Triggerdiscipline

From BluWiki

A Tabletop RPG for Super Mecha: Just another random /tg/ project

Just my attempt to compile what's been said so far today. Anyone who wants to fill in more, go ahead.

Also, if you want to add stuff here, go ahead and register and put your name here, just so we have an idea of how many people are actually interested. -Doink

Sorry. I was the guy who splattered random things on the wiki without a name. -BlackWhiter

Work is still going on here, right? If it is, I'd like to help out. I have a few friends that would absolutely LOVE this game, and I admit I'm interested in how it turns out as well. -TheHermit

http://4chanarchive.org/brchive/dspl_thread.php5?thread_id=400593&x=Trigger+disclipine+in+my+giant+robot+rpg For the thread that started it all -BlackWhiter

Stats

Special Stats-These stats are not bought at character creation like other stats: their base level would be determined differently (either they would all start the same or would depend on your character templates) and they would fluxuate frequently as the game progresses

GAR: The more awesome things your character does, the higher this stat gets. Grants bonuses to rolls to do awesome things, and affects Plot Armor.

Budget: inverse to GAR, shared by the whole team. The more large-scale, awesome attacks used, the lower this would get. When it gets low, players have to contend with QUALITY and must resort to fanservice or recap in order to raise it again.

Fan Rage/ DO WANT/ Moe: the amount the "show"'s fans like a character. Could be raised by becoming involved in subplots, especially romantic ones, and through Fanservice. Could save a character from death. Increases in this stat also increase budget slightly.

Dignity: affects the amount of control the DM/director has over your charcter. High numbers would allow a character to roll saves against the DM involving him or her in mindless fanservice or random Director effects.

Plot Armor: Prevents damage in situations where your character is using his or her GAR stat or Special Stimuli. Its value changes according to the situation and other stats.

Normal Stats

We need some. Basic character stats (Str, Dex, ect. We probably want something better than that. Or at least something more streamlined.)

Physical, Mental, Personal, with aspects that players can specialize in? Like this, Physical has six aspects (Strong, Tough, Quick, Quiet, Dextrous, and Trained (For teh kung foo)), and the player has three aspects they can pick, (Going for the Strong, Dextrous, Trained guy if they wanted to make a standard soldier pilot) that would give bonuses on rolls involving that aspect?

Skills and stats also can be pooled by the party to be spent on NPCs, the "support crews", the NERV staff waiting at base, the engineers grousing to repair, the Mithril mercenaries, all that junk. Support crew can handle things that realistically the mecha pilot wouldn't have ("So, you're going to resew your arm back on in the cockpit?" whilst awesome...Fuck, I'm making Doctor Hotblood first chance I get) or would be incapable of using. Also, they provide fertile ground for accruing subplots and fan rage (OTP! OTP! OTP!)

That seems a little overcomplicated for base stats. How about we just go with the basic formula in stuff like tristat and besm: three stats each with three specializations Physical(Strength, Dexterity, and Health), Mental(Intelligence, Perception, and Stability), and Other(Courage, Charisma, and Luck). Your GAR/Dignity/Fan Rage/whatever would be what you would primarily invest in to change these but you could also spend/buy back points by having one of the specialties be higher or lower than the others, say by a factor of half or a quarter? And a "trained" specialty falls more into a baught skill or ability that would simply give an all around bonus to attacks and maneuvers in melee. Liquid

I agree with Liquid. Most of the stats are going to be given crazy modifiers all the time anyways, so lets keep the base stats simple. Doink

Leveled Templates

Instead of having normal stats, it's been suggested that we have templates or something instead. Heres a simple example: at character creation the player has a certain number of points to buy job templates and extra templates. Each template would cost 1 point and job templates could be upgraded to the next level for 1 point.

Job Templates Every job template would have a list of skills (2 primary, 3 secondary, 4 tertiary, and 5 quartiery), each with a DC which the player must roll over to succeed at that skill in stressful situations. At level one, each primary skill has a DC of 15 and each secondary skill has a DC of 20. Even though the template has tertiary skills, the character is not counted as knowing those skills until the job template is leveled up. When a job template is leveled up, each skill DC is decreased by 5. In the case of taking multiple job templates, skills do not stack, but if the character already knows at least half of the skills he would know upon taking the other template, that template only costs 1/2 a point.

Extra Templates Extra templates cost a single point and can only be taken once. Extra templates give the character a special ability, situational skill bonuses, or other such addition based of a stereotype or archetype. A "Tsundere" template, for example, could allow a female character to make a save against losing dignity from fan service while still increasing Fan Rage and Budget. A "Hotblooded" template could give the character an increase to plot armor when vastly outnumbered in combat.

Episodes

A single campaign would be made up of 26 episodes. The theme and title of each episode would be rolled on a table, and would be required to be followed by the players and the DM. The exceptions would be for the 1st episode, which would always be an Introduction, and the last, which would always be the Finale.

On occasion, you have "wandering plot syndrome" wherein the characters forget about the plot and engage in inane antics. Then, they realize they've got to fit twenty six episodes of scorned plot into seven episodes.

Usually, "episodes" go like this:

High pitched moonspeak slur attached to music Statement of Episode Title, varies between mind numbingly direct and Bizarrely Ambiguous ("Picnic on Omicron Nine" vs "The Howl of Memories Dissolving in Absinthe")Roll on Director Madness table. Actual episode of budget wasting effects. Ending song that's sappy and focused on the various bug eyed folk, staring wistfully at things. Determination of Fan rage accrument, and budget loss.

Or something.

The overall feel of the campaign would be decided ahead of time by the GM (i.e. heavily dramatic, dark, semi-serious). However, depending on the total level of the characters Dignity and Fan stats, as well as the current state of the Budget, the GM may opt (or be forced to) change the feel of the setting entirely (for example, using up too much budget on serious scenes would force the GM to change the style by adding a ton of fanservice or comedy.) [I like this mechanic because it means that even the GM isn't entirely in control of his own scenario- the Budget stat especially would force him to change the way he ran the game, because if the Budget runs out, the game ends, no matter what the GM does. -Doink ]

Subplots

At any point in the campaign, characters can choose to become involved in subplots. These would be, of course, side stories driven by the players involved, giving them a chance to both reveal their own backstory and develop varying relationships with the other characters. Depending on the content of the subplot, a player could drive up his Fan stat considerably, whether by revealing interesting back story to the rest of the players, through well-acted drama or romance, or comedy (Dignity loss is possible from subplots, however.) All time spent on subplots that is not used for combat regains Budget.

Alternatively, a GM could offer or attempt to force characters into some sort of subplot, either to discover some other part of the main story, for fun, or in attempt to recoup Budget.

Additionally, while a character is involved in a subplot, if, during the main plot, the player can connect to the subplot in some way, he or she can use it to gain the same boost he or she would gain from his or her positive stimulus (for example: Player A is involved in a romantic subplot with player B. During a fight with enemy mecha in episode 13, Player B's mecha is critically damaged. Player A would be able to use his relationship with Plater B to gain a boost in his attempts to rescue her.)

-OR-

Additionally, while a character is involved in a subplot, if, during the main plot, the player can connect to the subplot in some way, he or she can use it to gain a boost similar to that given by a positive stimulus. The total amount of the boost would be determined by the number of episodes that the subplot has been previously going on. (for example: Player A is involved in a romantic subplot with player B since episode 5. During a fight with enemy mecha in episode 7, Player B's mecha is critically damaged. Player A would be able to use his relationship with Plater B to gain a boost in his attempts to rescue her, however, because the subplot has barely started, he only recieves a very minor boost. However, in the same situation in episode 20, if the subplot had been going on since 5, player A would get a very significant boost.)

Character Creation

Characters would choose certain descriptors at character creation: things like "Hotblooded", "Tsundere", ect. These would give stat and gameplay advantages and disadvantages: they would also determine the starting levels of your GAR, Fan, and Dignity stats.

-OR-

Characters would choose certain templates at character creation. Your character would have a sort of "title" that would define your character's stats, taken from several different tables. You could take attitude templates (like hotblooded), job templates (like high school kid or soldier), or special templates (like cat-person or android.) Depending on which ones you take, you'd get certain stat bonuses or negatives, and you would of course have to RP accordingly.

Characters would also have to choose Special Stimuli that would somehow tie into their backstory: these stimuli could be positive or negative. For example, Simon from Gurren Lagann's Postive stimulus is "Helping Those Who Believe in Me", and his negative is "That I'm Not Good Enough." Whenever a positive stat is triggered by an outside event, the player could use it as an Overlimit, which would grant a stat shift and a bonus to their Plot Armor stat in making some kind of action related to that stimulus. This could be used at the same time as the GAR stat, and actions made using it could also raise it. Inversely, whenever a negative stimulus is triggered, the player triggers a Downlimit, and must make a save against their GAR stat or face a GAR and Dignity loss, as well as be forced to either flee the situation or go crazy (depending on the stimulus.) Note that failing their negative stimulus can sometimes raise Fan levels (for example, a strong heroine who breaks down and cries during a fight will lose Dignity, but gain fanboys.)

Mecha Design

Definitely needs some work. There needs to be a solid mecha creation system. Mostly for show though- stats would all come from characters most likely.

Mechanics

GAR Bonuses

GAR bonuses can be classified into three different levels. The first level is activated by screaming "SUPAH [insert name of action]!" The player can add one bonus die to help him roll higher to achieve his task, subtracting 1 from the budget for every die. The second level consists of using prebaught abilities. By screaming the ability's name and subtracting 2 points from the budget, the player uses the ability. The player can reduce the cost by reusing animation, but this also decreases the effectiveness of the attack. The third level multiplies the character's damage, plot armor, or saves for a few turns. By screaming loud, poetic messages of courage the player activates this gar ability, paying 3 budget points for 1.5x the chosen factor, 6 for 2x, 9 for 3x, etc. Liquid

I see the GAR stat working more like Shifts in Unknown Armies. Basically, if your GAR stat is applicable in a particular situation, you make your character do something that would be considered GAR: shout a morale-building speech, scream out his attacks, dive recklessly into a situation to save someone's life. If you choose to use your GAR stat on that situation, all rolls you make would be given a certain bonus- whether it be numerical or additional dice- depending on the situation and your GAR level.

Or, alternatively, you have the opportuntity to roll your GAR stat rather than whatever stat you would normally roll against in such situations.

Either way, Budget would be subtracted depending on the number of rolls suceeded, and the amount of GAR bonus given. Doink

Random Tables

So far, we know we need at least three random tables.

Episode Theme, Episone Name and Director Madness And possibly some for character creation. Undecided about that one.

This is Stimulus Anon here, and here's my proposed system for the game, with some examples:

   Lord Kamina
   Trigger Disciplines-
   Hotblooded
   Final Stand
   Overlimit: Glorious Teamwork Between Comrades
   Downlimit: Disharmony of Brothers
   Gurren-
   Big Mecha
   Fuzion
   Plot Armor: 3

>> Anonymous 08/07/07(Tue)11:06 No.449709

   >>449695

   Let's say Lord Kamina wants to show off in the Gurren by doing something ill-advised with boulders.

   For his roll, he gets 2 dice automatically, one dice for describing it via a Trigger Discipline (a Hotblooded description of him shouting and posing for instance), and another for using one of the Gurren's traits (probably Big Mecha in this case, describing it's size and strength in lifting/throwing the boulders).

   If his Overlimit got involved (only once per episode) he'd have another additional die. If his Downlimit got involved (Only once per episode) he'd be down a die.

   He rolls all his die and takes the highest result.

   1 is a horrible failure, 2 is an embarassing failure, 3 is a regular failure, 4 is a success with negativ ecomplications, 5 is a good success, and 6 is a solid success.

>> Anonymous 08/07/07(Tue)11:08 No.449717

   >>449709

   That simple description and roll right there is just a skill check, what you'd do if a character wanted to do something that you felt they shouldn't automatically succeed. The stakes usually arent high and instead have only story implications. If Lord Kamina has a failure doing this he's going to look stupid mainly (which might have implications once GAR and Dignity and such get involved).

>> Anonymous 08/07/07(Tue)11:10 No.449727

   >>449717

   When multiple characters are competing they all do their descriptions and rolls, with the highest one winning. This is if characters are competing at something pointless, like a duel between friends or trying to woo the same girl or something like that.

>> Anonymous 08/07/07(Tue)11:12 No.449739

   >>449727

   In actually combat, the characters involved will take turns describing and rolling against a Threat. Each success take's away from the Threats plot armor, with each failure taking away from the character who threw it. Characters have a baseline of 3 Plot Armors before they get knocked out, which may be just that or may even risk death depending on the situation. Plot Armor is usually restored scene to scene (mechs get repaired, ect.).

   In essence when a character fails, the GM describes the attack however he wants. He's not rolling against the characters. Essentially the characters live or die by their own descriptions, as more descriptions mean more dice to roll which means greater chance of success.

>> Anonymous 08/07/07(Tue)11:13 No.449740

   Anyways that's my idea for a base system. Anyone think that they could graft GAR and such meta-rules onto that?

>> Anonymous 08/07/07(Tue)11:17 No.449749

   >>449740

   It's pretty much a backwards variant of Wushu designed to work without trait numbers and to have a system where lots of bonuses and detractors would be easy to calculate (just more or less die for certain actions or for a certain scene, ect.) since that seems to be what GAR and such will do, give bonuses and penalties.

Shinji Ikari Trigger Disciplines- I Mustn't Run Away OverLimit: BERZERKER DownLimit: I Might As Well Not Exist Eva 01- Oni Military Gear AT Field Plot Armor: 3

Rick Hunter Trigger Disciplines- Daredevil Squad Leader OverLimit: Minmei Music Spirit of Victory DownLimit: Romantic Troubles Veritech- Fighter Mode Mech Mode Gaurdian Mode Plot Armor: 3

This looks like our best bet so far. Using d20s and such kind of seems a little over complicated for such a narrative heavy game and, in retrospect, having leveled templates would be useless since I doubt few "shows" would go beyond a season. Liquid

Other Info

Archive of the first thread: http://4chanarchive.org/brchive/dspl_thread.php5?thread_id=400593&x=Trigger+disclipine+in+my+giant+robot+rpg