What's Veeky Forums's opinion on Pokemon PTU?

>PTU
Drop the T

It tries so hard to be faithful to the video games that it's totally unplayable without an automated spreadsheet. It should be more streamlined and abstracted.

seriously tho, who's anise

I dislike it, playing it feels like a chore and being the GM feels like you are a prisoner of the system.

Aren't there other systems out there? I've checked PTA and it seemed worse than PTU...

Cool stuff with being able to punch a charizard in the face, but they should have left a lot of the video game mechanics back in video games where you have computers doing all the processing itself. People talking about the spreadsheets aren't kidding. I've played in two short-lived games to see how the system was. If somebody had not linked me a google drive spreadsheet for character sheets, I would have given up on the system right at charactergen.

It's pretty intriguing, but doesn't hold up well. I wish I could take the better part of the themes and move them to a different system instead.

Oh, I don't know how the hell combat stages and their billions of move keywords ever made it through a single revision.

Too autistic.

Bump for interest. I'm running this game for my group soon and yall have legit scared me. I thought the new release fixed most of the issues?

Idk if I would do a setting as trainers, but I could dig a Mystery Dungeons setting

The playtest packets they've release are all great and do help distance the system from the games. For instance the newest one revamped many abilities to be more fair and buff some of the more lack luster ones. In addition, they really changed up how some of the status ailments work. Flinch now no longer steals your whole turn if you're slower, but now just lowers your imitative for the encounter and lowers your evasion for one turn (so now slow pokes can get benefit from flinching faster ones).

Most people here hate on the system because they havent played pokemon enough. True they do have a lot of keywords in some attacks, but if you've played the games enough to where you know the effects moves have, you'll grasp it pretty quickly. Most of what theyve done is given a keyword to things that pip up on multiple attacks (ie fury swipes, spike cannon, double slap, etc all having fivestrike; or fire spin, whirlpool, and sand tomb all putting the foe in a vortex).

I haven't looked at it in a long time, but I remember agreeing with the comments here. Way too focused on trying to be a direct translation of the games to the tabletop, which works out strangely in a lot of ways.

Personally, if I were going to do a Pokemon game, it'd probably be in Fate before PTA or PTU.

That sounds like a pretty fun idea.

>Most people here hate on the system because they havent played pokemon enough.

Nigga I've played Pokémon since 1998, I know everything backwards and I still find this system convoluted as fuck.

It isn't true to the Pokémon games as many anons seem to suggest in ways other than the tedious and inane video game mechanics.

I played it once. Our group very quickly threw the rules out and just did it free form. It tried to stay true to the vidya at which point, i'd rather just play the vidya.

I want a pet Swampert

There are actually two Pokemon homebrews. The first was Pokemon Tabletop Adventures, but people thought it was way too crunchy so someone made Pokemon Tabletop United as an alternative.

Or that's the story as I understand it.

The eternal problem plagueing people who wanna play PokemonTTRPGs is that Pokethulhu isn't a particularly bad take on the concept.

So everyone then tries to make things more complex when Pokethulhu kinda hits the exact degree of complexity you'll ever want to bother with in such a game.

I haven't played it. I played PTA a bit though; it was good times (but it was a lot of crunch for me as the GM).

This is pretty much correct.

If people could get generator tools solid for it, they would be pretty bitchin' systems to play.

>not mentioning pokerole

Come on guys.
It even has a Mystery Dungeon expansion.

pokerole wix com/pokerole

Some good ideas for the trainer side of things but the mechanics themselves try to exactly emulate the video game. If you are a secret AI in some military base or a kid with severe autism you will love it. Otherwise you will find battles a decade-long chore and DMing a cycle of pain with no escape. The people who made it are really dedicated and I wish them the best but they should have focused less on how you play Pokemon in the games and more on what the quintessential elements of the concept and setting are and made a game more fitting for the tabletop.

All that said if you are an ultra pokenerd/neckbeard check out the splat books for very cool fluff and bonus fan settings even if you don't play the game

Care to elaborate what you mean by that? A lot of andoms here keep parroting it but I'm curious as to what they mean.

It's a chore to run, at least when it was still PTA.

Parties bloat out pretty hard the more players you have, and even if your players go one at a time you still need to have pretty beefy mass combats every single time if you want to challenge them all at once.

For a very long chunk of time the game is rocket tag in a way that's very out of sync with how normal Pokemon work. I'm not even talking about type advantages. A Tackle will one shot most Pokemon very early one, and god forbid you use a super effective move on someone who isn't maximized for turtling.

The EXP system is hot garbage. It tries way too hard to be like the game, which just doesn't work in a tabletop setting where each player has a roster of dudes they'd like to level. I ended up just giving each players a minimum Pokemon level that kept adjusting as they leveled to save some of the headache.

I could go on really: super unbalanced trainer powers, the fuckload of GM effort it takes to make encounters unless you use 3rd party tools, the contest rules are confusing and not worth reading ever, etc.

It's a shame since I really liked our campaign while it was going on. The entire party was amazing, and I had free reign on the world to do my own take on Pokemon. I had dual type gyms and a sort of human supremacist reverse Team Plasma as the bad guys. With a radically different system and less flakey players it would have been easily one of my favorite campaigns.

*Anons. Darn phone.

But just to elaborate what I'm asking, what makes it clunker than other systems? I ask because most the "video game" mechanics i see people complain about are very similar things other systems have in their rules. Also im a first time GM with ptu being what i got my feet wet with.

It uses the same stats as the Pokemon video games: defense attack special attack etc. and even Pokemon natures. In theory this is to focus on stat differences between pokes and the strategic depth of the video games but in practice it adds several levels of extra math to thr process. Throw in stuff like accuracy, multi hit attacks, your speed (initiative) changing every round based on status or stat changes and other stuff and the game takes a long time. Those mechanics work fine in the game where a computer calculates all that for you but it adds a lot of time to running battles. Plus you have a tactical map that likely involves several different trainers, who also have a turn in addition to your pokes. I forced my players to only take one or two with them and it was still a clusterfuck to run.

>Also im a first time GM with ptu being what i got my feet wet with

Wow man way to cut your teeth on a real challenge. That game requires a ton of prep work for the GM. I ran 2 campaigns set in my own take on the cyberpunk setting from the sci-fi splat and loved it from a player and story perspective, but I'm pretty sure it took a few years off my life.

Ive only played in PTA and briefly looked through the United rulebook (which looked similar).

But, to put it simply, theres a lot of crunch, particularly on the GM side. Theres a lot of stuff to generate, a lot of numbers to keep track of, and if your group isnt decent at doing basic math in their head combat will slow to a crawl.

As I said, my actual gaming time is in PTA. But I personally enjoyed the system. Why I stopped playing it was cause the DM wouldnt prepare Pokemon stats till right before the fucking fights which meant every combat had a ten minute or so break beforehand while he wrote it all up. Also, because I was the only person who could do the fairly basic math in my head and everyone else would use a calculator even when I was giving them the answer, which slowed down combat pretty seriously. And other reasons, but all pertaining to the DM.

Something to be aware of is that the combat was deadly and a huge emphasis was on the alpha strike and type advantage, which is accurate to the games (if not the show) and combat was typically only a few brutal turns. I personally liked it, but others might now.

TL;DR: PTA is a good system to play in and it can be a bit crunchy for the players but the DMs job has a whole lot more crunch and legwork and is likely kinda difficult.

Thing is a lot of that is mirrors in other systems.

6 stats is a rather common thing most systems have (dnd for example). Buffs and debuffs are common place there too. While we're at it, ill bring up statuses too, and yes making the roll every turn can be a pain, dnd again has very similar things like save or sucks and the like.

Complaining about moves and their numerous effects is like complaining about the number and varying effects of spells in dnd. Yes there are a lot. No not all of them will ever be realivant.

I will concede that the fact people have multiple characters can be an issue, but unless your pokemon league allows for trainers to fight too (the system doesnt recommended it) it wont come up too often. Add in the fact that trainers only have one command action each round, its basically like any other system at that point where every one has one combatant they control. If it really rustles your Jimmies though, you can do just like what a lot of people will do for dnd and only allow so many casters/characters of a certain class.

To be fair though, those stats and even 'leveling up' happen in the show and is demonstrated whenever Ash and co would go to the areas trainer school. Theyd talk about it there and Ash would fail the course and decide that side of training wasnt for him.

Realistically, those things have to be there in a game that sticks to the lore and in setting logistics. Just now its put into the hands of the player to apply it. You could maybe make it a more rules lite thing but clearly they didnt.

It uses all of the video game stats for combat, and then dicepools (I think that's the term) for everything else.

I've been GM'ing a game of this recently, and I've been considering dropping it. Pokemon's fun, but running the game is tough- especially with all of the prepwork DM's have to do. The DM naturally has to do more work than the players, but it's up to an extreme here.

As a DM currently running a PTA game, I can say a couple things.
combat in it a shit, drop all random encounters save the ones your players really want, because it's nothing but tedium. When doing plot, rely more on story than combat, because the moment you put your foot into combat its little number-filled bear trap teeth are gonna bite down on your leg and gnaw on it for the next 4 hours.
All that said, it's more fun to build characters in than the other pokemon tabletop games I've found, it just happens to make using these characters a bit of a chore.

We've been playing for nearly 2 years now IRL with no computer assistance besides occasionally checking the book on strange rules like moving while grappling. Personally i have no trouble with it. Sure stating up major battles like gyms will take a few hours but honestly huge progression points like that should have time put into them to make the feel epic and fun.

Might help that im an engineering/math double major, and i have almost 2 yrs experience with the system. But yeah i never get the hate for all this stuff. If you love pokemon and you want to do a campaign, why not.

for one the GM is forced to generate all this stuff for every encounter. Need a Boss fight? Well pick a nature and spend EVs and make s moveset for each Pokemon. Not a big deal that's an important fight! Need a fight against s random trainer? Well pick a nature and spend EVs and make a moveset... Shit. Also this game has way more attacks and powers and effects than DND, not to mention type effectiveness. Those extra steps might not seem like much but as you they compound over time. But if you like the system and can run it fine more power to you, just don't take it personally that others don't want to play a game with that level of crunch.

First off, there are no EVs in either PTU/A. Theres level up stat points, much like how other systems do it with skills or what have you.

Ill go back to dnd. Wanna have a bbeg the players fight? Ok give him stats, spells, equipment, etc. Oh wait he has henchmen? Ok do it all over again for them too... and about SE moves, are you telling me the systems you play dont give bonuses for certain maneuvers like burning trolls, melting ice monsters, shooting from a flanking position, or ambushing an enemy? Come on.

Its literally nothing other systems dont also have. Also no one is saying you HAVE TO allow random trainer fights. Just like this user said, you can skim over that. In addition you can do what most other systems advice GMs to do in those situations and *gasp* improvise/wing it.

I dont really have an issue if people chose not to play it. Thats fine. I understand some people like rules lite or just dont like pokemon, and those are very valid reasons. I have an issue with people continually shitting on something when pretty much every other big league system has the EXACT same issues.

The hardest part is copy-pasting moves to the character spreadsheet.

All the pokemon-based systems I've encountered have either been fucking idiotic or tied to machine-level crunch and DM busy work.

So I just broke out Savage Worlds and we refluffed it, then got busy doing mystery dungeon-based adventures.

It's thus far been my favorite system I've ever played in. I'm in a campaign that's been running for about 1.5-2 years doing a more low-magic fantasy theme instead of the traditional Gyms and pseudo-super-science of the video games. My group has been playing with the playtest packets and whatnot and they really improve the game, especially the one that changes status afflictions.

I will say that the game is super crunchy, but our GM is an accountant and the rest of the group is a chemist, a physicist, a programmer, and a lawyer so we didn't really get daunted by the admittedly colossal learning curve. Absolutely a system that lends itself to smaller groups. We have a house rule that pokemon teams can't be larger than 3, otherwise combat would be impossible to run with swapping.

Note for any future PTU DMs: For combat treat it as being anywhere from 2-6x more people playing the campaign depending on the sizes of teams you allow. That and Combat Stages & Status Afflictions are much much stronger than just throwing damage at people.

Pokerole is pretty cool, but Veeky Forums rarely acknowledges its existence in favor of PTU.

>Get the Pokerole stuff
>Reading through it
>Be on the part about Pokemon League
>Not allowed to give confusing orders in order to trick your opponent

What? Why not? As long as you don't break the other rules by doing stuff like re-naming your moves, why not allow for really weird stuff?

I would assume it's a honor and tradition sort of thing, where the rules of the dual are very structured so as to show the strength of the pokemon and not the wordplay of the trainer.

Sounds like shit.

Well that's for official battles like the tournaments and gym battles, out in the wild or against a rocket I don't think that would be an issue.

Possibly so players dont say something with an ambiguous meaning so when the opponent reacts they 'clarify' and get the upper hand.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, so you'll have to bear with me, but if the gym badge or such itself meant that much to you you obviously aren't within the philosophy of Pokemon. The Pokeomon universe has constant themes on bonding and growing with your Pokemon and the gym badges show how far you've come and just how close and in-sync you are with your team. Of course this is rather idealized as trainers also battle with money on the line, but as said I would imagine the stricter rules are reserved for gym battles. Again this is a lot of conjecture, but that's what my opinion on the matter is.

One thing I've noticed running PTA is that if a player is competative in the video game, they're going to wreck face in the game and make other players hate him sometimes.
Don't cave everytime a player asks to search for random pokemon or things will halt to a crawl.
There are nice pokemon generators which make certain things easy, but if they spread out the stat points while Mr. McMinMax will steamroll them even if they're 20 levels higher.
Avoid 4x weaknesses on big bads, your players will have that move and will quickly bring it out to destroy that pokemon because they have a full team of 6 as soon as they can.

Yeah, there is shit in other systems, PTA/U just happens to have one of the smelliest ones.

And that is lack of fun, when all the crunch overwhelms the GM it won't be fun to run a session or many. If any game loses its fun factor then it stops being a game and starts feeling like a chore, this kills whatever good thing you had going on.

If you are the kind of guy who enjoys this kind of preparation it is ok, just know that you are the exception, not the rule.

If anything, I would imagine that having all kinds of confusing commands that only your Pokemon would understand would be a special kind of training bond. Maybe not appropriate for your average character, but for someone especially strange, tricky, or paranoid.

From what I'm getting, as long as you don't use it to trick the other trainer you could whistle to your Pokémon or pick your nose for it to know which move to use.

I think what they don't want if the players disrupting one another or the GM.

Could possibly be a Feature for one of the like 5 trickster classes.

>Hurr durr speshul snowflake we are bonded through confusing orders
You sound like That Guy

I'm never going to understand what these people that creep out of the woodwork are going on about when they cry about how PTU is oh so complicated, with the exception of rembering how much the combat stages make stats go up and down that one I'll give 'em you'll want a calculator for that, or just fudge it to "close enough". but everything else is right there on your character sheet. There is a bit of book keeping, but each player is tracking the stats of a trainer and up to six pokemon at any one time so of course there's going to be.

At first I was just kinda like "this rule sticks out for being a little strange."

Now I'm just like "It'd be funny to make an NPC that is bizarre enough that everything he does in battle is confusing."

You should get a Spinda or a Bidoof with "Contrary"

I'm putting this in my game right now.

>Opponent doesn't make any sense
>The only moves he uses directly against you cause confusion
>Everything else just misses and messes up the battlefield randomly
>The whole thing was a giant terrain set-up, and the last move executed finishes some insane combo that allows him to steamroll your whole team back to back

Its hard to recomend all that much, I have been playing ever since the first PTA came out. I can DM a game fine, but it really really needs the right DM and people otherwise everyone just gets bored. Also embrace the absurdity. I had one player who evolved his magikarp by using it as a flail instead of using it to battle.

Mr. Fish
Everyone and their grandma has tried to copy that

When did the first PTA come out? it was around the same time as the comic. Eh it was fun

bim

I've been trying to make a Mystery Dungeon system for a while now, and I want to keep it relatively simple. The movement and combat are covered pretty well in the vidya, and I'm considering expanding the games' preexisting IQ system for non-combat skills with GURPS. The real problem is adapting the math, specifically scaling the numbers to be dice-friendly. Would dividing everything by 10 (so Tackle has 5 base Power instead of 50, Arceus has 72 BST instead of 720, etc.) be enough?

For stats it should work out fine. You might have to do something with HP, or else you might fall into the rocket tag trap. Not sure what your plan is, but what i mean by this is if a mon with attack of 80 (8) uses tackle and deals 13 damage, if you dont have some modifier for HP, it will KO most foes easily. Keep in mind some pokes dont have stats nicely divisible by 10.
For moves it can get tricky for the same reasons.

I haven't played Mystery Dungeon in a while, but I remember one-on-one combat going relatively quickly. Even tough Pokemon could get ganked pretty quickly with a super effective move. The difficulty came in getting mobbed, running out of food, postgame traps, and generally getting lost.

PTA and PTU are VERY simulationist.
It is decidedly an RPG system of the anime, but it uses all the game mechanics.

They have done a great job at making the otherwise useless pokemon and moves viable, so everyone can use their favorite without a significant gap in usefulness.

The math is heavy, the encounter generating is heavy. Get the GM tools on the site.

Competitive players of the game will know things your other players might not, like team composition, but their comp team isn't nearly as perfect in the games. People who play competitive but love theorycrafting and helping other people's teams will love the game.

It's very beefy, so it's good for people who like that, you might get overwhelmed. Remember that it's fine to play things off the cuff sometimes.

I've tried it and it is without a doubt the most bloated mess I've ever tried. There's very clearly a lot of effort put in to making it richly detailed, but the actual system is in massive contradiction with the spirit of the game: simplicity and strategy. Imo, you shouldn't constantly be rolling to hit/dodge/damage (unless the move has less than 100 acc). The trainer stats/classes are a neat idea, but feel sort of wonky and out of place. I as a trainer shouldn't be trying to knock out a pokemon with my bare hands.

At the end of the day I think it fails for the same reason most pokemon groups of any game variety fail: a frankly insane proportion of the pokemon fanbase doesn't get that pokemon as a setting has certain built in themes and messages that can't be stripped out without totally changing it for the worse.

t. Someone who's been invited to three separate Pokémon ttrpg groups only to find out its a "gritty, more realistic take"

>implying that special snowflakes and other shenanigans aren't exactly in the spirit of the show

THIS, oh god, this!
Why does everyone want to play a "gritty" pokémon game? In the two games I've played of PTU there's always been an edgelord GM who wanted Pokémon to feel more "real" and that meant either surviving in a post-apocalyptic world where everyone carried guns and trench coats or making a nuzlocke-like run where there was no fainting, just dying, and considering how unbalanced the first few levels are in PTU it was a massacre for both the Pokémon we had and the wild ones.

Fuck that shit, seriously.

You can be special without being retarded, you know?

It's /v/babby shit for people who care about Harry Potter after puberty.

You just described Veeky Forums entirely.

It is very crunchy and takes work to DM, but I enjoy it.

The one time I ran PTA, I had a guy grind Ekans for like three real goddamn hours. He would ignore every plothook I threw the party's way and managed to rope the rest of the group into it too.

I was planning on talking to him after the game (he had the rest of the group doing the same thing, and I didn't want to be That GM that freaks out mid-game because everyone washaving badwrong fun), but at the end of the night the guy said the game was too boring and decided to drop the campaign.

Needless to say words were said, mostly consisting of "fuck" and "you."

Currently the best Pokemon tabletop out there, far better than PTA, but still built on a deeply flawed foundation that still shows up during play.

>liking things makes you a child

Good meme /b/

Weird standard for what "the best" is, mate

PTA is a wonky mess that should be aborted
PTU is a wonky mess that can be played...sort of

Definitely the best!

We had someone in our group run it for a while, but he quit in frustration after the 3rd gym or so because the rules were so bloated and it took him way too much time to put together a reasonably balanced encounter.

From a player perspective, a full team of 6 pokemon was a lot to manage even with the auto-fill google doc character sheet. I can only imagine how much of a pain in the ass it was to put together and run entire teams of enemies.

...Yes, that is literally the definition of "best," as in "better than all the rest."

If your choice is between unplayable and barely playable, barely playable is better. If those are the only two options you're considering, barely playable is the best option.

If you want to talk about other pokemon tabletop games, then yeah calling PTU the best is more than a stretch, but you didn't. In the context of exclusively PTA and PTU, PTU is the best by your own admission.

I think the term you are looking for is "Less shit"

I mean, yeah. Like I said it's pretty fucking bad. But stepping in dry shit is better then stepping in wet chunky shit. it's the best case scenario for stepping in shit, but that doesn't change the fact that you are STILL STEPPING IN SHIT.

The proper reaction is to avoid it entirely, but if you absolutely HAVE to step in shit, at least make it dry shit.

So yes, PRU is the best Pokemon tabletop. At least as far as RPGs go, obviously. Tabletop in general, the card game is best.

What is the highest number out of this list: 1, 2, 3, or 4? The answer is 4.
Is 4, from a broader standpoint, a high number? Not at all, I don't know anyone that would consider 4 to be a "big" number.

Does that stop 4 from being that largest number out of 1, 2, 3, and 4? No, 4 is still the largest number despite not being all that large from an objective standpoint.

I'm also not the user you originally replied to.

What do your numbers have to do with Pokemon?

It makes you a babby, not a baby. Learn teh difference, newfag.

We're not correcting your taste in Pokemon, we are correcting your English.

>teh
>babby vs baby
>newfag

Oh haha oh wow

>if I point out the obvious typo I'll be right
I see a lot of misinformed and depressed people on Veeky Forums, but not many authentically unintelligent people like you.

"teh" is purposefully used by faggots, as is "babby." No one's getting on your case for having a typo, we're saying you talk like a fag and you're shit's all retarded.

This user hit the nail on the head.

"Babby" is an apt meme for non-kids who care about Pokemon or Harry Potter, and a typo is a typo. Idiocracy is a dumb shitflick for the same type of idiot who gets their political opinion from American talkshows.

>if you like pokemon or Harry potter you're a babby lol I'm so much more mature
>calls anyone else unintelligent

I see, it's bait then.

In what way is "babby" an apt meme for people who like well designed works of fiction with positive messages?

Have you considered reading books not written for children?
>Harry Potter
>Pokemon
>well designed works of fiction
Stahp it please.

>stahp
Before enlightening us with your superior tastes, O Wise One, learn to spell. Or better yet, don't waste your time trying to uplift the vulgar folk ofthis thread.

Yes user, I wrote "stahp" because I didn't know how to spell it correctly. Do you think you could teach me the correct spelling? I can't google a word I don't know how to spell, after all.