I am a casual onlooker/granted GM permissions to a Pokemon RPG game that some of my friends are playing. I get to bounce stuff off the GM, and shitpost with them in the discord, since it was the one we used for Curse of Strahd last year.
As I'm catching bits and pieces of the game, I'm noticing something that bugs me, and the behavior it encourages.
- Getting pokedex entries counts towards progression, called Honors, which are also earned for gym badges, contests, and other things.
- It encourages the "touch trading" behavior, which I feel like is awful for a game based around Pokemon.
The reason for my distaste is that when I think "A Pokemon game", I'm thinking more of emulating the show. The game rules though want to emulate both the show and the video games. And that's where the disconnect is with me. The game puts the 'mon you catch at like, ranking 1 or 0 Friendship (out of 5 I think), and trading it resets it to the same low level, so there's 0 punishment for doing it. I see everyone go "OK, I got this, you got that, we'll just trade these two Pokemon around so everyone gets them" and maaaaaaaaaaaaaaan, that sucks to me.
It feels like a bad thing for someone who just wants to catch and befriend some critters.
Jama talks about one of the friction points with the "touch trading" behavior, the motivation/mood conflict that comes from turning "befriending critters" into "XP checkboxes", and I completely agree with that - honestly I feel like if you're in a TEAM environment like the archetypal tabletop RPG group, and you're basing progression around a cataloging mechanic, then the default assumption should be "shared info, shared database, shared progression". There's no need for the extra step of passing the palico just so everyone gets credit for rubbing its tummy, if everyone can be like "yeah! Betsy got a good picture, so we all get credit!" and we can still be faithful to the fiction by having friends learn about pokemon because "Meowth is always following James around, so of course Jessie learns his habits" without ever having to formally take possession of the pokeball, you know?
There's another, more general friction point that I want to talk about though.
When I was a little kid, and the Dungeon Adventure games I played had the "gold for XP" rule, we always used to powerlevel our characters by taking the first gold piece any of us found and just... passing it around. Even back then, a lot of us thought it was foolish, but it's what the big kids at the table did, and so obviously it was the right way to play and a really fast way to get to level 20 after our first adventure! It was SILLY, but if it's how the game was played...
Of course, said big kids are also related to the ones behind the Eternal Shopping Mall, and we know how that turned out. And as it so happens, in most retroclones, word space is spent to clarify "treasure for XP only counts when you SPEND the treasure, not when you TOUCH the treasure" or "treasure for XP only counts for the total-amount-retrieved, divide that up however you like" which were assumptions present in the original but not communicated in the original. And that brings me around to the Participatory Action XP issue!
This is something also mirrored in the "shared spellbook" / "shared arsenal" issue, so I'll talk about those for a minute too.
So there are a bunch of games that I've played recently where a major method / the primary method of players gaining XP are "each time you use this move, get an XP". Which is cool. Sometimes it feels forced and hamhanded, but it's also a very direct way of saying "THIS is what this game / this class / this archetype / this character is ABOUT, DO THIS". That's great. I want to encourage that, I want that to feel fun. Usually they're limited in some way, each player can only get the payoff for the move once per scene or once per session or once per target or what have you.
And sometimes, that leads to situations where you're in a big fight scene, and the players say "wait, wait hang on, we can't disable all the opposing targets, wait until everyone has used their XP move (as many times as allowed) so we get full advancement credit!" and that feels like touch-trading behavior above, right? Except for one crucial difference. Two, if you count "the move has to LAND" which is sometimes a restriction.
The one crucial difference is that carrying this maneuver out comes at a cost, namely "the enemy keeps getting turns to try something". The players can stack the deck, to be sure: they can eliminate non-qualifying targets first, and they can layer status afflictions which won't invalidate the move (if the move cares about "a target that is not stunned", for example). But ultimately: every turn they delay for someone to make sure they pull off the XP move is another turn for the enemy to interact. For reinforcements to arrive, for timers to tick down, and so on.
Obviously, this requires the fight-planner to plan for such things, either up front or just as a possibility, but I feel like this skill is a good one to develop regardless - related to the white-void-table fallacy, etc - and so "but what if there are no reinforcements" is met with a "well, either the players planned it out appropriately, or that's on you!" (cheerfully and affectionately, mind, this is an invitation to learn more, not a "well you shoulda known") from me. And similarly, "well, the players DID plan around it, and they keep farming every fight for minimum risk maximum reward" is a double invitation for more interaction: first, it invites the DM to play up that reputation off the battlefield, the adventurers who toy with their food, and see how they feel about that, but second, once the reputation is known it also invites the DM to start bringing in opposition that ALSO knows the players reputation, and plans around it. The conversation is not one-sided, the players should not be able to act in a complete vacuum! They have the advantage of OOC communication, which is huge, but what they actually, consistently DO is fair game to respond to appropriately.
And so "don't forget to tag in for XP", whatever the form, becomes an interactive narrative element, whether it's "make sure you shoot the XP Granting Mech", "everyone make sure to take your Showboat Maneuver at a point where it's Safe to be vulnerable in the aftermath!", or "during this investigation/downtime phase, everyone make sure you Bond With An Informant!" it costs you position, it costs you "actions", it costs you time, it may cost you opportunities. The cost or the restriction helps define both the action and the fiction, and generates the drama.
It's related to why, running older D&D editions or the like, I never really mind players sharing spellbooks, or passing magic weapons around between (or even during!) battles. Even if a friendly wizard is willing, it still siphons resources and time to copy out spells, multiplied if you're doing it for more than one allied wizard! Only one person can meaningfully use any given magic sword at a time, so if they're passing it around in battle that means they're either throwing it, standing close together to pass it off between turns, or investing resources in passing the sword(s) around instead of otherwise improving themselves. Where they choose to spend their resources is a part of the game! This is part of why, even though it's boring and frustrating in most forms, "tracking inventory" and "tracking supplies" and "tracking travel time" should be part of the experience - the management should be part of the drama (and the fact that "well yeah but it sucks" is a condemnation of the form factor and implementation more than it is of the idea, because everyone loves the underdog arc where the anime swordsman has to reveal that she can fight just as well with this stick she's forced to use, or where the heroes have to figure out how to survive with just a bedroll between them)!
And so "on-the-road touch-trading to fill out the Advancement Checklist" causes bad friction with me, because it's pretending like there's resource management, it's pretending that there's a requirement - oh see, no, you have to have caught that pokemon, you can't just look at the pokemon, you have to hold it and examine it - when actually it's just "nah, as long as you do it before someone bonds with the critter, there isn't even a downside, just hold the kitten and get an XP, we can even do it on the road between pokebattles, it's cool". If it were honest in either direction, I'd probably be okay with it, but instead it's honest in neither one. There's nothing interesting here. There's no play in that aspect of the game. It's joyless achievement checklisting, not even "going for the 100% because of the fun and challenge of some of these silly achievements, who DOES those".
Anyway, lemme step off that rambly soapbox, sorry, carry on.
