Triggers

As a central character in the story, your pilot will have moments when their background, training, and personality shine through. These moments are your pilot’s triggers: short phrases that describe key decisions and actions like Apply Fists to Faces or Get Somewhere Fast. Triggers are always accompanied by a bonus of +2, +4, or +6.

When one of your character’s triggers is relevant to a skill check, you get a bonus to the roll. For example, if you have “+2 to Apply Fists to Faces” written on your sheet, any time your character acts in a way that could be construed as applying fists to faces, you get +2 to the skill check. You can only receive a bonus from one trigger at a time.

Triggers apply to actions that depend on your pilot’s personal abilities, experience, training, or background – not actions that rely on their mech’s specifications. When taking actions that rely on a mech, mech skills are used instead.

Triggers are almost always used in narrative play, and they never apply to attack rolls, saves, or any rolls other than skill checks.

Triggers are usually fairly open-ended, allowing you to apply them in creative ways. That said, the GM is responsible for arbitrating outlandish claims. Be prepared to justify how your Apply Fists to Faces trigger helps you hack into an electronic network.

Create Triggers

With GM approval, you can write your own triggers. Custom triggers can be more specific than the examples in this book – Kill in Cold Blood or Insult Someone, for instance – but they shouldn’t be more general. They should always apply to specific circum‐ stances or actions.

Example Triggers

When creating your character and leveling up, you can choose triggers from this list or you can use them as inspiration for writing your own. At LL0, your pilot gets four triggers at +2 each.

Act Unseen or Unheard

Get somewhere or do something without detection, but not necessarily quickly: hide, sneak, or move quietly; infiltrate a facility while avoiding patrols and cameras; perform sleight of hand without being seen or heard, including picking pockets, unholstering guns, and cheating at cards; wear a disguise.

Apply Fists to Face

Punch someone in the face or fight in open, brutal unarmed combat, whether it’s a fist fight, a martial arts duel, or a huge brawl. Never subtle, clean, or quiet.

Assault

Take part in direct and overt combat: fight your way through a building packed with hostile mercenaries, trade shots over rain-slick trenches, fight in chaotic microgravity as part of a boarding action, or engage an enemy in the smoking urban rubble of a city under orbital bombardment. Loud, direct action.

Blow Something Up

Use explosives (improvised or otherwise), weapons, or good old-fashioned brawn to totally wreck something or turn it into an enormous fireball.

Charm

Convince a receptive audience or use leverage (money, power, personal benefit) to get your way: smooth-talk your way past guards, get people on your side, sway potential benefactors, talk someone down, mediate between two parties, or blatantly lie to someone. You can also use it when trying to impersonate someone.

Get a Hold of Something

Acquire temporary or permanent allies, assets, or connections through wealth or social influence; obtain information, food, materials, or soldiers.

Get Somewhere Quickly

Get somewhere quickly and without complications, but not necessarily quietly: climb, drive, pilot, swim, or perform acrobatic maneuvers to take a more dangerous shortcut; fall safely from a great height; move gracefully in zero-g; chase, flee, outrun, or outpace a target; get somewhere faster than anyone else.

Hack or Fix

Repair a device or faulty system; alternatively, hack it wide open, or totally wreck, disable or sabotage it. You’re probably hacking or fixing when accessing or safeguarding secure electronic systems, including electronic door locks, computer systems, omninet servers, and so on.

I Can Breathe in Space

Due to extensive genetic and/or cybernetic modification you can survive the harsh vacuum of space for an extended period of time compared to unmodified humans. This time is measured in minutes but in situations where it matters, every second counts

Invent or Create

Use tools and supplies to design or build something, either on the fly or over time; invent new devices, tools, or approaches to problems

Investigate

Research a subject, or study something in great detail: learn about a subject of historical relevance, or become well-read on a particular issue; investigate a mystery or solve a puzzle; locate a person or object through research and detective work.

Lead or Inspire

Give an inspiring speech, or motivate a group of people into action; efficiently and effectively administer organizations like companies, ship crews, groups of colonists or mining ventures; effectively command a platoon of soldiers in battle, or maybe an entire army.

Patch

Apply medical knowledge to medicate, bandage a wound, staunch bleeding, suture, cauterize, neutralize poison, or resuscitate; alternately, diagnose or study disease, pathogens, or symptoms.

Read a Situation

Look for subtext, motives, or threats in a situation or person: use intuition to discern someone’s motivations, learn who is really in charge, or find out who’s about to do something rash or stupid; get a gut feeling about a situation or person; sense if someone is lying to you.

Show Off

Do something flashy, cool, or impressive, usually – but not exclusively – with your weapon: shoot a tiny or rapidly moving target, shoot someone’s hat off or their weapon out of their hand, knock someone out by throwing a gun at them, perform an acrobatic flourish with a sword, throw a spear to pin a fleeing target to the ground.

Spot

Spot details, objects, or people that are hidden or difficult to make out: notice ambushes, hidden compartments, or disguised individuals; spy on targets from a distance; make out the details, shape, and quantity of objects, vehicles, mechs, or people in the distance; track people or vehicles.

Stay Cool

Perform a task that requires concentration, dexterity, speed, or precision under pressure: pick a lock while your squad trades fire with encroaching guards, care‐ fully disarm an explosive, or unjam a gun under fire.

Survive

Persevere through harsh, hostile, or unforgiving environments: the vacuum of space, frozen tundra, a pirate enclave, a crime-ridden colony, untamed wilderness, or scorching desert. Survival often involves journeys through the wilderness, navigation, or avoiding natural hazards like carnivorous wildlife, rockfalls, thin ice, or lava fields. You might also try to survive in artificial environments by navigating safely through a city or avoiding dangerous sections of a space station.

Take Control

Use force, violence, presence of will, or direct action to take control of something. The thing you take control of will usually be something concrete, like an object someone is holding – a gun or a keycard, maybe. You might also take control of a situation, forcing those present to listen, calm down, or stop whatever they’re doing.

Take Someone Out

Kill or disable someone quickly and quietly, up close and personal or from a distance – probably before they even notice you’re there. If you’re looking down a sniper scope at a target, preparing to knock out a guard with a strategic nerve-pinch, quick-drawing during a gun duel, or dropping from a ceiling to slit a throat, you’re trying to take someone out.

Threaten

Use force or threats to make someone do what you want; name what you want someone to do and what you’re going to do to them if they don’t listen to you. Threatening someone could also involve blackmail, leverage, or something similarly nasty. Whatever form it takes, there’s probably no chance of repairing the relationship after you’ve threatened someone.

Word on the Street

Get gossip, news, or hearsay from the streets, or from a particular social scene.