Triangle of Sadness: A simple RPG – Onside Review by Nick Luft

Unusually for me I was just trying to run a game and not try to reinvent or explore some new way of running a game mechanic.

I have not run a role playing game (RPG) for many years. I have had some time on my hands this summer – those long Private School holidays – and thought I would run a RPG.

The great thing about RPGs is that they don’t require much game prep from the designer: you create a few characters, invent a game scenario – mostly in my head – and then run it with some paper and pencils and some dice.

I watched a film “The Triangle of Sadness”*. It is a dark comedy that had a character driven plot – without combat or weapons. The film’s plot is driven by the tensions between the wealthy customers and the ordinary crew of a luxury cruise ship after they are shipwrecked. I thought it would make a good scenario.

I searched for a free simple RPG system and found Risus. It is a RPG system that has been around for a few years and has some fans and updates and seems popular. The premise of the game is that the character generation system and rule mechanics are based on the character’s experience. You do not have to spend much time creating complex player characters with character stats, skills, knowledge and lots of interlinked formulas. Instead you define your character by their life experiences. During the game the player will spin a rationale as to why their character can do something because of their experience.

Example of a Risus Character

For example – my character is an 18th century pugilist, Pocklington Jack.

He started life as the son of a poor cobbler in a boring little town in the East Riding of Yorkshire, known derisively by its neighbours as Pock. He soon tired of hearing that his future would be to mend the shoes of the local townsfolk and wasn’t that nice girl next door lovely.

He grew up to be a strong and tall boy and used to get into fights with the local toughs. He built a solid reputation as the town tough. The victims of his fights would get their revenge ambushing him as he drunkenly staggered home after a night drinking and boasting in the pub. He took these beatings, didn’t complain, didn’t go to the law; he kept quiet. Then later on he sought out his ambushers at the weekly market and challenged them individually and then gave them a humiliating public thrashing. He gained a solid rep. He also represented – unofficially – the town in inter-town rivalry and beat all comers at the summer fairs and was the talk of the town youth and the despair of his parents and other law-abiding townsfolk.

He was emboldened by his pugilistic successes and went to the York Fair and took on a professional pugilist. He did well and stood up for many rounds, but was eventually beaten by too many punches to his gut. But he established a rep on the pro circuit – the guy who stood up to the Grimsby Gutter. The next year he went back and he had been training, and preparing, soaking his hands in vinegar to toughen the skin. His bout was the talk of the district for many months and many locals put bets on Jack to win this time. It was a big event.

The night before the bout, Jack was shacked up in the Spread Eagle, talking big, talking loud and drinking tots of gin. In his lodgings that night he was grabbed in the dark and was man-handled with a sharp blade pressed to his throat. The local Walmgate Bar Runners wanted a word. They told him he was going to throw the fight in the fifth round, to a gut punch from the Gutter. There would be a nice little pay off for him if he was a good boy.

Pocklington had his rep and his mates and neighbours to consider. And he had a razor sharp knife at his throat. He took their purse and agreed to drop in the fifth. But Pocklington didn’t. He couldn’t. So he won his fight, using the same below the belt blows the Gutter had used. Pocklington Jack won – to the acclaim of his neighbours and his district. But he had to disappear. He went on the run taking a boat to the American colonies with his large bag of silver.

So this character can assert that they can fight unarmed combat – boxing, punching. They cannot assert, with much authority, that they can argue a case in law in a court.

Character stats

• 18th Century Pugilist (5)
• Tavern dwelling layabout (3)
• Cobbling (2)

Each number after the experience gives the number of dice they have to roll using that experience.

The DM sets a difficulty number to achieve each activity

1. Easy – 05
2. Harder – 10
3. Difficult – 15
4. Extreme – 20
5. Superhuman – 25

Scenario of – Triangle of Sadness

The scenario is about how to survive a shipwreck. A luxury cruise ship – 25 passengers and 50 crew – is shipwrecked. What appealed to me was the tensions that developed between the survivors: either wealthy, entitled customers or ordinary hard working members of the crew.

As I said my idea was to find and test a simple RPG system with a character based RPG rather a combat heavy RPG.

The players – Andy, Jon, Mukul & Trevor (online) – were given pre-generated characters and left to fend for themselves. As usual CLWGers managed to insert themselves into the story in ways I had not anticipated. One wealthy passenger appalled at the prospect of having to do work to survive, faked a paralysis in his legs, and spent the scenario sitting or lying down on the beach being served and assisted by the rest.

Feedback

I think I was too generous with the players and gave them too much food on the lifeboat and thus there was no real jeopardy for the players.

All players were able to make arguments that they had a skill based on their character’s experience. I think this helped them understand their characters better.

One suggestion from a player was that in a game of survival I needed to have a fatigue and/or a hunger stat. So when players do work for the group there is a cost to them as individuals and they might start to be less willing to just pitch in. There was too much cooperation in the game as there was no drawback in the game mechanics.

Some players demonstrated serious levels of paranoia – testing to see if they were still on planet earth, or if they had time travelled etc. Several players thought that after Trevor’s session last month I might have created a disguised scenario. Alas, and alack…. I was testing out a simple character based scenario and set of rules. But you never know what I might decide to do in the future. You’ve given me ideas now.

Game Characters

Here is a link to the game background, scenario notes and characters I had prepped for the game.

* Triangle of Sadness is a phrase used by plastic surgeons. It is the triangle between the eyebrows and the centre of the nose where your sad frowns leave furrow in the skin of your brow. 

The film, Triangle of Sadness, is available via BBC iPlayer until the end of 2025.