PTU Storytime

This is a story of one of my first times gming, running the PTU system for two players. There's no grand punchline or climax it's building up to, in fact the campaign died off quite abruptly, but some good people over in the Kamigakari thread said that they'd enjoy reading it and I hope at least some of you do too. It's not too terribly long, enough to fit into one thread in its entirety. Feel free to rag on it or ask questions, I could really use help to improve my gming since players tend to only give the default "it was good/fun" piece of feedback.

This campaign takes place in the new region of Circo, a roughly Mexico-sized piece of land that is still in its developmental infancy; while pokeballs have still been around for quite some time, automobiles and personalized radios are still the bar for what is considered 'cutting edge' technology. The region is largely unmapped due to the population's heavy reliance on water travel and stereotypically terrible sense of direction, leaving it open for the players to discover new areas and investigate local legends or rumors. I wanted to recreate the feeling the original games gave by plopping players into the center of a whole new world, and letting them explore it at their leisure. Whether that worked or not is anyone's guess.

In any case, I hope it's not too terrible to read, and if you feel up to it I'd love to hear any nuggets of wisdom you want to give to an aspiring gm.

We can't have a story without its characters, of course, so without further ado:

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=qMjcAloQkfA
twitter.com/AnonBabble

This is Kate Barque, the elder of the two Barque sisters, and daughter of Doctor Nancy Faye Barque and Professor James Quincy Barque. An esteemed pokemon breeder and a famous pokemon professor respectively, those two make up the parental half of the Barque family and currently reside in Seeblatt where they conduct their research to this day. Their names are well known to households in Seeblatt and Squircle, but outside of the Eroteme Forest their mentioning only serves to draw attention from scientific circles, not public ones.

Having grown up alongside pokemon, Kate developed a great deal of knowledge concerning the many types of pokemon and their development over multiple life stages. Kate found their slight differences, even within the same species, fascinating and it drove her to research how a pokemon's training, raising, birth parents and several other factors added up to how strong a pokemon could become.

As her final thesis, Kate is determined to test her theories and studies by building the most powerful pokemon team ever assembled, starting with her own chikorita. A Lonely little thing named after Kate's mother, Fey is constantly thirsty for attention and will stop at nothing to steal it from other pokemon. Kate has done everything she can to help make Fey a strong fighter: feeding him right, training with him, even ringing his diet with spicy foods. Now Fey and Kate are ready to take the next step in their journey and assemble a team to prove Kate's theories correct.

This is Breanna Barque, or Bree for short. The younger sister by a year, Kate could care less about pokemon research and training like Kate, instead finding a love in the great outdoors and the many bug pokemon it holds. Bree's favorite pasttime is sneaking out of the house to explore the vast Eroteme Forest surrounding the town, getting hopelessly lost, and having to be tracked down by trained zigzagoon and dragged back by the ear by her mother. Bree's developed quite some experience for the wilderness lifestyle as a result, having picked up the Survivalist class whereas her sister Kate is a Mentor.

To try and dissuade her from sneaking out into the woods in search of bug pokemon, the Barque family decided to gift Bree a baby bug pokemon of her very own for one of her birthdays. Not only did this exacerbate the problem, but the rather deadly choice of a scyther probably speaks volumes of their parental style. While disagreeable with most other pokemon and more than willing to use those scythes at the drop of a hat, Gloria is at the very least Adamant to stay by her owner's side and has proven capable of protecting Bree while she's out in the forest.

The rest of the storytime is carried almost entirely through screenshots, so apologies in advance for grammatical errors. You'll know what I mean. Just think of them as mint-condition, first edition prints.

In my defense for what a few of you might be thinking, I had no idea who Dobson was at the time of running this, I just found the character image by googling "25 Essential Expression Drawing Challenge" until I found a few that worked for what I needed. I apologize regardless.

...

...

Introducing Gloria and Fey, doing what they will essentially be doing for the entirety of the campaign: guarding food and wanting pats.

...

I liked how the players decided to run away from home and become vagabond pokemon trainers without provocation. It wasn't the campaign premise or anything, they just got really excited at the idea after I told them where they'd be starting.

...

Bree rolled quite well, even having a bonus from being in an Urban area (one of her Survivalist favored terrains.

Meanwhile, Kate rolled a natural 1. Which is an impressive feat given that PTU traditionally uses 2d6 for all skill rolls, but she happened to choose Stealth as one of her two deficient skills during character creation.

This is what happens from Bree's perspective...

...and this is what Kate sees from her perspective.

Hidden text: Misdreavus, the Screech Pokémon. Misdreavus are extremely mischievous and like to cry out at night just to startle people.

Kate's panicked attempt at damage control.

Kate rolled pretty well for Acrobatics here, notably less so for Stealth.

Christ, these two are abusive as fuck.

And the unfortunate aftermath.

>the face of a job well done, without having done anything at all

...

In fairness, dinnertime is a warzone when you eat next to dozens of hungry and wily critters. Gotta establish dominance and all that.

...

...

...

...

Dude's so embarassed about fucking their age up so spectacularly that he just shuts down.

...

...

...

Skipping several skill checks from players and pokemon alike here, for ease of reading.

The pokemon itself was rolled randomly from a location-based encounter table, but I gave Kate two rerolls for having prepared the time and location for a specific pokemon. Turns out she didn't need it, as I'd rolled up a Tympole on the first attempt.

Well its always nice when luck is on your side.

Our first battle!

...

Hidden text: Just kidding! youtube.com/watch?v=qMjcAloQkfA

Hidden text: Kate's Pokemaniac feature teaches her the following:
- It is Male
- It is Level 6
- It is Water Type
- It has a Skittish Nature
- It has the Water Absorb ability

The tympole is introduced to its new best friends. Fey is not happy with having to share the spotlight.

...

...

...

Ohhhh. PTU has to do with Pokemon.
I had no idea and just clicked because I was just checking the catalog without any goal in mind and saw "storytime".

Oh yeah, duh, probably should have mentioned pokemon in the title. It stands for Pokemon Tabletop: United, an offshoot cousin of Pokemon Tabletop: Adventures that was made when players grew dissatisfied with the (lack of) skill system and unbalance. Problems still persist of course, but it still makes for a fun system nonetheless.

Did they decide their characters were going to be siblings or was that something they decided on themselves?

>I liked how the players decided to run away from home and become vagabond pokemon trainers without provocation. It wasn't the campaign premise or anything, they just got really excited at the idea after I told them where they'd be starting.

So you told them some details about the setting and then they came up with the idea of playing a couple of trainers who are getting their start by running away from home?

You know your childhood is going to be interesting when you grow up in "See blyat".

The latter; all I gave them was the writeup of the region itself, and they decided what town they started in and that they wanted to be sisters. I proposed the specific parents and their home life, and they came up with the goal of running away from home to be pokemon trainers before the game started. It was pretty nice that they already had goals in mind before the campaign started, it took a load off of my shoulders since I didn't have to come up with heavy-handed reasons for their characters to travel around.

...

>Bree rolled quite well, even having a bonus from being in an Urban area (one of her Survivalist favored terrains.

Get out of here Stalker.

Seeblatt is actually the name of the shape of a lillypad! All of the major cities are named after shapes, in fact, though most are pretty obscure. An eroteme is just the shape of a question mark, so the mysterious Eroteme Forest is just "question mark forest," Squircle is just a squared circle, and so on. Kinda like how every major town in Kanto is named after colors, or every major town in Johto is named after plants, Circo's theme is shapes.

CHEEKI BREKKI IV DAMKE!

...

Pokémon Black & White Sound Gamerip: Caught a Pokémon

...

...

What is the difference between a big and small one?

Can Apricorns still be made into weird poke balls like in silver and gold?
Is the latter common knowledge in Circo.

I don't know how you did it but you chose the absolute perfect image for Fey. That is an expression that says, "I would crawl through a mile of broken glass just to steal someone elses paps"

The Big Mushroom is essentially just a higher tier version of the Tiny Mushroom, and some classes that make use of such items (such as the Chef class or the Botany subclass of the Researcher) are able to make much higher quality meals/medicines out of the Big Mushroom. By itself, the Tiny Mushroom can be ingested to cause 5 damage to whoever eats it in exchange for +1 Combat Stage to a random stat. The Big Mushroom, by comparison, instead causes the Poisoned status condition to whoever eats it in exchange for +1 Combat Stage to two random stats.

Just like in the gold/silver generation, apricorns can be made into a variety of pokeballs-- all it takes is some investment into either the Survival or Technology skill as well as taking the Apricorn Ball crafting edge. There used to be an entire subclass dedicated to making every different type of ball out of various apricorns, but that was scrapped and condensed into a single edge because of its universal lack of popularity.
The fact that apricorns can be crafted into pokeballs is common knowledge in Circo, because apricorn balls were the precursor to the modern pokeball-- before the current electronic version was invented, apricorn balls were the simply only way to capture pokemon. While the modern version is much more efficient to mass-produce, however, apricorn balls still hold their niche as antiques and cheap, specialized alternatives for those who know how to find/make them.

>Latex opera gloves
Oh look, another fetish of mine I can pin on that damned cartoon

I'll have to deliver the compliment; that picture was actually picked by the player, rather than myself!

...

Not much to say about the hidden text this time, a bunch of mechanics explaining that Bree found worms.

...

I mean, they were literally raised like animals

...

Coincidentally, the two players had gotten into pokemon battles for different reasons simultaneously despite being in completely different areas. I'd feared one of them would spend the time powerleveling while the other was left behind, but they were both on the same wavelength on this one.

Thankfully pokeballs aren't broken unless a pokemon breaks out of them. In Kate's case she just missed the throw entirely.

...

...

...

It's really cool when players talk between themselves for a while. I get to take a momentary breather, and it shows that they're interested enough in the game to roleplay farther than "press the X button at the GM until plot happens."

I've run PTU before, but I gotta ask. How long did you spend preparing for sessions? Or, I dunno, how long did it take you to go from having an idea to the first session?

I'm beginning to realize the Pokemon world is kind of like Australia, there are few places you can go without potentially encountering something that can inflict at least a status effect on you if not damage.

Years, months, or a couple days depending on what you'd consider a proper answer. The map and concept for Circo itself was from way back when I was in high school, but I never really started planning for a campaign until I found the map again years later. I hem-hawed over wanting to try GMing again after my last failed attempt for a couple months, and finally belted out the setting notes for the players over the course of a couple days before announcing it. The game itself started only a few days after that, once the players had their characters ready and we'd all talked about what they wanted out of the campaign itself.

It sounds like a long time of dedicated planning and worldbuilding when I put it like that, but it was really just a couple days of actual preparation spread out along years of procrastination. The map itself was a few minutes of sketching, and making it look nice enough on a computer took a few hours on paint dot net, but even that's just because I'm finicky. The setting notes were broad enough that I could fill in the details as they became important, so I just needed to write up the general technology level and major organizations/areas of note in the world, which took a few more hours of thinking and not all that much writing. I could share those too, if you'd like? Specific pokemon encounters were generated on the spot, thanks to PanoramicPanda's P.T.U. Tools. If you're running a PTU game, google that, it will save your life.

Granted, this entire game was done in play-by-post format, so the sense of panic and urgency that usually accompanies gming wasn't present. If a player asked a question or did something unexpected, I had ample time to take a step back and research my answer. Roleplaying as multiple characters/pokemon at once and even running a split party is a breeze as well, it really takes a load off of your shoulders as a gm in this format. Biggest weakness is the slow posting and inevitable death of the campaign, sadly.

>It's really cool when players talk between themselves for a while.

Yeah. It feels good when your players start doing that. They are enjoying the world and their characters enough to get invested to the point of acting for fun and not just because they are prompted to.

>I get to take a momentary breather, and it shows that they're interested enough in the game to roleplay farther than "press the X button at the GM until plot happens."

That is another benefit!

We're now moving into part 2! There's only 2 parts, just to let you know. This was when we started to move into the actual traveling segment of the game.

The hidden text is a simple homebrew system I made for the game that covers wilderness survival and travel a bit more than "make one Survival check between point A and point B," since the players were focusing on the wilderness parts of the game and it'd be a shame to boil their entire motivation to play down to a single die roll.
It's a bit too much to copy into one post, so I'll paraphrase: traveling happens in six-hour segments, you can choose to gather stuff, look for pokemon, hide from pokemon, navigate, or do any Extended action that your character is capable of during that time. Multitasking is possible but slightly more difficult. There's also optional rules for keeping track of food, water, fuel, temperature, all that nitty gritty stuff, but we ended up not using those.

...

Most of Breanna's rolls were average for this, save for her Survival which was through the roof and netted her plenty of sweet loot as a result.

Just like the show, it's perfectly viable to befriend a pokemon sans any battles or balls. There's mechanics for it and everything, which Bree's taking advantage of here.

Or, well, she was taking advantage of that. Past tense.

In PTU, every character starts with every skill as Untrained, rolling 2d6 whenever said skills are called into question. In addition, each character chooses one skill to start as Adept-level (4d6) and one skill to start at Novice-level (3d6). In return they must choose 3 skills to be Pathetic (1d6) and these skills can never be raised above this level afterwards.

The only reason I bring this up now is to inform that Bree's three Pathetic skills are Education: Occult, Education: Technology, and Command.

...

Hidden text: Weedle #1:
Level: 5
Type: Bug/Poison
Nature: Quiet
Ability: Shield Dust

Weedle #2:
Level: 2
Type: Bug/Poison
Nature: Impish
Ability: Shield Dust

Weedle #3:
Level: 5
Type: Bug/Poison
Nature: Bashful
Ability: Shield Dust

"When diplomacy just doesn't cut it, sleep spells do twice the charming in half the time." - bardic adage

...

...

Our first real random encounter!

Weirdly enough, this part seems to still include the last part. My bad.

...

And for the first time this campaign, a trainer jumps into the fight! There are many trainer classes that make poke-punching more efficient and effective. Kate is not one of them.

The battle rages on, this time a full-on team brawl! Things get a little more mechanically complicated in terms of who goes when, but it seems to work out alright.

After a few bruises, a few crits, a few knockouts and a few misses, the battle comes to an abrupt end!

...and so does the campaign. That's the last post of a now-dead game, sad to say. Thanks for sticking around for the storytime, I hope you enjoyed it! All I could possibly have left to share are setting notes that I made for the players to read, or I suppose answers if you've got any questions.

If I do pick up the gm torch again in the future, I'm hoping to be better at it and actually run a game to completion, so if you've got any bits of gming advice to share given what you've read I'd love to hear it.

I'd like to hear about the organizations and stuff. Sounds interesting enough!

The game seems like it was going swimmingly, what happened?

Righto, here's the notes I had at the time concerning the region's organizations. It's rather short, only detailing the Pokemon League and Diamond Industries, but a Team Rocket-esque criminal organization and various small businesses the characters would discover were to make an appearance as well, added as the game progressed like a sort of growing journal.

I had notes along these lines organized into different places for the players to read, mainly one for the notable areas of the Circo region itself and the rumors/legends surrounding them, and others for famous household names, acquaintances of importance (consisting only of Kate and Bree's parents at the moment), miscellaneous rules and organizations of note. None of them were terribly large due to the brevity of the campaign, but they still exist.

The same fate that inevitably awaits all play-by-post games: sudden, inexplicable radio silence. No drama or anything, just no more posts.

just like kamigakari user. My condolences.

Here's the region notes. Might as well dump these too, maybe someone here could use them as inspiration? Or just steal them outright, have at it.

And finally the various well-known legends and rumors. I think that's about it as far as shareable content goes, save for the boring non-setting stuff. Feel free to scavenge to your hearts' content, learn from my mistakes, rise from the ashes.

Weirdly related to the subject, Kate and Bree are Isekai GM and Hayate, respectively! We still play together (obviously), but the PTU campaign was years ago.

So true, sadly. I'm not even done reading and this already makes me miss my own pbp PTU days.
Ours died nearly the exact same way. One player stops, and the entire thing crumbles.
i-it's a fun story though!

is PTU meant to be played via Play By Post or is it also good in a more traditional format?