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My Experince with PTA/U; About the game I'm running
Topic Started: Apr 24 2015, 08:50 AM (1,138 Views)
Childofthesun1
Pokémon Trainer
[ *  *  *  *  * ]
So I'm honestly really surprised that there aren't more gameplay logs or talk about your own games further up on the pages here. I'm gonna post some of mine.

I bumped into Pokemon and Halo tabletop games and had to choose which to play with my friends while visiting my hometown. We briefly played Halo, but skipped it to play Pokemon Tabletop Adventures.

Character creation is, of course, very fast (edit: in PTA). We started at pokemon level 1 and made it up to 7. We had a Bulbasaur, Onix, and Eevee. The Eevee trainer was excited to build an Eevee team, and take Researcher to talk to her Eevees. The Onix was , of course, a huge challenge due to a huge defense score. I knocked him down to size with the psychic gym, so it wasn't as bad as you might think.

My regular group outside my home town (the rest of this post is dedicated to them) has a Bulbasaur, Machop, and Aron. Honestly, I have no worries about using pseudo-legendaries or rock/steel types for starters. Early fights will be easy for rock trainers, but I can be clever to challenge them. Also, the first gym was fighting, which earned me a dirty look from Aron's trainer. :)

PTU 1.04
Speaking of, my regular group transitioned to PTU and we've never looked back. It sucks making characters for a one shot, but for the most part I find it superior in every way. They enjoy leveling their trainers more frequently and the skill and edge system is wonderful. (I'm still running a separate PbP PTA game though, so I love both!)

My regular group has yet to update to 1.05. I doubt we will. We started playing and my Aron player printed TWO copies of 1.04 core, and literally the next day 1.05 dropped. He was playing a Hatcher/Medic. Yeah, it was funny.

Anyways, I'll probably grab anything I find fun from 1.05 or the eventual 1.06 if it's cool enough.

(Edit: my second group hit poke-level 20-25 with level 8 trainers. My other group never leveled their trainers)

REGION
We're in Wisconsin, so my homebrew region is the Red Stone Region, due to Red Stone being one possible translation to Wisconsin. My hometown in western Wisconsin started in west Redstone, and my group in east Wisconsin started over there. I picked major cities in Wisconsin and gave them names based on translation or pun. Superior became Better City. Eau Claire became Clear Water. Madison became Battle City. All the Routes are highways in real life. Of course I told them none of this. It wasn't until my players realized the local highway numbers corresponded to the routes, and that the city was a translation, that they groaned. :)

TOOLS
THIS IS THE GAME I HAVE PUT THE LEAST EFFORT INTO IN MY LIFE. Holy crap it's amazing! At first, I couldn't run anything. Pokemon are too complex and have too many build decisions available! But then I found PanoramicPanda's random generation software and I abuse the heck out of it. I just randomly generate based on habitat and pick ones I think are cool. The tools fans have developed are Amazing!

(Edit: I use generate by type for trainers. I use specific very rarely. It's very difficult to use that function on mobile.)

RANDOM ENCOUNTERS
Speaking of encounters, I built a random encounter chart in 5 minutes and have had some success. The Routes are real world roads, so I use google maps to calculate the travel times. Most Routes require 30-80 hours of walking, so about 3-8 days. Each hour gets a random roll. Sometimes they hit a desolate region with no encounters. Sometimes they get an encounter every hour.

(Edit: I figure 1 hour per 3 miles, 10 hours per day)

1-65 Nothing
Items
66-69 Healing
70-72 Pokeballl
73-74 Berry Bush
75 Kit (cooking/chem sets, berry growers, etc.)
Trainers
76-77 weak (-3 pokemon levels, 500 yen, 1 trainer xp)
78-82 average (+0, 1000, 2)
83-85 strong (+2, 1500, 3)
Wild Pokemon
86-92 common
93-96 uncommon
97-98 rare (starters, one-of-a-kind)
99 shiny
100 legendary

So after over 150 random rolls, still no legendary. I plan on tying in an overplot with that sometime. I've given out a bunch of Rare starters, including a torchic, piplup, and Charmander. The Bulbasaur trainer was insistent on having all three Gen 1 starters, so I thought, why not?

The chart has betrayed me before. I had a dozen trainer battles in a row. That's when I reduced over all trainer frequency from 15% to 10%.

SHINY POKEMON
We also had a Shiny! They were hunting for Geodude at Mt Timms (Timms hill, highest point in Wisconsin lol) and found a gold Geodude. We type shifted it from Rock to Steel and it knows a few Electric moves, due to the conductivity of gold. I plan on every shiny being a type shift. I'm just not sure what to pick next.

GYM BATTLES
So my gym leaders are based off the tone of the town . The trainers first gym was Emerald Bay City (Green Bay). I decided it was a fighting gym (Packers=Sports=Fighting). The two trainers who tested them were Billy and Jimmy, and the leader was John. Yep, a Double Dragon reference.

The second gym was River Town (Rhinelander) which is known for paper mills, so lumberjacks! The leader was Paul, with his Timburr named Bunyun, and his blue Taurus Babe.

So then they headed to Better City (Superior) and fought Captain Ahab.

So each gym leader starting with Paul will have an event required. Paul was hunting the Hodag, a mythical IRL creature in Rhinelander. Turns out it was a Team Rocket mecha, the Mecha Hodag!

Captain Ahab was hunting the Shiny White Wailord. They caught it for him.

BATTLE TERRAIN
White rooms. No real need to bother. Occasionally I draw the map to have walls, water, or elevation, but for the most part the map is simple. Players hurle books if I try to kite them with superior movement. The solution became that the map is an unofficial arena you can't leave, so you bump into invisible walls if you kite too hard.

MINIATURES
It became clear to me that the game is pretty miniature intensive, with clear ranges and spacing. We jury rigged dice (I'm red 4), but that blew (I thought I was red 4!). I gave up on minis at first, but found nice 2d full-color print outs on these forums and never turned back. Now my players whine if I haven't printed out their newest evolutions for the session. I also used blank tokens marked 1-10 for wild pokemon.

PRAISE
So yeah, this game is awesome. As you can tell, our tone is pretty silly. I wanted a bit darker, but the players insisted it was lighter so I'm fine with it. They have been shot at by Team Rocket before, but with Enriched Water rules they just Got Better.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Any questions? Want a scan of my region map (in its crappy pencil glory)? Need links to the tools I'm using (they're everywhere on the forums)?

ADVERTISEMENT
Also, PanoramicPanda has a webcomic I just started reading. It's awesome!
Edited by Childofthesun1, Apr 24 2015, 08:56 AM.
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TheKamenWriter
Pokémon Trainer
[ *  *  *  *  * ]
Glad to see you enjoying the systems, both of them! It's always awesome to see people excited to play.

Tone in PTX is always a weird thing. It's not very often one plays a PTX game with a consistent tone. Probably because everyone has their own ideas about what pokemon should be. I think I run on the more realist side, while I've got regular players who want to take it lighter and more cartoonish. Striking that balance has always been a challenge.
Edited by TheKamenWriter, Apr 24 2015, 12:08 PM.
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Childofthesun1
Pokémon Trainer
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I'm using both systems for different purposes. The sticky thread did a great job of spelling out the strengths and weaknesses of both. I use PTU for face-to-fave games and PTA for PbP games, it's nice to have options!

It also seems that PTA is more suited for gritty games. Lower HP totals and -HP death instead of -2xHP makes death much closer. It's easy to house rule that into PTU, and I think I will if/when I run a pokewars game for my group.

Hey, is here a thread where people posted their ideas for shiny Pokemon? I'm looking for some inspiration.
Edited by Childofthesun1, Apr 26 2015, 06:40 PM.
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TheKamenWriter
Pokémon Trainer
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Considering the "Pokemon Variations" craze going on all over Tumblr and stuff, I'd suggest going through and checking those out. From a flavor and gameplay standpoint, the Pokemon Variants craze has been a godsend for DMs. Free art for a bunch of non-standard shiny pokemon for all tastes and needs. A tabletop pokemon dream.

http://pokevariant.tumblr.com/ Here's a tumblr I follow. Check it out.
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