A Procedure for Acting in Triangle Agency

07 Jul, 2025

I was rereading Chris McDowall's Mythic Bastionland¹ the other day, and I love the Action Procedure as a concrete way to engage with the world.

Here, McDowall provides a clear way to navigate the action-intent duality, to avoid both underspecification of the means and lack of clarity surrounding the goal of the player's action. I am now running 2 concurrent games of Triangle Agency, so I was thinking about how to adapt a procedure like this one to that game, because it has wildly different assumptions about what is or is not possible for the Field Agents. The procedure follows!

1. Intent: What are you trying to do, in world terms?
2. Anomalous: Are you trying to use an Anomalous Ability?
   1. If no, move to Step 3.
   2. Confirmation: If yes, confirm with the GM that the ability as written/interpreted would accomplish what you want to do.
   3. Perform the listed trigger for the Anomalous Ability, if there is one.
3. This Might Not Work: If this might not work by anyone's judgement, it won't. You may abandon the idea here.
4. Ask the Agency:
   1. Describe a Causality Chain, asking "why?" until you arrive at physical phenomena or societal forces, rather than individual action.
   2. Choose a Quality Assurance that describes your intent, regardless of the specific method.
5. Roll: Roll your 6d4, remembering Burnout, and spend QAs as desired after the roll has taken place.
6. Impact: The GM describes the immediate impact of your action and should make note of future consequences.

I will be giving this a try next weekend as I run 2 sessions. Let me know if you use it, and if it helps you clarify your procedure for running the game!