We’ve been playing Triangle Agency recently. It’s an investigation game where you play a group of field agents working for The Agency. Your mission is to capture or neutralize anomalies that threaten to destroy reality. It’s SCP meets X-Files meets Laundry Files.

That rulebook though, it’s a piece of art and designed so well. It’s not a book that you simply read through. It’s a book you explore one page at a time. See, the book hides things from you. it keeps secrets–secrets that reveal themselves by playing the game. By engaging with it, exploring what it wants you to explore (and often by breaking the rules and exploring beyond it).

In the game, you’re an agent for the Triangle Agency. You have a company role (competency), a background (reality) and you’re bonded with an anomaly which gives you powers. You’re not supposed to use your powers. Goes against company policy. After all, your job is to capture anomalies, not play around with them. The benefit of being a resonant (it’s what the agency calls bonded agents) is that you’re quite good at handling anomalies without being affected by them (much). You’re not mundane anymore, and therefor hold a special place alongside reality. So, you become a field agent or you end up in the vault yourself. That’s where The Agency keeps captured anomalies, by the way. To study them. Figure out a way to make profit from them. The Agency has a profit line, after all.

It’s good to stay within company policy. For the sake of your own reality.

If you break policy and gain demerits, well, you lose access to the frozen yoghurt room at first. But then the game starts talking back to you. The anomaly, your anomaly, starts to guide you.

Back up. The first few pages of the game are the standard stuff: how to play, the dice, the game structure, and your first mission. You must stop reading the book once your character is created. Only after your first mission are you allowed to read more of the book.

You do that. You capture or neutralize or even let escape your first anomaly. You rely on your competency to deal with challenges, your reality to keep sane, and your anomaly … no, don’t use your powers. It’s against policy.

After your first mission, you get to enjoy some work/life balance. The book explains to you how to advance your competency and reality to get better at the things it offers. You can’t improve your anomaly though. I mean, there is a work/balance track to put points in, sure, but don’t do that.

Do it.

Only after you put the first point into your anomaly will unlock its playwall document. Break the company rules and your anomaly says “Hi.”

Playwall documents are earned. They’re all in the book. But you shouldn’t read them until you unlock them. Work/Life balance will unlock them as you invest time into your competency and reality. Don’t waste time on your anomaly. Just don’t. And whatever you learn, don’t share it with the other players/agents.

As you improve your character, you unlock more and more of the game. You get to read more of the book. Get to explore more of this awesome game. You play the rule book as much as your character. It’s as diegetic as a game can be.

There’s so much going on in this book. Every time I play the game, every time I read more of its content as I unlock its secrets, I find more little details. Little touches of design that are hidden everywhere between the art and the corporate speak, between the redacted words of your anomaly writing over approved text.

It’s a game you explore, not simply read.