting about like some of the bits of the back of the book. there’s one ability in the back of the book that like, if you make the right choices, you can unlock, which lets you pick any ability from any tabletop role playing game and use it once and you roll. And if you roll, well, it works great, right?
Sam: yeah.
Sera: and then separately in the back of the book, there’s a couple of abilities that you cannot unlock in the game. There are traps, right? They’re explicitly like there, like there, there’s an abnormal briefcase in there, which is like an item that does things different than the regular briefcase you get. but if you read it and you reach the end of the paragraph, it’s, you had a cheat to get here, demerits for you. This isn’t real.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: You can pick that ability with the other one that lets you use any ability from any game and all of a sudden you have an abnormal briefcase, right?
And like, I don’t know, like, is that up its own ass? Is that worth the rest of the friction for me? Unambiguously, yes. Unambiguously, I am a big fan of a big, ambitious, weird game and all the things the triangul does that makes it harder to table. And appealing to a narrower crowd makes it more for me personally, the sicko.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Well, and I think like something I appreciate, I hadn’t even thought about how much I appreciate this about Triangle Agency, but like, this is a medium at Best Crunch game. Like, it might be a really high crunch game, like, depending on how you think about it, maybe it’s not to like Garp, you know, but like, this is not like a Rules Light RPG.
And it actually is using all of that crunch for its thematic purpose, you know, in all the ways that we’ve been talking about. And that is, that’s such a breath of fresh air. You know, like if you’re gonna make something this like chunky, like this big, like I thank God you’re like doing so with a purpose instead of just like 3.5 e Dungeons and Dragons trying to simulate the laws of physics to a thousand pages, you know?
Sera: Even just like, there are nine player anomalies in this book. Right?
Sam: yeah.
Sera: like we can, like, you can have the d the conversation about D&D where there are like 10 classes and do there need to be 10 classes? Right. Do each of them do a sufficiently unique thing that you have to have them there? Right.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: And then you can try your agency and each anomaly, when you dive into the back of the book is doing the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen, right? Like, the, the timepiece anomaly, like, which lets you control time. Cool, fun fantasy, right? If, like, if you dive into the back of the book, you realize, well, if I dive down the end of these three different paths, I get these three different items and I unlock all three abilities. I unlock a super clock weapon that does un normally broken things, right?
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: or the growth anomaly. Like you start and it’s, oh, you can make yourself really big to hurt people, or you can grow extra flesh to block attacks, cool, fun. And then you start diving into the abilities in the back of the book, and if you make the wrong decisions, oh, you’ve triggered The End, which is a giant alien anomaly that’s coming to eat the entire planet. And there’s a mission hidden in the back of the book.
Sam: yeah.
Sera: every single bit of this is packed full with a unique thing. Like there is no section of this book, which is, oh, well
Sam: this
Sera: is D&D, they’re magic swords. We need to have 10 different magic swords. Let me
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: different magic sword, right? Like, no, like each anomaly has its own weird thing going on. Like you played the gun, right? I think one of the last things you unlocked was you answered a question that you regret hurting people with the gun and your gun changed, right? Like your entire anomaly changed into, I think you picked the cloak, right?
Sam: That sounds right. Just like make people permanently unnoticeable by others. Yeah.
Sera: Yeah. And
Sam: unsettling.
Sera: and like this arc that, like, you start with a
gun that kills people very, very easily. And the structure of how you, you don’t get to see all the, all the features immediately, right? Like, are you comparing this to apocalypse world where you get the playbook and you see every single move the playbook has right at the start of the game, right? you got this little arc of like uncovering more of your anomaly as you went until you uncovered that bit. Right.
And like, does that make it harder to engage with? Did you have to have like a bunch of notes about all the different things you unlocked and did we probably forget some of them at different points?
Absolutely. But like, I find I am not often that excited about a game and triangulate agency. Just every single time I looked at it, I wanna bring it to a table again.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: One more thing I, I wanted to check in on was a couple times while we were playing, we had, like, I think a lot of our sessions ended with us spending another half hour to hour talking about the game as like design sickos,
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: to break down like what, like what it’s doing. And I know there were a couple of moments where there was like commentary on what it must be like for me, GM ing it. Right. And I couldn’t necessarily talk that openly about the GM part of the book because I, you know, US players aren’t supposed to look at it, but I know Sam, now you’ve looked at the GM section.
Sam: yeah,
Sera: what was your impression of it? Like, seeing what I had to work with in terms of advice on how I run the game.
Sam: yeah,
I think the GM section and my thoughts on it really kind of boiled down to the conversation that we had earlier about like the urgency voice coming to you and saying like, Hey, don’t tell the players everything 'cause it’s more fun if they figure it out for themselves. Like I feel like the GM section was like a hundred pages of like explaining that in various ways.
Which is good to be clear. Like I think it was really, really good advice, both for like running games generally, but also for like holding in your head at once both you want to guide your players towards the experience of like rebellion whether that means rebellion against the agency or the game itself, or the urgency or everything, you know, just like to this more rebellious experience while also like you have to take on the role of the opposition there. Like it’s your job to portray the agency, but like do so in this way for this reason.
And I thought it handled all that really well. Like, I think it really does come very close to explicitly laying out all the stuff we were saying up front the game does not explicitly lay out, you know, of like, of the point of this game is to like push back against the game.
Yeah. So I I I feel like it did sort of equip you. I, I don’t know. I know how to GM a game and like, I think I know how I would GM this game and like, I, it’s hard to take on the perspective of someone who does not have that skillset, who’s coming in and looking at this section and like, is it working for me?
Sera: Yeah, I had a lot, like we talked about how fun the book is to read.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: section does a good job of
Sam: pitching
Sera: you the GM as like, here’s the weird experience you’re gonna have playing this game.
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: as much as I think technical agency is doing a lot of commentary on power structures in games, the GM is simultaneously, like in here, a very powerful role as portrayed and then in practice, I was on the rollercoaster with you all
Sam: Yeah, yeah,
Sera: I had very little control of what was gonna happen next. I had, like, if I had plans, they got thrown out the window very, very quickly. But the, like the GM section did a good job not making that feel like work. Right.
At
Sam: yeah, yeah, yeah,
Sera: like, I’ve certainly seen different takes from other people. I, I know that like, there, there’s an interesting thing here with like, it kind of asks you as the GM to relinquish control of some things. Like I, as GM for example, like I read through the play wall, right? I made that
Sam: yeah,
Sera: wasn’t supposed to. Right? Even as the gm, I’m not supposed to read the play wall. Until things get revealed to the players, right? I’m
Sam: yeah. Yeah.
Sera: with you all. Some of that stuff is like, what is the urgency? What’s actually going on here? So like, there’s like, there’s this interesting thing where like in a traditional game, maybe I’m making those, those decisions on my own, right? I’m deciding for myself what the urgency’s going to be. if I, then, if I discover halfway through the campaign, oh, I am wrong and the book says, this is true actually, I, like, I enjoyed relinquishing that control, right?
I also enjoyed the, like, just the toys it gave to me for being that opposition. Like I find like we’ve had conversations, I think in, in, in the space about it is to be an oppositional gm, like what it is to run games, oppositionally, and how there’s a long history of that being a very unpleasant experience. Like here it was, it was just funny. It was funny all the time.
Um, I end of each mission, I had to give you guys a grade, right? A letter grade on how you did on the mission. And in the GM section it tells you like, pretend like you’re calculating this based on metrics. Here we’re gonna tell you just give 'em a grade off of vibes. Just, just go completely off of vibes. If you feel like it’s funny to give them a bad grade, give 'em a bad grade. like it was every single time the, like the sick power I held telling you all, yeah, you get a D minus for this mission. Bad job. You did bad. Like, does it mean anything? No, but I had a blast running this game and being on this ride with you all.
Yeah, I, I don’t know, like we’ve talked a bunch about the, like, the friction that we had with the game and like how it was not an easy time necessarily. I enjoyed back to the table with you guys every week and like, I felt compelled to, and I know that’s not quite the exact same experience you had, but I think a lot of what I love about the game is that the work always felt inviting, the work of
Sam: Hmm.
Sera: it, the work of wrestling with it as a table. Like, I loved you guys as, as a table. I loved spending time with you and the invitation of Triangle Agency as a central object to do that around, I mean, like, like on a certain level it made it happen, right?
Sam: Yeah, I’ve maybe never seen a game as good at like getting people to the table as this, or inspiring the desire to get it to the table at least, because I think it is, it is still asking you a lot in terms of like time commitment to get to the table, but like, yeah. What an inspiring text.
Sera: yeah. guess like, as we come to, to the end of the, of the question here, like, Sam, do you have any words for someone considering playing this game?
Sam: No. I mean, like, other than the, like two hours we’ve just said, you know, like, I, I think approaching this game, I, I don’t know, my friend Nova Idol car has this blog, playful Void and did this series Critique Navi, dod at the end of last year where she just reviewed a game every day.
And a lot of like, it’s games, sort of like self submitted by people and most of these reviews ended with , Nova kind of saying like, I don’t know that this game is for me, but this is who I think the game is for. And now it’s kind of a meme for me of like, okay, so who’s this game for? If I didn’t like it, who’s it for?
And like, I did like, like the, that I don’t know who this game is for, right? like I think you were saying this, that like coming into this experience as someone who’s not a game design sicko, who has the opportunity to have the like holy fucking shit, like Galaxy Brain, seeing the matrix, neo moments like about games at large, I think that is the highest potential this game holds within it.
But also, like, are those people listening to this podcast? They are not like, like, so if you are listening to my words, what’s my advice for you? Like my, I think my advice is if you have a table like that and this game is compelling to you, fucking table it.
Sera: no, yeah, I think like this is a game that it is very, like, it’s very easy to come into all games with expectations, right?
Sam: Yeah,
Sera: like, I’ve established a way that I engaged with this art form and it’s worked with me so far, so I’m gonna use it here. And I think in a lot of ways, more and less subtle you are going to run into a brick wall. If you come into tr see that with expectations like,
Sam: yeah, yeah.
Sera: basic level of like play principles during a session to the larger level of like, how do I engage with the book? I think it’s a game that wants you to engage with it on its own terms, whatever that means. Like certainly all games want that, right?
Sam: Yeah.
Sera: think maybe more so than others, it’s a game that will trip you if you come into it with more expectations. so like, certainly if you know a table that’s played a bunch of D&D but is open to a weird new game, get this to the table, right?
you are a group full of sicko game designers who want something that, like, there’s nothing else quite like ang see out there, and you want to see something that’s pushing those boundaries and you’re ready to engage with it on its own terms. Try it. I think even if you have the same kind of friction that we experience, even if you have, even if you get six sessions in and you decide this isn’t for us, I maintain, everyone can learn a lot from what Triangle Agency is doing
Sam: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Sera: like, not, that’s not necessarily learn to do it more like triangle agency, but I think it certainly made me think more about how I read games and think
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. I think this game really is going to thrive most if you are prepared for the long haul. Like, I, you know, if you wanna run the one shot like goofball triangle agency game, like I think that is completely fine and you’ll have a good time. But I do think that like the best version of this ca game is gonna be like long campaign length. Which frankly is also like, one of the reasons I think the game is not for me in the end is that I don’t really like that anymore.
And then I think also, like, we’ve implied this throughout, but just like be prepared to be frustrated with the game because like so much of the fun is in dealing with that. You know, like, like as much as I had frustrations with this game that made me dislike my experience with the game, like all of the best parts of this game for me were also moments in which I was frustrated. You know, that like, I think this game contains lots of friction and some of that friction is for me bad but a lot of that friction is for good. And I think that that’s worth engaging with and worth playing around with. And like, you know, being prepared for
Sera: Yeah. And I think as a last thought on the friction, like the game was a ton of fun. I had a blast playing it.
Sam: I
Sera: had as much fun talking to you about it, right?
Sam: yeah, yeah, yeah,
Sera: sitting, with you as a friend and talking through our experience and like, I think this is a comment I made during the game, right? Like I would take a frustrating experience that created conversations like that over a experience where it ended and I was like, yeah, that was fun, and I really forgot about it every day
Sam: yeah. Totally. Absolutely. Uh, Thanks for being here, Sarah. Thanks for two hoursof chatting.
Sera: Yeah. Thanks for having me on. .
Sam: Thanks again to Sarah for being here. You can find her on Blue Sky at Seraphim Sarafina. Thanks to everyone with Sports Dice Exploder on Patreon. As always, you can find me on Blue Sky at Dice Exploder, and you can find my games@sdonal.itch.io. Our logo is designed by Spore, our theme song, sunset Bridge by Purely Gray.
And our ad music is Lily pads. But my boy Travis Tesser, and thanks to you for listening. I’ll see you next time.
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