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[thejunkd0g]

"Explorers! A PMD RPG": What To Expect - Post 2

Character Creation Part 2 - Stats, Skills and Levelling

So, you can pick any Pokémon. Now what? Well, it's time to start truly making this character your own. Stats, and the level system, have been untethered from Pokémon species. At the start of the game, your Stats are all 5, and you'll get 30 Stat Points to assign to your Stats, excluding HP. For balance reasons, I wanted the HP stat to come off your Class. There are a few ways to increase it via Items and Rare Qualities, but I digress. At each Level, your Stats will increase by 5, and you'll gain another 30-point budget to assign. Natures have no bearing on your Stats either.

NOTE: There are 10 total Class Levels in "Explorers! A PMD RPG". They represent your competency and strength of your chosen Class. We'll talk more about Classes next time.

I wanted players to choose how their Pokémon's stats are arrayed -- and I'm happy I stuck with the decision. People who want to stay true to a Pokémon's design can do so by emulating a similar stat distribution as in the main games. But what I really wanted was for those who felt their favourites or their chosen Pokémon to still feel as powerful and effective as the rest of the team. Because, let's be honest, not all Pokémon are made equal. But players shouldn't feel punished for their choices. So, make your Pokémon your way!

Furthermore, I introduced a new stat: IQ. It will govern the majority (but not all!) of the Skills in the game, but often has very few uses in Battle. Those who invest in their IQ stat will find their characters excelling in the social and/or exploration aspects of the game, but have less battle prowess than they otherwise could have.

NOTE: IQ is a homage to the PMD games and has no connection or connotation with the disproven "intelligence metric" in the real-world. There is an expanded note on this in the full PDF.

The IQ Skills are split into 3 distinct subcategories: Social, Exploration, and Intellect.

Social contains the Influence, Deceive and Intuition Skills.

Exploration contains the Tracking, Ecology and Sneak Skills. And

Intellect contains the Memory, Logic and Traps Skills.

The final skill subcategory is the "Stat" Skills. HP has Endurance, ATK has Strength, DEF has Phys. Status Resistance, SP.ATK has Awareness, SP.DEF has Sp. Status Resistance, and Speed has Movement.

Character Creation Part 3 - Moves

Moves were a big head-scratcher, and took several iterations to get right. At first, I made dedicated movelists for each Class... But then that ended up feeling extremely restrictive. I then briefly considered Movelists based on Type, but that too felt too restrictive.

Eventually, I settled on open Movelists. You can learn practically any Move. Level is your only gatekeeper here (That's right folks, you can have a Bidoof with Roar of Time by the end of a campaign. Truly, as Arceus intended).

At key Levels, you'll be able to gain access to a new Movelist to choose from in addition to your current, and these new Moves will increase in power.

You still only have 4 Moves available to you, of course, but at each Level, you can learn a new Move from the open Movelist. You can also learn a Move from a Move Tutor (your GM will probably have one for you in your local Town), or you might even be able to find TMs that can teach you a Move of a level that you currently can't learn from! In this way, TMs act as rare rewards for players that can increase their power level, much like how magic items can in more well-known fantasy TTRPGs...

And, of course, the game features Pokémon move staples such as STAB and Type Effectiveness (wouldn't be Pokémon without 'em, after all)!

Character Creation Part 3.5: A Word on Physical and Special Moves

Physical Moves in "Explorers! A PMD RPG" tend to have higher power than Special Moves, but have little range, so you'll need to get in close -- and be more at risk of taking damage. There's a great risk-reward factor in that. Special Moves, on the other hand, have slightly less offensive power, but compensate by having higher range, allowing you to KO foes from a distance.

Finally, a unique mechanic implemented into this game is a Physical/Special Split for Status Moves. During early designs and in playtests, Status Moves coming off of one Stat, or none, gave too much or too little weight. So, I took upon myself the strange (and I'll be honest, a little arbitrary) re-categorisation of all Status Moves in the game into Physical Status, and Special Status. Moves that come from these pools will come off their respective Stat to inflict, and subsequently their respective defensive stats for attempting to resist or end the effects. This felt the most balanced and allows Attack, Defence, Special Attack and Special Defence to enjoy equal weight with each other...

...That's all for this time! Next post, we'll be talking about Classes, as well as "What the heck is a Dicepool system?"

[thejunkd0g]

"Explorers! A PMD RPG": What To Expect - Post 1

Heya! Since we're on the run-up to release on August 2nd, I thought I'd make a series of posts discussing what you can expect from this PMD TTRPG system.

This book is a meaty 200+ PDF with incredible art from the PMD Community, of which each artist has given their express permission for usage. So, needless to say, we've got a lot to cover -- I'll try to do two parts per post!

Character Creation (Part 0): Preamble

For "Explorers! A PMD RPG", I devoted a lot of development time into character customisation. It was a big part of my design focus.

I wanted to make sure people could play their chosen Pokémon without fear of being pigeonholed by stats, movelists, abilities, etc.

If people want to play their Pokémon similar to that, that's cool, and the system can allow for that. But I wanted to account for people who wanted to try something new with a Pokémon, or felt their favourites wouldn't "hold up" in the course of an adventure.

So.... how'd I go about achieving that? Let's start with...

Character Creation (Part 1): Choose Any Pokemon!

A big part of character creation for a game all about BEING a Pokemon is giving control to the player. So, let's start with the basics:

You can play ANY* Pokemon you'd like in "Explorers! A PMD RPG".

Now, you probably noticed that glaring asterisk. Fear not dear reader. There's only a few exceptions. After some discussion with my Design Consultants, we agreed that, Legendaries, Mythicals, Ultra Beasts and Paradox Pokemon should be left to the discretion of the GM if they are to be allowed. We felt that GMs would want these Pokemon in particular for their own Adventures as bosses, villains or some other plot-related reason -- or their existence invited assumptions about a GM's world of PMD, or the general implied setting. So, if you'd like to play one of these Pokemon, get the consent of the rest of the players and the GM!

Futhermore, there's a list of Pokemon that felt like without their key Ability, that Pokemon would simply lose its identity. So, these Pokemon have been dubbed "Unusual Pokemon", and their playstyles can vary wildly based on their unique, built-in Ability. To compensate for them, so the rest of the table doesn't lag behind in power level, there's some suggestions to even the playing field.

That's all for this post! Please follow to make sure to follow to keep up with these "What To Expect" posts if you're interested in the development of this game!

[thejunkd0g]

Explorers! A PMD RPG is a TTRPG fan project that I'm releasing for free on PMD Day (AUG 2nd). It's a class-based d6 dicepool system, and aims to give you huge amounts of customisation for your chosen character.

Please follow to stay updated, and check it out when it releases!

A huge shout-out to Jorge Burgos on ArtStation for the cover art, and all the other artists who have contributed their amazing work to this project.

If you'd like to have your art featured, please shoot me a DM!

[thejunkd0g]

So, for over a year now I've been designing a Pokémon Mystery Dungeon TTRPG, and the core system design is pretty much done -- I'm mostly on to the GM section now.

What kind of information would you find important in a GM section to run this game? Are there any mechanics, guidelines or templates you're specifically looking for?

Also, if you're an artist who has done PMD fanart, and would like to have your work featured, shoot me a message! You'll be fully credited, of course.