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Old 10-10-2021, 12:25 PM   #11
khorboth
 
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Default Re: Realistic Pokémon-style GURPS mechanics

It looks like you have a number of things worked out, but a few left to go.

It seems like you're mostly ditching the idea of "duels." Maybe there will be formal duels somewhere, but the idea of wild pokemon ignoring humans in favor of their pokemon is out. Likewise, villians would target the vulnerable trainer rather than the better-armored pokemon.

There are a few specifics that will still need to be addressed before we can come in, even with broad strokes:

TL will be important. I have watched the show and not played any of the main-line games. It seems like they keep up with "modern" technology over the course of the 20+ seasons. So, modern technology in the cities seems right. Perhaps with a few spikes up and down. Weapons would lag due to monsters used in combat, for instance.

If Pokemon are as smart or smarter than humans, why haven't they formed a civilization? or have they? Maybe that will be the thrust of the campaign, the secret pokemon civilization.

Do you want to preserve the idea of physical size being largely irrelevant? I would be hard-pressed to come up with a realistic world where an electric rat can take down a fire-breathing dragon. Or a water-spitting mer-dog (Vaporion) take down a skyscraper-sized poison-spitting squid monster (Tentacruel) But, in the pokemon world, these things happen.

For catching Pokemon, I would probably come up with a pretty quick system:
Let trainers buy pokemon-charisma for 4 points per level.
Type-specific for 1 point per level.
Roll, add charisma. Check against the pokemon's IQ + FP
-5 to target number if it has fainted
-1 for each special move that's been landed on it by the trainer's pokemon.
+/- other modifiers based on GM whim.

For power types, there's no need to use the pre-built power types in GURPS powers. Just design the attacks/moves and call them the pokemon type. Flying, dark, psychic, etc.
I'd give the pokemon vulnerabilities and resistance to the types of attacks as a 0 point feature too. +50% damage and -50% damage as a wash. Indeed, as NPCs, you don't have to worry overly about point values for them.
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Old 10-10-2021, 12:57 PM   #12
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Default Re: Realistic Pokémon-style GURPS mechanics

Trainers need to be highly-competent to survive in the sort of world you're describing - a predatory Pokemon is going to view a typical human as "sick and weak" compared to the Pokemon he/she is traveling with, and enemy trainers are going to prioritize taking out their counterparts, which will make defeating the now-dead trainer's Pokemon (either to kill them - harvesting the meat and any usable materials - or to capture them for their own use) much easier. The latter you could have as part of a near-universal Code of Honor, Vow, or similar (near-universal because Oath-breakers are mercilessly hunted down and slain - or captured and publicly maimed and tortured - by other trainers).

So, you have a ~TL4 setting and need characters who can survive against monsters with supernatural abilities. It might not be a horrible idea to build trainers using the templates from Dungeon Fantasy - probably not the experienced [250] templates from the main book, but the lesser ones from Hirelings and the new Delvers to Grow should fit. Considering you also want a lot of modern knowledge to be in play, you may also wish to take inspiration from After the End, and make your setting post-apocalyptic (the apocalypse probably being Pokemon showing up... or if you want to inject a little humor, maybe the world used to be a lot like the Pokemon games/show, but one of the prepubescent trainers with control of a literal god screwed everything up.
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Old 10-10-2021, 03:36 PM   #13
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Default Re: Realistic Pokémon-style GURPS mechanics

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zarathustraff View Post


The Mechanics are really that easy?
I want to reply to Refplace.
Unfortunately mechanics are not easy, because they are tied to realism. It's easy to build mechanics copying the Pokémon games, but they are too far from realism to be used.

So, one of the first things to do is to redesign many mechanics to adapt them to the world of Pokémon.
I think the most usefull resources will be GURPS Powers and GURPS Alternative Attributes (I am still reading it).

Another really hard task is to regulate the interactions between humans and Pokémons: how to catch them, how to "store" them, how to control them, how to fight with them and so on.
When I said mechanic's are easy I was referring to game mechanics. Whether you go with powers, magic, or super science the mechanics are the easy part here. The fluff part or overall concept and making large creatures storable in tiny balls (where apparently they dont need food or air) and be somehow plausibly realistic is I think the hard part.
What is the origin of these creatures?
Biological: Likely means super science to shrink them or whisk them away to a pocket dimension.
Magical: Well pretty much anything goes here, but that makes the balls most likely enchanted items.
Spirit: My preferred option when I was watching the animated series and movies. If Pokeman are spirits that can take physical form than pokeballs are basically fetishes that can capture and hold a spirit.
If this is the cae you also have most of the training part, including capturing wild pokemon mostly built for you.

Rules wise any of the above work well enough, its the fluff and origin that influence the feel of the setting the most and lets you decide what rules or mechanics to explore.
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Old 10-11-2021, 02:22 AM   #14
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Default Re: Realistic Pokémon-style GURPS mechanics

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Originally Posted by khorboth View Post
TL will be important. I have watched the show and not played any of the main-line games. It seems like they keep up with "modern" technology over the course of the 20+ seasons. So, modern technology in the cities seems right. Perhaps with a few spikes up and down. Weapons would lag due to monsters used in combat, for instance.
Handguns technically exist in the anime, but the appear extremely rarely and were edited out in the US release, including never airing episode 35 in part due to guns being aimed at the kids.

As far as pokemon being dangerous to humans goes, canonically they are. It's the lore reason the player always gets stopped from exploring before they receive their first pokemon. And in the very first episode of the anime, Ash would likely have gotten killed by a flock of Spearow & Fearow if his Pikachu hadn't changed its mind about him and blasted them away with a powerful attack. You could theorize that wild pokemon don't attack trainers because they don't want to get blindsided by the trainer's pokemon.

In the real world, animals that get trained to attack humans can be unpredictable even around their trainer. Especially if the trainer ever shows signs of weakness. With that in mind, pokemon trainers might just train their pokemon to not attack humans for their own safety. And training pokemon to attack humans could quite easily be illegal without special permits.

Quote:
Originally Posted by khorboth View Post
I'd give the pokemon vulnerabilities and resistance to the types of attacks as a 0 point feature too. +50% damage and -50% damage as a wash. Indeed, as NPCs, you don't have to worry overly about point values for them.
The typings are more complex than that, with eg. Steel having many resistances (10), 1 immunity and few vulnerabilities (3) but also not being as powerful on offense (3 vulnerable, 4 resistant). Some type pairings also mean that a pokemon might have double vulnerability (takes 4x) or resistance (takes 1/4th) to another type.

This in turn plays into how common each type is, which can make other types better or worse on average.

Last edited by WingedKagouti; 10-11-2021 at 02:25 AM.
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Old 10-22-2021, 04:35 AM   #15
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Default Re: Realistic Pokémon-style GURPS mechanics

How are you getting on?

What you describe, with the players playing trainers and giving instructions to the creatures but not always being listened to, sounds like the kind of thing that the "hireling NPCs" system in GURPS Basic Set does. See Basic Set pages 517 and 559.
The idea of it is that on meeting a new hireling you make a reaction roll, with bonuses or penalties for various factors, and the result of the roll becomes their "loyalty score". The GM rolls against the loyalty score when a hireling is ordered to do something particularly dangerous or would get an advantage out of disobeying the PC.
Not all the bonus or penalty factors listed in the book would necessarily be relevant here. For instance, you can't exactly buy a "Pokemon"'s loyalty with higher wages - although treats might work. You'd have to make out a new list of what factors affect creatures' loyalty, and some might be different for different creatures. But the bones are there.

Regarding reasons for enemy creatures not to just ignore the trainers' creatures and go for the trainer, perhaps the "Pokemon" could just have the ability to absorb other "Pokemon"'s moves whoever they're aimed at, since they're made of the same kind of "energy", like a sort of super Sacrificial Dodge. That would get around the problem of how a tiny creature like, say, a Pikachu could possibly "shield" its trainer in a normal way. This might or might not work for protecting the trainers from environmental hazards, or from human enemies fighting directly instead of using "Pokemon".
Of course, if you want enemy creatures to be able to ignore the creatures and target the trainers, then you can ignore all that.
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Old 10-23-2021, 09:55 AM   #16
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Default Re: Realistic Pokémon-style GURPS mechanics

Oh, and if you're interested in making the Pokemon realistically like animals, you should make the acquaintance of the magnificent GURPS Animalia website!

http://www.panoptesv.com/RPGs/animalia/animalia.html

It has detailed stats for dozens, if not hundreds, of species of real-life animals. Of course, real-life animals aren't Pokemon, but you could take an animal that's similar to the Pokemon you want, like a lynx for Persian, and use its stats as a basis and adapt with the appropriate superpowers and whatever, to get something that does work like an animal in play.

Its stats may be too detailed for what you want, in fact, I don't know, but if so you can always cut it back, just drop the smaller traits or the traits that would cause the most extra work in play.

It does have some odd omissions - there are no birds, for example, and no rats or mice. There's another collection called Anon's Animal Album that covers some of those. See this thread http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=173896 which also mentions a few glitches to watch out for with Anon's Animal Album and a few other sources.
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Old 10-26-2021, 02:04 AM   #17
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Default Re: Realistic Pokémon-style GURPS mechanics

It's time to update the (little) work I have done so far.
Since there are TOO many things to do, I started from the ground, trying to set the best possible foundations to link GURPS with Pokémon.

The first thing I will discuss is about stats.

Stats
Initially I really wanted to do radical changes to how the stats work, but I decided to be as conservative as possible to save a lot of time to correct the consequences of doing that.

Attributes
I incresed the number of basic Attributes from the classic 4 to 6. The reason is quite simple: in Pokémon the capacity of doing "Special Attacks" (and defending with "Special Defense") is essential and not negotiable.

I will briefly explain all the changes I did to the basic Attributes, and how to reinterprate them.
  • Strength (ST): nothing changes.
    It is not based on the Attack stat that Pokémon have in games (because I find it "not realistic"), but instead entirely on the weight of the Pokémon.
    First, I corrected the size of Pokémons as I think it should be in the real-world, trying to visualize them more as raging dinosaurs than cute animals.
    Second, I studied a little of Allometric equations, finding the best ones to simulate the most real weight giving the Pokémon shape, size and chemistry composition.

    Third, I used a slightly modified version to convert an animal weight in GURPS's ST (the relation is that ST is proportional to the weight at the power of 3/8).
    With this process I obtained a realistic value of ST for all Pokémon. Confronting these values with GURPS animal ST values, I found they are almost perfect.
  • Dexterity (DX): mechanically it is unchanged.
    Since the meaning of DX is unbalanced towards "dodging" rathar than "speed", I did not use the Pokémon games Speed stat.
    I started from the Speed value, than manually corrected it to let DX rapresent more what it really is: the ability of dodging and agility, not pure speed (that can be easily modified).
    Here the values are consistent with real and fictional mosters values.
  • Intelligence (IQ): it doesn't govern anymore the rolls for Magic-like abilities thanks to the introduction of the attribute Power. The cost remains the same at 20 points/level.
    As I said before, I want Pokémons to be more intelligent than normal animals. Almost all of them cannot speak, but that doesn't mean they are stupid; they simply do not have any TL because biologically they didn't needed to, thanks to their physical superiority.

    We do not have to confuse "intelligence" with "culture". A Pokémon with IQ 10 cannot use a phone, while a human with IQ 8 can. The reason is humans have built their Technology based on their type of Intelligence, society and biology.
    I wanted to say this because I alredy imagine most of you saying "how can a IQ 8 Pikachu not know how to call 911?". I hope I explained myself.

    The reason for making Pokémon much more intelligent than animals is also simple: their "usability". As I already said, Players will only interprate the Trainer, not his Pokémons.
    Because of that choice, I don't want to give up to the GM all the control of Trainer's Pokémons. It's true that the Player cannot directly control his Pokémons, but most of them are intelligent enough to understand the reasons of what their Trainer says, giving the Player a little sense of "control" over his Pokémons.

    IQ loses all correlations it had with using and resisting Magic-like abilities, attacks, rolls, and so on.
    The reason is simple, and self-evident even in a non-Pokémon setting.
  • Health (HT): no changes.
    For Pokémon it is calculated mixing the HP and Defense stats from Pokémon games with the weight of the Pokémon. The values are reasonable, so I didn't use any fancy formula.
  • Power (PW): new basic attribute.
    Mechanically it replaces all the work that IQ used to do about Magic-like abilities. I did this because Magic/Spiritual/Elemental abilities are not correlated with IQ at all, neither they can be derived from other stats.

    So, the only reasonable choice, was to create a new attribute to do this job.
    For a Pokémon setting this is perfect because we already have the equivalent concept in the Pokémon games: the Special Attack stat.
    The greater the Special Attack, the easier and more powerful are the Pokémons Magic-like attacks, abilities, and so on.
    It was really simple to translate Spacial Attack stats from Pokémon games to GURPS Power stat, and it looked consistent.

    As you can already imagine, the use of the book GURPS: Powers will be fundamental in this regard, but it is not the time to discuss it here.

    About the points cost I am not sure. It is a very important attribute in the game, but 20 points seems too much, and 10 points too little. Maybe a 15 points cost and a 15 points cost for IQ would balance it, but I like 10 and 20 points more (estetically).
  • Will (WL): promoted from secondary characteristic to attribute, and increased from 5 points/level to 10 points/level.
    The explanation for the cost increase is simple: in a Pokémon setting Will is more important and does more things than normal, since it rapresents the "Special Defense" stat from Pokémon games.

    The reason of the "promotion" is intuitive: Will and IQ are not very well correlated, and Will is more and independent trait than a derivative one, so it deserves it.
    The calculation is pretty simple too: it is calculated from the Special Defense stat only, and it looks consistent.
    It still does all the usual job that standard Will does.

Secondary Characteristics

  • HP: formula changed.
    I chose to increase the value of it and basing it on both ST and HT, using the formula:
    HP = ST/2 + HT
    It already counts everything: the Pokémon's muscles, general health, size, etc.
  • Perception: formula changed.
    I didn't like it to be based only on IQ, since alertness is also a matter of will. Because Pokémon do not have very high IQ, but often they have high Perception being wild creatures, I also decided to add a +2 for everyone:
    Per = (IQ+Will)/2 + 2
    I liked the results, so it should be ok. This formula might not be accurate for humans though, where we might even use a negative "-2" instead of "+2". But I do not want two distinct formula. Maybe I will just add a Disadvantage that suits all humans, it will depend on the setting. It can eventually be removed with points when the Trainer gets better.
  • Fatigue Points: formula changed.
    Here I used the same logic for the new Perception: FP should be based on HT and WL too, since the force of will is essential to have more "resources".
    The formula is simple:
    FP = (HT+Will)/2
  • Basic Speed: formula changed.
    Same logic: speed should depend on both DX and HT.
    Basic Speed = (DX+HT)/4
  • Dodge: not modified.
  • Basic Lift: not modified.
  • Damage Table: not modified.
  • Basic Move: formula changed.
    Unfortunatelly I didn't find a good way to determine a balaced value using a formula. So, I started from the basic formula and manually corrected the numbers to obtain a "realist" value of movement (giving the Pokémon shape, size, agility, and so on).

Ok, this should cover all the basic Attributes and Secondary Characteristics. If I forgot something, it should work as described in the Baisc Set.

Next step?

With this basic structure in mind we can progress working on the typical Pokémon mechanics: caputure a Pokémon (how does a wild Pokémon react? How is it capture? How is it "stored"?, ...), train a Pokémon (relationship, gaining points to "buy" moves or abilities, how evolution works, ...), battles (how to control its own Pokémon, how Trainers fight, how to command a Pokémon, ...), the Pokémon world (setting a baseline power for humans, relation between humans and Pokémon, TL, specific settings, ...), and so on.

Hoping everything I wrote here works and is reasonable, what is the next thing we need to do?
I already overviewed how to "build" Pokémons, translating the Types to a suitable Power, eliminating the Damage/Resistance table. But I don't think this is THE second step to do.

What is the important thing to do now? Do I have to work on the specific Pokémon mechanics?
Should I clear the rules about fights first?


Thanks you all for you advices and your support. I cannot address each answer in my post, but I use every information you write in your comments.
Thank you again!
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Old 10-26-2021, 02:58 AM   #18
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Default Re: Realistic Pokémon-style GURPS mechanics

You could definitely drop the price of IQ since you've taken half of Per, all of Will and magic out of it.

Not sure why go through all this trouble of altering Attributes, it's probably something out of the book you mentioned in the first post, but I've never read it, so I have no idea what it's about.

Since Gurps Basic already allows you to buy Per and Will separately from IQ and do the same for Basic Move and Speed, and HP if you feel your critter should have more than its ST suggests, I'm not sure why all these changes are necessary. Just get the stats you need and don't lock yourself up behind some formulas.
And for Magic, depending on the system in use, you have Magery, or make up a Talent for the specific powers the Pokemon has.
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Old 10-26-2021, 08:43 AM   #19
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Default Re: Realistic Pokémon-style GURPS mechanics

What differentiates power and Will here? what does high-power low-will look like, and vice versa?


The HP equation is weird. I'd have leaned towards ST+HT/2, personally. Though I prefer just plain ST.



The FP change feels good, given the will emphasis, the other secondaries feel a bit unnecessary. I can at least see where the PER change is coming from.



The speed equation you talk about changing, but then give the standard 4e formula.



Quote:
Originally Posted by Aldric View Post
You could definitely drop the price of IQ since you've taken half of Per, all of Will and magic out of it.

Not sure why go through all this trouble of altering Attributes, it's probably something out of the book you mentioned in the first post, but I've never read it, so I have no idea what it's about.

Its a fairly common houserule to remove per and will from IQ and leave IQ at 20 points. It is the default thing I do. It originates in on MyGurps Website. I find that it makes talents for IQ-based skills a thing, which really helps to differentiate characters.
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Old 10-26-2021, 11:12 AM   #20
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Default Re: Realistic Pokémon-style GURPS mechanics

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Its a fairly common houserule to remove per and will from IQ and leave IQ at 20 points. It is the default thing I do. It originates in on MyGurps Website. I find that it makes talents for IQ-based skills a thing, which really helps to differentiate characters.
This is a bad house rule as per the rules IQ can be (and is in Power-Ups 9: Alternate Attributes) broken down:

Will: [5] per +1
Per: [5] per +1
Academic skills [3] per +1
Social skills [2] per +1
Technical skills [2] per +1
Brainier “adventure” skills [3]

By charging 20 points fo an IQ that has no effect on Will or Per you are throwing half of what you normally get with IQ at [20]
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