Early Concept Notes

Here are some of my early concept notes from September; getting ideas out of my head and down in type. A few of these have changed recently, but I'll share the more recent notes shortly.

1) It's going to be what's known to tabletop RPG players as a "hex crawl". The entire world map will be drawn out on a huge grid, with the party represented by a token/s on the board. To get around, you move the token a square, and then draw cards from a deck (called the Event Deck, or Travel Deck) to determine what, if anything, happens (wild pokemon, trainer battle, find item, weather change etc etc). Once the cards have been resolved, you move another square and repeat. I'm not sure if each player draws a card every turn, or the party as a whole draws 1 card, taking turns as to who draws it.

2) There may be different Travel Decks for different areas of the game (A Forest Deck might be loaded with more wild pokemon, a City Deck might have more items to find, an Ocean Deck may only have water pokemon etc etc).

3) Each player will have their own pokemon that they keep during the course of the campaign. I'm still deciding if experience is shared between all of a player's pokemon, if it's only given to the pokemon that battled, or if the player can choose which option to use.

4) Originally, I intended that each pokemon would have a mini 'character sheet' like traditional RPG's, and combat would play out much like it does in the video games; taking turns to attack with a certain move, and then rolling dice for damage.

Another option I've only just started tinkering with would be to have a card-game element to the combat instead. I thought about using the actual Pokemon TCG for combat, but decided I didn't like how limited and random it was. I like the idea though, and then I decided to try a system similar to Card Hunter, where each pokemon has it's own small deck of moves that you draw from in combat when using it. If you've played Card Hunter (and you should, it's a fun free browser game: www.cardhunter.com) you'll understand what I mean.

I think this will be fun, add a touch of randomness but not as much as the proper TCG, and add a bit of a deck-building component to the game, where players can customize each pokemon's move deck. It also means we can have things like TM's and HM's, which would be cards found in the Travel Deck added to the pokemon's move deck that you want to teach it to. The trick would be that a pokemon's move deck can only be so big, and so to learn new moves, you'd have to swap out old ones and decide what's going to be best to include. It's a great system, and I think it would be well suited to this game.

5) There'll still be a DM/GM (Dungeon Master/Game Master), who will play the role of wild pokemon, other trainers, gym leaders, as well as chime in at story points. I'd like to have, at particular spots on the map, a 'story point'. When the party go there, the DM has a little story prepared relating to that location that plays out much like an episode of the TV show, and is done in a more traditional way like we're all used to; kind of a 'mini D&D session' of an hour or so. They'd be spaced so the group would probably have a story point or two in each game session, and act to shake up the traveling as a place to aim for and investigate.

6) I want to use Pokemon from all generations, and I like the idea of choosing a starter randomly in a 'lucky dip' type deal. You get what you get and have to make the best of it. This would just be my own house rule though, other GM's running the game could choose their own method of distributing starters.

7) I'd like there to be different 'classes' (not only Trainer, but also things like Breeder, Ranger, Researcher etc.) that have different benefits attached. You choose what to be when you make your character.

8) I like how pokemon games take a long time to finish - it really feels like you're traveling across a whole region, and I want to capture this in the RPG. I want it to take a number of sit-down sessions to traverse the whole region - I want it to feel like an epic journey, rather than just a board game you finish in a few hours.

9) Like the show, I want wild pokemon to be fairly rare, and a big deal when you catch one. I really like the idea of having to make the best of what you can find, and forging an attachment to the ones you come across. It won't be easy for everyone to collect a full team of 6, let alone have boxes of randoms in the PC, and I think it'll be better that way, and make each one mean more. Again, this is just my own personal preference - other GM's could build the Travel Deck to include fewer or more wild pokemon encounters as they please.

10) I like the concept of the League from the show, where it's a big olympic-like tournament rather than just defeating 4 trainers. I'd like to make our League a mix of the two, where the winner of the tournament gets to challenge the current champion.

- Jamie