There is no point to having a Pokemon TTRPG

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm not the biggest Pokefan in the world. I played G1, G6, and some G7. The Pokemon anime, when I catch snippets of it, seems much better written than I remember it being, like Gargoyles or Transformers Animated. That said, I'm baffled that there are at least three completed or near-completed projects to convert the Pokemon setting to a TTRPG. Why?

• As paradoxical as it sounds, Pokemon fans aren't particularly interested in the Pokemon setting. It's not like Transformers or Star Wars where people go into the minutiae of the setting and seem interested in exploring every last corner of it. People just plain like to not think about the property in more than the shallowest ways possible.
  
  For example: going into the implications of Pokemon intelligence and how they interact with humans really skeeves people out. Partly because there's issues of racism and slavery, but also because if Pokemon are intelligent it implies some incredibly creepy behavior on the behalf of Pokemon, like the more intelligent Pokemon engaging what amounts to bestiality or lots of Pokemon being implied cannibals.
  
  So the typical move is not to think about it too much. But that fucking sucks. The whole point of Pokemon is playing with your magical animal pals but you're not allowed to examine their anthropology (for the lack of a better word) too closely. You're only allowed to interact with your Pokemon in really shallow ways, like beauty contests and dress-up. Which is okay for a video game, but for a TTRPG it's extremely lacking.
• Pokemon is a series that unapologetically separates its game mechanics from the story. People make a lot of sport about being able to beat up Arceus with a Mudkip, but as long as Pokemon is just a game of numbers that's okay.
  
  However, if I'm playing in a TTRPG, I expect for my Pokemon to be able to do shit out of a Final Fantasy-style interdimensional battlefield. While shit like using Magnemite to hack into a computer is fucking awesome, it also completely shits all over the game. If I'm putting together a Pokemon team for a video game, I care about gameplay effectiveness and aesthetics. If I'm putting together a Pokemon team for a SWAT raid, I care about narrative effectiveness.
  
  The thing is, no one has sat down and done a Champions-style deconstruction of all of the Pokemon. And I don't think anyone would be interested in that. No one is going to be happy with a Pokemon game where people bench Froakie and Skitty and Mimikyu because they don't do anything as narratively effective as hacking Team Rocket's HQ. But until someone does, the idea of a Pokemon TTRPG of being anything but a 4E-D&D style farce is just that.
• The setup of Pokemon conflicts with that of a typical TTRPG. In Pokemon, you're playing a lone protagonist with a self-contained team of Pokemon that are supposed to cover all weaknesses with goals of either dicking around or becoming a master. Obviously if you're doing a table of 1 DM versus 3-5 players, the typical Pokemon setup doesn't work. If you don't mind things being even shallower than that game, you can have 4E D&D style team battles, sure, but the basic pitch of Pokemon doesn't work for a cooperative storytelling RPG.
  
  This might not necessarily be a problem. The Star Trek TTRPG from decades ago doesn't feel anything like any of the shows. But like I said, people aren't interested in the setting. But if the basic Pokemon premise of 'get your team together and become the Pokemon master' doesn't work, what else is there for people to do? Your powers don't work out of combat and there's nothing in the setting to explore or do besides being a Pokemon trainer.

[Zaranthan]

The first thing that comes to mind is you basically play a different RPG, only with Pokemans!! Each player gets two or three mons, people go about their business in teams of three to five, and you play Shadowrun or LotR or Bakuhatsu High with the caveat that all your narrative power comes from your critters rather than any skills or gadgets you might personally possess.

You have your Oddish use Sleep Powder to sneak into the Renraku labs, then have Magnemite hack the computer, until the scurity spiders show up and you have a team battle to escape with the macguffin.

You have your Dugtrio undermine the city wall until the town guard shows up with a bunch of Groudons and Sandshrews, have a team battle, followed by uruks pouring into or out of the city.

You have your Vaporeon and Charizard use Rain Dance and Sunny Day to ruin the Racing Club’s big tournament, provoking your rival to come after you with his team of Ninjasks and Aerodactyls, followed by the planet being attacked by a 100 foot tall Mudkip.

[Avoraciopoctules]

As paradoxical as it sounds, Pokemon fans aren't particularly interested in the Pokemon setting. It's not like Transformers or Star Wars where people go into the minutiae of the setting and seem interested in exploring every last corner of it. People just plain like to not think about the property in more than the shallowest ways possible.

Back when I cared about Pokemon more, I read a bunch of fanfiction where people went around having adventures. It seemed like there was a decent amount of interest in looking at the stories of the people in the Unown Ruins civilizations or the Big Pokemon War.

There's also a lot of pokemon fan-games that put lots of time into a more complicated story and lore. I mostly know about those from Something Awful Lets Plays, but making a giant RPG Maker fangame seems vaguely comparable to making a tabletop RPG.

EDIT: I just Googled pokemon fan games and I'm seeing lists of "Top 10 Best Pokemon Fan Games" by year. It looks like they are still going strong.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

While shit like using Magnemite to hack into a computer is fucking awesome, it also completely shits all over the game.

Actually, the Porygon-line and Rotoms are the ones that can hack into things, not Magnemites. Magnemite is just a bunch of magnets, dude.

[OgreBattle]

Pokemon draws from stories like Journey to the West where a monk collects stronger demons to help him on his trip (and then he teaches them to not eat people), and old old East Asian bestiaries like this one that's 400 years older than Jesus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_o ... s_and_Seas

Pokemon Black White revolved around "Pokemon aren't slaves!"

So the nature of what Pokemon is draws from centuries of demon catching storytelling and has been addressed in the games, and then the manga's do their own take


Pokemon is 'just' a fantasy world with a modern mentality. Instead of murdering all the manticores and paving over the wilderness for more apartments, humans (who can become psychic wizards and break steel with bare fists because this is a fantasy world) live alongside them.

[Grek]

The obviously correct way to make a Pokemon RPG is a Maid RPG refluff, where you play as a Pokemon trying to earn the affection of your Trainer (who is played by the DM) by defeating other maidsPokemon in battle.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Sounds like a recipe for DM cocksucking.

[Grek]

So, just like the regular Maid RPG?

[Koumei]

While shit like using Magnemite to hack into a computer is fucking awesome, it also completely shits all over the game.

Actually, the Porygon-line and Rotoms are the ones that can hack into things, not Magnemites. Magnemite is just a bunch of magnets, dude.

To be fair, Magnemite can draw all the electrical power out of nearby things (see: the power plant in Sun & Moon). And that isn't hacking, but it's a pretty good espionage style attack - if you were going to do a SWAT raid on Team Rocket, you probably would want to cut their power (which in turn is why they want a super electrical Pikachu for emergency backup, and have so many Zubats that aren't bothered by dark environments).

[jt]

Pokemon is the nerdiest thing a huge swathe of people are interested in. That's a great reason for there to be a TTRPG of something.

And it has a strong built-in default adventure structure. You visit a new place, they've got some pokemon that are doing a thing. You learn about that thing and how those pokemon live their lives, then the people in your party who found the story compelling capture some. Every few sessions you instead face off against a gym leader, to find out whether you've made progress. There's nearly 1000 pokemon species to have a Very Special Episode about, and 18 types for gym leaders to specialize in, so you're never going to run out of shit to riff off of. Eventually you find something else that's compelling to do and your GM forces it to work, setting and system be damned, same as when you try to do something other than a dungeon crawl in D&D.

[Dean]

Pokemon is interesting because it is a world exclusively composed of genre conventions. You cannot change a single one of their genre conventions because that is all that thing is. If you have cavalry riding Rapidashes it won't be Pokemon anymore, if you have Alakazam's running their own nations with their 6000 IQ's it won't be Pokemon, if a trainer punches their enemy or just sends out 4 pokemon at once it won't be Pokemon anymore. It is jenga tower entirely composed of immovable pieces and if you tug on a single one of it's conventions the whole thing becomes unrecognizable.

I do think you could make some kind of ttrpg that could appeal to Pokemon fans. Kids from the 90's are pretty old now. They could certainly handle someone bringing the rating up to Y-11 and reimagining the setting in such a way that people did ride Rapidashes and eat stuffed magikarps and still gain some joy out of hearing the Pidgey's cawing in the tree but they would be cawing and not saying their name over and over again and I recognize that that would be a hard out for some portion of the population.

What I will propose as the most interesting option available is to actually combine Pokemon and Avatar into a single product that could deliver you the best of both world.

I think Avamon would rule. Avatar is already a world with magical combo animals that have magic and teach their TM's to people. Pokemon being mashed up would make people aware that it won't be exactly what they've known in the past and then they could just get happy when Gyrados are the sea serpents. A world where trainer learn moves and battle but also have force-multiplying pets seems a perfect combination of the two worlds.

The Fire nation already rides lizard monsters, how much would it rule if it elites rode this.

And don't tell me that the Swamp people wouldn't be down to train up these

It would also deliver an in fiction reason for typed lineups. In Pokemon it makes no sense for people to have 3 different fire pokemon but if you're a fire martial artist who learns fire moves from your fire beasts you're absolutely going to want to have a Rapidash mount and a hunting Arcanine and a Charmander slinked over your shoulder. Cause they can each help you develop the styles your people have patterned after their abilities.

Masters would teach their disciples to raise the pets their kung fu was patterned after and grow strong with them. It's a world where you give a young lad a growlithe so that they may protect one another and develop their powers in tandem. Where everyone wants their beasts to become powerful and strong not because of pointless genre conventions but because everyone in the world is already fighting all the time and if you have a lazy Squirtle and your enemy is throwing boulders at you from the back of an Onyx you're gonna get killed.

[Foxwarrior]

Pidgey's cawing in the tree but they would be cawing and not saying their name over and over again

I was with you until this part, you totally lost me here.

[jt]

What? I thought every pokemon made weird electronic gameboy sounds.

[Username17]

If you have cavalry riding Rapidashes it won't be Pokemon anymore

Very wrong.



In the Pokémon video game, the monsters do all of the fighting and they do so in one on one or two on two battles and they each have only four moves and so on and so on. In the Pokémon expanded universe, anything fucking goes. In Detective Pikachu there's a scene with a bunch of Pokémon fighting a single human. In the cartoon movies you have Mewtwo blowing up a herd of Taurosi (or whatever the plural is) with a blast like in Akira. Anything you could imagine like Pokémon working regular jobs or Pokémon being put into military units or packs of Pokémon hunting together is legit part of the Pokémon media franchise in some capacity.

A Pokémon Role Playing Game is just a regular Role Playing Game where you accept that there are going to be a lot of monsters in town and also too that a lot of the monsters you're going to use are ones you recognize from children's media in the 90s. Drowzee is actually a Baku. But you recognize Drowzee and probably wouldn't recognize a Baku unless it was compared to a Drowzee.

-Username17

[maglag]

There's plenty of out-of-combat utility for Pokémon. Cut, Flash, Surf, Fly, for starters, then the games also have electric Pokémon powering machines and Erika making beauty products with the help of grass Pokémon.

In the anime indeed things gets a lot more crazy, there's even a school for teaching Chanseys how to be nurses.

I'm not the biggest Pokefan in the world. I played G1, G6, and some G7. The Pokemon anime, when I catch snippets of it, seems much better written than I remember it being, like Gargoyles or Transformers Animated. That said, I'm baffled that there are at least three completed or near-completed projects to convert the Pokemon setting to a TTRPG. Why?

• As paradoxical as it sounds, Pokemon fans aren't particularly interested in the Pokemon setting. It's not like Transformers or Star Wars where people go into the minutiae of the setting and seem interested in exploring every last corner of it. People just plain like to not think about the property in more than the shallowest ways possible.
  
  For example: going into the implications of Pokemon intelligence and how they interact with humans really skeeves people out. Partly because there's issues of racism and slavery, but also because if Pokemon are intelligent it implies some incredibly creepy behavior on the behalf of Pokemon, like the more intelligent Pokemon engaging what amounts to bestiality or lots of Pokemon being implied cannibals.

1-Canibalism is only eating your own species.
2-In the real world animals are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. Pigs for example are pretty far from mindless beasts. We still keep them in tiny cages and slaughter them in the millions just so we can stuff ourselves with bacon until we die.
3-Just like humans are actually animals, humans are actually Pokémon too. Lots of ghost Pokémon specifically "evolve" from humans, there's psychic-type humans with psychic powers (hi Sabrina), fighting-type humans (blackbelts) and in one of the official games there's the ancient legend where there was no distrinction whatsoever between Pokémon and humies (and as you know in an RPG every ancient legend is true).

[Username17]

According to certain... kinds... of fanfiction, you can catch humans in Pokéballs and then teach them moves.

According to Detective Pikachu, humans and Pokémon can get soul merged and soul swapped.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

While shit like using Magnemite to hack into a computer is fucking awesome, it also completely shits all over the game.

Here's a magnemite being used to unlock a door to a Rocket office:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvpAkFd0G9w


It's from the Pokemon Generations self contained story, it also features Machamps smashing through walls so police can get through

----


Pokemon catch and battle humans in the in-game fiction too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAinTo2nAsc


The Lucario Movie shows what life was like in the past, it's basically Dragon Quest:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjYu9xK ... 179537.jpg[/img]

[Iduno]

While shit like using Magnemite to hack into a computer is fucking awesome, it also completely shits all over the game.

Actually, the Porygon-line and Rotoms are the ones that can hack into things, not Magnemites. Magnemite is just a bunch of magnets, dude.

A bunch of magnets is enough to break a computer.

The first thing that comes to mind is you basically play a different RPG, only with Pokemans!! Each player gets two or three mons, people go about their business in teams of three to five, and you play Shadowrun or LotR or Bakuhatsu High with the caveat that all your narrative power comes from your critters rather than any skills or gadgets you might personally possess.

You have your Oddish use Sleep Powder to sneak into the Renraku labs, then have Magnemite hack the computer, until the scurity spiders show up and you have a team battle to escape with the macguffin.

You have your Dugtrio undermine the city wall until the town guard shows up with a bunch of Groudons and Sandshrews, have a team battle, followed by uruks pouring into or out of the city.

You have your Vaporeon and Charizard use Rain Dance and Sunny Day to ruin the Racing Club’s big tournament, provoking your rival to come after you with his team of Ninjasks and Aerodactyls, followed by the planet being attacked by a 100 foot tall Mudkip.

These all sound better than an RPG about Pokeman, where it's one person going around trying to be the best there ever was. It's tough to work 3 other people into that story.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

According to Detective Pikachu, humans and Pokémon can get soul merged and soul swapped.

-Username17

I know you're not fucking with me, but I am compelled to ask if you are fucking with me.
All the more reason for a Pokemon TTRPG to exist: You can eject stupid shit you don't like and only focus on the stuff that draws you to the franchise - which can be a lot of shit. Most of my regular players haven't actually played a Pokemon game since they were kids, but they still get into it for the reasons Frank mentioned. It's a regular TTRPG with more color-coded monsters running around.
I also don't have them say their names, because that's fucking stupid too.

A bunch of magnets is enough to break a computer.

Breaking a computer isn't the same as hacking it, but Ogrebattle has proven me wrong with a source, so I guess I'll eat shit today. I'm reminded of the time I argued with people about Geodude being able to levitate and they posted pictures proving me wrong after we debated about it for 3 days. Cartoon logic is always in effect.

These all sound better than an RPG about Pokeman, where it's one person going around trying to be the best there ever was.

That's why I prefer to play it as an RPG with Pokemon, rather than something strictly about them. They're still a huge focus, but it's not like in the games or anime where literally everything in the entire world is ZOMG POGEYMANZ?!

[jt]

A competent Pokemon system would tell you that Porygon can hack things, you can ride Rapidash, that Porygon is better at hacking than Magnemite, etc. It doesn't have to be consistent with any particular piece of Pokemon media - the various anime and manga adaptations aren't even consistent with each other - you just have to nail down enough that everyone playing has the same understanding of the world that they're operating in.

Geodude is portrayed as levitating in its in-game art but does not have the ability Levitate, so it's still affected by attacks like Earthquake. Yeah I don't know either. Also Levitate makes you immune to Ground-type attacks, which makes sense for Earthquake and Dig and doesn't make much sense for Mud Bomb and Bonemerang. I'd lean away from adhering to the game mechanics on this one.

[LR]

Here's a magnemite being used to unlock a door to a Rocket office:

Not so much unlocking as shorting the thing out and causing it to fail-safe. Hacking would be sniffing cards so that you can steal someone's credentials, this is a physical security problem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDl4AO4ancI

Still, Magnetite's magnets would be great entry tools and I'd expect every pen tester to have one on their belt as they break into Pokemon Box server rooms. Who wouldn't want a superconducting electromagnet they could fit in their pocket?

[Iduno]

Still, Magnetite's magnets would be great entry tools and I'd expect every pen tester to have one on their belt as they break into Pokemon Box server rooms. Who wouldn't want a superconducting electromagnet they could fit in their pocket?

That also explains why everyone carries cash.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

A competent Pokemon system would tell you that Porygon can hack things, you can ride Rapidash, that Porygon is better at hacking than Magnemite, etc. It doesn't have to be consistent with any particular piece of Pokemon media - the various anime and manga adaptations aren't even consistent with each other - you just have to nail down enough that everyone playing has the same understanding of the world that they're operating in.

Geodude is portrayed as levitating in its in-game art but does not have the ability Levitate, so it's still affected by attacks like Earthquake. Yeah I don't know either. Also Levitate makes you immune to Ground-type attacks, which makes sense for Earthquake and Dig and doesn't make much sense for Mud Bomb and Bonemerang. I'd lean away from adhering to the game mechanics on this one.

I swear I'll get around to all this stuff when we hit the Pokemon section of my review, but it does a decent job of distinguishing Pokemon like that. In PTU, Geodude actually has the Levitate ability, but it has a Levitate movement speed separate from that, since plenty of Psychic types float around, too. There's a "Groundsource" keyword for moves that specifically come out of the ground and there are optional rules to have those moves miss Flying pokemon, but not other Ground moves. Using keywords and tags and shit is probably the best way to go here, so you know that a Rapidash can carry 3 dudes and spit fire even if it doesn't have any Fire moves.

[Prak]

These all sound better than an RPG about Pokeman, where it's one person going around trying to be the best there ever was. It's tough to work 3 other people into that story.

Not really... the anime has "a protagonist" but it's always been more about a small group of protagonists. Sure, Ash wants to be the Pokemon League Champion (and actually kinda sucks at it), but Brock wants to be a pokemon breeder and goes along with Ash to get out of his house stuffed full of, like, 11 younger siblings and find a chance to get laid, and Misty initially just follows Ash because he trashed her bike and she wants him to replace it, it's pretty apparent that she also wanted to get out from under the shadows of her sisters and not be expected to be a gym leader.

A pokemon RPG doesn't need to be "made" into an ensemble cast product, because the anime already is one. Sure, the games are single player, but I'd argue that you'd want to look at the anime, movies and manga as primary source material over the video game.

[Darth Rabbitt]

This topic is hilarious if you have a friend that you’ve invited to gaming groups and the only types of TTRPGs that they actually get really involved in are Pokemon ones.