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How do you set up/run your encounters?
Topic Started: Feb 20 2016, 09:02 AM (830 Views)
SmartAlec13
Pokémon Trainer
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Hello there party pokemon people,

I am about to start a campaign. I plan on using a premade adventure (Community Adventure Book), and I am wondering how most people set up their encounters. I was planning on just sticking with abstract descriptions for the combat, or maybe using microsoft paint or something? I know about Roll20, but I feel that might be a bit overkill. Is there any good program out there for setting up squares/grid, similar to what is exampled in the PTU Core book?
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Saltwater1
Pokémon Trainer
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I just use a whiteboard and paper miniatures. Nothing fancy, works amazingly. If you don't have a whiteboard, paper works just as well.
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BatiroAtrain
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Pyramid King
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One important thing: Are you running at a table or online?

For online: R20 or Maptools are the best programs, R20 being the more user-friendly of them. I don't know why you think it's overkill? PTU is grounded in tactical combat, and even if you just use the grid it gives you, it'll be way easier that way versus most of the other ways you could run combat online. Maptools is similar, but has more advanced features I think (I've never used it so I couldn't tell you much).

In-Person: Use a whiteboard or similar display that you can easily put a grid on. I personally have a grid in a poster frame that I whip out for in-person sessions, which I can easily draw on without ruining the grid itself. For miniatures, I recommend printing small tokens of your party and their Pokemon, and printing the mons you need for encounters the day before. If you're ambitious, you could use a laptop to display R20 on a television, though you'd have to move everyone's tokens yourself at that point.

Either way, as a general rule you should save the grids for multi-man combat. One-on-one Pokemon battles and full-contact duels are fine to go abstract with, since those battles tend to have less maneuvering in them.
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SmartAlec13
Pokémon Trainer
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I am doing the game online over skype with two or three of my friends.

The main reason I said Roll20 is a bit overboard is because it means everyone needs to make accounts and log on and all that
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BatiroAtrain
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Pyramid King
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Registration takes like two minutes... that's a small price to pay for the convenience of R20. You're the one that has to set up the map and plan everything, which presumably you'd be doing anyway; as long as they have an off-site sheet, all they need to do is log on, click a link for the game, and move their tokens when it's their turn. And if you're running over Skype, you'd likely want to use R20 to roll dice anyway.
Edited by BatiroAtrain, Feb 20 2016, 11:15 AM.
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Mudbucket
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Pokémon Trainer
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I just use the old fashioned way and explain where everything is.
And they have to ask me if they can hit someone from where they are. Works perfectly (I've never been a miniature guy in Role-playing games because it feels more like a board game to me then and I easily lose immersion.)
If I made a large scale battle I would draw up an easy map for them to see where everything is. Works in DnD and other roleplaying games and works here for me! =)
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Marhatus
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Avid Lurker
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Honestly it depends on how important the combat is to you. If you are going to be mostly roleplaying and combat isn't going to play that important of a role, abstracting combat distances should be fine. But as a player who enjoys the combat, I was always a bit disappointed when GM's would abstract combat distances. It's hard enough to keep track of everyone moving in different directions in your head that usually the mental model becomes more of a line instead of a grid, which is fine but does dampen the potential for being strategic with anything other than moves and maneuvers. If that's not a concern, you could use skype with some sort of dice roller (or have people use their webcams to show their dice rolling?).

But honestly, while the built-in music, grid, and dice-roller are nice, the main reason I'd go with Roll20 is because of the character sheets. They can be a bit of a pain to fill out because you have to do a lot manually (EDIT: Unless you fill out a google docs sheet first and import it) but once you fill in all of the stats and moves, you can just click one button and it'll spit out the accuracy and damage calculation(s) (plus whatever effect text you put in there). No waiting around for people to look up their rolls, add up their stats or remember how critical hits work. There's even support for things like double-strike and five-strike moves and Twisted Power (which can be a pain otherwise). It takes a lot of the crazy moving parts of the system and makes them one-click during play, which I love.

EDIT: Also, if you're lazy like me, make sure you bookmark PanoramicPanda's encounter generator for quick random encounters on-the-fly.
Edited by Marhatus, Feb 21 2016, 10:38 PM.
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strikeblaze
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Pokémon Trainer
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I do it on Roll20. I personally resized and uploaded them into a campaign. I then proceeded to make 3 pages, and put all the tokens on the 3 pages by sorting them out in groups based on their type, (as a result some are dupliated because of two types) Then when I want to do an encounter, I look at the 3 pages and select pokemon that makes sense to what they should be fighting, then I got on the PTU-Panda website and generate their stats up. Takes a few minutes to set up, which works out fine because it gives the party a chance to talk about which ones they want so they know which ones to hold back on. generating the stats only takes a min or two when your used to it.
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