So I'm doing this in depth Pokemon RP with my friends...

[Chaoswalker]

I like games. I like games a lot. I've been compulsively making games since I was 5. I finally gave in and started a Pokemon themed Role Play with 8 other friends. The problem? They can burn through content pretty fast. I've sped up the creative process by utilizing a random dungeon generator to create bases for maps, but a good design still takes time. I was hoping that this big o'l bunch of pokemon fans might be able to help me with ideas. First though, I should explain what is possible...
How The Game Works
The game is played over skype in three hour sessions. (It's on a very strict schedule to keep it from eating up my life.) We always have at least 2 trainers at a time, with me being DM. All pokemon stats, items, maps, etc are saved on a private forum. (Private in that you have to be an admin to access anything.) They choose an area to explore, pick up a mission to complete, or experience a story event. There are towns, pokemon centers, stores, wild encounters, trainer battles, and many, many areas to explore. I enjoy the regular pokemon battle system, so I emulate that as closely as possible with some dumbed down stats and simpler calculation that I'd say gives about a 10% margin of error. (If it's off by way more though.... woops. he he.) Each player can only cary 4 Pokemon at a time, and most battles are 2v2 in the interest of saving time.
What's Already In There
-Many stores
-Many NPCs
-Move Tutors who must be defeated to gain their services
-Champions who reward you with access to legendary pokemon events
-Apricorn pokeball forge
-Trade offers for uncommon pokemon
-Green House for cultivating berries
-Stadium to make challenges for quick cash, as well as tournaments and contests.
-Sort of side metagame called bucket wrestling where the only pokemon allowed are water types 2' or shorter.
-A mill that grinds up berries to give you three use berry pastes. (Metagame changer? I think so.)
-Doll shop that requires cotton/fluff based pokemon.
-There's probably a couple other things, but I can't think of them right now.

So what I'm wondering is... what would you want to do in an open Pokemon world? Who would be interesting to meet? What would be cool to make? What would be exciting to find?

 

[Shiruba]

So what I'm wondering is... what would you want to do in an open Pokemon world?

I WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO SIT ON BENCHES.


but in general, i see a distinct lack of side-game action. what about contests, and the varying forms of them? i personally think the show's contests are the most in-depth by far, but the most manageable i can see is the hoenn type, with sinnoh falling somewhere in the middle. you already have some form of 'berry paste,' so poffin/pokeblock/whatever making from that seems reasonable. aside from sheen level, hoenn operates on an easily predictable level and it requires no real reflexes or co-ordination like the dance stage of sinnoh or the completely arbitrary judging of anime contests, which makes it predictable like the battles and yetobviously different. after all, who doesn't want ribbons [lol almost put 'women] to make their pokemon pre-ttay?

pokeathlon is also a possibility, arguably more fun and sense-making [imo], though you'd have a similar problem to sinnoh's dance mechanic.

musicals... lol. if you want, i guess? those things have the depth of your average kiddie pool, though.

 

[Snaquaza]

I would like some very very big dungeons that have some puzzle and maybe a goal to go through them, mostly a forest seems great for this

Also, I always thought it was nice Pokemon Ranger that your pokemon could do things as stop fire, clear things, like HM's but more Pokemon specific actions seem good if you would be able to make them

 

[Chaoswalker]

what about contests, and the varying forms of them

I've had one contest up until now. It was an ugly contest. Several players entered their ugliest pokemon, and I had 3 people not in the RP act as judges, giving a rating out of 10 as to how ugly the pokemon is. The main reason I haven't added regular contests is that I don't know how they work mechanically, and I'd rather not keep track of contest stats in addition to regular stats. In the future I plan to conduct similar such contests for things like Beauty and weirdness. Perhaps I ought to consider things like accessories giving extra points though.

pokeathlon is also a possibility

Hm, I forgot about that. The stats are probably somewhere like Serebii, and I could make up new mechanics for how it works.

I would like some very very big dungeons that have some puzzle and maybe a goal to go through them, mostly a forest seems great for this

Explorable areas included so far...
City Sector: Park, Backstreets, Abandoned Warehouse, Power Plant, Sewers
Woodland Sector: Regular Forest, Evergreen Type Forest, Dark Spooky Forest, Haunted Mansion, Mountain Clim, Mines, Monastery, Snowtop
Ocean Sector: Windy Isle, Storm Isle
The first few areas I designed were simple maps with various items to find. Over time though, start adding more puzzle elements. For example, the mines has 3 floors. There are red and blue doors throughout, and purple valves. Turning a purple valve opens one color of door, and locks the other. (one color of door is always locked, and the other is open.) This means deciding which doors you need open when, as well as going back to previous floors to turn valves. In addition there are several keys hidden throughout, all of which need to be found to enter the final room where Registeel resides.

Also, I always thought it was nice Pokemon Ranger that your pokemon could do things as stop fire, clear things, like HM's but more Pokemon specific actions seem good if you would be able to make them

I use similar elements, such as a fire extinguishing mission that required water type pokemon. I don't bother making a pokemon learn HM moves. If they COULD learn surf, then by all means you can ride them across water. You simply need to have a pokemon who can perform the move. An example of an area where I use this is the Dark forest, where they found a smelly reaper cloth that required Odor Sleuth to lead them to the other side of the forest, but also need flash and defog to maintain vision.

 

[Drakhun]

I personally am a fan of needlessly grandious plots and general epicness. Since the Faerie type is coming out, and there is a history of the supernatural in pokemon (pokemon gods, parallel realities and the like) why not shove your trainers into the planes of shadow and the fae, where instead of humans, undead spirits and various types of Fae (faeries, elves, ect) train pokemon, and the pokemon we think of as normal are exotic and in these alternate planes pokemon of that theme are commonplace. Explore the multiverse, quiet rogue pokegods! Alternately go legendary hunting. Go to the far ends of the world to find the breeding grounds of things like legendary birds, and either protect them, or capture one for yourself. You could also have a town attacked by a criminal group while your players are there, and have the police pressgang trainers (or give them the option to volunteer) in flushing the terrorists out of a major building (think Silphco in RBY). Also, like we have challenge runs in our games, things like Nuzlocke and the like, you could go with league challenges, have your players make their way through the league with certain restrictions for increased rewards.

 

[DracoSP360]

Sounds Intersting.
Too Bad I won't be able to play it due to "Stranger Danger"

 

[Chaoswalker]

I personally am a fan of needlessly grandious plots and general epicness.

As you should be. I have a slowly developing plot that I'd describe as being somewhere between Pokemon R/B, Pokemon B/W, and Naruto Shippuden. There's an misunderstood/evil organization trying to make a better world for pokemon, by any means possible. Working in opposition, but also using much evil to get the job done is a corporation secretly endorsed by the city mayor which desires to extend their control across the continent. In order to meet these goals, both groups are scrambling to obtain powerful legendary pokemon: for whoever commands the strongest pokemon demands the most fear and respect. Such a person/group can bend the masses to their will. Behind all this though are two characters mixed among the ranks of each group with their own agendas for using legendary pokemon...
I usually try to do deep character development, but I'm making that secondary since I don't have control over the player's actions. Speaking of not having control, I have to make alternate scenarios in case they lose. /:

Since the Faerie type is coming out

I'm waiting for more info before I include anything based on fairy type. Right now I'm using Smogon's tiering and viability rankings as a way to gauge which pokemon are easy to beat, or tough to take down, and which moves I can tweak to alter difficulty. When fairy type comes around though, a lot of that is going to change.

Also, like we have challenge runs in our games, things like Nuzlocke and the like, you could go with league challenges, have your players make their way through the league with certain restrictions for increased rewards.

I definitely plan to challenge them more in the future, but right now they are scrambling to find and defeat move tutors to complete their competitive movesets. Until then, any pokemon with a smogon level build is already too tough.

Too Bad I won't be able to play it due to "Stranger Danger"

As much as I'd LIKE to bring in more players, since only 2 of the 8 tend to be present at RP time...
I've already had someone I only sort of know join: turns out I don't like them. Woops.
My policy on that would be: only if I know you are a cool dude (or dudette), otherwise your personality will make me occasionally bump up the NPC intelligence and start KOing your Pokemon. The guy I mentioned before is set on only getting the pokemon he likes, despite my continual advice to not only pick pokemon weak to rock. What happens when he runs into a Golem? He becomes dead weight in a tag team battle. That and he provokes NPCs who can hurt him. Anyway, since I don't really know anyone here... yeah.

 

[ryo yamada2001]

If you could make an IRC channel I could play since I have a great idea for a dungeon.

 

[Chaoswalker]

What is this IRC channel of which you speak?

 

[Chaoswalker]

I was looking around for stuff I like that IRC channel you mentioned. I kept digging deeper and finaly I ran across roll20.net . It gives us a chat, a space for maps, makes it easy to keep track of stats, roll wild encounter, use macros for damage calculation, has a fog of war function, and other things I'm sure I forgot to mention. We tested play on it once at the game ran soooooo smoothly.

 

[inanimate blob]

I was looking around for stuff I like that IRC channel you mentioned. I kept digging deeper and finaly I ran across roll20.net . It gives us a chat, a space for maps, makes it easy to keep track of stats, roll wild encounter, use macros for damage calculation, has a fog of war function, and other things I'm sure I forgot to mention. We tested play on it once at the game ran soooooo smoothly.

Sounds pretty sick. Maybe you could get this thing to take off in a big way, if it's that easy. That was the only thing I was worried about.

 

[Chaoswalker]

We made a bold decision that is paying off well. There is no longer particular need to catch pokemon. You choose a list of up to 16 pokemon, and you own them with perfect movesets and stats. From there on the game is more about adventuring as it turns out that grinding for EXP is not fun when you have to do it at scheduled times. There is a catch: You still have to hunt down legendary pokemon to capture them. This makes you feel much cooler when you finally get them.

Hm... I'm starting to wonder if I even can allow more players. As things are now, battles are kind of a commodity. When a wild encounter comes along two people step forward to fight, taking turns each time. When a character appears to be battled, again only up to two people can fight. When I have more than 4 players (which is rare) people start to feel left out of the fights since it takes so long for their turn to come around. I don't want to touch triple battles since I don't know much about them. I have a friend who wants to try GMing though (and he'd be good at it), meaning the scope of the project could conceivably be expanded a little.

It would be nice if I could make wild encounters even FASTER though. Right now I have a macro for damage calculation, but I still have to go through a slow process of looking up the stats, checking base powers, remembering abilities, etc. This is not a problem with trainer battles, since we just do those over Pokemon Showdown. (For short wild encounters setting up showdown teams breaks the game up too much) I'm on the edge of just not including random encounters at all, except in the case of dungeon or story events so I can do them over showdown.

"Design is an iterative process" said a wise youtube video. No kidding.