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[PTU][Worldbuilding] PokéEarth Campaign Setting; Blending the Pokemon World with the Real World: A cooperative thought-experiment
Topic Started: Mar 15 2017, 03:39 PM (1,812 Views)
The Black Glove
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A Man Of Heart
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Counterpoint: Would Pokemon be considered intelligent? Certainly, Pokemon can learn things, have personalities, etc., but very few have exhibited qualities that would make them any more so than your average pet (Team Rocket's Meowth, Sir Aaron's Lucario, and several legendaries come to mind as far as the anime is concerned). Depending on the continuity, your average Pokemon isn't more intelligent than, say, a gorilla, with a few very rare exceptions. I think it more likely the world consider them animals, albeit dangerous and clever ones, with a few exceptional individuals who have achieved higher degrees of sentience.

More interesting, I think are the properties of Aura, and how it influences the world. Aura is the basis for almost everything Pokemon do, including performing Moves and Evolution. As far as I can tell, it's an energy created by their bodies, presumably converted from things they have consumed, before they expel it in aspects of heat, light, force, or other forms of energy. According to Bulbapedia, all living things have Aura, and thus, this would include humans as well, though in smaller quantities. Knowing about Aura, what it does, and how it can be harnessed, how would this affect the growth of technology? Weaponry? I can imagine countries creating weapons and tools that feed off of or amplify the effects of aura, leading to potentially devastating stuff.
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l33tmaan
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Your rebuttal raises a second point: There's almost undoubtedly some black market pokemon trafficking going on. How does that work?
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jroncladd
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Quote:
 
Counterpoint: Would Pokemon be considered intelligent? ... Depending on the continuity, your average Pokemon isn't more intelligent than, say, a gorilla, with a few very rare exceptions. I think it more likely the world consider them animals, albeit dangerous and clever ones, with a few exceptional individuals who have achieved higher degrees of sentience.
Since the Pokemon franchise doesn't really give a clear answer to whether "are Pokemon considered intelligent?" This is a question that is should be established be the setting and/or GM. The goal for this setting is to capture the feeling of the Pokemon games and media, and for me this includes how certain Pokemon media implies that Pokemon are intelligent (to an extent, of course; even if it is established that Pokemon are sapient in this setting, there are varying levels of sapience, as you point out). However, this need not be the case of we can capture the feeling of the Pokemon games without making all Pokemon sapient per se (I give one possible solution below). The analysis on page 445 of the PTU manual gives some support for both sides. What are your thoughts?
Quote:
 
More interesting, I think are the properties of Aura, and how it influences the world. Aura is the basis for almost everything Pokemon do, including performing Moves and Evolution. As far as I can tell, it's an energy created by their bodies, presumably converted from things they have consumed, before they expel it in aspects of heat, light, force, or other forms of energy. According to Bulbapedia, all living things have Aura, and thus, this would include humans as well, though in smaller quantities...
Based on how Pokemon and humans/animals/other living things interact with the world different (the rest of the world lacks elemental types, moves, and so forth), perhaps there three fundamental types of Aura: Pokemon aura (the mass-energy making up Pokemon), Human aura, and the aura of other living things? I separate Human aura and the aura of other animals/plants/etc because this could be used as a tool to justify Pokemon-human relationships in this setting (Pokemon need something from Humans that they can't get from any other plants or animals).
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Your rebuttal raises a second point: There's almost undoubtedly some black market pokemon trafficking going on. How does that work?
I would totally agree with this--my guess that it is a formed of organized crime, like the Team Rockets, because in this instance the Pokemon world closely mirrors the real world: organized crime is responsible for much of the world's human trafficking.
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jroncladd
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On another note:

Mechanically speaking, I've divided the setting into 9 divisions of the Pokemon League, and I'm thinking of further subdividing it into Individual regions, perhaps 5-6 for each Pokemon League. Each Region would be about as varied as each in-game Pokemon region, with a list of ~200 species commonly seen in this region, a variety of geography roughly based on real-world locations, but with "exaggerations", cities based on the real-world cities (name changes could be considered), and so forth.

For example, in the North American Pokemon League, one Region could be the "Cascades Region," based on the Northwestern United States. Major cities could include Seattle, Spokane, Vancouver (Canada), Portland, and so forth, and geographic features could be exaggerated, such as by making the columbian plateau a full-on desert, while the temperate rainforests on the Pacific coast would be full-fledged jungles.
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The Black Glove
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jroncladd
Mar 17 2017, 09:33 AM
Since the Pokemon franchise doesn't really give a clear answer to whether "are Pokemon considered intelligent?" This is a question that is should be established be the setting and/or GM. The goal for this setting is to capture the feeling of the Pokemon games and media, and for me this includes how certain Pokemon media implies that Pokemon are intelligent (to an extent, of course; even if it is established that Pokemon are sapient in this setting, there are varying levels of sapience, as you point out). However, this need not be the case of we can capture the feeling of the Pokemon games without making all Pokemon sapient per se (I give one possible solution below). The analysis on page 445 of the PTU manual gives some support for both sides. What are your thoughts?
In order to answer this question, let me ask you another question- how are Pokemon introduced to the world? Is there some sort of freak time/space event that brings them in from another dimension, have they always been there alongside plants and animals, or are they mutated creatures based on existing animals/objects? Depending on how Pokemon connect with our world will drastically change the setting, and as a result, how humans and Pokemon likely interact.

Quote:
 
Based on how Pokemon and humans/animals/other living things interact with the world different (the rest of the world lacks elemental types, moves, and so forth), perhaps there three fundamental types of Aura: Pokemon aura (the mass-energy making up Pokemon), Human aura, and the aura of other living things? I separate Human aura and the aura of other animals/plants/etc because this could be used as a tool to justify Pokemon-human relationships in this setting (Pokemon need something from Humans that they can't get from any other plants or animals).
Well, canonically, it's the same stuff- Pokemon just have more of it and are more adept at using it. I theorize this is how Ash can get hit with flames hot enough to melt boulders or 10k volts of electricity and be totally fine afterwards (he is noted to have more aura than your average human, which I imagine helps). Besides, there are lots of reasons to justify human-Pokemon relations without them being dependent on "leeching" aura. It also means you still have a reason for wild Pokemon to exist, since they would otherwise be forced to bond to humans to survive.
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l33tmaan
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jroncladd
Mar 17 2017, 09:33 AM
Based on how Pokemon and humans/animals/other living things interact with the world different (the rest of the world lacks elemental types, moves, and so forth), perhaps there three fundamental types of Aura: Pokemon aura (the mass-energy making up Pokemon), Human aura, and the aura of other living things? I separate Human aura and the aura of other animals/plants/etc because this could be used as a tool to justify Pokemon-human relationships in this setting (Pokemon need something from Humans that they can't get from any other plants or animals).
If you don't mind getting a little metaphysical, I rather like the depictions of Anima within Game of Throhs. It sort of explains how elements work and why humans and pokemon are different while still being vague enough to do a lot of things with. For example, in my games, Anima most certainly exists, but because my game is basically set in the Unova of the games (made darker and edgier because my players eat that shit up), very few people know about it and even less understand it. After all, scientists think they know how the universe functions - why would they ask some woods witch about Origin Anima?
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jroncladd
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Quote:
 
how are Pokemon introduced to the world? Is there some sort of freak time/space event that brings them in from another dimension, have they always been there alongside plants and animals, or are they mutated creatures based on existing animals/objects?
For this setting, similar to Pokemon world media, Pokemon have always existed. This setting has simply "converged" to be similar to the real world, in terms of history, people, culture, countries, governments, organizations, places, and so forth.
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If you don't mind getting a little metaphysical, I rather like the depictions of Anima within Game of Throhs. It sort of explains how elements work and why humans and pokemon are different while still being vague enough to do a lot of things with.
I just read through the Anima stuff in the Game of Throhs book, and this is almost exactly what I was imagining for this setting! Thanks for the tip. The main difference for this setting is, rather than being in the real of "metaphysics," this pokemon Anima in this setting is actually just "physics," related to sub-atomic particles and types of matter, and so forth. On the subatomic level, the difference between "water-element" pokemon and "grass-element" pokemon could come down to the presence of different "quarks" and so forth.
Edited by jroncladd, Mar 18 2017, 01:40 PM.
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13thSyndication
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Here's an answer (potentially) to the 'symbiotic' relationship between humans and pokemon question. The main question comes down to, what do Pokemon get out of it? Why is them fighting for humans an okay activity, and not dogfighting? How do we do this without making Pokemon in the wild unable to survive without humans?

Let's consider this:

What if the answer is that Pokemon have a basic instinct and/or need to battle? To push themselves, to get stronger? Certainly this is suggested by the fact that battling allows them to gain new powers and eventually evolve. If pokemon battle each other, even in the wild, as an instinctual, necessary ability to test their strength, and Pokemon battles which mimic their natural habits/needs i the wild do not hurt them or unduly damage or stress them, then human-directed Pokemon battles would be something that would not violate ethical agreements. Battling is a fundamental function of life that they need in order to grow stronger;pokemon that do not battle during certain stages of their lives will never have the same sort of life as a pokemon who does not battle. Not necessarily a bad life, per se, but there is an inherent element missing from that life.

Take the scene from Pokemon: THe First Movie: "Pokemon are meant to fight, but not like this." Also several scenes in various movies or episodes show Pokemon using Moves both in their environment and against each other, and Pokemon matches are structured to be until faint, rather than until death. Actual physical harm to Pokemon is portrayed in most of the media to be abusive, while the Pokemon using their energetic moves on each other isn't shown to damage the Pokemon much at all, or at least not permanently, unless the mon has already fainted.
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Songtress
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I love it and I want to play in this!
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