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MIDDENARDE - PART 7 by PurpleXVI - 12/12/16
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DORF FORT ELLPEE by CAPSLOCKGUY - 10/19/08
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Latest version of the rules.So, when I first heard of Trigger Discipline, I looked at the name, I looked at where it came from(/tg/) and assumed it was some crazy-detailed, realism-wanky piece of shit and completely ignored it. Later some people mumbled something about mecha and I still proceeded to ignore it, because, hey, come on, giant robots do NOT need realism, are we agreed? They need to be all BAM BAM BAM, SPEED, BOOM, POWER GIANT LASER KATANAS, KABOOM, POWER, SHAZAM.
On closer inspection Trigger Discipline actually turns out to be pretty close to this.
To get the bad parts out of the way, the editing badly needs some work. It's poorly organized and sometimes relatively vital things about something are left out until a later point just because that single line apparently fit more appropriately under some other heading in the writer's mind.
But that's really all that there is to pick on.
The basic system is pretty simple, roll three dice(D4 to D20, really, it depends on the "episode" you're in. As you get further into the game, challenges get greater and the challenge die increases.). One for your GAR, one for your Power and one for a relevant Trait. If you roll equal-to-or-under on any one of them? You succeed. Most extras and such can't really oppose you, so they don't get to roll against you, but big villains may have one or more of those scores as well, so they get to challenge you.
Successes of the same type cancel each other out, GAR wins beat Power wins, Power wins beat Trait wins. Whoever eventually is the only one who has a success, or has a more "powerful" success wins.
Once a player has succeeded at something, they then get to describe how it goes.
Say I use my Mecha Backhand weapon against the Star Ho of Chaos, I get to describe how I spin gracefully, backhand her one across the cheek and send her hurtling into the heart of a raging supernova where she is consumed by the flames and torn apart by the gravitational forces.
Of course the GM gets to veto you if the villain makes a last-minute recover to just run away and re-appear later, or if you're trying to wrangle a success on Super Hairdressing into some sort of lethal combo attack(and it isn't funny enough to permit.).
For health you've got Plot Armour(which gets shaved off every time a villain succeeds at smacking you up, or presumeably if you fuck up all your rolls against some extras). Once you run completely out of it, further failures strip off your stats until you're completely incapacitated.
(For anyone confused at this point, this isn't just to represent a Mecha game, it's supposed to represent a Mecha ANIME game. Though you can wrangle it to be used for other things, it tends to be aimed at replicating shows.)
The game's essentially made to run in "batches" of eight "episodes"(which can translate into sessions depending on how long your sessions are) with the challenge die upgrading once every two episodes.
Each episode has a challenge of some sort, a limit on how often you can use your EPIC DESTRUCTOMATIC skills(you can give any given skill or maneuver a better chance at succeeding by making it more rare that you can/will use it. Like COURAGE POWER for a cowardly character, or a trademark weapon with rare ammo or some such) and you get a chance to improve your character at the start of each episode, too.
Of course, with surprising foresight, Dagda, the designer of Trigger Discipline, even included rules for extending stuff past those eight episodes.
So, in short, the system can be used for a lot of things, mostly well-written, pretty simple and fast to use and if I wanted to just run a few, fast games without much prep, I'd definitely consider using TD for it, which isn't to say that you can't plan shit.
~PurpleXVI
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