PokeTopia!
Poketopia is a game created by Nate to playtest the combat mechanics for his other game, Sordid Dystopia.
Contents
Our Characters
Stats and shit
These are the stats for your Pokemon. Human characters (TRAINERS?!) have 0 special attack, unless they have psychic powers or something. I don’t even know how that shit works.
- HP is something I’m going to call Stamina. This is how much you can be hit before you go down like a bitch. If something hits you, you lose one of these. That means, at max rank, you can only be hit six times before you’re out and at your opponent’s mercy.
- Attack is used to physically attack with your body, obviously. Roll this when you’re doing, uh, that.
- Defense is used to defend from physical attacks. Roll this when someone is trying to hit you. If you succeed, you are not hit.
- Special Attack is clearly used when doing magic and shit. Roll this when you’re trying to hit someone with crazy magic and stuff.
- Special Defense is used to defend from mystical attacks. Roll this when someone’s attacking you with magic and shit. If you succeed, you are not hit.
- Speed is used to determine initiative order in combat.
Whatever your stat is, that’s the dice you roll when making any sort of skill roll.
- Rank 1 – d4
- Rank 2 – d6
- Rank 3 – d8
- Rank 4 – d10
- Rank 5 – d12
- Rank 6 – d20
System stats <-> Base stats chart. Go to Bulbapedia, Serebii.net, or another website that deals in the base in-game stats for various species of Pokemon. That Pokemon’s base stats determine its template.
- Rank 1 = 1-30
- Rank 2 = 31-60
- Rank 3 = 61-100
- Rank 4 = 101-130
- Rank 5 = 131-160
- Rank 6 = 161-200
Trainer Stats
Making a trainer is easier than figuring out a Pokemon. You get 8 points. Put these points into stats. Unless you can somehow justify your character being considered a “Psychic” or “Ghost” type, then you’re treated as having rank 0 in special attack.
Also, there’s a second list of stats, because Matt demanded it. These are used when people interact with people. When you’re making your trainer, roll these up with a d6. Maybe that’ll give you some personality. If you have a human like Pokemon that can interact with humans as, you know, a human being . . . well, roll up some shit for them, too.
Here’s how you figure this shit out. Roll 2d6, then divide that by 2, rounding down. That’s your attribute in whatever. Or, if you don’t want to try the luck of random generation, take 15 points. Put them in this shit.
- Athletics. Physical ability, combat ability.
- Affection. How good are you at forming bonds?
- Skill. How good are you at doing things?
- Cunning. How capable are you at being a trickster?
- Luck. Just how lucky are you?
- Will. How positive and constructive is your thinking?
Oh, human characters are automatically treated as Normal types. They can have other types if you’re crazy enough to justify it. “Fighting” type, for instance, if you’re a karate master, or “Psychic” if you’re a psychic master. “Ghost” type if you’re literally a wayward spirit. “Steel/Electric” if you’re a robut. Make something up to justify it, but I swear to God if you say “my trainer is mechanically Normal/Flying because he’s HALF POKEMON,” I will end you. I will accept no anthros in this game. Robuts? Robuts are fine. Anthros are not. Honestly, if you want to play an anthro or something else creepy like that, read below.
Pokemon as trainers. Some Pokemon can technically be trainers (I.E. Alakazam, Gardevoir, Hypno, and most upper tier psychic and ghost types--ESPECIALLY Alakazam, because that bastard actually has an IQ higher than any readable scale). Deal with it. If you’re playing this out, you have to roll up/divvy out some interaction stats for that Pokemon.
Natures
Pick a nature that describes your Pokemon’s personality. There are some stat things that happen, but they’re not important. Also, a stat can be 0. If it’s 0, you literally cannot roll it. Anyone attempting to make a contested check against a 0 stat of yours succeeds automatically.
- Hardy (no bonus, no drawback)
- Lonely (+1 attack, -1 defense)
- Brave (+1 attack, -1 speed)
- Adamant (+1 attack, -1 sp. Attack)
- Naughty (+1 attack, -1 sp. Defense)
- Bold (+1 defense, -1 attack)
- Docile (no bonus, no drawback)
- Relaxed (+1 defense, -1 speed)
- Impish (+1 defense, -1 sp. Attack)
- Lax (+1 defense, -1 sp. Defense)
- Timid (+1 speed, -1 attack)
- Hasty (+1 speed, -1 defense)
- Serious (no bonus, no drawback)
- Jolly (+1 speed, -1 sp. Attack)
- Naïve (+1 speed, -1 sp. Defense)
- Modest (+1 sp. Attack, -1 attack)
- Mild (+1 sp. Attack, -1 defense)
- Quiet (+1 sp. Attack, -1 speed)
- Bashful (no bonus, no drawback)
- Rash (+1 sp. Attack, -1 sp. Defense)
- Calm (+1 sp. Defense, -1 attack)
- Gentle (+1 sp. Defense, -1 defense)
- Sassy (+1 sp. Defense, -1 speed)
- Careful (+1 sp. Defense, -1 sp. Attack)
- Quirky (no bonus, no drawback)
Types and weaknesses.
So, these guys have types. Again, go to serebii.net, bulbapedia, or something. Look at your Pokemon’s type weaknesses. If you see that it’s got a x.5 versus, I don’t know, dark type attacks, then they get a bonus against dark type attacks. I don’t know, have a chart. You take a penalty or a bonus to your defense/special defense rolls when you’re up against one of these things.
- 4x = -4 penalty
- 2x = -2 penalty
- 1.5x = -1 penalty
- 1x = 0 penalty
- .5x = +1 bonus
- 0x = immune
Buffs and debuffs are things I don’t know how to implement, don’t even ask.
Initiative is decided at the beginning of combat. Everyone involved rolls for speed. Initiative order goes from highest to lowest roll.
Attacks can be determined by a Pokemon’s natural move list (again, refer to a website with move lists). If the Pokemon only naturally learns Grass type moves, then it can’t throw a ball of Psychic energy at someone.
Status effects.
Here’s a list of them and what they do. Have fun. Also, people can have status effects. Isn’t that just dandy?
Paralysis. When you’re paralyzed, all lower half numbers in your die are treated as natural 1’s. Which is to say, for a d6, you cannot succeed if you roll 1, 2, or 3. Sleep. When you’re asleep, you just can’t do jack shit until you roll the upper half numbers of your die. Which is to say, for a d8, you cannot wake up if you roll 1, 2, 3, or 4. Burn and Poison are both damage over time effects. You lose 1 HP for every turn you’re poisoned or burned. You can spend a turn to put out the fire you’re covered in. Poison is a lot more difficult to take care of. Probably requires an antidote or something.
Confusion is annoying as shit. When you’re confused, if you make an attack and you roll the lower half numbers in your die (I.E. 1 and 2 on a d4), you deal 1 HP of damage to yourself rather than hitting your opponent. You can spend a turn to regain your composure or you’ll automatically regain your composure with a critical success.
Also, when trying to catch something, if it’s suffering a status effect, it suffers a -4 penalty to its defense roll. Speaking of . . .
Catching shit.
Oh, hey, there’s a wild Pokemon. Throw a ball at it. Maybe you’ll catch it. I DON’T EVEN KNOW. When this shit goes down, you roll pokeball quality vs the target’s HP + defense (or special defense, depending on which is higher). Here’s a chart of pokeball quality:
- Pokeball – d4
- Heal ball - d4 (automatically heals the captured Pokemon’s HP)
- Great ball – d6
- Ultra ball – d8
- Dusk ball – d10, but only at night, in a cave, or an equally dark place. If it’s not dark out, it’s a d4.
- Master ball – YOU AUTOMATICALLY SUCCEED, you fucking cheater.
Experience
Experience points are gained eventually. I don’t know when. But this is what happens and how you can spend them:
- Rank 0 -> 1 : 1 exp
- Rank 1 -> 2 : 2 exp
- Rank 2 -> 3 : 4 exp
- Rank 3 -> 4 : 8 exp
- Rank 4 -> 5 : 10 exp
- Rank 5 -> 6 : 12 exp
Evolve: 10 exp
Other Stuff
Are you really limited to 6 monsters at a time? I don’t even no. Probably not. You don’t even have to keep them in Pokeballs. Really, that’s just all you need to catch them. In theory, you can deploy a veritable army of laser eye shooting monsters at an opponent, but that’d just be hard as hell to keep track of.
Critical Success and Critical Failure refers to the highest and lowest possible rolls for any die. If you roll the lowest (a natural 1), you fail miserably what whatever you’re doing, even if you have a bonus. If you score a critical success (the highest possible roll; I.E. 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, or 20), you get to throw an extra d6, which adds to your total success. You can score a critical success or a critical failure on any and all rolls.
Weapons can be used by people. They do things. Like give them +1 rank in Attack when using that weapon. Maybe some weapons give higher bonuses. I don’t know.
HP is not limited to 6. Ideally, it was limited to 6 like all other stats because catching pokemanz called for an HP roll for defense. If a wild pokemon’s HP is above 6, it simply cannot be caught--until its HP is 6 or lower, that is.
Stats above 6 go in the same previous EXP + 2 pattern.
Special Attacks
Dealing more damage requires one of two things: splitting actions or maxing your attack die twice (receiving a critical success and rolling a subsequent 6). If you max your attack die twice, you deal 2 HP of damage instead of 1.
Splitting actions can be done to do multiple decisive things in a single turn. Like mounting two attacks in one turn, ja? When this happens, you lower your attack rank (or whatever you’re using) by however many actions you’ve split. Thus if you have an attack rank of 5 and you mount 3 attacks in the same turn, you roll 3d6 rather than 1d12. Your opponent rolls defense only once, however.
Countering can be done by splitting actions. You simply lower your defense and attack by 1 rank when you do. You can only attack if your defense succeeds. Here’s an example, because this might otherwise be confusing as shit:
| Attack 5 | vs | Attack 4 |
| Defense 5 | ||
| Nidoking | Nidoqueen |
Nidoking attacks, Nidoqueen defends and calls a counterattack. Nidoking rolls 1d12, Nidoqueen rolls 1d10 (Def of 5-1=4) and 1d8 (Att of 4-1=3) after the successful defense.
Prepping an action costs one round of no actions, but allows your next action to be 1 rank higher.
Total defense entails increasing your defense by 1 rank at the cost of not attacking for that round. **
Total attack entails increasing your attack by 1 rank at the cost of being unable to defend for that round. **
