Pokémon RPG

A fully working Table Top RPG system adapted from the franchise “Pokémon”, originally started as part of my original Sheridan Game Design Portfolio in 2017

Take Aways

As one of my few non-game-jam projects, my main lesson is to finalize the project faster. The project was in a complete state a few months into its lifetime, but as I continued to grow and learn as a designer, many areas of the project became dated.

I eventually packaged it, and was able to remove myself from the project completely, and focus my efforts on other projects.

Pokémon RPG was my portfolio piece turned passion project, that was uploaded to the public in Jan. 2020.

This project was an individual effort, through this project I created a complex table top system and created corresponding character sheets, and data sheets. As my first long-term project, I was able to see how the project changed and adapted as my skills as a designers grew.

Pokémon RPG was written and formatted with Microsoft Word and supplement work was created in Microsoft Word and Excel.

Initial Thought Process

Pokémon RPG at first, was a design challenge I set out for myself. How would you make an Pokémon into a tabletop workable environment, while still containing the heart of it.

I summarized that idea to

“A Player should be able to play any Pokémon in any way they want.”

Which created the common theme of versatility through out the overall design. Every move, ability and type needed to be a fair choice for the player.

Versatility

In order to achieve versatility, I created a simple process to allocate a character’s abilities according to their typing.

Each type had a stronger* and a weaker* ability that both represented their types as best they can. Through this every possible combination of types has a useable and themed ability

(153 total useable combinations)

*If you had two types you are given your types’ 2 Weaker abilities, if you had one type both the stronger and weaker ability of that type was given to you.

Reworks

Pokémon RPG was a project that spanned approximately 2 years, during that time I was in a state of constant playtesting and mechanic reworks. Overtime, as I learned more design practices, many of the older mechanics became obsolete and needed to be reworked. Causing the project to balloon in time.

This rendered a lot of player confusion as games continued to go on.