Pokemon Journeys - Minor Playtest

Currently, the very first proper playtest for Pokemon Journeys is scheduled for this coming weekend, and I'm very excited about finding out what everyone thinks of the system, seeing what works and what doesn't.

My good friends Chris and Louise from Parental Guidance came by this weekend, and we decided to have  a small, informal playtest of the game, to give them a look at how it was all progressing, and also so I could see it in motion with my own eyes before the upcoming major playtest.

I built a small 20 card Travel Deck, drew a simple map on a blank D&D Battlemat, and then we made some test characters. Louise played as a Breeder, and started with Bulbasaur, whilst Chris chose to be a Researcher and started with Charmander. Each Pokemon began at lvl 5.

The map had 10 squares between the two towns, so it would take the pair a little over 2 days to get there.

Our first playthrough went very smoothly - probably too smoothly. A lot of Clear Run cards were drawn in succession, despite my thorough shuffling. I used my List of randomly generated Pokemon I made beforehand to select trainer Pokemon from when Trainer Battle cards were drawn, and Chris' Charmander destroyed the only Wild Pokemon they came across with some big damage rolls.

It was really good to see the excitement when a 2v2 Team Battle card was drawn, where they got to battle together against a pair of opponents. I think these cards are going to be a real hit with players. 

We "teleported" back to the first town and tried it again. This time, the journey was far more arduous. Louise came across a wild Bouffalant that pasted her Bulbasaur before charging off, meaning they had to backtrack to the starting town to heal up. Upon trying again, a wild Pinsir attacked Louise, and Bulbasaur bit the dust again, forcing them to scurry back a second time. I was having the players roll to randomly determine wild encounters, and it was just unlucky that Louise rolled the two most powerful Pokemon I had generated.

Chris also blew another wild encouter when his Charmander destroyed an Azurill. As well as downing an opposing trainer's Pokemon in a single hit, Charmander quickly earned the nickname 'Killer'.

We got to test out the different weather cards, and that system worked well. Dry Weather (Fire Types may re-roll their damage rolls) feature predominantly, and Chris made plenty of use with it with Charmander. It wasn't until after the game had finished that he realised he could also have used Dry Weather to reroll Charmander's big damage rolls to make them lower, thus not completely devouring the wild encounters he'd had. Chris thought this was a great mechanic.

With the deck empty and all the wild encounters having either been too powerful or eaten by Charmander, we finished the playtest with their starters having just reached lvl 8, and we decided to give each of the players an extra lvl 5 Pokemon (Chris got Rattata, Louise got Spearow) and have a friendly match against each other.

Chris managed to pull the win after his Rattata went down to Bulbasaur, and finished off both of Louise's Pokemon with his increasingly scary killer Charmander.

We had a long discussion after the game about what worked, what didn't, what we liked and what we thought needed changing. Both Chris and Louise loved the game, and actually thought it was almost perfect as it was, with only minor changes needed. Even though Louise got done in twice by two powerful wilds, it turned out that they actually enjoyed that, Chris saying that it added a real feeling of adventure and danger to the game; "sometimes you run through to the next town without a hitch, and sometimes you get beat and scurry back to your mum's house with your tail between your legs. That's just how it goes sometimes." They pointed out that Louise could have chosen to run from those powerful encounters, but she took them on and paid the price.

I was wrapped to hear that the game was not only playable, but enjoyable in it's first draft. For me as the GM, it was easy to run, as I only had to get involved to play the role of wild and trainer encounters, or dish out items that had been found. All of this came from my list that I'd made beforehand, so there was very little looking up stats or the like for me.

The battling system worked really really well. Rolling to see who sends out first really added a great element, and the rest played out very naturally from there.

There were really only 2 issues that cropped up during the game, and a few things that caused discussion on what should happen. They were:

- Money. In Pokemon Journeys, battles against Trainers do not grant money in the way the games do. Instead, the player makes a wager before the battle. If they win, they get that much money. If they lose, they lose it. In theory we loved this system, but in practice it led to a quick money shortage for the players, especially with items like Pokeballs and Potions still costing the in-game equivalent. We resolved this problem by granting the player double their wager if they won, but still losing their wager if they lost, which the three of us thought balanced things out much better.

- Damage. I've said it before, but the damage values we were using from Pokemon Tabletop Adventures was mostly a mess. I'll be working this week on a new damage system, converting Power ratings from the in-game moves into dice, that I'll talk about in another post, which I hope will make things a lot more balanced.

- When a wild Pokemon beat Louise, we discussed whether another player could jump in and try to continue battling it and capture it. In the end, we decided against this, as it meant the defeated player could do all the work and get it to a capturable state, for someone else to just jump in and steal. We resolved that if a player's Pokemon are defeated by a wild one, it runs away.

- We decided to alter the Capture Rates of the Pokemon to a d10 system instead of a d100 system, by simply dividing the CR's by 10.

- We discussed whether a player could borrow Pokeballs from other players if they ran out trying to capture a wild Pokemon. We didn't resolve whether they could borrow one from another player and that's it, or if they just couldn't altogether, but we did resolve that item swapping was something the group could do when they made camp, but not during the journey.

- We decided that the players in the group taking turns to draw a card from the Travel Deck each turn was the best way to go, rather than the group as a whole drawing a card and deciding on who gets it.

- We came up with a great system where, when it's a player's turn to draw a card, they can choose to either resolve it themselves, or pass it on to another group member. This way, if say Louise has 4 captured Pokemon and has found 3 items, and Chris has been unlucky and only drawn weather or Clear Run cards, if Louise draws another Wild Encounter she can choose to pass that to Chris instead.

That's about all from our little test run. I'll be sure to give you all a more detailed look at our major playtest this coming weekend.

Until then!

- Jamie

Building a Character - Traits

Ok, lets talk character building.

As we all know, the focus of any Pokemon game is firmly on the critters themselves - the trainer mostly acts as a vessel to transport the action from one place to the next.

Other systems, such as Pokemon Tabletop Adventures, have really gone to the extreme to make the trainer a more integral part of the experience; with classes, their own stats and a full blown character sheet and progression system. With their rules, the trainers themselves can even get in on the action and punch or kick Pokemon right alongside their battling companions, taking their own actions amongst a traditional Pokemon battle.

That might sound awesome to some people, but for me.... ehhhhh...

I'm going for a more traditional approach, but I'd like to make the trainer more than a faceless, nameless carrier. There'll be the standard RPG fair like name, age etc. but I'd like them to be able to do things outside of battle if they want, and have some individuality above simply being a boy or a girl, without getting too in-depth and complicated. 

To this end, I've given player characters a set of 3 basic stats, called "Traits" with a possible fourth I'm considering. These stats will be used much like Skills in D&D, where if a player would like to do something, they would need to roll a check against the matching trait. They are:

- Physical
- Knowledge
- Social

- Luck/Tactics?

Physical determines how athletic a character is, and is used for things like jumping, running, climbing - much like the Athletics, Acrobatics and Endurance skills in D&D, all rolled into 1. Any sort of above-normal physical activity the player wants to try will use this trait. (Eg: Climbing up over a high wall to escape).

Knowledge determines, surprise surprise, how knowledgeable the character is. This trait will be used whenever the character wants to know something, or determine some information. Similar in D&D to Arcana, History & Religion. (EG: A character is trying to determine how old an artifact is, or why a Pokemon is acting in a certain way).

Social is used for interacting with NPC's. The D&D equivalents would be Diplomacy, Insight, Intimidate, Bluff - all of these sorts of activities will use the Social skill. (EG: Bartering with shop keepers, or convincing an NPC to give them some information).

The last trait I'm considering is Luck or Tactics. Unlike the other traits, Luck would be used in a battle to try and perform some sort of creative, 'outside the box' maneuver. The attempt would require a Luck/Tactics check to see if it succeeds. This would be used to encourage and enable some of the more creative tactics seen in the show, rather than simply attacking back and forth (EG: Having your Dewgong use Ice Beam on a pond in which your opponent's Goldeen is swimming, or having Weezing use Smokescreen to block out the sun to weaken your opponent Venusaur's Solar Beam). The effects of these sorts of tactics would be left to the GM to govern, though as a rule I would say that any attempt to use Luck/Tactics could not result in direct damage, but merely change the conditions or environment of a battle. I'd have to play test this one before deciding on whether or not to include it though.

Here's a quick example of the primary 3 traits being used in-game:

GM: 'So all of your Pokemon have fainted, and this Houndour is now glaring at you with all the hate in the world.'

Chris: 'Well, I'm making a run for it! Back to that tree everyone's hiding in!'


GM: 'Okay. You can hear the Houndour nipping at your heels as you go, and can feel the air getting hotter as it prepares to attack just as you reach the tree. Let's have a Physical check to see if you manage to get up there - not a hard one, climbing a tree isn't too difficult.' *GM quietly sets the check at 10*

Chris: *rolls a d20 and adds his Physical trait* 'I got a 12 total. Is that enough?'

GM: 'Alright, you scurry on up that tree as a wash of flames misses you by inches.'

Chris: 'Thank god.'

Louise: 'Well, I told you not to go down there! Am I able to try and figure out why the Houndour is so stirred up?'

GM: 'Sure, let's have a Knowledge check.'

Louise: *rolls a d20 and adds her Knowledge trait* 'Bummer, an 8.'

GM: 'Yeah, you're not too sure what it's problem is. But luckily you don't have to wait in the tree long before you hear a young girl's voice, shouting "Houndour! Houndour!" It sounds like she's looking for it.'

Louise: "It's over here! Come and call this thing off us!"

GM: 'A girl with dark hair in a beanie comes into view through the branches, glancing between you and the furious Houndour. She seems disturbed, and asks "What's going on? What have you done to Houndour?" '

Chris: 'We didn't do anything you nut case! We were trying to get to a Pokemon Centre and this thing ran up the road and attacked us! Call it off!'

GM: 'Well then, let's have a Social check.'

Chris: *rolls a d20 and adds his Social trait* 'Bam, 18!'

GM: ' "Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry!" the girls says, before producing a pokeball and returning her Houndour. "It's ok, you can come down now" she calls. "I'm sorry, a strange man bumped into me at the park and knocked me over, and Houndour just took off after him. I've been looking for my Pokemon ever since and I thought you might have been the stranger" What would the two of you like to do?'

Hopefully that's given you a good indication of how Traits work. If you've ever played D&D, it'll be very familiar, though still simple and easy enough for newcomers to pick up.

Next time, we'll take a look at the class system. Until then!

- Jamie