GM's can make up their own system for handing out starters, whatever they feel suits their campaign. I've decided that for the region I'm making, it is customary for budding trainers to choose a pokeball without knowing what's inside - sort of a 'lucky dip' kind of thing, but you can feel free to come up with whatever system you like.
The game will have two different sides to it; role-playing, and more traditional board gaming. The introduction to the game and selecting of starters is a good chance to get a bit of role-playing happening in the group, before they move on to the board game side of things.
Once your trainers have their starters, they'll head off on their adventure, and the game can begin.
The Board
My goal is for the board to be a map of the region, overlaid with a 1'x1' grid. You could use a region that already exists, or create your own. Erasable Battlemats used in D&D are a good tool for drawing your board, or you could get fancy and create one in something like Photoshop.
The game is played in turns, with the players traveling together as a group (represented by a token placed on the map). Along with the board, there is a Day/Night cycle counter, and a deck of cards called the Travel Deck, which contain events that can occur whilst traveling from one town to the next.
Here's a rough section of board I made, showing a route between two towns, to give you an example:
Turn Sequence
The group begins the game in their starting town. Each turn, the players complete the following:
- Advance the Day/Night cycle counter one space (in a total of 4 spaces, 3 day and 1 night. Using this scale, we can see the above route would take a total of 2 days to travel from one town to the next).
- Move the group token one square.
- If the square they enter is not a Story Point or Settlement, draw a card from the Travel Deck and resolve.
The players repeat this cycle for each square they move as they make their way around the map on their journey.
At this stage, things like tall grass in the above map are purely cosmetic. Whether the group walk on the path or in the grass, or whatever terrain the map may show, they will still draw a Travel Card each turn, and have the potential to encounter wild Pokemon and other events.
Town Movement
Once in town, the group shifts from board game mode into role-play mode again. Towns are mostly safe and secure places, and players can move about towns freely without adhering to the 1 square per turn movement rule or drawing Travel cards. They simply say where they'd like to go and what they'd like to do, and the group role-plays accordingly.
Story Points
Scattered across the board will be places called 'Story Points'. These squares are another role-play focused event, and should be named on the map (such as the "Strange Statues" in the example above), indicating that they are a place of interest the group may want to check out.
These points are places where GM's should feel free to flex their GMing muscles a little, and act as centrepieces to hang small adventures on, like those found in traditional RPG's, that would play out a little like an episode from the TV show. GM's can feel free to make story adventures as long or short as they like, but about an hour I think makes a good length so as not to take up the whole game session.
Using the "Strange Statues" example above, I might come up with a story adventure that involves a shrine the local townsfolk have built to a pair of Pidgeotto who protect the area. The townsfolk lay offerings of food at the statues daily for the Pidgeotto, though lately they have not been coming to eat. Also, the locals have noticed that Spearow and Fearow have become more of a problem, attacking travelers and stealing their crops. It's up to the group to find out why that is, and what's happened to the town's Pidgeotto protectors. It might turn out that a local thief has imprisoned the Pidgeotto so that his Spearow and Fearow can steal food from the town's farms unhindered, which he then sells back to them at a higher price. The group must then defeat the thief and save the day.
Regardless of the adventure, Story Points should always be something to look forward to, and the players should be excited about getting there and seeing what adventure awaits them. They also serve to break up the cycle of travel, and when you are designing your region you should aim to include a couple every day or so (3-9 squares).
So that about sums up how the game works, and how players travel around your chosen region. Next time, I'll go into more detail on the Travel Deck, how it works, and what it contains.
Until then,
- Jamie
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