Prospective campaigns to GM: Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pokemon

I will be starting a new campaign in the near future but I want to make sure I invest the planning and all that into a game people are interested in. Is anyone interested in playing a campaign in any of the following universes? Star Trek Star Wars Harry Potter Pokemon I MIGHT consider requests for a different setting. The campaign will most likely be roll20 or a variant of it, depending on the systems I can get a hold of and how I adjust them (if at all.)

Never heard of a Pokemon RPG, i would be down to play that.

I would be interested in a pokemon one, love pokemon. If not I wouldnt mind the others

Pokemon huh? Count me in.

HP sounds interesting to me, but so far it looks like Pokemon is winning.

A DS9 style game would be awesome Star Wars is a little over done Harry Potter would be interesting Most of the Pokemon RPGs I've seen have been pretty bad or horribly broken, but if you can find a good one that would be cool

Actually, I'm going to look into the Harry Potter manual again, it's been a while and I never really got a feel for the system.

Tate said: Most of the Pokemon RPGs I've seen have been pretty bad or horribly broken, but if you can find a good one that would be cool That's a shame, would love to play a good one. I guess it is hard to balance hundreds of pokemon

If I host a pokemon game, I may utilize the damage and battle stat formulas used in the actual handheld video games. I have the formulas set up in an Excel workbook to a high degree of accuracy. The upside to this is the familiarity with battle gameplay and it being only as broken as the true formulas are (with possible room for error on my part). The downside would be more complicated battling than is typical in tabletop games. Don't worry about doing lots of scary math, though. That's what Excel is for.

Well depending on what day. You make it and ill play it.

Sounds pretty good, so long as the days good with me

This sounds pretty interesting to roleplay.

We might have to get creative for that. In the video games, you're one person with a lineup of 1-6 pokemon. In this, you'll be in a party, each with your own lineups. Going up against a trainer (gym leader or otherwise) by yourself would be tedious and boring for the others, as they'd be standing around, watching. There are a few options I can think of at this time. A. Battles are one trainer vs one trainer and the others wait their turn. Very unlikely we'd go with this cause that's lame. B. You encounter other parties such as your own and engage in multiple simultaneous battles, each player taking on a particular opponent's lineup. (This would include gym leaders as they no doubt have more traffic coming in than the video games imply so one gym leader could not possibly keep up with all the would-be pokemon masters coming in day and night.) C. You encounter other parties, as stated above, but you battle in one big skirmish instead of individual one-on-ones. Your party's lineups versus the other party's lineups. There can be limitations on the number of pokemon used by each trainer and/or limitations on how many pokemon can be on the field at once. When battling gym leaders for badges, you'd do so collectively in one big skirmish with similar rules applied. D. You encounter other parties as well as individual trainers but battle them in one fight. Instead of everyone using all the pokemon at their disposal, each trainer involved contributes a pokemon (or more than one) to a collective lineup with the standard limit of 1-6 pokemon. (Obviously it wouldn't actually be 1 pokemon in the lineup.) The lineup limit could be greater than 6 for party vs party battles, if we so choose. E. A combination of some or all of these, depending on circumstances and/or the desires of the players.

Just looking at those options is making my head hurt. Four players with (potentially) six pokemon each, 24 potential pokemon in the party's possession at a time. Four pokemon on the field at a time, each with four moves they can use, against a person or persons who have to somehow contend with that.

Perhaps you should limit the amount of pokemon we can have in their party at once? It seems like a lot if it is 6 each. Perhaps 3 pokemon each? You could also make it so all gym battles are team required and you can only contribute one pokemon to the fight out of your own party.

Either it would be multiple pokemon vs multiple pokemon OR one pokemon vs one pokemon at a time, regardless of the number of trainers on each side. In other words, it would be fair. But this is for legit Pokemon League-approved battles. In cases of survival, self-defense or (if you're so inclined) you're committing a crime, these rules likely won't apply. But if any of these sound daunting, we can always come up with something simpler.

Joshua V said: Perhaps you should limit the amount of pokemon we can have in their party at once? It seems like a lot if it is 6 each. Perhaps 3 pokemon each? You could also make it so all gym battles are team required and you can only contribute one pokemon to the fight out of your own party. Those are good suggestions.

I would have to go with Option C, As I think it would probably have the most depth. Limiting the amount of Pokemon a trainer can have to 1-3 sounds like the right way to go.  Given we use the C method, how will combat take place? Is it going to be like the games, or are we going to incorporate positioning and close/long range attacks?  Also I'm  worried about the whole effectiveness  against   certain  types of  Pokemon, each encounter may end up with each Pokemon gunning down whatever there effective against.

I could direct you to the pokemon tabletop forums Thie linked boards host both the Pokemon Tabletop Adventures system and the new Pokemon Tabletop United one.

There are two ways we can do the lineup limit. We can make it 1-3, as a couple of you have suggested. We can also make it 1-6 carried, but only 1-3 used per person, per battle. Incorporating positioning and assigning range to attacks is appealing in theory. The trouble is breaking the game by doing so. The moves do not have ranges so it would be up to me to decide what they are. A risky business. The other thing is movement. Movement is typically defined by speed in tabletops but in the pokemon video games, the Speed stat acts more like initiative, deciding turn order. Pokemon do not have a movement range and the Speed stat would not translate well for that purpose because it has such a wide range (starter pokemon can have a Speed under 10 while high level pokemon can have a Speed in the hundreds.) As for your worry about type effectiveness, that's a staple of pokemon. We can't cut that out. Not to mention if we did, that would also change the balance of power and possibly break the game.

Mattia B. said: I could direct you to the pokemon tabletop forums Thie linked boards host both the Pokemon Tabletop Adventures system and the new Pokemon Tabletop United one. Wow this looks interesting.

Patrick W. said: Mattia B. said: I could direct you to the pokemon tabletop forums Thie linked boards host both the Pokemon Tabletop Adventures system and the new Pokemon Tabletop United one. Wow this looks interesting. They are both pretty good systems. PTA is more tested out, but personally i prefer PTU, wich picks up from the PTA experience and covers most of the 'holes' of the previous iteraction.

Mattia B. said: Patrick W. said: Mattia B. said: I could direct you to the pokemon tabletop forums Thie linked boards host both the Pokemon Tabletop Adventures system and the new Pokemon Tabletop United one. Wow this looks interesting. They are both pretty good systems. PTA is more tested out, but personally i prefer PTU, wich picks up from the PTA experience and covers most of the 'holes' of the previous iteraction. I didn't expect something like Pokemon to have a fully fleshed out system. I'm so very excited to give this a go.  

Have you played pokemon conquest before? It is a strategy RPG that uses pokemon and you could probably take some movement and attack rules from it. Generally in conquest weak pokemon have high movement speeds while their evolved forms get less and less due to how powerful they become. They are also each assigned a single attack they can use which can change once something evolves. (eg charmander starts with ember, charmeleon gets fire wheel and charizard gets flamethrower)

Ok I've been looking for a usable system for most of the afternoon and I've found a D20 based system. From what i can tell from about 1 hour of reading its fairly balanced with the idea being that you level up both your trainer and pokemon. Its shockingly in depth and i think that it should fit our needs perfectly I'm uploading the PHB, DMG, pokedex, and character sheets to this google drive as im sending this <a href="https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4xISrS0x0gjdkt1TmpCOWRxZ3c&amp;usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4xISrS0x0gjdkt1TmpCOWRxZ3c&amp;usp=sharing</a>

Tate said: Ok I've been looking for a usable system for most of the afternoon and I've found a D20 based system. From what i can tell from about 1 hour of reading its fairly balanced with the idea being that you level up both your trainer and pokemon. Its shockingly in depth and i think that it should fit our needs perfectly I'm uploading the PHB, DMG, pokedex, and character sheets to this google drive as im sending this <a href="https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4xISrS0x0gjdkt1TmpCOWRxZ3c&amp;usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4xISrS0x0gjdkt1TmpCOWRxZ3c&amp;usp=sharing</a> Yeah looks really good. Should defently get a game running ASAP.

Tate said: Ok I've been looking for a usable system for most of the afternoon and I've found a D20 based system. From what i can tell from about 1 hour of reading its fairly balanced with the idea being that you level up both your trainer and pokemon. Its shockingly in depth and i think that it should fit our needs perfectly I'm uploading the PHB, DMG, pokedex, and character sheets to this google drive as im sending this <a href="https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4xISrS0x0gjdkt1TmpCOWRxZ3c&amp;usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B4xISrS0x0gjdkt1TmpCOWRxZ3c&amp;usp=sharing</a> Not to sount cocky, but your link is just an old version of PTA (pokemon Tabletop adventures). You can find an updated version (among a different and newer system, Pokemon Tabletop United, PTU for short) here .

Looking at it now.

I like what I see, so far. If I go with pokemon, I'll probably use this. I might do some houseruling after I've read it all.

It looks like there's six or so people who are in full or partial support of pokemon and a couple in support of a Harry Potter game. Someone also mentioned having interest in Star Trek if it's a Deep Space 9 scenario but I can assure you it wouldn't be. As for pokemon, I like the suggested system. I'll start framing a campaign with it. Those who are interested in playing it, feel free to post about your expectations for a fun game. If you have preferences as far as pokemon generations, settings (location and/or era) or goals to pursue, talk about them and I might take them into account. The handbook is pretty vague in regards to setting and plot so there are a lot of ways this can go. I also ask that you don't read the GM manual or the pokedex manual as that would be metagaming. I can't give any dates yet as to when this will be ready. But I'm just as anxious to start as you are. --- If anyone still wants to discuss the possibility of Star Wars, Star Trek or Harry Potter, please go right ahead. I intend to do each of those at some point so this is a good opportunity for me to get some preliminary ideas.

My favourite generation is 3 (Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald) but I would be fine with any generation or setting, can't wait to play this.

So long as we have access to 1st gen ill be happy

Im fine with most of the eras. They each have&nbsp;their&nbsp;ups and downs. Im looking foreward to this.

I'm not fond of how this system makes pokemon restat upon leveling up. Unless I'm misunderstanding it, the stats of a Charmander become irrelevant when it evolves into a Charmeleon. Any point distribution up until it evolves gets erased, only to be replaced with a new point distribution of the trainer's choice. I can see how the 'clean slate' is appealing but I think it takes something away from the gameplay. I might adjust this mechanic for the campaign, if I can only think of a way to do so without breaking the game.