RPGs That Ask You To Save The World On Company Time
Boss makes a d20, I make a dime.
Triangle Agency, the roleplaying game of corporate agents tasked with preserving reality, walks a very specific line. On one hand, it reaps the ludonarrative advantages of starting the players out as members of a pre-existing organization. All of their characters are on the same team because, well, they’re literally on the same team. They’re also on the same page because there’s an actual page they can read together that lists out what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. It’s an enviable clarity of purpose. On the other hand, Triangle Agency isn’t a modernist game. It’s a postmodern one. It can’t just serve up a tale of useful and productive employment. Instead, the game leans in close and breathily whispers in your ear, hey, babe, tell me, do you trust your boss?
Delta Green is a slightly older game with a very similar premise. The players are operatives for a shady governmental organization dealing with paranormal—potentially reality-destroying—threats. But like any good paramilitary entity, members of DG are expected to be loyal to their employer, knowing full well that if their brain takes too big a sip of the cosmic cocktail, they will be taken out back and put down. Their loyalty to a vicious employer is built on old-school values of manly self-sacrifice—someone’s got to save the world, even if it destroys their relationships, their body, their soul. It’s supposed to feel gritty and bleak but there’s a naivete to it as well. Comparatively, Triangle Agency looks much more cynical: it’s very clear that the only reason you would do the job is money, more money, and the occasional exotic vacation.
