Pokemon RPG

Is there a better Pokemon pen and paper than Tabletop United? I appreciate the work of the team, but I feel like it's needlessly complex.

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pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=349118

ive had a lot of fun running this. the summary poorly represents the rules and turned me away from the system for a while, luckily i was bored and decided to give it a read.

Yeah, I agree. Seriously 500+ pages for the core sets, focusing extensively on just the Trainer seemed completely like a waste of time.

That does beg the question though. When looking for a Pokemon PnP, how important do you consider Trainer stats, feats, abilties to be? Vital to your experience? Needless baggage that slows down the experience? Or something in the middle?

I'm personally in the mindset that it's rather irrelevant. In the show and in the games, Pokemon seems to be central to the culture, so your own physical prowess is secondary to that of your Pokemon. And even Beauty Contests can be determined by a Pokemon battle instead of actually Beauty. But I wonder what others feels.

i think trainers should be a big part of the long term strategic layer but they shouldn't be throwing around buffs/heals/attacks mid battle.

in the system i shilled for above progression is mainly tied to the trainer but they arent active participants in battles like in ptu and the like. progression being tied to the trainer was something i really disliked at first but has grown on me over time, and now i feel its the best way to do it.

Huh, well when you put it like that, I see your view.

I'll read the system you posted and see if it looks interesting. I've been digging around for a while already and that's one I've not seen before.

I think that Pokemon RPG based on genesys system would be dope as fuck

In a good Pokemon system I think the trainer should almost be static, or maybe there should be 9 character levels (so a classical levelling experience may involve battling all the gym leaders + becoming champion.) Each level should give a slight buff to some non-combat skill use, and maybe a little bit of combat prowess, but I don't like how involved the character is.

Pokemon themselves is something that doesn't occur to me naturally, but I'm sure there's a better way that doesn't involve nearly so much direct emulation of game mechanics.

I'm a little confused by the "Damage and Hitpoints" section.

Are they saying that any Pokemon that is not your starter will only ever have 3HP? And all attacks deal 1-3 damage?

That seems like a recipe for disaster. How does this translate to gameplay?

i forgot to mention that the rules listen on that forum post are wrong and the pdf has the up to date rules.

non starters have 3 hp and an extra plus 2 if that is their "high stat"

i dont see why that would be in issue.

>i dont see why that would be in issue

(Please note, I WANT to be wrong about all I'm about to say here.)
I can only speculate from the paper, because I have not tried it myself, but my scepticism stems from the following hypothetical scenarios, and we're only talking non-starters:

Since all your Pokemon use your Starter Pokemon's stats for their own, a Caterpie is theoretically straight up stronger than both a Meganium and a Tyranitar (3HP both). It has more HP than them, and deals 3 damage with a super effective attack. Either could counter with a super effective move of their own, but the Caterpie could tank that hit easily (5HP). What stops this from happening?

Also your Pokemon do not grow independently from you, and are instead dependant on Trainer progression. So they are only as strong as you are, and join your group at equal levels. Evolving Pokemon seems to do nothing beyond giving you a chance to re-spec their Highest Stat and maybe give them a different Ability. Also new moves if you have the right Boon. But the difference seems negligible. Caterpie beats Chikorita in pure numbers, and Bayleef/Meganium are equally vulnerable and defenceless. So... evolution aren't necessarily improving your Pokemon anymore.

With only 3 (or 5) hit points, stalling would be akin to playing Russian Roulette with 3 bullets loaded. If you apply poison of burn on your opponent, you are banking on them failing to hurt you for 3 turns, knowing that those effects won't KO them. But considering they only had 3 (or 5) HP to begin with, just like you, you would've been better off just to duke it out, and rely on your (hopefully) higher defensive stat to keep you alive. And stats do not seem to go up at all, that I can tell, so you will only ever have 2 more defence than an glass canon.

Where am I wrong here, if at all? And please, explain how. I really want to know.

for the first point you are kind of right. you are supposed to be able to viably use your favs. the only real edge the evolved Pokemon have is that stage 1 of 2 or 3 families dont have abilities iirc.

for the progression thing i think thats a positive it cuts down on bookkeeping for your 50 something Pokemon (your intended to keep a large stable of them instead of focusing on one team. but yeah evolving them only gives access to an ability, a typing change(not always an improvement) and very rarely a mega evo. i think the intent of the author was that the bonuses they get from your trainer leveling is good enough in that regard.

and in terms of stall, the game is supposed to move faster than normal Pokemon but that doesn't mean stall is a bad strategy. i think you underestimate how tough a high defense Pokemon is.

>And stats do not seem to go up at all, that I can tell, so you will only ever have 2 more defense than an glass canon.

your party's stats go up every trainer level.

I see.

Well all that remains is to test it, then. Leave further theorizing at the door.

>PTU
>needlessly complex
Man you clearly never tried running PTA. Fucking columns

I tuned in to an actual play of this system once and you're absolutely correct, it's _extremely_difficult to actually hit and take down Pokemon, especially high defense ones. It's not a terribly well conceived system.

It shouldn't be this hard to have a system for a game series this popular.

Cartoon Action Hour is a decent way to do it if you want to more copy the feel of the anime than the games.

Majimonsters exists, and could potentially handle working as a game that can be used to emulate a solid mix of the game/show, but its more rigid statlines (than CAH) and no baked in evolution means it requires a fair bit of extra work to homebrew.

Honestly I think the problem is less with the shifter and more with the druid

But heaven forbid they ever change the druid

I think Majimonsters might be the system I hack together if I ever attempt this.

Weirdly enough I found PTA simpler.

Has anyone tried hacking Pokethulhu into a straight Pokemon game?

www222.pair.com/sjohn/pokethulhu.htm

Speaking about complexity, as someone who GM'd a Pokemon game before you really gotta watch out for player and Pokemon bloat. Now I was running PTA at the time so it's possible that newer systems hammered out some of these issues, but for me running a game for 4 trainers plus all of their Pokemon became crazy even with a cap of only being able to carry 3 Pokemon at a time. Then factoring in shit like capturing wild Pokemon and contests I had to hotfix a lot of shit on the fly to not make each session bog down forever.

OP, how many people are you planning on playing with and about how many Pokemon do you expect them to have?

Not OP, but I made the terrible mistake of running a PTU game with 5 players. And I, in my infinite naivety and stupidity, allowed them to have the standard 6 mon team. This shit was a nightmare, not only for the amount of bookkeeping, but whenever I designed an encounter (and I tried to keep encounters quick and with 2 trainers max), someone always had the one ability that I forgot about and would hard counter the encounter.

If I ever run a Pokemon game again, and considering it like a retard, I'm only running it with two players with 3 Pokemon each.

pokemontabletopadventures.com/index.php

This is a generator for wild pokémon for the Pokémon Tabletop Adventures game I'm playing. Had to houserule it tho.

>not using babby's first roguelike as a base
It has tile-based movement/combat, basic survival mechanics (Belly), weapons (throwing items), "magic" (Orbs), and best of all, no humans. It has almost everything you need for a TTRPG built in. The only problem is adjusting the math.

You definitely want to limit the amount of available Pokemon depending on Player number.

1 player = 6
2 players = 4
3 players = 3
4+ players = 2

You cannot limit yourself to just 1 since you do not want to become a 1-trick pony (though could work in a Sun/Moon setting, since HMs were replaced). Think of Pokemon as "prepared spells" you don't consider or build for non-prepared spells in mind. If a player wants to switch their team around and use another Pokemon they have in the bank, they can do so, and only then do you worry about how to implement them.

Also a good idea is to reduce numbers (and their sizes) where possible. We're trying to play a game, not a mathematics exam paper.

this.