One of the big draws of Pokemon are the battles. I really wanted to make the battles great - keep the feel of the battles from the video game but amp it up another notch to make things more interesting for the tabletop.
The most obvious route was to use a dice-based system similar to D&D, just like we're used to. The creators of Pokemon Tabletop Adventures have already done a good job of converting all the moves over to dice-based damages and D&D-esque usage amounts (at-will, daily etc). It would save a lot of time and effort to simply use this system that's already in place, and one that we are already familiar with the mechanics of.
My goal was to try and shake things up a bit and introduce a card-based battling system, where all the moves would be made as cards, using the damage values and effects from the Tabletop Adventures system, and Trainers could collect a 'move deck' over the course of their adventure from which they could 'build' different move-sets for their Pokemon each battle. This would add a cool deck-building element and another layer of strategy, where the trainer/player would have to go through their moves and pick 4 that a chosen Pokemon could use that they thought would be best for the coming battle. I was pretty sold on the idea.
The big snag I've now hit with this system is prepping a play test to try it out, by giving 6 players a random lvl 10 Pokemon (so they have a full set of 4 moves), and having them battle each other. The problem is that with just these 6 Pokemon, they share 24 moves between them. That's 24 cards that need to be made and printed out, just to cover these 6!
I opened Google and typed in "just how many different moves are there in Pokemon?" Turns out there's over 460 moves in total in the Pokemon games. That's 460 cards that would have to be printed and kept, and that's just to have one copy of each move! How many of the 600+ Pokemon know Tackle? Or Scratch? It's easy to see that, while in theory this system would be a fun addition, practically... well, not so much.
So for now, I've resigned myself to using the Pokemon Tabletop Adventures' dice-based system. The fact that it's dice-based still brings that exciting element of randomness and uncertainty to the table that RPG players know all too well, and it's a solid system I know will work.
I'd still like to find a way to put my own spin on the system - I'll ponder it over the next week or so and see if anything pops into my head. For the meantime though, we won't be retiring those RPG dice just yet.
- Jamie
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