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25, bi, genderless.



Jama
@Jama

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.

  1. Getting pokedex entries counts towards progression, called Honors, which are also earned for gym badges, contests, and other things.
  2. 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.


amaranth-witch
@amaranth-witch

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.


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in reply to @Jama's post:

I think I know which Pokémon Tabletop you’re talking about and I couldn’t smoke that one. There was something going on in the version I was looking at where stat progression was too sculpted and involved with little help creating opposition. Like literally coming at it from the opposite angle where I wanted something like the games, they incorporated the aspects of the games you don’t want to touch for a frictionless user experience. It’s the worst of all possible worlds, that ruleset

I think the best way to put it is that system desires to be frictionless in the wrong way. It wants to be pat as opposed to accessible, and if you want something consistent and pat, a ttrpg is going to be the wrong engine

Oh man that feeling of ttrpg devs like, playing it too close to the chest when emulating games.

i get a similar vibe with like, every attempt at a Fire Emblem ttrpg. they do the weapon triangle and fail to realize that you need a full, 8 man party to make that shit work.

No no, the problem becomes enemy composition.

As a GM, you'd need to be super careful in the early levels so you don't say, deploy all spearguys against Swordparty.

or if 2 people wanna be Swordguy.

With the triangle, you sorta pigeonhole yourself for a few fights until everyone gets like, a Promotion to like Hero [sword/axe] or Gremory or Paladin whatever.

I’ve seen it emulated to a tee on a text based PBP where instead of “what if chess if it made you horny” it was “what if mail order chess had discord drama.” It was so idiosyncratic in some ways it was its own game though, and there tended to be a player who became the group’s Caller of sorts. My exposure was too brief to recall much beyond that

amazing.

Those dinguses had both the 2d100 AND the flat d100 to hit rules. it was such a mess!

glad i bounced instantly, I knew it'd end up as you said. Got the One Guy Who Played Fire Emblem just like... play fire emblem, but slower.

This is like so not the point but I took a crack at an FE ttrpg and my solve for this was making each player character a Lord with a customizable class and giving them each control over a small squad of allied NPC units. I never finished it but it was fun to work on anyways lol

You see this occasionally and it's usually weird when it shows up: single player mechanics applied to individual PCs without really thinking about what that means or how weird that is, especially around experience. Make that a group mechanic (as in, track the pokedex across the whole group) and you get a lot closer to the vibe you'd want.

This was exactly my thinking: You house rule it so that when anyone in your group gets a pokemon it gets added to everyone's pokedex automatically.

I was going to say that I didn't know if that would unbalance the game in some way (since I don't know the game). But given that the players are effectively already doing this, you might as well just embrace it and skip the tedious and immersion breaking touch trading step.

If it's too much of a problem it wouldn't be too hard to like, tweak accumulation of those Honors downward - like if you'd gain 1/Pokemon, instead gain 1 for every 2 caught across the party or something.

You gain 1 per 30 in your 'dex, since those are like your "level" things.

Yeah, eliminating the vibe of "we're just trading it around' is the easy solution and just say like, oh these things are linked and share information or whatever.

It’s interesting to see how every person/group makes their fan games, because that Show vs. Game feeling was exactly why I started working on my own Pokémon TTRPG lol.

I wanted to play/run something closer to the show, especially the vibes of the Kanto, Alola, and Journeys seasons. So when I was thinking about the Pokédex and its mechanics in-game I tied most of the mechanical benefit to a specific character class (basically a professor in the making) since I was making a PbtA game. So while everyone could use the Pokédex for info or even minor mechanical benefits, that specific class was focused on filling out the Pokédex, adding new info, and using that Pokédex knowledge for moves for the rest of the party and themselves. I also divorced Pokédex entries and mechanics from catching, and instead tied them to “meaningful” observations of Pokémon, which meant players could observe their Pokemon, their friends Pokemon, or wild Pokemon, without having to catch them unless they wanted to.

Again, it’s all so interesting because I think my decisions are based on where my head is at in what I like about Pokemon, and you can see what other people like about Pokemon in their fan games. You see the same thing in stuff like Dragon Ball fan games, where some TTRPGs shovel huge importance on power levels, whereas others don’t even care about them.

Fun fact: there is actually a pokemon ttrpg that I think is more styled towards the show, called "Pokeymanz"! I haven't played it myself yet, but from occasionally poking around in the community, it seems a lot of them enjoy it for:
-its lightweight nature (it's a hack of Savage Worlds); there's not an excessive amount of statlines to keep track of in terms of bookkeeping
-and its ability to accommodate a wider array of situations, including the potential for making what could be considered "weaker" pokemon in the games, just as viable as the "stronger" pokemon

It could be what you were hoping for a "Pokemon game" to be, although this is based on my own limited pokemon experience (in general, not just in ttrpgs)

in reply to @amaranth-witch's post:

This is not an uncommon pitfall when someone tries to inconsiderately translate an intensely single player experience into the multiplayer medium of a traditional group TTRPG, too. Or even sometimes fanfic, but that’s a different story. Upthread in the comments there’s talk about fire emblem RPG attempts, which is another angle on the same issue - you think it should be easy because obviously each player gets one blorbo, fire emblem players love their blorbos! But the games are designed for one person to control ALL the little guys, and breaking up the band while thoughtlessly replicating the game’s weapon balance leads to Big Challenges. I’ve seen it in Halo tabletops, in Castlevania tabletops, even Lord of the Rings tabletops struggle with “how do we translate this, it should be easy, this text formed the blueprint for the dominant rpg in western markets” without really successfully reckoning with the fact that it is, essentially, what modern gamers would call “a bespoke jrpg experience”.

Anyway yeah I imagine that in the pokeuniverse, the professors would be like “ok so don’t forget to sync up your pokedexes, you each have one just in case some of them get lost or broken or in case you split up later but share your info!”

This isn’t even going into the other thing that bugs me about “progression” being tied to filling out your encyclopedia, though. My time with the games is very limited and I don’t have the common nostalgia for critter collectors, but it is my understanding that “we caught them all!” is only related to one thing: unlocking the “rest of the index” so now you can keep track of critters from the rest of the world. All other “progression” comes in the form of “well did you complete this activity challenge?”

  • critters gain XP through battling and eating candy
  • trainers gain move access through clearing gym battles and finding hidden caches
  • other unlocks include cooking critter treats, winning critter fashion shows, and answering critter trivia questions

And so the idea of “leveling up” through Pokédex entries feels, IDK, really weird to me.