Has anyone here tried to run a Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game?

How did it go? What system did you use? What characters did you create?

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Bump for interest. I've been trying to figure out a system to use for it myself.

Only in freeform. I played a flaaffy who went on adventures when they weren't busy at a bakery run by a marowak player.

To be honest, I haven't. But I really want to. I already have several ideas for NPCs that I would love getting some help fleshing out.

>Clefable with Beheeyem husband, task players with finding components for their rocketship

>Scyther and Bagon/Shelgon sweethearts united by dream of flying

>Zangoose product of forbidden love between Seviper and Zangoose

>The Amaura princess of a hidden kingdom of fossil Pokémon, and her headstrong Cranidos and Tyrunt squires

>An Arbok and Weezing who regale youngsters with tales of running with the most badass "team" around

>A Pichu, overshadowed by his Pikachu brother, who wants to establish his identity as an adventurer and badass

Shelgon a cute

So I'll admit I've never played it but do the rules of the Pokémon tabletop rely heavily on having a team? Like could we scale it to just play as the individual Pokémon or no? If not then whatever system you use needs to have a way to represent elements in some way because that's all there really is too Pokémon and while its been a while since I've played mystery dungeon I think I remember it being somewhat similar but honestly I don't remember.

I always imagined Pokemon not falling in love outside their egg groups, let alone their species.

Ho boy.

My group had a PMD game than ran for about 10 months. It was a trainwreck, but a beautiful trainwreck all the same.

It started out as a divergence from our PTU game that I was also running - I forget why, but I offered running a oneshot just for kicks, and three people showed up. The opening cast was:

Ridge - A rhyhorn who was not the sharpest tool in the shed at the start of the game.
Magnus - A Magnemite with a major malfunction who dreamed of reversing the magnetic properties of the polar ice caps.
Picco - A Deino with a ravenous appetite and a penchant for running into things.

The premise started out simple - the world was quietly post-post apocalyptic, and the group were members of the Pokemon Exploration Society (PES) who had been sent on their first mission to excavate some ruins that had recently been discovered.

Originally, the gimmick for the game was that everything was randomly generated, so of course I had to think on my feet whilst whipping things together and discovering a Ho-Oh was in this dungeon. I decided they'd find an egg of one who'd gotten killed, named Bob, who'd just finished reincarnating. A good portion of his power had been stolen by the Electric Rodents, one of which (a Pikachu) they fought as the big boss of the evening.

People loved the goofy atmosphere and it was a smash hit overall, so the players requested more and I was happy to oblige. Around this time the idea came up to turn this into the Co-GM'd game we'd been kicking around for a while - whoever wanted to run a game could in this world we were slowly sculpting. And that was how the autism started.

The starting cast was soon joined by three more characters:

Espionage - An espeon with an awful pun for a name and the de jure leader of the new guild. He ended up excelling at social manipulation and was a bit of a pervert.
Kreus - A Vivillon who'd escaped from a tyrannical government called the Consortium who had the ability to see into the future. Imperious and egotistical at the start.

What started as a series of harmless one-shots grew into a massive spiral of interwoven, overcomplicated plots. These are all the ones that I remember off the top of my head:

- The aforementioned Bob plot, where he would show up periodically to enlist their help in regaining his power since they claimed to be his disciples. This one ended abruptly when Picco ate Bob while he was unconscious.
- The PCs were invited to the royal ball of the Goodra Kingdom as guests of a wealthy Spewpa banker who lived in their town. After an (ultimately botched) assassination on the princess Goomy (she joined the party after), they discovered a group of fairy-type Pokemon orchestrating assassinations and operating multiple illegal operations across the continent. These sessions were mystery themed.
- The ground cracking in one region of the world where an icy cold and constantly on fire place were nearby, along with the consequences of a fued between the two ruling monarchies. Likely orchestrated by an asshole Klefki.
- A case of a Hoopa taking an interest in the group and turning the game into a Persona ripoff briefly by awakening people's Shadows and forcing them to abandon the guild for a time.
- A trio of evil Lake Spirits who were involved in a lot of nefarious schemes, sucking up the planet's energy, manipulating the sky pirates, all in a bid to rebirth an Arceus they could manipulate.

- A pair of Ninetails who lived in the town that the guild resided in and the oddities involved therein. Involved a lot of archaeology and discovering the ancient history of the world (filled with callbacks to our PTU game, as by that time it had ended. PMD took place in an alternate continuity.)
- Various time-travel fuckery with a Cincinno who had discovered a number of temporal irregularities and needed the guild's help with fixing them.
- The guild's ongoing struggle with the PES Guildmaster, Winnie, who was probably one of the best written and most hilairous NPCs I've ever seen.

There's more I'm forgetting. I've asked the others to remind me of some more.

The cast BALLOONED as the game went on. We allowed people to make more characters as time went on, and we were easily in the dozens by the time the game came to a conclusion. Most people had 3 or so. One guy couldn't restrain himself and made like 10.

And then there was the alchemy. Pokemon is easy fodder for interesting crafting material and we went heavy on the supernatural elements in this game, so there were a ton of magic items floating around. It got very excessive very fast, not only hard to track but very difficult to balance with how stacked the PCs were for most fights.

Not every autistic indulgence was bad. We had semi-mandatory social links going on, and there was a TON of interaction between the cast, including the most romance we've had in any game up to today. It was kind of a chore sometimes, but I'm definitely glad it happened.

I just realized I hadn't mentioned it, but we were using a hack of 1.04 PTU for PMD at the time. I think it worked fine, actually, though I'm a bit sick of PTU at this point so I probably wouldn't revisit it.

Listing every character would take ages, but I know a lot of us wrote bios for them. I'll dig up some in a little bit.

Could you post the hack?

The version we used is sadly dead - one of us might have it in our gdocs but I'd really have to go digging through it for that one. The author's thread for the current iteration is here, though I've not played with it myself:

forums.pokemontabletop.com/topic/10435348/1/

I would be interested in a game like this. I mentioned it once to my friends, but they weren't interested.

I hate how d20 won out. I hate d20 systems, dice pool systems are infinitely better.

i currently am running something similar in concept, very rules light, and RP heavy, pretty much my main groups venting game where they can shitpost to there hearts content, actually working out pretty well.

Syther can fly though...

Give stories, I'll bite.

Scyther cannot learn Fly.

I ran an entire campaign a few years ago. It was a homebrew system, mainly a D20 system. After solving the mystery of what happened to a nearby town, the players were hired by a Xatu to investigate mysterious goings on in a faraway land. The campaign was them travelling to the place and confronting the evil. The final boss was Missingno

I've always like the idea of making the ruleset into a complete PDF instead of my pile of notes, but didn't think people would be interested in a fan-made PMD game.

I have far and away too much Poke-autism to even consider doing anything Pokemon related.

I would always fear the physical prowess of a Joltik more than a gigantic Onix.

Post the notes

Post notes pls

Sorry anons, there's a shiton of them, most aren't finished, and they're horribly out of date too (Gen4/5 I think). There's not enough written down for people to run their own games, since most of the basics I knew by heart.

Although if Veeky Forums gives a shit I can always knuckle down and try and get it actually serviceable again.

And that, my friend, is what date rape drugs are for. Or better known as: TM45.

Delia a bigger cute.

Do it fagget

If you strip out the trainer classes, you're stripping out a lot of PTU's complexity and problems. It may actually play better.

Please do, this seems like something to put in my toolbox of things I really want to play or run someday.

Bymp

I'm bored, so If you want me to try up a few pics of your tabletop team or whatever, I'm open

When this thread dies, I probably will start a Mystery Dungeon collective worldbuilding thread to get more of Veeky Forums involved.

I tried to run some PMD once but got fucked over by one of my group's members before it could get off the ground, effectively killing the project.

Most importantly, it strips out the everyone-is-seven-characters nightmare.

Sadly the devs still maintain that the game is not meant to be played like that and don't like it when people attempt to houserule it that way. I left that crunchfest for Pokerole instead.

PTU is a game so overly complicated with such shitty devs it's a surprise that they're popular at all. They come so close to making a half-decent game, then undercut themselves because they don't want the game to be fun for anybody but themselves.

The backstabbing cliquishness from the switch from PTA to PTU was so beautiful.

No one does petty and pathetic like nerds do petty and pathetic.

So let me get something straight.

Do you want to run a Pokemon campaign or a Mystery Dungeon campaign? Settingwise, the most prominent difference I see between the main Pokemon series and the Mystery Dungeon spinoffs is the fact that in Mystery Dungeon there are no humans, and you play as sapient Pokemon. Is that all you're looking to get out of this, or do you want the whole Mystery Dungeon package?

I don't know much about Pokemon, but I know a thing or two about Mystery Dungeon. If this thread is still here (or another up) by tomorrow I'd be happy to offer some information on that topic.

Putting on my favorite trip so people know it's me.

Anything on Mystery Dungeon is pretty helpful- one because they share an engine, and two because I've always wanted to capture the same flavor of the Mystery Dungeon styled games for a stupid shitty homebrew that mixes in Etrian Odyssey inspired classes.

Link sauce please?

Wouldn't it loose the skills and stuff?

Can it be pared down to 1 trainer and 1 mon baked together into one statblock?

>they discovered a group of fairy-type Pokemon orchestrating assassinations and operating multiple illegal operations across the continent
>Likely orchestrated by an asshole Klefki.
Why are fairies so terrible?

Because it's a classic.

And in just that list they were also fucked with by psychic types twice, but gotta focus on the new hotness, right?

My players once found themselves in a town dominated by a corrupt warlord. He was the mightiest, cruellest, warrior around, and all lived in fear. Then it was revealed he was a Jigglypuff.

Players thought it was hilarious until he started slapping their shit.

Its always fun to have something cute and "harmless" to be a badass

What poke would you most likely be turned into if you were transported to a mystery dungeon setting?
I'd probably end up being a Turtwig or Bergmite or some other chill bulky mon.

I spend all day in front of a screen so maybe a Rotom

PTU's skill system is shit, but if you need it you can still have Pokemon use them without class features.

I'd enjoy it. There's some potential.

Thread's still up, I'm back.

First, a bit of history on the Mystery Dungeon series.

The first game was a Dragon Quest spin-off, called Torneko's Great Adventure: Mystery Dungeon (pic related). The star of the game was Torneko, a fan favorite character from Dragon Quest 4, known in the western localizations of those games as Taloon. Torneko would adventure deep into the heart of the ever-changing Mystery Dungeon to retrieve a treasure box at the end of the game and escape with it. The game was released by Chunsoft in 1993 to an excellent 9/10 rating by Famitsu magazine. I'm no game historian, but I believe that Mystery Dungeon was what introduced roguelikes the Japanese gaming scene, in the same way that RPGs in general were introduced by Dragon Quest before it.

And make no mistake, Mystery Dungeon was a roguelike in the traditional sense of the word. It was tough and it was mean. Permadeath rules were instituted in full force. It also set many precedents for the series: the monster houses we see in Pokemon first showed up here, as well as the system of missile fire (which, you'll notice, is nowhere to be seen in the mainline Pokemon games!). Both these things date back to the original Rogue, so we know for certain that Mystery Dungeon didn't invent them, but Chunsoft's particular style of doing it, with missiles fired on the L and R shoulder buttons, and monster houses that SUDDENLY PLAY FRANTIC MUSIC as soon as you step into them became part of the whole Mystery Dungeon schtick.

What Mystery Dungeon might very well have invented (though I don't know for sure -- it could also have been one of the first-generation, pre-internet variants of Rogue) was a system where monsters could gain experience and level up and evolve a la Pokemon if they killed one another, either accidentally by friendly fire or deliberately by infighting. AFAIR, this ironically isn't featured in the Pokemon spinoffs. Too bad, I think.

The next game in the series, released in 1995, was the point at which the Mystery Dungeon franchise stopped being just a spinoff of Dragon Quest and started to become a thing of its own. Probably for licensing reasons, the next MD game was a completely original IP. They took the subtitle of Torneko's game and shunted it to the main title, calling the game Mystery Dungeon 2: Trials of the Wanderer. (That name is more commonly translated as "Shiren the Wanderer", since that's the main character's name -- but "trials" is what the word "shiren" actually means. Since the word "shiren" in the title is written phonetically rather than ideographically, that ambiguity is clearly deliberate.)

Shiren is an enigmatic ronin samurai in fantasy feudal Japan, on a quest to climb Table Mountain and reach the fabled Land of the Sun at its peak, where the Golden Condor sleeps in the City of Gold. Like the first game, Shiren featured only one main dungeon, with 3 optional bonus dungeons available after you finished the game.

Shiren introduced a prototype of the party system you see in PMD, although they didn't have multiple AI settings. It wasn't the first roguelike to feature allies; Hack had pets, but again, the Mystery Dungeon series would develop its own way of doing it.

Shiren also added warehouses. Although the game still had permadeath, warehouses made the game easier, especially since you could get your keep your best sword in a warehouse and then stop by to upgrade it every new run, until you could cheese the game with your +26 wide-slashing 100% accurate critical-hitting ghost-slaying dragon-slaying katana. If you did happen to die with it in your inventory, though, it was gone for good, so in the end, a feature to make the game easier for the kids just ended up making the game that much more sadistic and painful.

Shiren remains one of my favorite roguelikes, and traditional roguelikes remain my singular favorite genre.

>tfw your group is unimaginative as fuck
>Delphox mage
>Samurott warrior
>Decidueye ranger
>at the end we fought a Hydreigon and saved the Gardevoir princess

>liking Pokemon
No. Remove this thread, it's an insult to mankind and supports literally the worst heresy.

Did someone say... heresy?

Now that I have seen this, I really really want to run this. Or rather play this, but I am the eternal GM and I just know that if I don't offer to GM no game will ever take place.

Anyway, i think it would be hillarious to do a typical PMD test at the beginning with all players to determine what pokemon they would be.

bump for interest

Was the Gardevoir a guy or a girl?

I haven't, but I've played in a few, one great. One FUCKING TERRIBLE. I'll talk about the good one. We are using a slightly modded system of Savage Worlds which may be more modded later on. (We, and by that I mean I, am testing a new way of doing things, butt he basics are still Savage Worlds)

The characters we've made are hilarious in and of themselves, as how they start is now how they end at all. First you have a Flaaffy who was a thief from a human city. Unable to roll well enough to land any electric attacks they took to wrestling everything. They are now the Ampharos incarnation of Mike Hagger. We have a crazy Rotom who is mostly a fridge, A smarmy Porygon 2, a Mienshao whose basically Solaire from Astoria and more. There was a Vibravia whose become a Flygon and is... very unsure how to feel about eating meat, and he'll have to go away for the 'mating season' soon. Something we joke about... there's honestly a lot of characters... its a fun ride.

>, this ironically isn't featured in the Pokemon spinoffs.
Super PMD has this, actually. If an enemy KOs one of your party members and evolved, you're in for a ride.

Really? Neat!

Is there a way to switch on "reset to level 1" in that game? Because that's the main reason I stopped playing PMD; it was too easy for me!

Dice pools are just as shit as d20. 2d6, 3d6, Trapezoidal curve, and RnK are all superior.

SPMD seemed a lot harder than the other ones. A Salamence was one of the first bosses, iirc

Don't know if there's a reset, but there are the level 1 dungeons and there's always the option of switching to a different mon for the next dungeon.

Doesnt mean shit. Its seen multiple times in both video games and the show flying.

Diglett could learn teleport back in the first games. Doesnt mean Digletts can teleport.

Tell us about the terrible one too!
Please?

The Gengar was a male human
The Gardevoir was the spirit of a female Gardevoir

Out of curiosity, Was this on the TVTropes forums?

Yes please. If I ever ran that I'd make it mandatory.

This series made me want to be a Pokemon when I was younger.

I mean, shit. Not even important to the subject matter, but I just rerealized that after all these years.

So, fellas, what system?

I just wanna know how you rolled with THAT as the final boss? Some kind of exotic pokemon, or a you're all in the matrix type deal, or something else entirely? Or just never explained?

From what I hear, Pokerole is very good.

I'd be down to be a humanoid pokemon. Stronk, cuddly, and hands all in one package. Floatzel would probably be near the top of the list for cuddly and hands, Alakazam or Machamp for stronk and hands.

Other fun options would be Electrabuzz, Hitmonlee, Magmar, Sableye, Infernape, Blaziken, Pangoro, and probably some others I'm forgetting that have good hands with thumbs (except Jynx, Mr. Mime, and Hypno because they're all creepy fucks).

Could a supers system like M&M be good for approximating PMD?

I dunno, man. Lack of thumbs is always going to be a burden, but the others without hands seem to be doing alright for themselves.

Still, it's all...very weird to remember this, that at a point in time I was more obsessed with the prospect of being some pocket monster instead of being a vigilant man of reality.

Reminds me though - are they still "Pokemon" in the mystery dungeon universe? There's no more incentive nor ability to 'catch' them all, unless you count what super tried to do...I think I heard something about it, at least.

>Not befriending them all
>Not resetting with max iq, item'd up party members for friendship to counter the massive negative recruit factor on bosses