Most Pokemon RPGs that I've seen are just battle simulators that leave everything else up to the GM to decide. Besides punching other shit to death, everything else can be wildly inconsistent between tables. At one table, a Machamp can pick up a boulder and throw it for a ton of damage, while at another it's disallowed. I find this dissatisfying. Obviously, a GM should control the game and not the other way around, but when you have 1000+ pages dedicated to your game and 75% of it is devoted to killing shit... there's room for improvement.
Enter Pokemon Tabletop Evolution.
It's the only name I could think of that seemed to fit the spirit of what I'm going for: Taking the Pokemon concept to the limit. There are plenty of simple RPGs out there that try to focus just on the battle engine... which is admittedly a large part of the Pokemon experience and not something you want to fuck up. However, what really draws most people to Pokemon are the other things about them - their design, how they act, their biology, and most importantly... what would it be like to raise one and have this sentient creature be your buddy as you go on adventures? Most Pokemon RPGs I've seen rely a lot on external information for the GM to come to these conclusions.
After all, why translate Pokedex entries into mechanical game elements when there are so many of them and you can put the onus on the GM to do the heavy lifting of your system?
I realize it's an ambitious goal, but I want to try and encapsulate as much of the Pokemon universe as possible into this game while keeping as much of it as streamlined as I can. This is a series with nearly 25 years of history across a wide variety of mediums and there's a lot to draw from for inspiration. I want to keep individual Pokemon viable, but still thematically relevant and distinct from one another. I want legendary Pokemon to do utterly crazy shit, like Mewtwo lifting houses with its brain and dropping them on people while mind-wiping entire cities and mind-controlling a few PCs. I want progression to be clear, enjoyable, and crunchy without being overwhelming - the focus should be on doing cool shit, the numbers required to do so should be handled by the system whenever possible, not the players. I'd like to add enough structure to the game where you can go from one table to another and have a rough idea of what travelling from one town to the other will be like.
Warning: This shit is about to get crazy.
Yes, this kind of crazy is included.
The best way to illustrate this, I think, is with a character sheet mockup of a max-level Pokemon. From there, I'll explain some of the major points of the system's mechanics and start talking about the basics.
We'll be using a Pokemon classic - good old Charizard. By the time you get to this level, you are totally capable of doing shit like this. No GM fiat or MTP involved.
This is on a standard 8.5x11 sized sheet of paper. For a max-level Pokemon, I don't think this is too bad.
Anyway, here's what we can learn from this:
- This game operates on levels and Tiers. Tiers are split into sets of 5 levels each and are major milestones of progression, each expanding the scope of the game. Typical Dennery.
- Skills define a lot of what you're capable of, and rank from 1-8. You roll 1d6 per rank in your skill. Every rank of every skill gives you more options in-game, rather than just being a numeric boost. For example, Charizard has 7d6 Athletics, which lets it gain the capability Superpowered. Because of this, it can lift objects up to 12 tons before reaching its Heavy Lifting range, and can throw such objects up to 680 meters per 10 seconds, or roughly 150 miles per hour. Ironically, it is immune to Collision Damage, so it can have boulders thrown at it and not give a shit. At this level, your Charizard getting into DBZ fights is normal.
- In addition to skills, there are the battle stats straight from the game. This Charizard's player gained these stats by choosing its Nature and Moves, nothing else. At no point did he level up and ask himself "Am I putting my stats into Attack or Special Attack?" Due to the MATH, this Charizard is almost completely immune to the attacks of low-level creatures and easily crushes them without thought.
- Like PTU, this game has Evasion. Unlike PTU, there's only one kind.
- Charizard has Power Points - or PP - which it can use to enhance its combat and non-combat abilities. Not its Abilities, though.
- Injuries operate similarly to PTU, but are even more ingrained into the system - NPCs, for example, typically make Morale checks when injured or bloodied to make fights go a bit faster.
- Diet and Loyalty are important enough to put on the character sheet. These factor into mechanics like renewing PP, Pokemon care, and various forms of evolution/combat enhancements.
- This Charizard gets fucked up if you splash water onto its tail flame AND gets pissed off if you punch it in the eyes for huge damage.
- It has quite a few Abilities, but they're mostly passive. You gain 1 per Tier, and 5 levels can take a while in-game. It might have Abilities from other sources - in this case it has Scrappy due to having Rank 6 Combat, which earned it the Dimensional Fighter power. It can punch and grapple Ghosts and other intangibles, and when it hits something, the target can no longer use space-altering effects.
- Struggle Attacks are the main form of attacking. Pokemon are limited to 3, which are typically a Normal-type move and 2 moves it has STAB on. Moves can have a large effect on these attacks. Struggle Attacks are made through a point-buy system, and I plan to have a decent list of example attacks that people can use in a hurry. The point is that nobody cares about the difference between Ember and Water Gun aside from the type difference, so having 2 paragraph-long entries in the book is unnecessary. Most of the boring elemental laser shit goes here. On the bright side, there are no damage rolls.
- Moves have pretty drastic effects and can redefine a Pokemon into different roles. Charizard is offensively oriented, and its Moves reflect that - making it physically stronger, faster, more capable in the air, and excellent at dropping houses on people, or throwing them into the stratosphere. Hyper Beam lets it do crazy shit like focus Fireball into an 80-meter long line attack capable of instantly vaporizing Tier 1 creatures it hits, which it can swing around every turn.
Anyway, this is a pretty rough writeup of what I've got so far - but I hope it whets your appetite for more.
I'll be posting more about the system fundamentals next, then I'll go over skills, Pokemon, combat, and some other stuff. I admit that so far, I've focused more on building Pokemon than their Trainers, but... fuck it, that's probably the way to go, anyway.