10-10-2021, 12:25 PM | #11 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Denver, CO
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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. |
10-10-2021, 12:57 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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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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10-10-2021, 03:36 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: Realistic Pokémon-style GURPS mechanics
Quote:
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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10-11-2021, 02:22 AM | #14 | ||
Join Date: Oct 2007
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Re: Realistic Pokémon-style GURPS mechanics
Quote:
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:
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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10-22-2021, 04:35 AM | #15 |
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: UK
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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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10-23-2021, 09:55 AM | #16 |
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: UK
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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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10-26-2021, 02:04 AM | #17 |
Join Date: Oct 2021
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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.
Secondary Characteristics
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! |
10-26-2021, 02:58 AM | #18 |
Join Date: Nov 2015
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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. |
10-26-2021, 08:43 AM | #19 | |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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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:
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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10-26-2021, 11:12 AM | #20 | |
On Notice
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Sumter, SC
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Re: Realistic Pokémon-style GURPS mechanics
Quote:
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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