How would a society of Pokemon, a la Mystery Dungeon, even function? You've got different types of Pokemon...

The Mystery Dungeon games are offshoots of the main series and probably aren't canon as a result. That you can end the game and just kind of wake up makes it all seem more like a dream than a real event that happened.

Also that Absol better stop talkin shit bout the weather man. I mean how often is that punkass pokemon ever right about the weather?

So, going off the concept that the Pokedex is supposed to be an in-game source of information on Pokemon, compiled by people who live in the Pokemon world, the only real explanation that the electric mouse Pokemon could be described as such would be simply because there are mice that exist in that world as a reference. I'm pretty sure normal insects and fish are referenced as prey as well, but I can't be 100% sure and so won't use it.

In addition, the Pokedex lists numerous instances of Pokemon being transformed from humans. One such instance is Kadabra. Some Ghost Pokemon such as Pokemon Yamask and Phantump are also mentioned to be the spirits of deceased humans. The strongest argument in favour however, are a series of books from the Canalave library in the Sinnoh region which suggest that Pokemon and humans sat at the same table, got married and were virtually indistinguishable from one another.

Absol have the ability to predict disasters

Everything in Pokemon is canon to itself and nothing else. Mystery Dungeon isn't canon to the main series, which isn't canon to the Coloseum games, which aren't canon to the anime, which isn't canon to the special manga, which isn't canon to the card game.

Absol can sense disasters user, get the fuck out of wherever you are.

As far as anyone of us know, the news channel could be using another Absol to predict only a chance of rain. So one of these 2 Absols is bad at predictions or one of them is lying.

Or Humans are just a variety of pokemon with special rules for evolution.

Most news outlets use Castform for predictions actually.

Should probably keep a pokemon who can tell you when a natural disaster is about to happen on staff just in case. Just saying.

Non-Pokemon animals no longer exist. In fact, they never existed. Dog? What's a dog. I think you mean Growlithe. Please come with me.

I think that's the intended reading, actually. Or my interpretation, at least. Humans were a variety of Pokemon that diverged for whatever reason and became their own thing.

With stuff like Mew and Arceus around I would think Pokemon came first.

The "Mystery Dungeon pokemon world" doesn't really operate on logic. How the hell a quadruped with no thumbs can throw something is a big enough riddle, but when it comes to worldbuilding it's such complete bullshit that it's kind of hard to no where to start. I just wished they used actual names instead of referring to each other as their species, but it's obvious why they wouldn't do that from a non-roleplaying perspective
The pokedex is really just so absurd that you sort of have to dismiss it as just being a collection of whatever rumors some kid (you) has heard about a pokemon whether it's true or false

Some other user mentioned canon and how most of the Pokemon media tend to be in their own little boxes. With that in mind, how do you explain the rare (extremely rare) occurrence of Pokemon capable of speech? I want to know why some Pokemon that are claimed to be hyper intelligent or are just plain psychic can't speak in anything other than the animal grunts and growls that some of the simpler Pokemon speak.

>Indian Elephants

I think the only non-pokemon animal that has been mentioned is the "Indian elephant" from raichu's dex entry, though that does imply that African elephants also exist

As for the worlds media it's kind of weird. You barely even see roads that a car can go down in the games. The world seems to operate like a bunch of sci-fi city states with no crime outside of the rare gang of costumed weirdos surrounded by wilderness where animals have magic powers, but then you hear details in the game that contradict that in favor of making it sound more like our world.
As for how intelligent they are I think that's just a disconnect between the main games and the anime. In the anime they're basically as intelligent as humans, but in the games they don't really ever seem that intelligent outside of a few legendary ones

>main series
I would probably say simple biology for most, but sometimes it gets weird. Not matter how smart an Alakazam is, it doesn't have the necessary vocal chords for speech. Pokemon just don't have the capacity to speak, but can understand well enough. I can't recall an example of a Pokemon speaking human language in a game offhand.

>anime
All bets are off. Pokemon have the vocal chords for speech, but have their own language that consists only of their names and for some, growls. Somehow completely different species can understand this, and they transmit complex ideas easily. It's fucking magic, I don't know.

Mimikyu goes "me me curse you"

But apparently that was just added to the western version

Non-Pokemon fish were in the anime as well as non-Pokemon insects like worms.

*insects and shit like worms

Also forgot pic.

Why the fuck is this on Veeky Forums and not /vp/?
You could be bringing actual, decent discussion to /vp/, but NO you gotta post it on Veeky Forums because it's not gonna get you enough (You)s!

The answer to your post is it's just a game. You're thinking too hard. Relax.

Same reason we have TES lore on Veeky Forums.

Except anons here were working on tabletop Pokemon rules before /vp/ existed and the cardgame predates Veeky Forums.

Look, nobody said you had to reply with an actually well-thought and reasonable response.

You end up with a caste society, where Pokemon do jobs based on their species. E,g, electric types work at electric plants, fire types are chefs and smelters, rock and steel are builders, kinda the same with fighting types I guess.

Roads would be standardized based on the largest land Pokemon, outside of legendaries.

I don't know where you think you are or who you're talking with, but nerds love to overthink things. It's the number 1 killer of momentum in any ttrpg group.

Alakazam is said to have an IQ of 5,000 according to the Pokedex and it's rumored that a kid turned into a Kadabra while performing an experiment. So those two would actually make sense if they were actually able to talk. Slowking is also said to be hyper-intelligent (but would lose that intelligence if the shellder were ever removed from its' head).

Most psychic Pokemon being able to communicate telepathically would make the most sense, though.

On another note, if you really want to no longer look at Pokemon the same way again, read their Pokedex entries. A lot of those fuckers are terrifying.

That would explain why nobody seems to age in a way that makes sense.

For Mystery Dungeon, I've combined a few things:

>Humans are rare, but not uncommon
If you look at Gates and Super, the Pokemon have a problem in that their powers usually lead to the creation of some Godzilla monster in response to them. So a human gets called in to fix it, but a human would also bring in their baggage. Imagine them trying to organize a group of 'Mons the way they are familiar, like how a Corporation would work in modern Japan, and then the 'Mons copying it over and over. It's not that the 'Mons are idiots, they've just never met anyone who thought as strangely as the human does.

>Agriculture led to Domestication
All the Pokemon media shows them being able to eat fruits and vegetables and baked goods. Once you start expanding on that, a few apple and peach trees here, some soy and rice there, it becomes much easier to live with a full stomach. As farms expand, it probably attracts more Pokemon and they pool their abilities to protect/expand their farms and the cycle keeps growing.

Look, the reason why the Pokedex entries derail into hyperbole is because they're written by literal elementary school students.

Example: Slugma's skin is said to be as hot as the surface of the sun. If it really was, then he would combust everything in a 60-mile radius.

Which is why people shouldn't take references to real-world animals seriously. They're just mentioned so that we, the 3rd party viewing inward, have a frame of reference to work with.

Slugma is much smaller than a sun, and despite the temperature would have much less energy and overhall heat on him.

Still he would superheat the air in a large radius around him to plasma, sterilizing the earth in its path.

Technically, there's nothing in any canon that actually supports that view. A few games just say the Pokedex automatically generates entries itself by collecting data on Pokemon you catch.

Given how nonsensical and generally out of place the Pokedex entries are, though, I'm of the opinion that the entire thing is some non-canon to pseudo-canon meta info. It's a neat thing for the player to read, but shit is just different in-universe. Raichu's most recent dex entry as of Sun&Moon STILL mentions Indian Elephants, and is still at odds with the rest of the setting.

Honestly, I think Pokedex info is a mix of actual valid info and folk tales/rumors/etc.

Hell the only instance of the "Kadabra was once a boy" that wasn't framed as rumor or wild theory was in Fire Red.

...

I.... I ... not crying...

Fucking ninjas just threw water in my eyes....

The Pokedex can make some great feels fodder.

Gender would also be expressed differently. Since there are often trap Pokemon (male Gardevoir, male Primarina, female Machamp), it would be much harder to tell male and female apart.

On another note, the reason why it took until 2nd generation and Professor Elm to categorize male/female Pokemon is because Oak has a hard time with that sort of thing.

>implying thats not a tragically malformed Weedle

How dare you make fun of his disability

Pokedex entries are directly mentioned in the story and by NPCs more often in S&M

How do man-made or object based pokemon come about?

But Pokemon wouldn't consider them 'traps'.

Pikachu is an "electric rat" pokemon, Rattata is a "mouse" pokemon, Tauros is a "wild bull" pokemon, and Miltank is a "milk cow" pokemon.

All these animals must exist/have existed in recent memory for them to be used to describe pokemon.

> because Oak has a hard time with that sort of thing
Reminder that Oak has a brother he never even mentioned, and spends most of his time around 10 year olds, and his pokedex already has all the information on how many pokemon there are in the world.
I think we need to accept the pokemon professors are either senile old men, or students who are using child labor to get information for their masters degree.

The kadabra deal is being listed as a "legend" even IU, so it's probably not even true there.

There was that time where you find out the password to the Mahogany Town Team Rocket base from a talking Murkrow, but that's probably more of a parrot-imitation thing, since the only thing he says is the password. There's also occasionally Pokemon that speak through devices or illusions or telepathically, but those are isolated incidents.

I'm fairly sure those types of pokemon would be able to tell each other apart, especially sex.

The Machop and Timburr lines could also be used for construction.

It's possible that humans are somehow involved. The pokedex entry for Voltorb says that it was first discovered at the same time that pokeballs were invented.

I could also see it being a case of the Pokemon actually coming first and the man made object being based off of it.

Reminder that Grimer legitimately consume Trubbish. They probably eat them alive.

IT'S THE CIRRRRRRCLE OF LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE
AND IT MOOOOOVES US AAAAAAALL

Truly, predation is a horrifying thing.

Pokemon are very good when you want to tell a story, so I have some themed cities.

A cold, frosty town near the beach. The locals rely on stored food to get by during the winter, but they've been doing their best to do some aquaculture to try and stretch their resources. Most of them are Ice types, cold and distant and treating the town as little more than a food storage facility and a safe place to keep their kids while they go out into the deep sea and hunt.

So of course it's up to the amnesiac MC to show up and help everyone learn the value of a hometown.

Another simple town I had in mind was to take the archetypical rural town with all the nice people with nice jobs and throw in the MC as some kind of massive monster. Something like have a town full of 2-3 foot tall Pokemon and have them deal with a Milotic, Serperior, or Tyranitar who suddenly showed up without memory.

Question for Veeky Forums,

how big of an organization do you think Pokemon could handle? They have Guilds, but it only seems to be about 20-30 'Mons. Do you think they could handle governments and corporations?

Don't forget about the entire clan of Kecleon that have pretty much spread across the entire world to engage in glorious capitalism. That's probably the largest known organization that has ever even been close to canon in the PMD world. Civilization seems kind of fledgling in general, as there are still so many villages and tribes and wildlings around. The most organization you're probably going to find at the current timelines are rescue federations or trade agreements.

rules of nature
gotta follow laws of liiiife

Well. Given an amount of time and an abundance of food (A way of farming) you eventually get towns but that does not answer the question. Pokemon civilizations would most likely reflect their placement, You'd find high mountain civilization created from rock or stone carved out by ground and rock pokemon to make way for their lives, water pokemon having a vast kingdom... but limited in many ways. Its very simple. You'd find major trade hub cities usually chalk full of the normal types and a good smathering of others depending on what's around.

I could see roads having been made depending on the placement. Buildings usually being made with a 'maximum body type' in mind first with accommodations for those who are smaller being made second. I imagine buildings have 'Half Floors' where the smaller, more minute take to living. You'll usually see this in Inns or the like. Most Pokemon have sentience I imagine as well... but its not broken up by species.

Pokemon who exist within the wild away from others for to long may slowly fall back into their...instincts one could say. Given time among others they may pick them back up... but there are 'mon who are born who are just always... gone. In fact that brings up an interesting campaign idea. More and more pokemon eggs are coming out wild and mindless, like animals. Something has to be causing it and such. Could be interesting.

...man I just meadered around really hard there.

They seem smart enough to handle government, but I imagine trying to represent and standardize things for so many different body shapes and abilities would be a Darkrai tier logistical nightmare.

I'm picturing a kind of Council thing that consists of one Pokemon of each type that's meant to represent said type in political matters. So you've got your Pikachu and he's the guy you write to for Electric representation.

Imagine 18 political parties divided by type lines, not including those shifty dual typed guys you're never sure are on your side.

First, one could assume that in a world where Pokemon are autonomous, they are also fully sentient, intelligent, and mostly capable of communicating with eachother. Things can be tweaked of course, especially the language thing, but otherwise it just becomes a mess.

With this in mind, every pokemon species would likely be able to understand the benefits of a "neutral" zone, where nobody tries to eat eachother and can conduct business in peace. The few who disagree are vastly outnumbered by the ones that do, so they either agree under threat of pissing off someone just as strong as them, or disagree and become outcasts.

A town of Pokemon would generally be tailored for what lived there. A big neutral town, however, would not have this luxury, and thus would likely be constructed as broadly accessible as possible. This means structures not tailored to certain species are built large instead of small, because an inconvenience to little guys is better than inaccessibility to the big guys, who are honestly the ones who require neutral zones in the first place.

Fortunately for pokemon, they have super-powers. A large rock can be forced out of the ground and hollowed out in probably under a week to make a large cave building.

As for who would put in the effort to do this? Aggron. Aggron is the magic key to making the Pokemon universe work for any setting. Aggron is outright stated to be very interested in conservation and ecosystem managment. Aggron has access to all of the important powers to literally poof a city into existence in under a month, and that's one Aggron. Imagine what a guild of them could accomplish.
In a world where Pokemon carve out lives for themselves, there is little reason to believe that some Aggron would see this as the natural order of things, and attempt to establish and maintain this ecosystem as they would any other.

>some Aggron would see this
Should be wouldn't

not 18 political parties, 18 seats, probably split between two or three parties, with atleast one party consisting primarily of dual-types, because there's a lot of dual-types out there, and they don't feel represented by single-type pokemon.

sure but Aggron respect each other. The ones who didn't would just pick forest homes or whatever.

Actually, that's a fair point, there's a few pokemon who would do that shit. Conkeldurr, for example, is a civilising influence. I bet any forest-towns would pay out the fucking ass to get a sceptile to move in so the trees stay healthy, and desert towns would probably employ Numel and Camerupt as guides.

You're not the first person to raise this topic. Terry Pratchett brought it up in Discworld years ago.

>The Law of Unequal Returns

>This is a growing point of contention among the larger races that reside in Ankh-Morpork, detailed in The Discworld Companion. The problem is this: there are many jobs in the city for which a gnome is equally (or in some cases more) competent, such as rat-catching (as detailed above) and watch-making, as their small hands make them ideal for performing intricate work. As money is generally paid for the amount of work done, gnomes are invariably paid the same for doing these jobs as a human or dwarf would. However, as a gnome is much smaller than a human or a dwarf, the money will stretch further. For example, a dollar might buy a loaf of bread. To a human or dwarf, that is two or three meals. To a gnome, the same loaf of bread is food for a week and can also be hollowed out to provide emergency accommodation. This disparate value of earnings is making many of the taller workers in the city angry, but at this point it is not known if any legislation has been or will be passed on the matter, or indeed if the matter has become anything more serious than a grumbling point.

There's also the ways different pokemon species are inevitably better suited to different jobs then others. Xatou are great at stakeouts or work long hours because of their ability to stay perfectly still and just watch for days on end. Fire types will be heating buildings as a career, grass types as berry farmers and psychic and dragon types will inevitably be the ones butting heads for leadership positions.

The effects would be noticeable, and probably contribute to a lot of the existing stereotypes between species.

Samson Oak is just his cousin.

I think the heightened senses that vary from species to species would cause a lot of problems. A quiet house party for some loudred could be considered an act of anti-social behaviour for Zubat neighbours who would think it sounds akin to a jackhammer in the next room.

>Ninetails
>A nine-tailed fox assumed to be extremely haughty and family-oriented
>Expect it to have that old-fashioned "ohohoho~" style of speech you'd expect from something like that

>Ninetails in the anime speaks
>It's high-pitched and girly

>in the anime
>as opposed to how it behaves in the pokemon mystery dungeon games, which this thread is based on

pls go

Ninetails in the games is cute! CUTE!

I would contradict you with gameplay and story segregation, but there are instances in stories where certain Pokemon do things that are very difficult for them to do. For example, at Waterfall Cave in Explorers of Sky, you and your partner jump through the waterfall to get into the cave. If either of those characters are Charmander, best case scenario is cold shock assuming that Charmander tails can reignite, and even then it's pretty stupid for a cryophobic creature to jump through a waterfall based on a vision you got suddenly tripping out.

Empires would be very difficult since the needs of many different species would lead to conflicts and instability. Small kingdoms, city-states, and nomadic tribes are realistic in this setting.

Now I want a Ninetales with a scouse accent.
They can have the expected attitude, but that accent is now my headcanon.

Pokemon's sentience and intelligence are a two variables function: Their type, and body shape. Clearly humanoid pokemon have bigger chance of sentience, others not so. Types from biggest chance to lowest are Psychic, Fighting, Dark, Dragon, Fairy, Ghost, others. Having this considered, species intelligence is still usually case by case study.

Levels and sudden evolutions are just made up bullshit for sake of game dev, and should be disregarded, with evolutions replaced by metamorphosis. Gender differences are also more prominent, as are personal characteristics of each pokemon. Egg laying is replaced by births, seeding or other methods of reproduction as it feels necessary.

Pokemon moves and ''abilities'' are also removed, and become innate skills and characteristics, based on what such pokemon should or should not be capable of doing, depending on their bodies and types.

In such setting we could see monospecies civilizations, as well as melting pots, made up of sentient pokemon and thier domesticated helpers. Berry growing would be biggest, but no only source of food, since other branches of agriculture, hunting and edible farm 'mon could be eaten too.

My favorite headcanon for such setting is late Renaissance, with sprouting mechanization and first global powers emerging from chaos, complete together with fine arts, grandeur architecture and vast written lore about times long past. Merchants, inventors, princes and princesses, flamebarfers for hire, anything goes.

We really need 16+ PMD, don't we?

I'd love to have some sort of PMD MMO, if that was possible.

There are a lot of fan projects that delve into, alter, or expand the universe of PMD. There's a lot of theories and speculations that try to fill in the gaps of canon.

There's a thread almost every night at 7pm where OP uses figures and a whiteboard to create an adventure where anons suggest actions. Pic related
Rest of the album here:
imgur.com/a/7TfUl

>Overbearing Liverpool fox mom

user no.

>PMD MMO
MMOs usually have shit plotlines
And while PMD ain't no Bitcher, I still prefer kid's evening stories over Destiny

>Pokemon's sentience and intelligence are a two variables function.

No.

All pokemon are sapient.

>>Pokemon's sentience and intelligence are a two variables function.
>
>No.
>
>All pokemon are sapient.
In animu. And in PMD

We're talking about a PMD society. If we go by the games, then the only sapient ones are maybe some of the Legendaries.

user, you need to understand, Veeky Forums is what Veeky Forums wants to be. We talk about whatever is our choice to talk about.

and few of the normal ones

but remind, that we're talking about Pokeciv, and not strictly PMD2.0
In my setting there would be few pokemon sapient, bunch more sentient, and rest at animal/toddler tier mental capabilities.

It wouldn't be for the story, more for interacting with other characters and roleplaying, but those usually have shit communities too.

I can imagine it now - One player being an asshole garchomp stealing some clefairy's doll, the rescue team assembling to go take it back, things looking whimsical, campy and perfect, and then that one faggot munchlax constantly talking about his bowel movements and how much he needs to shit mid-dungeon before attempting to describe just how much of a dump he took in the middle of the floor.

Eeexactly

A lot of the starters seem to be intelligent, especially the fighting ones. Lucario has a mental bond with his owner through chi or something, IIRC, so we can assume they can talk telepathically or something.

Like I said, case by case study. Maybe even for individuals, to outline some gifted individuals.

Pokemon religions...what kind of religions would spring up? if there are presumably literal god pokemons active then presumably there would sects of pokemon deticating themselves to them no?

What makes you think they're intelligent? I figured Lucario's bond was like a dog and his boy.

The only active Legendaries are the minor ones that can be compared to Local Legends or Shinto spirits.

I would presume that, broadly speaking, Pokemon would either worship Arceus, or a derivative of it, or a high-ranking Legendary/Mythical that pertains to their goals and their challenges. Warrior Pokemon might revere Victini, while Pokemon who use the sea might worship Kyogre, and make offerings to drive off storms.

I imagine practices would largely be held as they are in epic greek stories, where the gods would occasionally just show up at people's homes for whatever reason.

Have you played Red Rescue Team? Ever?

pretty sure humans didn't make regigigas... it's noted as having "towed continents with ropes" and not much else. It's the Colossal Pokemon. It would be better placed under Groudon's Domain. The rest all looks good, though.

How do you justify mewtwo and genesect in a world without humans though? Where do the gen six and seven legendaries fit into this chart? Someone needs to update this.

Also, I feel like we should consider that different legendaries are from different places. The legendary pokemon Kyogre clearly has domain over Hoenn, but Lugia seems to have dominion over the seas in Kanto- I think of them as closer to a series of protectors who watch over the land, or possibly, if you're going darker and more animalistic, some of them might simply be super-predators that have a huge swath of land that they've claimed, and within that land they might choose any number of ways to interact with any given pokemon they choose to interact with- from killing and eating them to aiding them.

Pokemon once shared this world with mysterious creatures called Humans, but that was a long time ago.

What I don't like about Pokemon is it has this thing where all Pokemon are inherently good. The problem with that is what is "good"? Nature gives no fucks about morality. In real life, alpha male lions kill the cubs of other males in their pride. Pokemon definitely has predator-prey relationships. Prey would regard its predators as bad. There's also competition.
As far as legendaries, I prefer to have a more grey/gray interpretation of them. In my headcanon, Victini is kinda like an avatar of liberation, rebellion, and victory; but is also a perpetuator of war and ultimately does not try to break the cycle of oppression. Darkrai is an asshole manipulator who brings visions that may bring deception, truth, or inspiration, but he favors those with strong wills and great curiosity.
I also wonder how humans can survive around Pokemon. Maybe those humans are physically superior to us.

Actually, Meowth is straight evil. He wants to capture Pokemon for Team Rocket and he knows exactly what is going to happen to them. Technically, he is still a wild Pokemon because neither Jesse or James can actually say he belongs to either of them.

In PMD, they do mention the predation thing, if as a joke. There's a team consisting of a bird and a bug Pokemon, and the bug is worried he'll get eaten by the partner.