Thought I’d open this up to the DW community. What do you guys think about a Pokemon hack of DW or AW? Andy Hauge and Adam Blinkinsop were discussing it in another thread, and it got me thinking. So here’s what I have-just brief thoughts and ideas. Feel free to suggest stuff!
Thought I’d open this up to the DW community.
Thought I’d open this up to the DW community.
I feel like all player classes should be “Trainer” subclasses, in a sense. Means, as a GM, you can worry most about setting up episodic stories where the Gym is the boss fight.
I’ve got a bunch of thoughts about this that I’ll probably post in the future, ( #fermat ) but it’ll be more an AW hack than a DW hack, so I’m interested to see where you take it!
Yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking: all the players would be trainers, but they would do other things as well (hence the other classes).
I haven’t had a lot of experience with AW, but I’ll look into it. I have a feeling that it might work better than DW, though.
More thoughts, then:
– Play should probably be episodic, where the Gym battle forms the climax.
– Players won’t ever kill their Rivals, so character arc is very important.
– Monster creation is key.
In the shows, you seldom saw the same monster multiple times. I feel like a suitably awesome monster generator (c.f. Stars Against Humanity or The Quiet Year as games that produce artifacts as a side-effect) would really make this game.
That way, character generation is über-quick, with most of it a group session to create starting monsters. The book could come with a sample “Pokédex” for wandering monsters, but it’d be extremely small — the majority of the monsters found should be player-generated. Evolution should be player-directed.
Essentially, character customization is controlled through the monster itself, with the character able to switch modes by switching which monster is active. Players would start with one monster and add more complexity over time.
It’d be a fun trick to make it a nano-game, but that might be too much pressure on the players.
That sounds fantastic. Would there need to be classes like AW and DW then, or would everyone start with a Trainer playbook, with the differences being with their starting Pokemon?
I think there would still be playbooks, but they’d be simpler, for monster archetypes instead of adventurer archetypes.
You’d want it to be easy for a player to create one, ideally fitting the “Pokédex entry” on an index card to pass around the table.
So, perhaps each character sheets would be divided into seven sections: Trainer info like name and profession (breeder, prof. etc.) then six sections for Pokemon. Then the GM prints out a little Pokedex booklet to write down info for each new Pokemon that appears, literally building it through play. Also, I think that creating a Pokemon should be as easy as rolling 2 or 3 dice.
Perhaps once for element, once for type of animal, and once for base strengths (element and type would give a bonus to a couple of stats, whereas base form would give the baseline that the others would modify)
Sounds awesome ! ! !
Thank you! It’s cool to see such an interest in this.
Not to blow my own horn, but… toot! XD
I sat down and made a ‘monster trainer’ class for DW. Meant as a class to go along with the rest. Not exactly this project, but I thought you might at least like to see someone else’s (almost complete) ideas on this.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11fApZGhvAs-K_cAP4tGrcDZnRUjKaTf19L003ZaCB0E/edit?usp=drive_web
Yea, I actually loved your Trainer class! That’s what got this conversation started, believe it or not ( in one of Adam Koebel ‘s threads about mounted combat, of all things)
Looking at what you have there and it looks great! I would recommend doing one move for each subtype. When you are creating the creature, choose one of the moves for it’s subtypes to attach to it. The trainer can give the creature access to it’s other subclass moves by evolving it. When the trainer levels up they can choose one of their creatures moves to learn (put on their sheet) and can then give it to other creatures that share one of that creature’s three subtypes. That would allow moves to be fluid in an interesting way and almost ensure that a single group never plays out all the moves.
So, you’re saying that the base, the form, AND the type would have a move? Because that sounds awesome!
That was my thinking yes. It would be a lot of work to get unique triggers and responses for that many but it would add a lot of flavor that would make each monster unique.
I would also recommend that you break from the one monster at a time model here seeing as the really interesting thing would be the group combos. This would make an awesome twosie game.
Well, I was thinking that you’d start off with one monster, but then could capture more as you go. Then you could do things like send in your ice turtle to soak up damage while you call your fire lion to you so you can heal him.