Playing The Game: Travel Deck & Weather

Today I'll give you a quick look at how the Travel Deck works, as well has how weather affects the game.

Travel Deck
The Travel Deck is a deck of cards the GM builds to suit their campaign, and may rebuild several times to suit different areas of the region being explored if they so wish. The Travel Deck contains cards that determine what happens during the group's traveling.

The Travel Deck is where most of the action in the game comes from. Each turn, after the group moves a square outside a town or Story Point, the group draws a card from the Travel Deck to see what happens. I still have to playtest this mechanic, but GM's should feel free to impose their own rules on how cards are drawn (one per person in the group, one per group, players take turns drawing a card etc.), depending on what they want out of their Pokemon Journeys campaign.

Currently, these are the cards that can be found in the Travel Deck, with more still being developed:

- Wild Pokemon (Common)
- Wild Pokemon (Uncommon)
- Wild Pokemon (Rare)
- Trainer Battle (1v1)
- Trainer Battle (2v2)
- Team Battle (2v2)
- Team Battle (3v3)
- Team Battle (4v4)
- Find Item (Common)
- Find Item (Rare)
- Clear Run (Nothing happens)
- Pokemon Training (All current pokemon gain 10 x Lvl exp)
- Weather Cards (more on those in a moment)

I'd like to include a few more that either delay or speed up movement on the board, and possibly a card that allows the player to choose what sort of event occurs. Let me know if you have any other ideas that you think would work.

There is no set number of cards to include in the Travel Deck, nor specific numbers of each card type. The GM should decide on the size of the deck and the types of cards it contains, based around what sort of campaign they want to run.

As an example, I want wild Pokemon to be fairly rare in my campaign, as I want catching them to be a big, exciting moment rather than tripping over them whenever you walk through some grass. To that end, my Travel Deck will contain fewer wild Pokemon cards. As there won't be many wild Pokemon, I run the risk of my players being under-leveled, and so I'll need to include more Pokemon Training and Battle cards to make up for that. You may want plenty of wild Pokemon in your game, but few other Trainers, or any number of combinations - in Journeys, you'll have the freedom to customize the deck for your own needs.

Weather Cards
When I'm playing a video game or tabletop RPG, I love it when the weather changes - it just turns my crank. I find it makes the whole experience so much more immersive, and so I wanted to try and incorporate changing weather into Pokemon Journeys; both to aid in roleplay immersion but also to add some interesting mechanics like the video games do.

For the moment prior to playtesting, weather cards are incorporated into the Travel Deck, and may be drawn as normal. A weather card, however, does not simply get resolved and discarded, but stays in play until it is replaced or removed by another weather card, to show the changing weather.

Currently, the weather cards that have been decided on are:

- Clear Weather (Normal conditions)
- Sunny Weather (Grass type Pokemon may reroll their damage rolls)
- Rainy Weather (Water type Pokemon may reroll their damage rolls)
- Dry Weather (Fire type Pokemon may reroll their damage rolls)
- Bad Weather (Make camp for the night and discard current weather card)

Note that players may reroll their damage rolls - they are not forced to. However, if they do, they must take the second result, even if it's lower. The weather does not provide a straight boost to damage, but rather a gamble option for affected players.

The Bad Weather card takes effect when it is drawn, regardless of the time of day; the players are forced to make camp for the remainder of the day until the weather blows over, waking to a clear sky the next morning. It essentially acts as a reset for the weather.

I don't want to include weather benefits for every Pokemon type, nor do I want to make cards for every kind of weather condition imaginable, but just enough to offer some variation and a bit of immersion.

Others I'm considering are:

- Stormy Weather (Electric type Pokemon may reroll their damage rolls)
- Windy Weather (Flying type Pokemon may reroll their damage rolls)
- Cold/Snowy Weather (Ice type Pokemon may reroll their damage rolls)

Once again, the GM should feel free to include as few or as many different weather conditions in the Travel Deck as they like, to suit their own game.

Rebuilding the Travel Deck
GM's also have the option to rebuild the deck to suit different parts of the game. They may want to include more wild Pokemon in a certain area, and more Trainer Battles in another. Likewise, they may want to add and remove different weather conditions depending on where the players are in the region.

Along with Story Points, the Travel Deck will be the key to setting the theme and tone of your journey. It's your journey after all, I'm simply providing the tools for you to embark upon it.

Next time, we'll get to the stars of the show, the Pokemon, and I'll give you a look at the cards and how they work in the game.

Until then,

- Jamie