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Pocket Monster Adventures — A TTRPG based on the first generation of Pokémon (heavenlyspoon.org)

submitted 2 months ago by HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network to c/rpg@ttrpg.network

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hey, Lemmy!

I’m a somewhat experienced TTRPG designer and my latest project is an RPG based on the first generation of Pokémon games.

You can download the complete game for free here:

https://heavenlyspoon.org/pocket-monster-adventures/

My focus was on ease-of-play and simple prep. Many of the other Pokémon RPGs out there seemed to involve a lot of overhead—especially for the GM. I prefer a more improv-heavy game, and having to do a lot of prep makes that basically impossible.

Sticking to gen 1 made it so I could keep the scope small enough to allow for simple encounter tables, pre-prepared Pokémon sheets for every Pokémon, and a simple set-up for every Pokémon controlled by the GM.

The game is designed to be played with one GM and two or three players, and every aspect of the original games has been changed where needed to accommodate this.

I don't know how much interest there is for this kind of thing, but hopefully at least someone will get some joy out of it!

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[–] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Oh wow, thanks a lot! I guess I know what I’m doing this weekend.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I really appreciate all the work you've put into this, I've got a group together to play so my weekend is going to be writing an intro and a map for them!

[–] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Version 1.2 is up! It should include fixes for everything you pointed out. There's a short overview in the Version History.

Some design clarifications:

Amnesia doesn't work out of battle, I've added a clarification to the move.
I hadn't actually considered Transform out of battle, that one's on me. It now gives you that entire Pokémon's moveset, but every move uses a d4 Move die to balance out the lack of PP.
It's deliberate that some Pokémon have more than one Basic Move. It felt kind of arbitrary for Poison Sting to be one for Weedle but not for Nidoran. I have removed Transform's Basic status for Mew, though.
There’s no benefit to catching higher-stage Pokémon, the catching rules mostly just make it a bit harder to get higher-stage Pokémon early. By making excursions into higher-difficulty areas more costly, it should hopefully keep trainers within their intended zones without explicitly forcing them to. But yeah, if you want a Machamp, you should probably try to find a Machop instead.
MissingNo.'s size difference wasn't intentional, but I'm definitely keeping it.

Thanks for the thorough read-through, I really appreciate it!

And lovely to hear that you've got a group together! I'd love to hear how it goes!

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Nice! You'll be glad to hear I've already spotted something new: the pokedex entries seem to have the right-most few pixels cut off so some of the words are slightly truncated. Also Electabuzz is still showing as "small" on its sheet, and Straigar still says "main" instead of "maim".

You're too kind to have included me in the credits, compared to how much effort you must have put into designing this whole system me spotting a few typos is really nothing!

[–] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Weird, I don’t know how that happened, but it should be fixed now. And I’ve had a few projects now where someone just did a thorough proofreading and it’s been awesome every time. The helpers of the internet don’t get nearly enough credit, so it’s the least I can do!

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

We're a few sessions in and everyone's loving it, unfortunately that means more bug reports!

Some pokedex pages (Drowzee on p.321 and Psyduck on p.307) list Disable as dealing 2 hits, other pages and the full sheets list it as only doing 1 (which seems correct)
Poliwag's pokedex entry (p.310) says "it tries and swim away or hide", that "and" should be a "to"
The pokedex.pdf seems to be suffering from the 'right edge of text cut off' issue you fixed in the main doc

[–] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Happy to hear that! And I’m always happy with more bug reports (as long as they’re fixable). Yeah, Disable should be 1 hit.

I don’t notice the edge clipping on my copy of the Pokédex, but I could’ve accidentally uploaded an older version. It should be good now, I hope.

I’ve updated the document with some other minor changes as well. They’ve been in the doc for a bit now, but this seemed as good a time as any to actually implement them.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Edge clipping is fixed in 1.3, ta.

BTW I noticed that Straigar's pokedex entry still says "main" in the main rulebook but is fixed to "maim" in pokedex.pdf, I had assumed one was generated from the other but I guess not?

Also I see that Articuno is now covering up a bit of the table and some of the text at the bottom of p.94 - I assume that's a deliberate design decision (it looks quite good) but just letting you know in case it wasn't!

[–] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It normally is just a copy, but I edit the dex file for small changes instead of doing a full copy since that’s a bit quicker, but yeah, I apparently didn’t actually change it in the main doc. Oops.

And yeah, Articuno is deliberate. I liked it taking up most of that page, and this way seemed like a neat way of not having to shrink it as much.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 2 points 3 days ago

I think it's appropriate for a legendary