>>97886220
I love Pokemon tabletop games in theory, but every time I've tried to play/run one the bookeeping was too annoying to do anything with it other than a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon sort of thing.

Is there a stadium style battles wargame?

>>97886845
Yeah, that's why I'm glad stuff like Foundry exists to make everything easy on both the player and GM side. I remember GMing a short lived campaign a long ass time ago and everyone getting fed up after a while with having to bookkeep so much.

>>97886865
I've only played PTU but there's a load of other fan-made systems, some more tactical and wargame like than others.

>>97886220
>>97886845
The fundamental problem with any pokemon tabletop is that the genre basically assumes every player is going to essentially end up with 6 characters to manage unless they intentionally hold back.
Pair that with how so many of the rulesets try to cram in as many moves and game mechanics as possible, and it quickly becomes a book-keeping nightmare.

Even with digital tools, there's still a lot of decision making to factor in even if you shortcut a lot of the math and tracking.

>>97886220
PTR/PTU foundry is good. I am preparing a manifesto to give them to implement in a goal to fix all the dogshit classes & features.

>>97887278
While it isn't a huge help. I find limiting Pokemon either the whole game or at first helps. But also you have to understand how big Pokemon autism is. For someone like me, PTU is a breeze to actually keep track of everything. Only with Foundry, which I would say is core to the system at this point given the people working on the foundry are actually continuing to work on the system. So the people making a system for Pokemon are likely in that same vein. I would say Pokerole was a decent option if you don't want to be playing 4e D&D style Pokemon.

>>97886220
I personally found that the best way to handle Pokemon RPGs is just to do it freeform. The PCs and their mons just operate better by rule of cool (within reason) than meticulous crunch.

>>97886220
I ran Pokemon through Majimonsters, but it required a bit of work converting moves and stats over. For something looser and more like the anime, Cartoon Action Hour worked decently well.

>>97886220
I prefer the "PTE" version of the system, which is a split of PTU. Rebalances stuff and has a default limit of 3 mons

>>97887321
I've got a fair bit of pokemon autism, but the games have just piled on so many minor mechanics and redundant moves over the decades that designing a ruleset that assumes you're doing all of that manually is just a bizarre decision.

Pokerole is one of the better ones for at least remembering to simplify stats, but even that includes 200 pages of moves.

>>97887773
That is just the nature of Pokemon I think. Unless you do like what one anon suggests and go totally freeform. I myself enjoy the crunch, but another person who is a player without the tism does get overwhelmed at times so I understand there is too much for some people. I'm not sure how to make a solution while keeping the stream of "every move, ability, and Pokemon from the game gets adapted". At least the more annoying shit like Base Relation was killed off.

>>97886220
Does anyone have a "Family Tree" of all the "Pokemon Tabletop Advetures" family of games and which ones are still being developed?

>>97888112
I think it's went PTA>PTU which then split off into PTR and PTE and are still indev

>>97886220
It's something I've been interested in for a long time. I even started sketching out my own region and league based on Florida, but always got bogged down by the extreme crunch. Recently, I started getting back into play-by-post, and I feel like that would be perfect for a Pokemans game since things are already naturally slow.

>>97887321
>I would say Pokerole was a decent option if you don't want to be playing 4e D&D style Pokemon.
I can't wrap my head over how bad they are at marketing. Most people don't even know that pokerole 3.0 has been out for a year now.

>>97890765
3.0? Aren't they on 2.0?

>>97890819
my point exactly. the current pdf is only available on discord.

>>97890822
Link?

File: Untitled.jpg (232.7 KB)

232.7 KB JPG

bump.

>>97890416
My main advice if the crunch is too much is just find some basic things that are reliable. Can't Miss moves, generic and mostly passive trainer classes. Find those so you can easily get together basic trainers. Then as you get more familiar you'll be able to pick out combos or mechanical interactions you want to try out easier.

>>97890822
I should really take a look since I very much disliked Pokerole 1.0. But PTU/R is really what I would want anyways. Just have to fine tune the balance on classes / rework the dog shit player combat.

>>97890949
limewire.com / d / rAwkJ#JSO6kx6rSC

>>97893602
>not dolphin porn
cheers, lad

>>97893398
Fair. There was also a lot of 'my friends aren't going to have the patience/memory for a lot of this' and that causes some discouragement as well. Another thing I'm enjoying about PbP: players often have more investment and discipline. Unlike my wife, who has played a dozen different games and never read the rules for any of them...

>>97893750
>>not dolphin porn
oh well, i'm not thinking clearly today, no mental capacity to make jokes. have a good one. also if you end up wanting to print it hmu, i have an illegal edit without background images that you can't get on discord

File: file.png (3 MB)

3 MB PNG

This is where my autism finally pays off.
Pokemon Tabletop United is the ones that most people are familiar with and are very crunchy but generalist. I think if you wanna play PTU, just use Pokemon Tabletop Evolutions, which is catching up in terms of tools and uses a much more manageable 3 Pokemon per trainer.
Pokemon 5e USED to dominate the Pokemon tabletop scene for a short stint before the DMCA forced all the support to shut down. It's back now under new management, but no one I know plays it anymore.
Pokemon Tabletop Adventures 3 is very much what I'd recommend for most people. The bookkeeping isn't terrible. There is trainer combat or PMD options if you allow it, but it's generally well-balanced and doesn't get into Pokemon build autism.
Pokeymanz is a well-done Savage World hack with the unfortunate side-effect of having cringe humor on every other pages. It's a genuinely good system but it's hard to sell a party on it because it has that early tumblr humor baked into its PDF.
Pokerole is a system I've basically written off. Every trainer will feel the same. Every Pikachu will feel the same. The devs are autistic as hell with a very narrow vision of the setting, and it's restricted the system into being something you play with your little cousin rather than with friends. It's a very usable system, but you will not find people going to bat for it unless they're ESL third-worlders.
Pokemon Tabletop Reunited is the opposite side of Pokerole's autism. It is PTU's problem amped up to 11 and only meant to be played on Foundry, which can automate the actual fucking game mechanics. It's absurd, it's autistic, it's both ugly and beautiful in the way it flippantly turns a tabletop RPG into a video game.
The Poke RPG is a niche system that I will put out there if none of the other options interest you. It's a generalist system but feels a lot more concise and easier to introduce to people.
Finally, Explorers! is for PMD. Use this for PMD. Use PMD for it.

>>97894568
>YOU LIKE YOUR TABLETOP HAVING AUTOMATION? FUCK YOU
Stay mad, I'll keep playing PTR with my pals and have several complete and fun campaigns.

Any games based on 70s/80s design styles rather than modern DnD mega crunch?
>>97886865
Sounds pretty sick

>>97894606
I don't have Foundry so I can't really comment on it too much. Automation is ultimately a good thing when things get as crunchy as PTR does. Hell, even PTU and PTE needs some automation. Glad you're actually playing games Anon. That's rare in this day and age of /tg/.
>>97894650
More of the lighter systems of Pokemon TTRPG are gonna lean on narrativist or gamist systems. The Poke RPG is probably the most simulationist outside of literally playing Pokemon 5e or some bootleg Pokemon system.

>>97886220
>>97886845
>>97887321
I feel like pokemon might work as a skirmish game. where you control a squad sized group that individually have less total info then most RPG's, where you are just assumed to handle one entity if you are a player.

I personally would look at things like Rangers of Shadow deep or mordheims for inspiration. Skirmish games that have a bit of a campaign focus. Spec some of your mons into melee combat and tankyness, others into ranged, others into support and others still into contering mon's who counter your other mons (say you have a steel type main tank, you have a secondary water type tank to adress fire types). Then you can have a party of 6 mons that all fight together instead of one at a time. Hell in a campaign situation you can even evolve your pokemon as an equivelent for leveling up.

>>97894606
If your tabletop isn't playable without automation it's kind of a bad tabletop.

>>97894606
People like automation. People don't like the system being damn near unplayable without automation.

PTU/R is unironically only behind deranged systems like FATAL for how much math they expect you to do. It's only remotely playable because the fanbase automated it, which is an insane thing to say about a genre defined by playing at a table.

I just want a pokemon tabletop without null turns, is that too much to ask?

>>97886220
Consider a hybrid game where you use a pretty basic TTRPG for the trainers, then pokemon battles are handled via the TCG or Showdown.

>>97895014
I feel like that would remove all of the fun of the battles when it comes down to utilizing the environment, giving trainers extra things to do mid-battle, and other non-videogame stuff that you can do with roleplaying and a tabletop system in general

>>97894871
Having it be a squad based game would be neat since you as the Trainer could expressly still influence your troops. Or go full PMD and make it squads of Pokemon.

>>97894894
What do you mean Null Turns?

>>97895056
I was wondering about that too, it looks like reddit speak for missing your attacks/failing your checks during a turn and not feeling useful ;(
i initially thought it meant excessive action denial or something which yeah can be a massive pain in the ass

>>97895074
There was an errata for PTU like almost 10 years ago to remove all the turn loss status except for Freeze and Sleep. In my game we turned Freeze into Frostbite, -special attack burn basically. Sleep is still there, but any damage wakes you up and we made it easier each turn to wake up like the Vortex saves. I have PTSD from when a Slaking put my Raichu to sleep and I failed 4 turns even with +4 and rerolls.

>>97894568
>something you play with your little cousin rather than with friends
anon, are you aware of the target demographics of the franchise we're talking about?

>>97886220
Completely overhauled Pokemon Tabletop Adventure AND ran it in Cortex, ask me anything.

> Cortex lacks granularity to my taste, but it is time / resource-efficient.

>>97886220
Pokerole 3.0 is apparently a huge step up. I've heard nothing but glowing praise from a GM of mine who hated 2.0 so that has to mean something. Haven't looked it over myself.

Also, a friend of mine wanted to do a PMD game for some of our friends (I wasn't super interested, it's not my cup of tea) so I brewed up some shit that uses the stats from the core games and such with tweaks to effects and how combat works. If you're interested, you can find that quick and dirty hack here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Tl1B80GIzj0aKFYdUNtlN1Ao0BOLZQdZ?usp=sharing

>>97886220
I made my own Pokemon Tabletop a while back. My friends like it but you got to have people willing to deal with all of the book keeping of not only their pokemon which is up to 6, but their own trainer as they have skills and classes. Though I have no problem having it filter the tourists and fake players. (If you want a full team but better be able to handle the book keeping of not only your trainer but each pokemon as well as maintaining all of your pokemon.)

People liked that the trainer classes and the different skills you got for leveling them up. Plus making the trainers more than just a blank avatar rather than everything be able the pokemon. Also simplified pokemon stats, moves, items, etc. Making it easier once you got it down.

>>97887835
>I'm not sure how to make a solution while keeping the stream of "every move, ability, and Pokemon from the game gets adapted"

Why would you want to honestly?

>>97887835
>>97897044
That's also the part I'm questioning. Pokemon, sure. But there are so many nothingburger abilities and redundant moves. Especially in the context of a tabletop game. You don't need Follow Me when a pokemon can just bodyblock directly. You don't need Cut when there's 100 other moves that can get rid of small trees.
People spend so much time trying to replicate the video games that they forget to actually take advantage of the strengths a tabletop game would offer. If I wanted to know how the video games would resolve a battle between two pokemon, I'd just use a damage calculator.

>>97897244
The irony is that Follow Me actually has more use cases in a tabletop setting than a video game. In the video game it's only useful for Pokemon you're fine with taking a hit in Doubles. But in a tabletop it's a proactive taunt instead of a reactive body block that forces you to take damage. So it's niche shifts to pokemon who are better at avoiding damage in the first place.

>>97897044
>>97897244
Yes I want to keep them all. PTU did a half decent job turning useless shit into something with a niche. Frequencies and Keywords being something to account for with moves.

>>97897623
I'd argue it's better for future proofing the system as well. People will always want to use the shiniest new toys so if Game Freak decides a Pokemon only learns X Y and Z bad moves for a bit it's now easier to translate to the tabletop later than if you'd arbitrarily decided some moves aren't worth the space and now have to potentially make up shit wholesale.

I'd argue the bigger problems with PTU arise from the stat math and multiple active abilities clogging up both bookkeeping and combat over things like Cut and Follow Me having use cases.

>>97897652
I also agree. I have no elegant way to do it but that is why I am looking into it with my friends. But around the mid 20s to early 30s the game becomes fucking awful to play due to evasion. We fixed this by just giving a global +2 accuracy at like level 30. Worked like a charm. I do prefer the PTR math since PTU's 1:1 stats make Speed feel useless. But things can get out of hand quite easily at the higher end.

>>97897700
Sadly the most elegant solution I've ever come across is just starting a new system from scratch. But that's not exactly an appealing option either.

>>97897720
The accuracy buff at 30 may stay then. The system's design I find is salvageable for the most part with tweaks here and there. Probably enough to be another edition, but I find the base totally workable. My main goal with a rework of things for the most part is focused on Classes and their features as I find the gap in quality in them to be a major detriment. Baseline mechanics that need adjust as I previously mentioned is accuracy at higher levels and dealing Status changes.

>>97897742
The base is workable in the sense the math does work to achieve the goals of the system. I just don't agree that those goals are always worth pursuing. But this is Pokemon and nobody is gonna agree what actually matters in Pokemon in the end. It's why we have so many branching systems from the original PTA, and Pokerole has its own vision. Pokemon 5e deserved to be buried desu it was total dogshit.

File: file.png (69.3 KB)

69.3 KB PNG

>>97894894
Explorers!, which is a PMD system, does auto-hits unless you explicitly have the status effects that make you miss.
I'm currently working on a trainer hack in my free time based off of the PMD system just because I liked the core of it so far.
This is gonna be my first system.

>>97886220
I ran a game of Pokerole a while back. There were three players, each with a team of 6 pokemon, so it was a challenge to run, trying give distinct personality to some many NPCs. My players seemed to really enjoy it - the best praise I got for the campaign was having engaging gym leader NPCs. I'll describe some of them and some of the other plot points with storytime.

The grass gym was a dominatrix. The normal gym was a dad, complete with dad jokes and grilling. The psychic gym had a Gothietelle that predicted the gym leader's death, and a Beheeyem that would erase the gym leader's memory whenever she learned of her impending death - they wanted her to enjoy her final days. Her Oranguru did a Weekend at Bernie's so the party could get their badge. The fairy gym was their rival character, but their ace had been stolen by their obsessive mother, so they couldn't attempt that gym until dealing with a major villain. The steel gym did superhero performances for the children, and the gym challenge was to partake in one.

>>97899905
The local professor wanted to research the history of humans and pokemon and how they were once the same according to ancient legend - not in a have sex with them way, but in a "can I mega-evolve or dynamax a human?" way. So they went on a quest to find Dialga. One player did a Wonder Trade, losing their Wattrel for Necrozma (rolled randomly and got that...) which became a major threat. The Wattrel was lost in a dead dimension. The electric gym leader was a villain that had hassled that player near the start of the campaign with their Kilowattrel - before that player ever had a Wattrel. Since Dialga was a plot point, I figured I'd close a time loop and reveal that the electric gym leader had rescued that Wattrel from the dead dimension and sent it to their past self. So the Kilowattrel the player had a vendetta against was the one they abandoned all along. They eventually bring back a cave woman from the past who is the local rock-expert (there wasn't a rock gym). She falls for a player's cooking and decides to keep them. Her dna allows the professor to make a pokemonification serum that allows humans to use potions, mega evolve, get caught in pokeballs, etc.. One of the player's mom was the giant office lady actress from Pokestar Studios, so she takes the serum to get dynamaxed for good special effects. This also means mob boss villain can throw a pokeball at her to kidnap her and hold her ransom.

In the end, the fairy gym leader rival 'dies' but wins her life back by winning enough points playing games with Arceus. Then the players have a tournament with a few NPCs and each other to determine the Champion.

So yeah, I'd say I enjoyed my time playing a pokemon ttrpg.

>>97899912
To elaborate my thoughts on Pokerole for anyone curious. I used roll20, and the buttons there worked well enough, but it was a lot of work transcribing everything from the book into moves on the character sheet. Sometimes, I'd just ask each of the players to stat a random pokemon or two of their choice that I could throw in the pool for using later. During play, roll20 handled a lot of the crunchier things, but the amount of prep-work needed was not something I'd want to do again. Granted, if I ran that system again, at least I could re-use a lot of pokemon to make it easier.

>>97900588
Yeah even just having bare basic stats for every Pokemon encountered in a game is a lot of work for whatever system is used by nature of there being that many Pokemon. I'm glad foundry is seeing more use as a goal for PTE and by PTR since it really makes so much of the prepwork easier and really gives more time to make special encounters more special.

>>97894568
>Pokemon Tabletop Reunited is the opposite side of Pokerole's autism. It is PTU's problem amped up to 11 and only meant to be played on Foundry, which can automate the actual fucking game mechanics. It's absurd, it's autistic, it's both ugly and beautiful in the way it flippantly turns a tabletop RPG into a video game.
I actually don't mind this. Most of my players are competitive or semi-competitive, so having mechanics that closely mirror the game is great for us and makes designing boss fights a hell of a lot easier since I already know what mons do.

It can also run Mystery Dungeon which PTU is awful at in foundry.

Also it doesn't matter what pokemon system you use. Trying to run any game of it without automation tools sounds like pure misery and suffering.

>>97894883
What an inane example. The difference between PTR and FATAL is that FATAL expects you to do the math at the table. PTR gives you the math, but they straight up tell you it's meant to be played on a virtual tabletop. They don't force you to do it at the table.

>>97886969
>I've only played PTU but there's a load of other fan-made systems, some more tactical and wargame like than others.
C-c-can you list them?

>>97901347
Imagine thinking it actually closely mirrors the game. Your players having Smogon math autism will not help.

>>97890765
Have they finally updated the mystery dungeon supplement?

>>97901851
It's not a 1:1 mirror, but it's close enough at base. The added skills also really help customize each mon.

File: lol so random.png (82.1 KB)

82.1 KB PNG

>>97901949
No, I don't think they are interested in maintaining that. not sure about the homebrew, didn't see it on discord.

>>97901957
Dude the damage multipliers and stat ups are different. You're getting a rough estimate on a good day.

>>97902968
The stat formula is much closer with PTR than base PTU. And oh no SE is only 1.5 instead of x2, less glass cannon? Say it ain't so. Injuries are also there to prevent stall. If anything it is better than base singles.

>>97903039
Yeah it does suck that PTU/R is terrified of glass cannons, because it means the best way to play has always been rounded offense with spammable mid-power moves. Even 1v1's can take ages at high levels as a result.

Injuries as anti-stall is also just retarded when most recovery and status worth bringing are already low-frequency.

The PTR and PTU devs apparently live in an echo chamber that doesn't actually survive contact with the reality of what they've made.

>>97903612
You can still make a hyper offensive Pokemon with high power Smite moves to insulate misses. Especially with broken older stuff like Strike Again or Flying Ace allowing multi turns. Injuries are good and for sure work as intended at being able to counter stall by nuking their HP if you drop them to half and they heal above it. If someone is able to spam healing items and their Pokemon aren't dropping below half then you have an issue that isn't really related to the system but your play group. The enemies are too weak, the players have infinite cash, the healer SHOULD be targeted if they are healing abunch in a high stakes battle or healing shouldn't be allowed to be spammed in a league battle.

>>97903646
You mean the moves you can only use a few times a battle? Oh boy I can attack ten whole times before I'm left with struggle attacks. And when I whiff at least Smite does a bit of damage! Except the damage sucks so the enemy is gonna soak most of it. And at late game most moves hitting become a coin flip as a default, so that's even more fun.

You clearly talked to the devs at some point because you're parroting their horseshit perfectly without understanding why it's not working as they claim.

>mfw the thread had to be bumped twice with shitpostsd but it eventually gets traction

>>97904009
Did I say I hate Waffles bitch?

I'm not saying only have Scene x2 moves you ass. I'm saying having some is good. You wanna get Suppressed by any of the many sources of pressure and actually only have struggle? Go ahead and get abunch of Scene x2 moves. But no, I think like 1-2 big Scene x2 moves then like one Utility and the rest being EOT or At-Will with some PP Ups are good. PTU still had glass cannons be good because they could just fully invest in attack and nuke people then sweep people because the base PTU devs were retarded sometimes.

I use a lot of things to fix the system and glass cannons are STILL good. Even with KOing a Pokemon allowing a replacement to have a turn. I also give +2 accuracy to everything at around level 30 which just helps everyone. There are a lot of options for defensive moves and abilities to enable a full retard glass cannon. You just can't do as much easy sweeping as you can in the video games.