Sometimes, when I'm discussing building techniques with newbies on the TBA training mud, I boast about my zones and show off my triggers. And, sometimes, I get the impression that some of them are thinking, "Well, why should I even try? I'll never be able to build triggers as good as Parna's." Well, maybe a few of them? Oh, come on, there HAVE to be one or two, right? Anyway, this is my answer to that question.
I have decided to call my style of building triggers "Frankentriggering". What I do is, I search through TBAmud triggers, especially the stock ones, to find any that might be useful to me.
I recommend starting with the Forums, building section. Check out all the trigger of the day posts. Make a note of all the discussion points you don't understand yet because hopefully you'll be able to understand them better later.
My next source is tlist <zone#>. 0 and 13 are good places to start. Check out the two words at the end of the line. They'll show you if the trigger is for mobs, rooms or objects and what sort of trigger it is. Read HELP TRIG-TYPES to understand them better. The number in the [] is the trigger number. If any of the trigger names or types look interesting, TSTAT <triggernumber> to see what it looks like.
Next, I love the command VNUM T <keyword>. That will only get me trigger titles but it gives me a jumping off point. I'm wondering what to do with my doors? Use the keyword door. I'm wondering about transform? I use transform for the keyword. Again, TSTAT the trigger number to see if that particular trigger will be useful to you. If you've seen my park triggers, you might recognize the rabbit trigger that keeps popping up. I always forget where to find it so I type "vnum t bunny" which doesn't do me much good because I always think that rabbit is a bunny. Then I switch to rabbit or decap to find that I need to TSTAT 1398 to see it. And if you haven't seen my park triggers, don't worry. I'm hoping to have both the park zone and the tarot card zone in donatable shape soon. Yeah, I've been saying that about the park for about three years but I'm really close now!
I also downloaded a copy of Windows Grep and have it pointed at my home copy of TBAmud. Then I can search for things like %actor.vnum% that won't show up in VNUM T <keyword>. Just don't try searching for %%.
After I find the triggers, I chop them all up (yeah, this is a terrible thing to do to a poor, innocent little trigger that never did me any harm, but it's for its own good! Really! It'll thank me later...). I pull out all the good parts, toss them into an editor and stitch them all together and hope that the stitches hold without being too obvious. Then I cross my fingers, set off the trigger and hope for the best.
Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Then I start poking all the parts, trying to find where it isn't working. Sometimes I'll reset the type as speech, the numeric as 100 and the argument as testing. This means I can set it off whenever I want without waiting for conditions to be right. Next I try putting in an %echo% at each section, to make sure every section is hitting as it should. If you've /fi'd your trigger (as you should always do!) its much easier to see where your ifs and ends are. I sometimes put all sorts of weird spaces in as I look for errors, knowing that the /fi will get rid of them when I'm ready to save it.
After that, I run around asking for help. That wonderful part of t1284 that made sure that you didn't deal the same card twice in a single deck, well, it just wasn't working after I Frankentriggered the deck. Thanks again for fixing that for me, Thomas! Rumble and Fizban often have to fend off questions about "But WHY isn't this working?" And, yes, sometimes the answers are embarrassing but that's all just part of the learning process.
So, back to that question of "Why should I even try? I'll never be able to trigger like Parna." The answer is well, even Parna can't trigger like Parna. My triggers are a mix of ideas from various ideas of known and unknown builders that came before, polished by people much better than I'll ever be. And, btw, the person that I'll never be able to trigger like? Detta! Have you looked at her triggers? Incredible! But that never stopped me trying.
For a really long list of helpfiles, type HINDEX trig. Many of them are alternate helpfile names but it's still useful.
Recommended:
help trigger
help trigedit-advanced-tutorial
help trig-expressions
help trig-if
I could always use the help. 
