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| New to PTA and PTU? Here's what you need to know!; READ THIS before asking questions about the systems! | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 4 2014, 01:17 PM (18,190 Views) | |
| castfromhp | Jun 4 2014, 01:17 PM Post #1 |
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Mawile Ace
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Hey, first of all, welcome to our community! You might've noticed there are two systems played here, Pokémon Tabletop Adventures and Pokémon Tabletop United. PTA and PTU respectively, for short. Well, questions about the two get asked a lot, and it’s a pretty common thing for newbies to be confused about. So we’ve finally decided to put together a summary of the two and their differences and history. If you're not interested in the history, feel free to skip down to the system summaries. I've explained the history here because there have been a lot of misconceptions about the relationship between the two systems and their developers in the past, and we'd rather not have a repeat of some of the drama that has arisen as a result. This thread is meant as a reference for newcomers, not as a site for arguments to flare up, and thus this thread is not open for comments. I hope you understand. First things first though - you can find downloads for the two systems at the Portal link at the top bar of the this site, or at the following links: PTA XY PTU 1.05 And if you're like to be part of our IRC community, hop into #PokemonTabletop on the Rizon network. You can find more detailed info and instructions here. If you still have more questions after reading this, IRC would probably be the best place to get answers directly from the source! Basic History: Pokémon Tabletop Adventures is a homebrew system DrMrStark started creating back in 2010. Over the years, he drew a number of other developers into a large team to help him work on the system, including most of the current developers of Pokémon Tabletop United. Of course, this being an amateur project, things weren't perfect, and some of us found issues we wanted to fix with PTA. That's how Pokémon Tabletop United started, as a series of fixes for PTA. Some of the changes in PTU were pretty radical, and it was pretty understandable that some of the other developers were hesitant to adopt them. Unfortunately, around this time, some parts of the team also became very resistant to any change at all, and even simple fixes to PTA became a slog to approve and get through the bureaucracy that had formed. What this eventually led to is that Stark gave the other PTU devs and I his blessing to work on PTU as a separate system, and the idea was he would continue working with the rest of the team on PTA as a parallel endeavor. As it would turn out though, the devs who had been stonewalling progress on PTA drifted away from the system and stopped working on it as well. Luckily, Stark is a champ despite how busy he is IRL, and he's been trucking on alone and developing PTA since that time while the other PTU devs and I continue working on our system. Occasionally, we get together to organize cool little things for the community like the holiday preview we did a couple months after X&Y dropped to showcase our respective Gen VI updates, but otherwise our development processes are pretty much independent. Before we carry on, here’s an explanation of who I am and my role in the development of both systems. I was brought on board the PTA team before the 1.27 ReMystic update back in 2011, specifically to work on a revamp of the Mystic base class. From there, my role grew until I was one of the most active PTA developers, and between the other devs who would come to make PTU (zoofman, Dox, and Mons), we were responsible for a lot of the changes and class revamps in the system. When Dox started putting together PTU, I of course was one of the ones who moved with him to work exclusively on the new system when Stark gave us the go-ahead and have been here working on PTU ever since. Now that that's out of the way, here's some basic info on both systems. Pokémon Tabletop Adventures: It's a d20 class-based system, though there's a crucial difference between other class-based systems in that you're expected to take multiple classes. You can think of individual classes as skill trees, in a way, and by the time your character is at high levels, they will have up to four different classes. The classes are largely based on the trainer classes you see in the video games and manga - Ace Trainer, Breeder, Coordinator, Capture Specialist, Psychic, etc - and are sorted into basic classes such as Ace Trainer and more advanced variants like Stat Ace, which play a similar role to Prestige Classes in D&D. Each class is composed of Features which do things like give your Pokémon extra Experience Points or give stat bonuses to bred Pokémon. In addition, there is a pool of Features which is available to all characters. Features and even Pokémon attacks in the game work off a similar system as D&D 4e. There are At-Will Features and Moves, ones you can use once an encounter, ones you can use a limited times per day, etc. Trainers in the system use the six attributes from Dungeons and Dragons: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma. There's no skill system, and most actions are resolved by rolling 1d20 + the modifier for one of these attributes. What might be a stealth check in another system, for example, would be done as a d20 + DEX mod roll. Pokémon use the stats from the video games: Attack, Defense, Special Attack, etc. PTA stays very faithful to the video games, and you'll see all of the various Moves and Abilities Pokémon have in the video games translated to the tabletop, often with some tweaks and changes to work better in the system. Therefore, Trainers and Pokémon don't share much in common when it comes to mechanics, and when they do have to cross over, such as when Trainers attack a Pokémon, each Feature will specify how to translate one of the six attributes into a Pokémon combat stat. Yes, that means PTA is a game where Trainers can fight Pokémon and vice versa. Wild Pokémon won't necessarily leave a Trainer alone, after all, and they may even be more attractive targets than their Pokémon for intelligent species who understand who's in charge during a battle. Of course, in official League matches, Trainers are usually expected to stand back and let their Pokémon fight without intervention, but Team Rocket and other criminals will not follow such rules. Combat in PTA is done on square grid. Why might someone prefer PTA? -They're fond of the d20 system and the six attributes used in it and don't want to move away from that. PTA's basic mechanics can feel familiar to those who've mostly played D&D and know intuitively which attribute should be used for which activity. -They prefer the base/advanced class structure. Some players want more structure to how they advance, and PTA provides that by having a number of advanced classes that proceed from their base classes and use the same attributes. -They prefer for Trainers and Pokémon to work using different mechanical traits. Some players may simply think that Pokémon and Trainers are too different to handle with a unified system. -They want a system with faster Trainer creation. Without skills or combat stats to determine, making a PTA character is very quick and usually just a matter of assigning attributes and choosing a class to start with. Why might someone not want to play PTA? -There are many holes and omissions in the system's rules, some of them easy to deal with like a lack of rules for how far Poké Balls can be thrown on a grid, and some much harder to resolve issues like the lack of interaction between Trainers and Pokémon. Because Pokémon lack d20 attributes like Dexterity and Wisdom, there's no real way to resolve a conflict like a Pokémon trying to sneak past a Trainer or vice versa, and because Trainer lack combat stats, Moves which lower them such as Growl and Leer have no effect on Trainers. -The community consensus is that there are a lot of balance issues with the game, such as Ace Trainers and Psychics being far too powerful compared to many other choices. -Early game PTA can be brutal, and there are overall issues with the combat numbers. Damage values are rather high in the game, so battles with Pokémon under level 10 or 15 will involve a lot of OHKOs. Trainers also can feel uninteresting to play until about level 5. Area of effect Moves in the system target a huge area and can often quickly wipe out an entire field, including allies. -Choices of which stats are associated with a class and how base/advanced classes are organized can be questionable. For example, Ace Trainer uses Strength and Constitution, resulting in the highly tactics-oriented Strategist advanced class using Strength as its primary attribute. Chef and Medic are advanced classes for the Breeder, making them more difficult to access for other trainer archetypes despite not being particularly connected to breeding. -If you're the impatient sort, the pace of PTA's development may not be for you. Stark is but one man, and he's also really busy IRL to boot. He will occasionally stop by these forums, but for the most part, he's not going to be around. Stark has also stated that major changes for PTA have ceased in favor of simply updating content for new video game releases, so if you're expecting rules overhauls or balance changes, they're probably not happening. Pokémon Tabletop United: PTU is an overhaul of PTA, in response to both issues some of the developers had with the system as well as shortcomings that the community identified. As such, a lot is kept the same between the systems. It's still a class-based system where characters are expected to take multiple classes, and most of the system is made of Features that are split between those classes and a general pool. However, the distinction between base and advanced classes is gone, and rather than using a d20 base, there is a skill system. Most of a Trainer's competence is determined by their skills, which rank from 1 through 6. A basic skill roll is Xd6+Y where X is their skill rank, and Y is any modifier from equipment or other sources. Trainers raise their skill ranks through Edges, which can also be used to buy what are essentially mini-Features. True to the "United" name, Trainers now directly have combat stats the same way that Pokémon do, and Pokémon have skills as well. The core mechanics for Trainers and Pokémon thus share a lot in common and are easy to interface with each other. Like in PTA, Trainers in PTU can participate in combat alongside their Pokémon partners. The D&D 4e inspired system for action frequency (At-Will, Daily, etc) remains, though now there's also a refreshing pool of Action Points for Trainers which refreshes every new scene in a session and is used as a resource to use some of their Features. Grid-based combat is also still a part of PTU. Pokémon are the most similar aspect between PTA and PTU. They are very much like their PTA counterparts, but with the addition of skills. While all of the Abilities and Moves from the video games also exist in PTU, new custom Abilities for many Pokémon have been introduced, such as giving Farfetch'd an Ability to represent its weapon mastery with its characteristic leek. Moves and Abilities also tend to differ more from their video game counterparts in PTU, since the team deemed there were more changes necessary to make them work well for tabletop. Why might someone prefer PTU? -They want a more complete ruleset that plugs many of PTA's holes. The Unified aspect of PTU is one of the biggest reasons for its creation: Pokémon and Trainers sharing both skills and combat stats makes interaction between them both in and out of combat much smoother than in PTA. -They want a game with a skill system or that emphasizes skills over attributes. For some players, there's too much abstraction with how PTA generalizes everything to a roll of one of the six attributes, and they want to be able to differentiate their characters' specialties and fields of expertise better. -They want a more balanced system. Again, the community consensus around here is that PTU is more balanced than PTA and has a greater proportion of classes which are interesting and viable to play. The combat numbers such as HP formulas and Move damage are also considered to work more smoothly than PTA's numbers, and area of effect Moves are greatly diminished in size. -PTU has a very active development team. We're very active on IRC and the forums, and it's pretty easy to give us feedback and ask questions. Why might someone not want to play PTU? -They want a game with a quicker set-up time. PTU characters take longer to create than PTA characters, because there are skills to contend with rather than just attributes. Starting PTU characters also have more in the way of Features than PTA characters, which will also take more time to decide upon. Another factor at play here is that PTU isn't particularly based on any one other system, whereas PTA is much more clearly based on d20, which can provide a baseline for learning it. You will probably not sit down with PTU with new players and get through set-up with enough time to start a game in one evening. -They prefer that PCs are more restricted and guided in their progression. PTU provides a lot of freedom to take a varied slate of classes, and some people may feel there's too much freedom that could result in unfocused character concepts. -They dislike the introduction of new Abilities and other deviations from the video games. Despite the faithfulness to Pokémon stats and Moves, neither PTA nor PTU play very well if you try to approach them with a video game mindset or use Smogon's strategies. However, PTU definitely has a higher degree of deviation, such as the many unique Abilities that have been created for Pokémon and the increased number of differences in how Moves work compared to in the video games. Edited by castfromhp, Mar 3 2015, 11:25 AM.
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7:42 AM Jul 11