Designing a Pokemon TTRPG

[Username17]

The cartoonishness or seriousness of your Pokémon RPG is an important question that you have to answer. There's not actually a right or wrong answer, but it's entirely reasonable to play a game in which everything is plush pillow fights where no one gets seriously hurt and it's equally possible to play a Pokémon game where Pokémon have sharp claws, people bleed when slashed and die when they are killed. Those are very definitely not the same game, but they are both reasonable games to make. But like questions of how big the kaiju are, this is pretty much a question you need to answer for your game before asking players to make characters.

One thing to remember is that in an RPG you will necessarily encounter a lot less Pokémon per player character. than you do in the video games. Some of this is that when you're playing a table top role playing game it will necessarily take longer to set up and break down each encounter - so people's appetite for random encounters with a Bellossum or Marill are just much much less. The other of course is that you have four players instead of one, so even if you could encounter the same number of Poochyenas, each player's share would be reduced by 75%.

When I ran D&D with Pokémon trainers, I never had more than one Pokemaster in the game at a time. And I genuinely don't think there was room for a second Pokémaster in any of those games. There just weren't enough capturable monsters to have kept two Pokémasters happy. And while you could juice the encounter mix to support a second one, keeping a whole table full of blue mages happy is something that has basically never happened in any table top RPG ever.

What this means is that if you are going to go for a full Pokémon campaign, upwards of half the players shouldn't be capturing Pokémon at all. Maybe they are Officer Jennies with a Growlith or Snubull companion that eventually evolves but is never replaced. Maybe they are a breeder or gym member who gets new Pokémon from domestic rather than wild stock. Whatever the spiel, or whether all the characters have the same spiel, the simple fact is that there just isn't room for more than one or two characters trying to catch 'em all in a table top RPG. The relationship to Pokémon of the other characters has to be something else.

-Username17

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Frank, that's also completely fucking retarded. My players have over 40 Pokemon at this point and it's never, ever been an issue for anyone. I don't know what you're on about.

[Username17]

Frank, that's also completely fucking retarded. My players have over 40 Pokemon at this point and it's never, ever been an issue for anyone. I don't know what you're on about.

You're talking over 40 encounters even if every one of them involves capturing a unique new Pokémon. And that's a lot of encounters. In a standard 3.x D&D game, that's more than three actual levels of play. And that's without any encounters with sword wielding humans, Pokemasters whose Pokémon you aren't allowed to steal, traps or natural hazards, or just more Zubats that you already have. And 10 Pokémon per character is actually fairly thin when it comes to actually making a 6 Pokémon team - that gives you less alternates than you have positions and you're going to end up running Metapod in slot 5 or some fucking thing fairly often.

So assuming that roughly half the encounters get the party a new Pokémon (what with all the other types of encounters that don't give you one this is actually pretty generous), you're looking at like six or seven levels later to get over 40 Pokémon. Or to put it another way: you start Red Hand of Doom, and at the literal end of that your team has gotten that many Pokémon. Or if you start The Sunless Citadel, then after you complete that, and then you complete the Forge of Fury, and than you complete the Speaker in Dreams, then you have that many Pokémon when you start The Standing Stone.

Except I've never played The Standing Stone because campaigns usually fucking end before they get that deep. 80 encounters is like, a fucking lot of encounters, and the campaign is probably over at that point.

-Username17

[jadagul]

Frank, those numbers hold if each wild pokemon you catch has to be a full-fledged individual encounter. Other solutions:

1. Sometimes you encounter a pile of wild pokemon at once. If you have an encounter with two Geodudes, two Zubats, and an Onix, then you can get three new pokemon out of that one encounter.

2. Not all wild pokemon encounters need to be full-fledged encounters. If you're running a level 15 Wartortle and you bump into a level 3 Pidgey, you don't really need to break out the battlemat. You can just, like, roll a couple dice to see if the pokeball hits and move on with life.

This isn't suitable for major event pokemon, or even just random pokemon at the same level as the ones you already have. But for filling out the middle of the team with local wildlife it seems reasonable.

[Username17]

I submit that a core and necessary facet of acquiring Pokémon through battle during encounters is that you acquire your Pokémon through battle during encounters. I regard this as a fundamental tautology that I refuse to budge on even a little bit.

Which is not to say that every character has to get Pokémon that way. Indeed, I assert that it is good and necessary for some of the characters to be getting their Pokémon during downtime - either as perks of their job like Officer Jenny or the fruits of out-of-combat activities such as breeding, fishing, or garden cultivation. But this is necessary precisely because the Blue Mage style encounter rewards cannot fill the Pokémon rosters of a table full of player characters in a reasonable amount of time. The combat music simply takes too much table time to realistically play it a half dozen times for each character before they have full access to their normal abilities.

The time constraints of TableTop RPGs and hand held single player video games are just wildly different. Very importantly, the amount of time I'm willing to spend on watching someone else "grind" on game night is just very low compared to the amount of time I'm willing to grind while sitting on the bus.

-Username17

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I submit that a core and necessary facet of acquiring Pokémon through battle during encounters is that you acquire your Pokémon through battle during encounters. I regard this as a fundamental tautology that I refuse to budge on even a little bit.

I'm not disputing that at all. Without doing SOMETHING to earn a Pokemon and just getting it, it feels hollow and that ruins the entire experience.

The combat music simply takes too much table time to realistically play it a half dozen times for each character before they have full access to their normal abilities.

This is the part I question. Why does it need to be half a dozen times for each character when you can have encounters with multiple Pokemon types and each trainer can just catch shit? If two people want a Makuhita or whatever, then whenever you make an encounter with Makuhita in it, just have two or more. It makes more sense that most Pokemon live together in groups, especially at the lower levels where you'd need to fill out your team and you aren't just catching shit because it looks cool.
I just checked my campaign notes, where I actually mark when everybody catches or evolves Pokemon, and everyone in the party had acquired 4 extra pokemon within 4 sessions of play, AND gotten 4 Eevee eggs on top of that. And they finished two side quests! I disagree that it would take anywhere nearly as long as you're saying to get a team going. It's almost like in your world, everybody just fights a single Pokemon at a time. While that's something I'd like to model for boss fights and shit, I assert that most encounters should involve fighting groups of Pokemon, since you're a group of trainers. It's not a large stretch of the imagination.

[Username17]

Why does it need to be half a dozen times for each character when you can have encounters with multiple Pokemon types and each trainer can just catch shit?

• "Do you remember when I caught Geodude?"
  "No. Because you capturing Geodude was like the third or fourth most important thing that happened in an encounter about capturing Pokémon."

Yes, you can hand out Pokémon by the dozen if you want to. You can declare any Pokémon accumulation method that you want. But if you don't make capturing a Pokémon the central event of an encounter, then you aren't meaningfully utilizing the "Pokémon gained through encounters" narrative. You seriously might as well give players their Pokémon during downtime. If a player captures Poochyena as the fourth most important event during an encounter that's not even an event. That's no different from a player making the declaration "My character is going to buy some chain mail." The table will only remember it because it's written down on a character sheet - no different than someone making a craft check, performing level-up accounting, or spending money during a shopping montage.

By saying that you can get players enough Pokémon through encounters by utterly trivializing the acquisition of Pokémon so that the captures don't even make it above the fold on the report of the encounter they happen in, you've basically conceded the argument. You destroyed the village in order to save it. In order to get players enough Pokémon through encounters, you've trivialized the Pokémon acquisition so thoroughly that they aren't meaningfully associated with encounters at all.

-Username17

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Frank, I can't stop people from throwing Pokeballs at wild Pokemon if they want to. I, as the GM, am not the one who makes catching Pokemon the central event of anything - you just run into some fucking Pokemon and if you want to catch them, then you just fucking do it.

Do you have any ideas on how to not "trivialize" Pokemon acquisition while keeping it in full control of the players?

[Foxwarrior]

I think Frank is putting the videogames on a pedestal a bit here. Sure, the highlight of a random encounter with some trash mob in the forest is that you get to capture one new pokemon, but you do like one fight every minute or two. The number one highlight of a random pokemon video game battle is still less significant than the number four highlight of a pokemon tabletop RPG battle is going to be.

[Username17]

Frank, I can't stop people from throwing Pokeballs at wild Pokemon if they want to. I, as the GM, am not the one who makes catching Pokemon the central event of anything - you just run into some fucking Pokemon and if you want to catch them, then you just fucking do it.

That's functionally downtime Pokémon acquisition. If you're going to let players grab Pokémon out of what is functionally the scenery, why are you wasting real table time with "capturing" at all?

Just designate some number of Pokémon as "common" and let players catch however many of those they want during down time. Mark off the Pokéball cost and move on. Have the players only spend real table time combatting and capturing upgrade Pokémon.

-Username17

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

That sounds reasonable. Are people really that invested in catching fucking Pidgeys and shit anyway? However, I'm not sure what an "upgrade Pokemon" is. Even common Pokemon upgrade.

I think there's something I still don't understand, though. If you're fighting a boss or miniboss or something and you catch some of its minions... are you saying that's a bad thing we shouldn't incentivize? I'm not saying at all that you should play out random encounters where a player says "I'm gonna go look for a Pokemon outside of town", but if you're already doing something relevant to the "plot" and there are Pokemon involved (which there had better be), if a player decides "oh shit I wanna catch that Geodude while we're here", what's the problem with that?

[jadagul]

I think "upgrade pokemon" are supposed to be relative to what you currently have. So like if you're running a level ten Wartortle and a level eleven Kadabra or something, no one gives a shit about you catching a level 3 Pidgey but it matters if you catch a level twelve Starmie.

It might help to think about a few different scenarios for catching Pokemon.

• * You have a big boss battle, and at the end you catch the Pokemon. This is probably how you would get Mewtwo or Zapdos, if you get them at all.
  
  * You have a major encounter with one Pokemon and catch it. This is how you get Pokemon that are about as good as the ones you currently have and you're supposed to care about a bunch.
  
  * You have a major encounter with like a few Pokemon that are similar in power to the ones you already have.
  
  * You have an encounter with a bunch of Pokemon, and maybe use some actions to throw Pokeballs and catch some of them. This probably gets you some Pokemon that aren't super interesting any more.
  
  * You say "Hey, I want to wander out into the forest and catch a Pidgey." You don't really need to play out the act of fighting the Pidgey.

Option five is downtime things. You can make it a class power that "you have a bunch of low level stuff", or if you have a downtime system than one downtime action can be "go out and catch a Rattata."

Options one and two are basically the same, I think, except for intensity. Fighting and catching Moltres is a major, campaign-defining event; catching a Rapidash matters but isn't quite as impactful.

Options three and four seem to be the contested ones. Frank seems to be arguing that if you catch your Horsea as a side-action in an encounter against two Horseas, two Goldeens, and a Seaking, that might as well be a downtime event. TAA is pointing out that the characters have pokeballs and you certainly can't stop them from throwing the balls at a Horsea if they happen to be fighting one.

I guess, Frank, you think that in this case you might as well let the players declare that they already caught a Horsea so that it doesn't suck up actions and table time during combat? And does the same thing apply if your party of four level ten Pokemon fights four level ten Machokes and you decide you want one?

[Username17]

Consider non-magical chain mail. You could strip some off the corpse of an Orc, or you could take your share of the gold coins and go buy some in town. But either way, no one else fucking cares. And you probably don't care, and in three or four sessions no one at the table is likely to remember which avenue you pursued to get your chainmail - if you're even still using it at that point. Given that fact, it would be completely ridiculous to claim that fighters had a meaningful ability to capture and use regular chainmail, which is why no one ever does.

If you make the acquisition of Pidgeys like that, then the acquisition of Pidgeys will be like that. Very much including the facts that no one will remember or care how you got the Pidgeys and also too that even considering the ability to acquire them in battle as an ability is profoundly questionable.

-Username17

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Option five is downtime things. You can make it a class power that "you have a bunch of low level stuff", or if you have a downtime system than one downtime action can be "go out and catch a Rattata."

I think having a downtime system is important to break up all the Pokemon battling and adventuring that players typically get themselves up to. Once you're in town or camping or whatever, you have various options you can do (some of which are class-specific) and one of those could be "I go catch some nearby bullshit". The issue lies in quantifying what that bullshit is. Does the onus there lie on the system or the GM? Should we have Common, Uncommon, and Rare Pokemon?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

So I sat down with my fancy little list to start actually making a game, but not having done this before, I must confess that I'm a little paralyzed on where to start. I know I should probably work on action resolution first, but that seems like a broad starting point. Should I start with skills and work on systems from there?

[Username17]

So I sat down with my fancy little list to start actually making a game, but not having done this before, I must confess that I'm a little paralyzed on where to start. I know I should probably work on action resolution first, but that seems like a broad starting point. Should I start with skills and work on systems from there?

There's an App For That..

-Username17

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I was already looking at that thread, actually. Much of those first 5 steps are pretty much done, so do I just start fucking around with the PTU system or what?

[Username17]

I was already looking at that thread, actually. Much of those first 5 steps are pretty much done, so do I just start fucking around with the PTU system or what?

I for one would be pretty interested in your idea of the three person party and the six person party. The default Pokémon protagonist is some flavor of Blue Mage - a character who acts largely through Pokémon and collects Pokémon largely through their adventures. While such characters could obviously have different adventures and have different Pokémon, the characters in a role playing game won't factually have different adventures because they will be ensemble protagonists. So there's no reason in that model for any of the characters to be meaningfully different from each other.

I think that's pretty much job one. Come up with a reason for the protagonists to be meaningfully distinct. And then come up with some distinct character concepts players would actually like to play. It's a tall order, since of course the protagonists from every version of this property are very much not that.

-Username17

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

You're right, making assumptions about design probably isn't the way to go.

I guess the hard part is deciding what to call a group of Pokemon Trainers. A party would be the default and works fine, but... it's not very imaginative. I guess you could call them Trainer Parties and Pokemon Parties, to distinguish the humans from the things they carry around on their belts. I dunno.

Let's see what a trainer party might consist of.

• The Pokemon Ace is your generic "I like Pokemon!" guy. He relies almost entirely on his Pokemon to do anything for him, and trains them vigorously to push them beyond their natural limitations. If you have a Pokemon-related inquiry that isn't super specific, this guy can answer it, because he's obsessively into Pokemon. If he doesn't have a Pokemon out, then he's basically a sitting duck - but he has a social skill or two to help him buy time to escape or get a Pokemon out.
• The Karate Kid is a solid melee combatant whose Pokemon back him up in a fight. His mobility is greater than most Pokemon's, as he is able to run up walls and do crazy kung-fu shit like that. His knowledge of martial arts help him reveal non-type weaknesses of the enemy, as well as other details that could be gleaned from keen observation. He can use his kung-fu magic to heal people of debilitating status effects and probably meditates with his Pokemon to teach them weird mystic powers and shit.
• The Super Nerd really does not like being in a fight, and outfits their Pokemon with items and steroids to improve their combat utility. He knows all sorts of random shit and will happily infodump on you if needed. He can also make items and equipment for the party and customize them for much cheaper than usual.
• The Psychic uses their magical abilities to gather information and control the battlefield, occasionally backing it up with mind blasts and shit. They can directly communicate with Psychic-type Pokemon and see things that "normal" people cannot.
• The Hiker lives outdoors and fucking loves it. They make wilderness survival much more comfortable, giving the party extra resources and downtime. He can use the environment around him to make up for his own shortcomings in combat and teaches his Pokemon how to do so - they are far more adept at manipulating the physical form of the battlefield than anyone else.
• The Burglar is obviously the sneaky one who specializes in escape and misdirection. He can help the party avoid/escape encounters, get people to where they aren't supposed to be, and acquire more loot. Pokemon are almost an afterthought to him and he barely trains them - they're tools to be used, rather than friends to be treasured.

Let's further split these into two groups of three:

• Our first group consists of the Pokemon Ace, Super Nerd, and Hiker. The Ace and Hiker can handle most combat problems, and they have a solid group of skills between them, being knowledgeable about Pokemon and the outdoors - two big components of the game. The Super Nerd is our skillmonkey who supports the other two and our Ace would probably be the party's face.
  
  The second group consists of the Karate Kid, Psychic, and Burglar. For these three, combat isn't a problem at all, but they struggle outside of it. Depending on how many magic powers he has, the Karate Kid might not have much to do, and the Burglar is limited mostly to your typical rogue shit. The Burglar could possibly be the face, if they're good at lying, and if the Psychic is capable of reading people's minds, then they could make a good pair. They all have rather narrow fields of knowledge, but it's better than nothing.

Personally, that sounds fairly distinct to me. I tried to limit myself to archetypes that showed up in Gen 1. For some reason, I'm caught up on your "come up with a reason for the protagonists to be meaningfully distinct" statement and I can't quite figure out why. Are these groups actually meaningfully distinct, or have I fooled myself by slapping a coat of paint on top of your regular Pokemon Trainer?

[Username17]

First of all, yes all of those characters are Pokémon trainers who capture Pokémon and have whatever ability set their Pokémon actually have based on the adventures they go on. So if they are all going on the same adventures, they are pretty much all going to have the same ability set. I mean, think about those characters except that every single one of them has Wailmer. Now thing about the same group except instead every one of them has a Charizard. Is that difference bigger than the fact that the Burglar has some stealth skills and the Super Nerd has a Full Restore in his backpack? I would say unequivocally yes.

But second, why on Earth is anyone going to choose to be anything but a Pokémon Ace in that setup? Basically you've set it up so all the classes other than Pokémon Ace just trade having shittier Pokémon for having one slot worth of Pokémon abilities fixed. No one is going to care about being a Karate Kid when the Pokémon Ace can have a supercharged Machoke in their adventuring sack. Why would someone accept having weak Pokémon in exchange for "being sneaky" when they could just randomly have a Haunter or an Abra in their adventuring sack?

Everyone can do the same things in your setup because everyone is collecting Pokémon from the same pool because everyone is going on the same adventures. But one of he characters has "do better stuff with the ability set we all share" as their actual character shtick. Like Wizards versus Fighters in 3e D&D, except that the Fighters in this example are themselves Wizards with the same spell lists and just worse access to spell slots.

-Username17

[DrPraetor]

I think Pokemon Ace is a bad class, in the same sense that Adventurer (who specializes in going into dungeons, murdering the occupants, and taking their stuff!) would be a bad class for D&D.

You can certainly split the classes into high-pokemon and low-pokemon:
The Nerd and the Hiker mainly have mundane skills, and are thus high-pokemon.
The Karate Kid and the Psychic have their own magic skills, basically counting as a pokemon on their own, and are thus low-pokemon.
I think the Burglar had better specialize in using their pokemon to commit crimes (and thus be high-pokemon) or he's not going to be competitive with the other classes.

You do want a sixth class, which could be a Leader instead of a Pokemon Ace. The Leader is super-knowledgeable about Pokemon and also has leadership skills, and provides bonuses to pokemon training for the rest of the party? This would then be Satoshi's class and he's providing this bonus to Kasumi and Takeshi, who are a nerd and a hiker, I guess?

Of course, that gives you four high-pokemon classes:
Burglar, Nerd, Hiker and Leader
but only two low-pokemon classes:
Karate Kid and Psychic

so in the sense that those two classes correspond to fighting and psychic types, you might add Elf (Elf:Fairy type as Karate Kid:Fighting type) and Wight (Wight:Ghost type as Psychic:Psychic type) as classes, where you are yourself a fairy or ghost (but not a pokemon?)

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

First of all, yes all of those characters are Pokémon trainers who capture Pokémon and have whatever ability set their Pokémon actually have based on the adventures they go on.

This is non-negotiable, dude. Everyone catches and uses Pokemon, period. They are all Pokemon trainers because everyone is a fucking Pokemon trainer. If they're not, then they don't go on adventures.

I think Pokemon Ace is a bad class, in the same sense that Adventurer (who specializes in going into dungeons, murdering the occupants, and taking their stuff!) would be a bad class for D&D.

I can see where you're coming from, but I think there needs to be a distinction between your shitty trainer who catches Pokemon in their spare time and a Pokemon Professor who went to college and got a PHD in Pocket Monsters. But I already bitched about generic "I'm good with Pokemon" classes in the review, so... yeah. My bad.

[Username17]

This is non-negotiable, dude. Everyone catches and uses Pokemon, period.

Officer Jenny doesn't. She has a Pokémon, but she doesn't catch new ones during adventures. Her abilities are not adventure dependent, and because of that her abilities are going to be meaningfully distinct from the characters whose abilities are adventure dependent. Regardless of what those adventures are.

If the only character you can imagine is basically Ash Ketchum, then all the characters are going to be basically the same. While characters who've had different adventures might be different, that don't mean shit in an actual game because fucking everybody goes into the Zubat cave together or stays out of the Zubat cave together. All adventure dependent characters are going on the same adventures. That aspect of the character is simply not a point of character difference within the context of the campaign.

If your non-negotiable point is that everyone is playing Ash Ketchum then your non-negotiable point is that all the characters are interchangeable and your game concept is never going to be good as a role playing game for multiple players. You are failing at step two. You haven't envisioned a six person party, you haven't envisioned a two person party. Ash Ketchum is not different from Misty or Dawn in a fucking tabletop RPG.

What do the other players do? That's literally the second question. And you have not answered that in a satisfactory way.

-Username17

[jt]

You can salvage the ace trainer by making their shtick be "Good at type advantages" instead of "Good at Pokemon." Class features for things like increased damage super-effective hits and decreased damage from things they resist. That still outputs people who go around obsessing over balanced team compositions and generally behaving like ace trainers.

Professor Oak is not an Ace Trainer, he's a Super Nerd who's high enough level that it's cool. Remember that you don't need a "better" class when you already have levels.

I like DrPraetor's high/low pokemon thing, though I don't know how you justify it in setting.

Ghost-based classes in the games are called Mediums, Hex Maniacs, Channelers, all of which are better names than Wight. The only Fairy-based class I could find is Fairy Tale Girl, which... lol.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

This is non-negotiable, dude. Everyone catches and uses Pokemon, period.

Officer Jenny doesn't. She has a Pokémon, but she doesn't catch new ones during adventures. Her abilities are not adventure dependent, and because of that her abilities are going to be meaningfully distinct from the characters whose abilities are adventure dependent. Regardless of what those adventures are.

If the only character you can imagine is basically Ash Ketchum, then all the characters are going to be basically the same. While characters who've had different adventures might be different, that don't mean shit in an actual game because fucking everybody goes into the Zubat cave together or stays out of the Zubat cave together. All adventure dependent characters are going on the same adventures. That aspect of the character is simply not a point of character difference within the context of the campaign.

If your non-negotiable point is that everyone is playing Ash Ketchum then your non-negotiable point is that all the characters are interchangeable and your game concept is never going to be good as a role playing game for multiple players. You are failing at step two. You haven't envisioned a six person party, you haven't envisioned a two person party. Ash Ketchum is not different from Misty or Dawn in a fucking tabletop RPG.

What do the other players do? That's literally the second question. And you have not answered that in a satisfactory way.

-Username17

Officer Jenny isn't a player character, she's a fucking NPC. She doesn't go on adventures, she sits in town waiting for crime to happen and maybe gets assigned a Growlithe or something. Your assertion that everyone being able to catch Pokemon makes them the same character is fucking ludicrous to me and you have yet to convince me otherwise. There are nearly 900 fucking Pokemon and having 6 people able to draw from that be bad cannot compute. Pokeballs are seriously something you can just go buy at the store and if you're lucky, you can have a Pokemon literally 10 minutes later. The reason Officer Jenny doesn't do that is because she doesn't want to. Or her job doesn't let her. Fuck if I know, either way that's not something that's inherent to her or her skill set. It's a decision that she made. To make Officer Jenny, you would need a class feature that is literally "you have one Pokemon, but can never catch any more". I don't see the value in that.

You have the bizarre assumption that because anyone can buy a Pokeball, that automatically makes everyone Ash Ketchum. That's not true, that just makes you a regular person in the Pokemon world. That is the answer to your second question: The other players do whatever the fuck they want as long as they continue to have a reason to stay with the party, because people can have different goals that align together sometimes. Do they try to beat the Elite 4? Open up a store? Try to take over the world? The #1 value of a Pokemon system is interacting with Pokemon. Anything else can be done in another system. If you do not interact with Pokemon, then you shouldn't be playing a Pokemon RPG.

Seriously, dude. Officer Jenny's shtick isn't that she only has one Pokemon, it's that she comes from a fucking family of clones! Functionally, she has unlimited lives. She can literally do that thing where you take Bob the Fighter's character sheet and write Bob II when he dies. That is far more weird and interesting than anything to do with her Pokemon or job.