| Welcome to Pokemon Tabletop. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
| why no GMs | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Sep 20 2011, 11:46 AM (1,629 Views) | |
| Geez3r | Oct 3 2011, 01:28 PM Post #11 |
|
Pokémon Trainer
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
The main problem with GMing P:TA right now is the fact that there is very little in the way of tools for a GM to use to quickly cobble together an encounter or the like on the fly. This is less an issue in Play by post games due to extended prep time, even in the middle of combat, but in the face to face games, it can be rather daunting. It's been my experience as a D&D GM that I only know what's going to happen in a given session for about the first 10-20 minutes. After that the players are so far off the rails, I'm just making it up as I go along. So when it's time for an encounter, I thumb through the monster manual, and make up an encounter based upon the area the PC's are in, and their rough ECL. A task made very easy by things like the Monster Filter, and of course general familiarity with the source material. You don't have that with P:TA. What is the relative difference in power between a level 10 Beedrill and a Level 10 Squirtle? How about level 15, or 20? The answer most people have is "I don't know." The Stat distribution of any 2 species of Pokemon are widely divergent, without including the level increases. Furthermore, while Stats may play a rather important role in combat, it is the individual Moves that win or lose Pokemon battles. The Move Tutor update did a lot to mitigate that, by lowering the overall damage and removing some volatility from the system, but Moves often create a sort of tipping point in the overall level of a Pokemon. This is very similar to spells in D&D to keep my previous example going. Wizards that are between level 1 and 4 are simply just trying not to die. Once they hit level 5, and gain 3rd level spells, it's a whole new game. Charmeleon for example goes from having its best offensive Move being Ember at level 16, to Dragon Rage at level 17. Unless you increased only S. Attack, Dragon Rage will do more than you max damage with Ember and is furthermore not affected by Defenses. And it'll do a pretty sizable chunk of your Target's HP to boot, even if you can only use it once. This tipping point happens again when he hits Level 28 and Learns Fire Fang. At that point, there are precisely 2 reasons to use Ember over Fire Fang: you can't get in range to use Fire Fang, or you used Fire Fang last round. Now unless you have some sort of freakish memory to memorize the Move lists of every single Pokemon, you don't know when that tipping point is off the top of your head. So you may send your party up against a Pokemon that is unintentionally very powerful for its level, even worse if you've accidentally sent them up against an entire group of these Pokemon. Now of course, you can always decide not to use the Move, or replace the offending Move in question, but the point is that it's another step the GM has to do on the fly. Lastly, in creating a Pokemon for use in battle, you have to consult all 3 books. Pokedex to get its Stats, Abilities, and Moves, Players Handbook to know what the Moves & Abilities do, and GM's Guide to award XP and figure out successful captures. That's a pain. Sure, you'll know some of the basics really quickly. Tackle does 2d6 damage, has the Dash keyword and has an Accuracy check of 3. But there are far fewer GM's that know what say... Punishment does off hand. Long story short, if the GM is caught by surprise or the players do something different than intended, the GM is going to have to spend the next 10 minutes frantically flipping through the pages of the pdf's trying to stat out an encounter they weren't expecting. Wow that was a lot longer than I expected... so uhhh: TL;DR: GM's don't have tools or benchmarks readily available to them to quickly come up with material for unexpected events. |
![]() |
|
| MrCompetition | Oct 3 2011, 02:35 PM Post #12 |
![]()
Pokémon Trainer
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
One tip I have for new GM's that need to stat out encounters on the fly is to have your players take a break while you do that. For my IRL game, I can stat up 6 enemy pokemon in about 5-10 minutes depending on how varied their levels and species are. This time includes writing down all the pertinent information for those pokemon (xp value, base capture rate, stats, moves it has) on a separate sheet of paper. During that time my players will take a bathroom or smoke break, refill their beverages and snacks, and discuss basic tactics with each other. Then, when I'm ready, they're ready as well and we can have a relatively smooth encounter. While they're rolling dice, I'm looking up the next move I want to use. This is my suggestion to anyone who seems to be having problems running their games. Sometimes I'll even have the players stat up the wild's or NPC's pokemon (I only do this when the party has split up. Fortunately for me, my players love to watch each other suffer in-game). There have even been a few times where I'll hand an NPC's information to a player who's character isn't around and have said player be the opponent. I would suggest GM's do this if there is a lot of inter-party tension or conflict slowing the game down. This practice has greatly reduced the amount of "poke-stealing" in the group (capturing a 'mon that someone else was trying to) as well as lower many other incidents that tended to cause hard-feelings between the players. |
![]() |
|
| BuckBacon | Oct 5 2011, 02:32 PM Post #13 |
|
Pokémon Trainer
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]()
|
There are two different games on the Union Room board recruiting players RIGHT NOW. Isn't that enough? And for my two cents, I love playing the game, but I love DMing more. I rarely if ever plan ahead stats, though. I plan story points and dialogue. I rarely make dice rolls for NPCs. I usually judge success or failure (and degrees of success) for NPCs based on what would lead to the most interesting plot outcome. |
![]() |
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · Union Room · Next Topic » |
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
| Track Topic · E-mail Topic |
5:30 PM Jul 10
|
Pokéball created by Sarah & Delirium of the ZNR





![]](http://z4.ifrm.com/static/1/pip_r.png)




5:30 PM Jul 10