Catching pokemon in a pen and paper game

Related to this and this. If I am using tamed monsters as a magic system, there has to be a way to catch them. Or not? I am very confused about how to do it. 

On one hand I have the analogic ways:

Getting into the wilderness (aka the tall grass)  until a monster pops up, then catching them with a pokeball equivalent. This works perfectly on the videogames, but I see how it can become tedious on a tabletop. Grinding a place to find one pokemon that one player happens to want makes all the other players who dont have anything to do at that place just stop and watch the show. If I do it too easy so the pokemon is catched fast, its almost the same as giving the player the monster straight. 

An even more analogic version of this is if the monsters are not catch with pokeballs, but convinced to follow a leader by actually roleplaying and discovering the monster's motivations or personality. This is great to have sometimes, but having it as the main point of the game for sorcerers and not for the rest of the classes might make them absorb a lot of game time that is not spent doing teamwork. It is also difficult, as it might seem easy to bond with a pikachu in game, but other monsters can be a challenge for the GM to roleplay in this manner.

A middle option is to make the player roll their pokeball or do their talk no jutsu once per downtime or so, allowing retrys once some time has passed.

The more boring option is just to give the players pokemon on level ups just as if they were magician spells. They can select from a random heap of them (whatever invocation scrolls are available on the local library, or whatever local pokemon are on the nearby grass), maybe adding any monster they met on their adventures to the list of possibles. This removes the need of doing all the work in character, though still the first options can be used for legendary or special pokemon. But something feels bad about taking from players the experience of catching their rattattas.

This opens the problem of that players catching their pokemon diegetically advance more than those spending their level ups on them. Its easy to fix, though, by making those diegetical ones "temporal" until the next level up, and then requiring the player to spend the level up "keeping" them just as if they were their downtime catch. This can apply from cosmic monsters who manifest as spells to a plain dog who is an animal companion. 

As an addendum, there is something I don't like about Naruto's summoning: Servant animals are supposed to be someplace when you just "teleport" them into battle or whatever. This is ridiculously easy to break by PCs in order, for example, to send real-time messages through them as they dispell the summoning; and you run into the risk of summoning a sleeping dog at night or summon a giant toad at the moment he was sitting on the toilet taking a shit,

 

 

 

 

 

Into the Odd + Pokemon = Into the Oddish

Something I found out that somebody else is doing,

 

 The only page I have seen from the rules. I love everything about this. 

 

 this third party blog is recruiting people to write the whole 151 pokemon + all the moves. I'll try to contribute if I get some time

Naruto + Pokemon

 

 

The little black dot in the head of the frog that is in the head of the other frog, its a human.

 

My untested greatest rpg project of all time is to replace the whole magic system of my D&D clone with something parallel to pokemons: Wizards catching and collecting monsters that cast or are the spells, but at the same time create a bond with them. But at the same time, having the fighter class a viable and interesting choice.

After beating Koga, the ninja trainer at Fuchsia City Gym at Pokemon: Team Rocket, he says something like he had used techniques that were 400 year old. That got me thinking on how the relationship with pokemon was back then, in a feudal japan type world. Which is very close to my thing. 

 

 

Then I realized that Naruto could have become this very easily. In a different world, the Naruto anime went mostly the same until the Chuunin exams, and then derived fully into its "mon" facet: Kakashi's dogs, Jiraiya's toads; everybody's hawks, snakes, monkeys, etc. 

But I would have taken it further: Making every ninjutsu & genjutsu technique (that means: every technique that is not purely martial) some kind of summon; and that includes rasengans, illusions and shadow replications, personified with a little monster that actually does the thing for its master. Sharingans and Rinnegans could be reframed as family "spirits" that serve a clan or maybe keep them as genetic privileges, why not. You even have the bijuus working like that already, filling the setting's slot for legendary pokemon, with the steel type pokemon being the ninjas themselves; filling the slot that pokemon never tackles: Is there space for human fighters in a pokemon game?

I mean; I love Naruto. Gaara and Orochimaru are probably my favs. But how much better would be the series with 80% less Pain and Great ninja wars, and replacing it with mon catching and training, to be the very best like no one ever was? The pokemon entries on this blog are probably not over. Stay in tune.

 

 EDITED: I've been thinking on how to allow pokemon to ninjas while still having "non-magical" fighters in the world, be it as players or as NPCs if their gameplay is not interesting enough.

1. Pokemon are very hard to find for the common person. They are not physical animals, but more spiritual entities from another plane. If you start with one, it means that is has a some kind of contract with your clan (this casually also puts emphasis on the clan aspect of the ninjas). This pokemon is rolled at random from a list of starters.

2. When you level up as a ninja, you have the choice of, instead of raising speed, strenght or whatever attributes you have, studying your village's pokemon scrolls. This will give you access to a new pokemon at random that you can pick if you like it, or level up the one you already have. 

3. Certain NPCs will introduce you to new pokemons if they like you. Old ninjas might want to tell you about their own, or a mystical girl of the mountains may talk good about you to the local Kami. When you roll to pick a random pokemon, you can choose the random one or any of those introduced to you through the adventure. Normally, ninjas will only reveal pokemon to other ninjas of their own or allied villages. Sometimes, Pokemon will appear in your way by themselves, even searching for you if they want to "get XP" through being used by a worthy caster.

4.  Pokemon are summoned through hand seals, because it is aesthetic and fitting. Pokemon may be physically present as "animals" but most of the time, only some of their aspects will be visible (feathers, fire, snow, etc). Sometimes they will be channelled through the body of the caster.  If the hand-seal thing is a upgradeable skill, it is only natural that more martial characters such as samurai don't invest on it. 

5. Staves as magical tools can work as a symbol of status before pokemon, just like a king's scepter. They only work after a downtime period of attunement, and are useful mostly for powering up spells that are "shot". It makes normal for ninjas that use spells on target:self to forfeit wants altogether, even more so if they difficult things such as climbing trees or keeping stealth. 

 

 

gaara and his sandshrew

 

 

Pokemon and Worldbuilding

I am playing Dragonsden's Pokemon: Team Rocket Edition again. Its a fan game made by a Spaniard but I think its becoming translated into english already. It might be the greatest pokemon game ever made. This is the pitch:

You start the adventure as just another recruit on the Inta Island headquarters, at Archi7, with the intention of ascending little by little into the Team Rocket organization. Yoy must fulfill succesfully the missions assigned by your superiors. 

The story unfolds in the same timeline than Red's and Blue's adventurers (the MCs of gen 1 pokemon) and, given that you will be sent to Kanto, you will be able to witness their stories from the perspective of a Team Rocket's member, and everything that happened on the backside, keeping the canon from the original games intact but adding a surprising depth into the lore.

You soon find that the Team Rocket, while still being criminals and Pokemon thieves, are at the core a patriotic resistance from Kanto, resisting an invasion of the Lance, a warlord from Johto, and their Elite 4 who invaded the region using their pseudolegendary Dragonites, and you can feel first hand the campaign of hate and the media manipulation they use trying to paint Giovanni's Team Rocket as crazy terrorists (If you were a vaccine-skeptic person by covid times you'll know what i mean)

If the plot is not enough to sell it to you, the pokemon-training part is awesome: you can potentially capture basically 99% of pokemon of the first 4 generations and fully visit Kanto, Johto and Hoenn. This is my current team:

 

This game really shows how good pokemon worldbuilding is. We don't speak enough of how crazy its premises are:

* A world where there are no animals beyond a very specific number of species, most of which are evolutions of each other, and a great number of them are legendary and not really seen around. 

* Pokemon can be so powerful that there are no arms race between countries. No guns, tanks, nukes or even more primitive weapons: There is no need of them when you can just train a worm into a Beedrill and make it fight for you. Everything in Kanto, from the small to the big, is settled by combats, and all combats are fought by pokemon. A government getting hold of Mewtwo is the equivalent of the race for the Nuclear Bomb.

* In a sense, pokemon work as local fauna, flora, workforce, weaponry, pets and shinto gods. Everything and everyone in the setting has a different relationship with pokemons. Every city has a pokemon something: a museum, a safari zone, a pokemon burial yard. 

See this video if you want to see all the types of pokemon trainers of gen 1, or just marvel on how artists could make peak 56x56 pixels pictures with 4 colors. If you are like me (a worldbuilding ultra geek) you can spend hours thinking on how each of the random trainers represent an alignment chart of personality x strate of society, which defines their lifestyle and which pokemons they get:

Bugcatchers are kids trying to get pokemons in their nearby forest. I like to think that, given that bug type pokemon are strong against dark and psychic, those kids can defend their homesteads of evil Sneasels, Hypnos and Kadabras. Some bugcatchers will stay sheltered or forego pokemon hunting as adults, others will attempt to get a Pinsir or a Scyther, but most will switch to another type as they grow up. 

Swimmers strike to me as some sort of 60s surfers, living in the coastal areas by and for the sea. Sailors are also water-pokemon users, which reminds me that while there are cruises available, there are no sight of cars. Kanto is a good example of a non-globalized world where people lives near their workplace, and travelling is done by bike and for fun. I don't think planes are really needed either, when important persons can teach FLY to their pidgeottos.

Bikers and Team Rockets are the organized criminals, the former using poison/fight pokemons such as weezing or mankey, and the latter using their signature rattatas/zubat combo. As revealed in the game i'm playing, they pretend to be lamer than they are as a way to gain advantage over the elite 4. As Giovanni says: "you cannot fight what you don't know it exists"

Mountaineers (geodudes and onixs) are the common country man who loves Lynyrd Skynyrd. Blue collars become engineers (magnemites and voltorbs) in more industrial zones. Fishermen complete the middle class triad. The most drunk of them talk about the magikarp they will never evolve, the most level headed about where and when to find more (or less) level 19 tentacools at this time of the year.

Those self called Cool Trainers (endless nidorinos) represent the snob, against the true Gentleman's Arcanines and Manectrics. The Nerd will get their personal pokemon waifu (usually Slowpokes) for personal fulfillment instead of elitism. 

Maybe its just me, but I see many people at the street who could be the Gambler. Those old men with a couple of poliwags or wasted junkies with a meowth who should be taken away by the pokemon welfare; trying to get all or nothing in a street combat. One, trying to recover the spirit of his younger days; the other, some coins for some Silph-manufactured crack.  

Which leads me to one of the greatest pillars of the setting: Scientists. Wherever you go, under a very thin veil of innocence, they are doing massive pokemon-related shit. Cloning Articuno, Creating Mewtwo and creating countless waste (Dittos) in the process, creating all types of pokemon steroids, resurrecting fossils, inventing the pokedex or better types of pokeball, or closing the gap between science and parapsychology with the silph scope. I like to think that, just as they invented the teletransporter tiles, Escape Ropes really work as teletransporters in-setting. The clash of nature/divine vs science/manmade is a heavy underlying theme through all the games.

Karatekas, who use machops and hitmonlees, are beautiful to have. You never ever see a man vs man (or man vs pokemon) fight in all the game. I understand it so that no man can match the fighting skill of those fight pokemons, yet they still practice karate to hone their spirit, strenght and skills. True spiritual man that seek for enlightment and possibly get inspired by the energy of their pokemon companions. 

The spiritual representation continues on the Channelers at Lavender Town. It is refreshing to see that the game cares to show you that there exist death rites and beliefs in this world for men and beasts alike. They double up as goth girls, making the world become suddently much more interesting. Also, see this note on how Erika, the plant gym leader, was probably destined originally to be a ghost trainer or a ghost itself.

 

If I was a real person on Kanto, however, I'd probably be a Bird Keeper. They strike me as sort of a middle ground between a complete outcast and a functional life. Fearow is probably my favorite pokemon: its not just beautiful, but also a real (glass) cannon, a true sweeper if you can manage to never let your opponent get a turn

Interesting how policemen trainers carry growlithes for protection instead of guns or batons. I like to think that when they carry a random haunter or pikachu, they do it because they are on a special mission, so they are not easily targeted by a water-user criminal. 

As a wrap up, I'd say that all this examples paint a world in which the common people is very connected to nature, and most of them live meaningful lives pursuing their passions. You might not have noticed conscioulsy yet but now you just did. I will probably expand on pokemon-related ideas this month, because I am a huge pokemon nerd.

As another wrap up, just some quote that I might extend on the future: any worldbuilding is not great just for what the world shows, but for the stories and explanations it allows you to make. 

 

World of Dungeons: Pokemon Spirit Combat

In World of Dungeons, magic is done primarily by summoning spirits. Yet these are the only rules present for it. Wondering how I could expand it, and mostly, wanting to define some example spirits for a list, I ended up wanting to turn magic into Pokemon-style combat. As such, spirits should have a list of 1 to 5 abilities that provide either firepower (against other spirits or the wizard's enemies), defense (same) or some utility (MOs in pokemon, utility spells in all rpgs). 

Spirits are usually minor spirits, not named or unique (a rule that can be broken at any moment); some actually seek for a wizard in order to "level up" or spend their excess energy; others are too dumb to know they are being catched. Lawful-aligned spirits might want to help their own, while chaotic demons will take fun in corrupting their wielder. 

The template for spirits in the pokedex should be something like:

NAME: generic name for the spirit, but you can rename your own, why not?
LORE:  The most important points are: habitat, a common way to make contact in order to "catch" it, and its usual mood. The latter can influence how the spirit behaves on partial successes and failures.
ATTACK#1 (maybe something useful at low level)
ATTACK#2 (the rest of the attacks are learned in order)
ATTACK#3 (though sometimes there might be a choice in the order) 
ATTACK#4 (mostly on through the middle progress)
ATTACK#5 (the idea is to put the most gamebreaking ones at the end)

I had this idea that, when you command your spirit to do something (roll 2d6+mod) and get a partial result/failure, the attack may be at random. Roll 1d6 and if you roll over your intended #attack, it happens. Else, the spirit may do the rolled attack or just act on his nature.

The easiest leveling up method for pokemons spirits is to have them grow when their summoner does: each level up of the caster, he can/must level up a spirit instead of getting some or all their HP (actual amount to be discussed). This also sort of fixes the fact that fighters progress the same as wizards in World of Dungeons.

An important note on spirit combat is that spirits do not die when defeated: they are debilitated. They don't even track hp: Instead they have a resistance value: if they are damaged by that amount, they are "stunned" for a round. If they are damaged for double that amount, they are defeated and need to rest. Damage and armor work as normal, but spirit attacks have types (electric, holy, fire, ice, etc), and spirits have resistances and weaknesses to those types (this means less, more or maybe no damage)

The next entry will probably be some spirit prototypes.The more I think on this project, the more I see that this whole blog was pointing towards it since the beginning. (even these ff8 GFs tie in here somehow)

 

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art by Suzuki Sarunobu

related (in my head) bonus: on the origins of the Miko

The origin of the Miko dates back to the end of the Jomon period (-14,000 to -300 BC) when women shamans entered into convulsions and trances to transmit the messages of the deities. Over time, they grew in importance, performing religious services and taking charge of various political and social activities.

From the Nara era (710 - 794), the political powers of the archipelago never stopped trying to regulate the activity of the Miko, to both control it and prevent abuse.

During the Sengoku period (1477 - 1573), the institution of the Miko also suffered from the chaos of the country and many priestesses brightened up in the country, becoming "arukimiko" - literally, "itinerant Miko" and exercising activities close to prostitution.

It was during the modern era, from the Edo period (1603 - 1868) to the Meiji era (1868 - 1912), that their role was gradually formalized, the practice of shamanism being prohibited under the Tokugawa while the imperial restoration prohibits any spiritual activity. 

The Miko that populate Shinto shrines today is easily recognizable. They wear a red hakama, the chihaya (white kimono top with wide cuffs), Japanese sandals, and quite often a hanakanzashi, a flower ornament that serves as a headdress.

They take care of keeping the shrine shop, offering omikuji, helping with the maintenance of the shrine, assisting the kannushi (Shinto priests in charge of the shrine) as well as performing the traditional dances, known as "Miko-mai".
 
It is often young virgin girls who hold these jobs, in the form of volunteer work or part-time work. They usually leave him when they get married.

There are several types of Miko, three categories if we follow the ethnologist Kunio Yanagita:

    jinja miko ("shrine miko"), the miko who participate in dances and rituals
    kuchiyose miko ("miko medium"), the miko who speak for the dead
    kami uba ("woman of the gods"), the miko in charge of the worship of the deities

The Miko has become, like other ancient symbols of the country, elements of Japanese popular culture. Often presented in manga with a broom in hand in shrines, they have the stereotypical figure of being temperamental and fierce.

 

 

 

Schools of magic

image: twitter - @ahruon

From the gamist point of view, there are plenty reasons to divide magic into colors in an RPG

- increased replayability

- increased difference between various PC casters

- increased customization and sense of identity. Say that novice wizards start with one color, expert can add a second and masters can add a third That makes for organic character customization which comes up through gameplay, not at character creation. Much more if you pair it with all or some spells being "found" in-game.

- different types of wizards build world. Factions, tensions, zones on the map that belong to ones or others. The whole Kanto is built over making zones for each pokemon type, but the same can be said about Ravnica.

- the opportunity to create different legendary spells or magic items tailored to specific types, which can be quested for by their respective PCs. This type of "item hunting" is one of the best things you can have when you play a sandbox.

And, lets face it, I want to create something inspired by Pokemon Magic since ages. It's one of the best examples of good gameplay-oriented worldbuilding in history, and there is a lot to steal from it.

After thinking a lot about this,  I think that the correct number of schools for my project should be around four or five in the book, with around 10 spells each (lets say: 6 basic, 2 expert and 2 legendary). But instead of closing them in a wheel (as MTG does) keep it open so one could create custom schools or spells around any concept one should want (chronomancy, technomancy, etc. Sense of taste not included) while still being compatible with the existing lists. As I was doing my research, I found out that the uneven GLOG does "in spirit" much of what I am striving to do, but of course, I am going to do it my way anyways. 

So, first of all, lets see some examples of magic schools portrayed elsewhere.

You got eight of them in post-3e D&D: abjuration, alteration, conjuration, divination, enchantment, illusion, invocation, and necromancy. This particular case is interesting because types are defined mostly around their "role" in game: alteration and illusion are suited for adventuring tricks, conjuration and invocation are more suited for combat, with necromancy having a very defined use. To put it in a way, wizards are much more "pigeon holed" in what they can or cannot do.

Pokemon, on the other hand, is divided by theme (lightning, plant, water, etc) but the role of every theme is mostly the same: beat the other guy down. 

Magic the Gathering's five colors fits nicely between both examples: Colors have a solid definition in theme, and while all of them can take you to "zero life" they play wildly differently. And while they have limitations and specializations, they feel like they are built around a theme in-game and not around utility in a design room as 3e D&D does.

Ideally I want to conceive five wizard schools and try not to rip off MTG straight in the process. Five is a curious number to base something, as there are much lesser correspondences than with the number four (four directions, four elements, four seasons, four quadrants on an X/Y graph); though it is used on chinese systems (earth-metal-wood-water-fire) or japanese ones (wind-fire-water-earth-void). Also japanese use a five season calendar that divides summer into a rainy and a dry season.

So, to begin with, here is a table in which (you/I) can roll up some wizard schools. Your school spell list gets one spell for each type below, but for one that is unknown to them (roll). Two other types get one and two extra spells respectivelly, for a total of 10 spells. A school with three types of offensive spells is likely to be a very quarreling faction, while one that focus on alter the self or alchemy will look more like a sect of cultivators.

1 offensive (damage + certain status alterations)
2 healing (damage and or status alterations, including death)
3 divination (prophecy, ESP, commune-style questions, etc. Tapping into the "hidden" side of everyday things, such as travelling through mirrors or speaking with animals, also goes here)
4 summoning (other entities, forces or objects)
5 enchanting (alter things and people, also non-violent combat moves such as sleep)
6 altering the self (transformation or other power ups)
7 alchemy (preparing potions or other consumables, probably buffed in uses to compete with instant spells)
8 protection (any kind)

Now, roll two or three times for the themes of the school. These will help you give form to the spell list, and hint which forces or mythological animals power your advanced spells. Just forget for a while that these are the official pokemon types.

1. Fire
2. Water
3. Grass
4. Electric
5. Ice
6. Fighting
7. Poison
8. Ground
9. Flying
10. Psychic
11. Bug
12. Rock
13. Ghost
14. Dark
15. Dragon
16. Steel
17. Fairy
18. Normal

Suit yourself to choose what each of this words mean. Fairy in the pokemon game is used mostly as mind-alteration (which make more sense on the Psychic type IMHO) but it can be interpreted in a more open way and make it about fate, bending space and time and other works of elves and demigods. It feels natural to expand Ghost into necromantic/exorcist territory, while type: Normal is probably best used as representing animals and other beasts (druidic style)

Now roll twice for your thematic colors

1. Red
2. Blue
3. Yellow
4. Orange
5. Purple
6. Brown
7. Black
8. Green
9. Pink
10. Indigo
11. White
12. Emerald
13. Lavender
14. Turquoise
15. Gold
16. Silver
17. Bronze
18. Cyan
19. Magenta
20. Go monochromatic. You can always choose this instead of any result. If this is your only result, roll again.

EDIT: link to Dont worry, I've got a Sword where the author has worked on the same topic.

EDIT 2: 8 Schools of Magic by Reckless Dweomer

source (a game called wizards of unica)

initiative without rolls

 

Happy new year! it feels like its been a long time without posting. Or maybe its just my feeling. This blog has been boosted like x 10 in visitors since Alex Schroeder mentioned me in his blog (its not like I had many before lol) and I should be making only hIgH qUaLiTy posts from now on. 

I want to take an entry to talk about my initiative houserule, and why I like it so much.

Basically, unless there is surprise, initiative goes to the side whose has the single member with more max HP, and only in case of a tie I randomize it.

Additionally to this, I don't do the "one side acts, then the other side acts" thought it would work perfectly I guess. I complicate it a little further by making the side who acts choose one member which acts (for the monsters, the GM chooses) and then, after the action, a member of the other side acts; and this goes on until everyone involved has taken its turn. Arrows and Spells can be shot reactivelly (spells require an armor-based roll to work in time) but doing so it consumes the turn of the shooter/caster.

I've been playing like this in my last campaign and I've accostumed myself a lot to it; to the point that I don't think I am going back. Combat is much more swift (much more combined with the "no damage, just take a Hit Die" houserule), and also it makes interesting effects in game: 

Having a Fighter in the party is suddently much more important. His instincts help everyone to take the lead on a fight, even if he doesn't fight himself: Maybe he just grabs the initiative so the thief can do something first. Tougher monsters are also scarier, because their sheer "speed". Suddently it also matters in which turn of the watch the monster appears: if the fighter is asleep, the monster can get a great advantage.

The "alternate sides" thing also adds an element of strategy for the players, something that its often missing from combat when a game makes the fights a little bit abstracted. Using this (also abstract) ways to control combat gives PCs more buttons to press which, in my opinion, adds a +1 to old D&D.

Sometimes I like to distinguish swords from the other weapons because they add a little bonus to HP only for initiative purposes. They are the weapon of heroes after all.

And thats it. 

I want to note that it is also possible to make a much more gamist initiative without rolls, and I found out by playing pokémon this last weeks.

In the GBA games, initiative works like this: both trainers choose their movement at the same time, then the pokemon with most speed acts first. Stats are very granular, so having a tie is very rare.

Certain movements have priority over others, regardless of speed. For example, taking a potion or changing pokemon goes always before any attacks (there is but one attack AFAIK that specifically strikes before retiring the pokemon). Some attacks have a "quick" tag that makes them go before the enemy, and there are slow attacks too, which work the opposite way.

It could very easily be ported to tabletop by assigning a sort of speed stat (dexterity is the easiest) and then listing which kind of actions have priority over others. This very choice can lead to very different combat systems and tones (for example, if healing has priority over attacking, if spells go first or last, etc). 

Offtopic: If you speak or understand spanish and like the game, I reccomend you this awesome Team Rocket Edition hack by Dragonsden. You play as a Team Rocket recruit acting parallel to Red and Blue in the original Game Boy games. The lore of the game is so good that its really a pity that its not "official", I am really enjoying it!

[review] Pokéthulhu; my first game as GM ever

Little by little that need of making this review grew on me. This is a 19 year old game, with 0,0 active fanbase or discussion nowadays, but that I have very fond memories of. It was the very first game I ever GMed. I remember I convinced my friends to play rpgs around 2009 or so, and when they said yes, I went home and printed it on a whim to play that very afternoon. I read the manual as I went, and used the introductory adventure hooks at the end of the book (it was 20 pages or so) to improvise a campaign. I let everyone draw their first pokemons and we started. I don't remember many details, but I remember some. 

I drew a handful of pokethulus in a few minutes. I just sketched some shits on a paper, then added lightning, horns, extra eyes, extra anythings, fire, water, wings, tails and random weirdnesses and they were perfect. I was into the mythos while my players weren't; but I made a lot of references to them anyways, with one of the toughest pokemon being straight up ripped from Hellsing's Baskerville (one of the PCs captured without combat, with a lucky roll of a pokéball throw). There was a mechanic that incorporated making up quotes for the pokethulu fictional show in exchange for ¿successes? but we did away with that completely.

deviantart: geistvirus

The game describes itself as a joke game, but it manages to accomplish a lot of things right. Common checks for humans are d12 roll under, with easier tasks giving you more dice to roll, while thulhu combat is really cool while remaining simple. Each thulhu has up to two types (decomposing, fishy, fungous, icy, luminiscent, non-euclidean, squamous, sticky), a weakness to one of those types and three stats: power, speed and hit points. You have four choices for attacks: injure, dodge, trap or frighten. Each of them has a type adequate to the thulhu  and a number from 1 to 3 d12 to roll, under power or speed. 

The cool part is that you get to name/invent the nature of the attack, depending on the attack and its type. For example, the game lists Shub-Polywrath having a Non-Euclidean, frighten attack of 3d12. It is called Chest Swirl Display of Infinity. Mechanically it doesnt matter much: you'd roll 1d12 extra against targets who are weak to Non-Euclidean. But it is cool to know that if you choose to use your pet monster to frighten a clerk on some shop and succeed, the clerk is going to freak out gazing at infinity in the thulhu's spiral. There is a mechanical part which carries the rules, but is an analog, player made name which creates the effect. This is something that inspired me a lot and made the game very very easy to run. (The 3rd edition has an "official" pokethulu list, but when I downloaded it first there wasnt any, only a few examples)

I went as far as to implement Mythos-type magic when a PC found a forbidden book at the evil guy's lair. I gave his character a page with three spells that he could cast at anytime, each one once. I remember one of the spells "just" summoned a rain of blood. It was the kind of game that doesn't break for things like that. You can even play with the existing codes and give objects, places, people, etc types and weaknesses, such an squamous necklace or a fungous-averse library. But am digressing.

It is astonishing how well both of the settings mixed (pokemon and the mythos) answered the questions opened by the other. I have talked before on how Lovecraft's mythos are a great setting but hardly playable in my opinion in in a serious campaign. This joke game allowed me to play with them in a way that Call of the Chtulhu could not offer to me. In CoC, the King in Yellow is a book you read and makes you lose sanity, but you cannot really bring more info to your players about the city of Carcosa, the lake Hali or the King itself, as they are not described even in the books. You can only roleplay how your character goes slightly mad little by little. In pokethulu, you can rule that the King in Yellow is a book that allows passage to tattered Carcosa, where you can meet amd challenge the King into combat, steal some eldritch items and maybe capture some horrible fish type critters at the lake Hali.

On the other hand, it takes Pokèmon to its logical conclusions: What happens when pokemon turn against man? they eat their souls and marrow. Why kids get pokemon? because the world is hard and its always cool to have a friend with the destructive power of a nuke. Why only kids? Because you need a high sanity score to deal with thulhu and most adults (exception being some cultists) have a sanity score of 1. 

The implications of a world where the kids hold a power like that while adults cannot handle this madness and pretend that all this pokethulu thing doesnt exist is really really poetical, almost sublime. It fixes all the problems that modern-based fantasy settings have on a single strike, and I want to go back to this on further entries. 

suddently, all my art folder looks like pokethulhus

On the bad side, it is true that the rules gave some trouble eventually. I don't remember exactly what happened, but we found a way to break the game easily; maxing out speed + trap or speed + dodge or something like that. I think it wasn't hard to fix. I am re-reading the rules right now, after all this years and having discovered the old school D&D, and I cannot help thinking on how I would change this or that rule; lots of great ideas. 

* Stats for humans being rolled (1d12 with 9-12 defaulting to 4 instead of point buy). Buying stats at 11 or 12 made the characters auto succeed at everything from the start.

* human attacks (and other checks) being 1 dice only, lucky ability allowing 1 extra die + 1 extra if the task is easy or using an appropiate weapon or something, or taking advantage of somebody's weakness.

* Implementing hex travel, rations and pokethulu's travelling speed

* Statting pokethulhus a little lower; having 6d12 among attacks at the start for the some of the first owned pokemons is totally enough. We did it like this if I remember well.

I ram him with the bowsprit! you throw the pokeball!

I must say that the game has always been free to download, but the official web seems down, who knows since when. You can get it HERE, and there is also a web with resources in HERE. Nobody seems to know or have played this game, but from my humble blog I'd like to reccomend it to you all.

Edit: Some related link about somebody wanting to make a pokemon campaign focused on exploration.

sometimes, the line between what counts as a 

pokethulhu or a trainer is very thin. I could 

make this guy into both sides with little effort.

A spell list of pokemon moves

 

One of my long carried over projects is to make a game or D&D adaptation whose entire spell list is taken from pokemon. Basically to take the list of Gen 1 - pokèmon moves (back from when there were 151 of them) and rework them into spells. 

Many of them are explicit on their effects (flamethrower). Some of them might require some explanation, and some of them, which are redundant (Thunder, thunder punch, thunder shock, thunder wave and thunderbolt), can be reworked into more interesting things, so they are the place in which I can get creative with non-combat effects (for example, thunder wave might be used to magnetically seal a gate or whatever)

The great thing about this is that it feels a really new start, not based in the D&D list, to make magic fresher and personal. At the same time it has some constraints that, far from being adverse, are always the greatest helpers when building something great.

Interestingly, it allows for a very elemental-esque approach to magic, with all spells having someone that is vulnerable or resistant to it. One can make monsters based on elements, or trying to figure out to which pokemon element do D&D monsters belong. 

PC casters should not be elemental per se (they are treated like type: normal unless belonging to a specific race, like merfolk or harpies) though they can become elemental under certain circumstances (some spells or items, maybe?). Another good way to "pokemonize" this casters is to allow them to learn only moves of 2 different types, (beyond type:normal). Maybe monks can also work this way, by learning moves of type:fighting.

In the list I linked the moves are labeled as physical (causes physical damage) status (causes status alters, might be sort of magical) or special (more magical in nature). This and the movement type are to be respected a priori, though I might change my mind.

 

I find it very interesting that in the pokemon games there were no Dark and Holy types (though they added Dark shortly afterwards). This sort of paints the world as having no definite law and chaos, just a very strange and wild nature. Also there are oddly specific types like bug, ghost and three types of earth related elements (plant, ground and rock; with steel being added in the later generations). So there is no way to play a cleric in the usual version we know about. If we count them as being "those who drive ghosts away", a quick glance at the chart shows us that only other ghosts are super effective VS ghosts :/

Which element do you feel that a healing spell would belong to?
Which types would you grant to a medusa?