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

submitted 1 month ago by HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network to c/rpg@ttrpg.network

23 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 1 points 5 days 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 5 days 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 4 days ago

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!