Trigger Discipline: Alpha Rules

First, just a heads-up: this delay between updates is going to get a little longer before it gets shorter. I've been hunkering down to focus on college work and finals are coming up here. Second, another item from the "I should probably mention this" pile. . .

Trigger Discipline's initial playtest rules are complete. In fact, they've been complete for a few weeks now, I'm about to start updating them to include all the overall elements of the gameplay structure. I've neglected to mention this mostly because I already mentioned this on /tg/ and as as far as I know the extent of people following this game either learned about it through /tg/ or were given the link to this very document and then followed the link to the Chance Deck post at the end. (For you people: The name's an unrelated phrase that wound up being the working name. I'm keeping it because that's the name the existing audience expects, it's memorable and I haven't thought of anything better.)

So yeah. If you were following this game and had no idea these rules were up, sorry- I thought you'd heard.

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Trigger Discipline Retake: Chance Deck

For every episode except the premiere and the finale, the Director must draw a card from the Chance deck and follow its instructions (or if he's not inclned to print out and cut up d20 Rethought's sheets of cards, just roll on a table to determine the draw). Each card represents either an event occurring in the real world or the results of the Director's steadily decreasing sanity. Hit the link for the current list of

Director Madness:
-Director wants to be deep. All characters must recite a quote from a philosopher.
-Director's having a bad breakup. All friendly npcs of a random gender become unreaonable and uncooperative.
-Director relies too much on bad advice: Characters must roll dignity or randomly pick a new archetype.
-Director backlashes against fans: The character(s) with the highest popularity lose half their plot armor.
-Director's been listening to emo music: All characters must roll dignity or count as having the uncertain archetype for the purpose of this episode.
-Director is fed up with these restrictive "laws of physics": Patently ridiculous descriptions of combat actions give you +1 GAR on the roll this episode. Same goes for npcs.
-Director forgets about pacing: Whenever a character builds GAR charge, they must roll dignity. If they fail, they must spend twice as much time charging, dragging one scene/turn out into two and still only recieving one charge for their trouble.
-Director decides to oblige shippers. Characters must roll dignity, starting with the most popular. First two to fail will be depicted in a compromising situation.
-Director has big dreams. All scenes must be at +1 budget minimum until budget runs out.
-Director can't bother to communicate with animators: No scene can have better animation than normal
-Director has great idea for cool style element: Director comes up with signature move, which players can use once per scene as a skill with max ranks.

Real-World Event:
-Animation is left to the interns; the entire episode has QUALITY animation.
-Random character *or* villain gets a kickass theme song, letting them treat a scene as being 1 budget higher than it actually is once an episode.
-Random character becomes subject of internet meme, fanbase goes up by 2.
-Background artist is sick, all scenes taking place in new locations cost an extra 1 budget.
-Toy merchandising deal. Characters get a free chance to upgrade their mech at a discount, but each episode must contain at least one scene featuring the mechs in action at +1 budget.
-Real-world tragedy makes random plot element potentially offensive, said plot element must be dropped or radically altered.
-Production team has massive party, wastes half the budget for next episode.
-Random producer dies, lose 2 budget.
-Product placement. Characters must roll dignity. Anyone who fails must plug a real-world product at some point during the episode, losing 1 GAR but boosting the budget by 1.
-Director gets therapy. Players can spend 2 budget to keep this card, giving them a one-time "get out of director madness free".
-Studio gets warned for inappropriate content. Players who depict actions or use language (OOC) that strays on the edgier side of PG-13 lose 1 plot armor.

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There Is No Spoon: TD-Retake #2

Work continues on this little rpg, which is quickly shaping into something quite entertaining. I'm currently collaborating with one of the original creators, though others may be joining us in the future. Hit the link for a full list of further evolutions to the concept.

-The dies are changed to d10s for longevity. There is also a third die, the Mecha die, whose stat represents the quality of the character's mech. A GAR success trumps a Mecha success trumps a Discipline success.
-Each episode must contain at least 5 scenes. Each non-combat scene costs one budget point to animate under normal standards. Each combat scene costs 2.
-A character's first triple success during an episode earns him one fandom point. If the scene is being produced using QUALITY budget, he earns no fandom points. If the scene is being produced at +1 budget this fandom point can also be recieved after a double success involving GAR. If the scene is being produced at +2 budget he earns an additional fandom point with every triple success made.
-Characters can build up a "GAR charge", up to the limit of their current GAR score. Characters may spend up to three GAR charges before making a roll. One charge lets them reroll a failed discipline roll, two lets them also reroll a failed mecha roll and three lets them also reroll a failed GAR roll.
-Characters must each choose one archetype and one role.
-Archetypes are used to build up GAR charge. To build up one charge an archetype must work to ____ for an entire scene or combat turn.
arrogant: Assert superiority over others.
brainy: Technobabble.
coldblooded: Unnerve others with his emotionless nature.
hotblooded: Clash with authority.
laidback: distinguishes himself from others through laidbackness.
psycho: Unnerve others with his psycho nature.
withdrawn: Refrain from speaking or other forms of socialization.
uncertain: Inner monologue on self.
scheming: Inner monologue on personal machinations.

-Roles provide a character with a free GAR chip once per episode, which may be used on:
dutiful soldier: Anything fulfilling his orders/directions
mentor: Any roll being made by a teammate that falls under one of his disciplines.
mercenary: Anything being done on his own, without any help
renegade: Anything being done in defiance of authority.
rookie: Any skill where someone with more ranks is giving the rookie advice.
specialist: One single skill chosen at character creation.
trusted friend: Anything being done for the sake of someone else on the team.
veteran: Any roll where no one has a higher score in a relevant discipline.

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There Is No Spoon: Trigger Discipline Retake

Okay. Since maybe *one* person will know what both these things are:

There Is No Spoon is an excellent, mechanically simple action rpg that was conceived with the Matrix movie in mind but is fairly easy to convert due to that aforementioned simplicity. I highly recommend checking it out.

Trigger Discipline is an rpg concept that started with this 4chan thread; the existing work has been collected here. It's a satirization of anime, particularly the "giant mecha" genre. I was never involved with the project and it eventually stalled, but it's been coming up again on 4chan recently and when I actually took a close look at it I found myself having some ideas about how the game should work. These are just my musings, I have no connection to the project and can take no credit for any of that material I just linked to.

So, here's how I would recommend doing trigger discipline: Each player controls a character, while the Director controls about everything else about the show in standard GM fashion. The ultimate goal for both parties is to get through a full season- twenty-six episodes. Of course, both sides probably have their own ideas about what's going to happen over the course of those episodes. . .

-Start with the rules for There Is No Spoon, but rename Matrix as "Gar" (internet slang for "manly badass"), Skill as "Discipline", and Body as "Plot Armor". Include the "Woah," "Dicing With Death" and "Sick At Heart" variants.
-Characters also have a Fanbase statistic, representing how rabid and numerous their fans are. Fanbase cannot be purchased, only earned.
-The director has a Director Mandate rating, which represents how much control he has over the show. Characters contest director mandate like anything else, using their Gar stat as well as a relevant discipline, if any- "Dignity" is a good example of a discipline meant specifically to help your character resist cheapening themselves for the good of the series.
-The show itself has two statistics, budget (representing how much you have to spend on the animation for each episode) and popularity. The players normally decide how much budget to spend on a given scene; by default, most take only one or two points. Spending more than that gives characters a bonus on rolls and can let a Gar success increase a character's fanbase without an associated discipline success, while spending less grants penalties, prevents character's fanbases from increasing in case of a double success, and can even make it so that complex actions have to happen offscreen. Recaps provide another way to conserve the budget for a series. A show's popularity, meanwhile, is the aggregate of the player's fanbase scores plus any modifiers from Real-World Events (see below). High popularity can increase a show's budget, while low popularity can reduce a show's budget or even lead to its cancellation.
-Subplots: At character creation and in between episodes, players may select subplots for a character. Each subplot has certain details determined by the player; everything else is up to the director, who secretly chooses which subplots to bring into play each episode. The requirements for successfully resolving different types of subplots will vary, but doing so always counts as a learning experience for the character, earning them at least 1 point to spend on character creation.
-Fates in Trigger Discipline represent the director's plans for the plot, and always have an associated subplot. Acting in a way that brings them closer to their fate gives characters a bonus on die rolls. If a character fulfills their fate,
-At the beginning of each episode, the director rolls randomly to determine the episode's title and theme. Additionally, they must roll on the Real-World Event and Director Madness tables.

Here's what still needs to be done for this to be a working game:
-Full list of scene types (Action, exposition and so on)
-Episode name generation tables
-Full list of episode themes (plot advancement, fanservice, focus on a random subplot. . .)
-Director Madness table (Can abruptly tweak the feel of the show for good or ill, usually ill.)
-Real-World Event table (Internet meme makes random character's popularity skyrocket, random producer goes bankrupt, publicisized tragedy makes upcoming story event potentially offensive (a.k.a. "My brother died that way"), etc.)

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