A pokemon adventure set in the brand new region of Arkona
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Fandom Pokemon: Vice and Virtue: Combat and Progression
- Thread starter AtlannianSpy
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AtlannianSpy
Alarmed and Strangerous
Pokemon: Vice and Virtue is intended to be a relatively lightweight, freeform experience, but I still want to capture essential elements of the pokemon experience such as growing stronger over time and overcoming limitations or disadvantages so we will be tracking a few variables to serve as a baseline or jumping off point for our roleplaying.
Leveling up
Every pokemon you own or battle against will have a level which serves as a very rough indication of how strong and experienced they are. A level advantage can certainly be overcome or circumvented, but it is an advantage. The greater the level gap between you and your opponent, the more you will have to rely on other factors such as creative strategies, favorable terrain, unconventional use of moves and type advantages.
Your first pokemon starts at level five and you can catch or obtain pokemon up to the highest multiple of five that your highest level pokemon has reached. So if your starter is level 5 you can catch level 5 wild pokemon, but if your highest level pokemon is 12, you can only catch up to level 10. You can catch or obtain pokemon at a lower level if you want to, but there's no real meaning to doing so as we aren't tracking EVs or other mechanics that would give a pokemon an advantage by being raised from a low level.
Because tracking experience for up to six pokemon would be a pain, instead everyone will receive a certain amount of "level up points" at the end of each main story segment or side story, which you can freely distribute as you see fit among your team. This means you don't necessarily have to use a pokemon to level it up, though you are free to only level up pokemon that you use if you want to roleplay it like that.
Moves
For the most part, you will need to rely on specific pokemon moves for your team to be effective in battle, these represent maneuvers that your pokemon are practiced and comfortable with so they can deploy them at a split second's notice and with good precision and reliability. Your pokemon can learn as many moves as you want them to rather than just four. As pokemon levels up it automatically learns the moves from its in game leveling list, however more exotic moves like those it could learn from tms, tutors and through breeding, have to be sought out with IC effort, you wont simply gain them for free.
You can reference a moves in game effects such as its power, accuracy and so on to get a rough sense of how it will behave in RP terms, but we wont be making explicit calculations baased off of those statistics. We wont be tracking pp either, instead I would like people to be generally aware that repeatedly using powerful moves is going to be draining for a pokemon and leave them vulnerable. This is something you'll have to watch out in regards to your pokemon but it might be a way to defeat an opponent's pokemon as well.
Evolution
To keep things simple, I'd like to reference in game mechanics for evolution as much as possible. So if your pokemon would evolve at a certain level in the games or require a certain item than thats how it will work here too. If you have a pokemon with an odd, or very specific means of evolution that would be difficult to replicate in an RP than we will work some alternative out on a case by case basis.
Pokemon that evolve through trading: Since there are many popular pokemon that evolve this way I didn't want to remove this system entirely, but in an rp it isn't reasonable to ask people to invest time and effort in a pokemon that will only evolve when traded away to someone else. In real life you would get around this by trading a pokemon to a friend and then immediately trading back but this is a bit gamey and unrealistic in an rp setting. My head canon is that pokemon that evolve this way need the experience of working with multiple trainers to learn different approaches to combat, so to evolve pokemon like this you need to loan them out. When you do this you'll give your pokemon away for a limited period of time, one story chapter or side story and borrow a temporary pokemon of your own. Once that segment is complete, you'll get your pokemon back and it will evolve.
what does evolution actually do?
Since we aren't tracking individual statistics like atk and health its a fair question to ask what the point of evolution is apart from aesthetics? To keep things simple I've decided that when pokemon evolve they will receive some bonus levels to simulate the sudden growth in power. The first time a pokemon evolves, it will receive five bonus levels and the second time it wil receive 8. Since I do not expect us to reach the pokemon level cap of 100 this will be an effective increase in power with no down side.
this is unfair to pokemon that don't evolve! I agree! That's why pokemon that don't evolve will still receive these bonus levels at certain milestones. If your pokemon doesn't evolve than together we will work out a pseudo evolution for it, a level it must reach or an item you must obtain that will help it grow stronger at which point it will gain bonus levels as though it had evolved, you may mark the ocassion by changing your pokemon's appearance in a subtlle way, perhaps it simply grows larger or develops a unique marking or coloration, but you don't have to if you don't want to. If your pokemon evolves only once than you can use this pseudo evolution system to access the second allotment of bonus levels.
Obtaining evolution items. Many pokemon evolve through the use of an item such as an elemental stone or held item. To balance the advantage you'll gain from doing so such items will be difficult to obtain, you'll have to devote some of your precious free time towards side missions to either earn the money to buy these items or towards searching them out yourself.
Free Time
There are many ways to help your pokemon grow stronger, but a trainer on a journey only has so much time in a day. To simulate this delicate balancing act, I'm using a free time mechanic. After each main story mission, you'll be awarded free time, which you can spend by writing a scene describing a small adventure or challenge your trainer faces. Writing these free time scenes is the only way to achieve many important things.
For example:
Battling other trainers to level up. Whereever you go there'll be an endless stream of trainers to challenge, win or lose, you'll receive some extra levels to allocate to your pokemon. You can challenge your fellow players to battle if you would prefer or face off against npcs controlled by me.
Learning unusual moves: I mentioned before that your pokemon will only automatically learn moves from its level list. To learn more unusual moves you'll have to write a scene in which you put the pokemon through some kind of training or testing to help it learn, you can collaborate with other trainers to write a joint training scene if you would like. You can even teach your pokemon your very own, custom moves this way.
Obtaining rare items: If you want a rare item, especially those needed for evolution, you'll need to write up a scene in which you seek it out, describing where you look, what kind of measure you take and what kind of trouble you run into along the way.
Catching or otherwise obtaining a pokemon: One of the most important uses of your free time will be adding new pokemon to your team. Like with seeking out an items, you'll need to describe what kind of plan you have for seeking out and capturing your desired pokemon and some pokemon will only be able to be caught in certain regions of the map.
Earning cash: In Arkona it hasn't always been possible for trainers to make a living purely off pokemon battles, so they often make money by handling requests or side jobs for the people of towns they enter. These would be things like driving away dangerous swarms of wild pokemon; using your pokemon's abilities to help with work like farming or construction; or hunting down ne'erdowellls like minor criminals or even illegal team members. Mechanically earning money in this way allows you to "bank" your free time, you can spend the money you earn later to easily accomplish something later that would otherwise take time. For example, you want to catch a numel, but you aren't in a region that attracts fire pokemon, so instead you earn some money by rounding up a local gang of purse snatchers with the help of your pokemon. Later on when you arrive at an area where numel are available, you spend the money you earned hiring a local guide and he helps you easily find and catch a numel, so you do not have to spend your limited free time searching for one. When you spend money you already earned this way you don't even need to write a scene since you already put in the effort you can just get your reward.
Free time difficulty.
Depending on what you want to achieve, you might not be able to reach the goal right in one free time session. If you're trying to catch a super rare pokemon or teach a very powerful, very unusual move, you might need to work on it for multiple free time sessions. Its important to note that the difficulty of a goal can change depending on where in Arkona you are. In the thick, humid Nomazor jungles, catching almost any leaf type pokemon is relatively easy, but it would take much much longer to find a fire type for example, this is true of certain items as well, if you look in suitable areas than you'll have an easier time.
If you want to do something but you aren't in a suitable area it might be best to work on something else in the mean time, or earn some extra money and then travel towards the region where your goals will be easier to accomplish. you can tackle the gyms of Arkona in any order you wish, so you can make a beeline for the area where your favorite pokemon is waiting to be caught if you want to.
Even learning new moves can be easier in the right location. A bulbasaur can technically learn curse, but it would be tricky for them to do so and might take while, but if you train them in a haunted manor the latent ghost energy in the area will make it easier for them to grasp the technique and save you some time!
Of course, some things are just always going to be difficult no matter what. A custom move for your pokemon for example will always be a long process. But pokemon is about exploration to a great extent, so if you epxplore and make use of the environment around you you can achieve great things!
Leveling up
Every pokemon you own or battle against will have a level which serves as a very rough indication of how strong and experienced they are. A level advantage can certainly be overcome or circumvented, but it is an advantage. The greater the level gap between you and your opponent, the more you will have to rely on other factors such as creative strategies, favorable terrain, unconventional use of moves and type advantages.
Your first pokemon starts at level five and you can catch or obtain pokemon up to the highest multiple of five that your highest level pokemon has reached. So if your starter is level 5 you can catch level 5 wild pokemon, but if your highest level pokemon is 12, you can only catch up to level 10. You can catch or obtain pokemon at a lower level if you want to, but there's no real meaning to doing so as we aren't tracking EVs or other mechanics that would give a pokemon an advantage by being raised from a low level.
Because tracking experience for up to six pokemon would be a pain, instead everyone will receive a certain amount of "level up points" at the end of each main story segment or side story, which you can freely distribute as you see fit among your team. This means you don't necessarily have to use a pokemon to level it up, though you are free to only level up pokemon that you use if you want to roleplay it like that.
Moves
For the most part, you will need to rely on specific pokemon moves for your team to be effective in battle, these represent maneuvers that your pokemon are practiced and comfortable with so they can deploy them at a split second's notice and with good precision and reliability. Your pokemon can learn as many moves as you want them to rather than just four. As pokemon levels up it automatically learns the moves from its in game leveling list, however more exotic moves like those it could learn from tms, tutors and through breeding, have to be sought out with IC effort, you wont simply gain them for free.
You can reference a moves in game effects such as its power, accuracy and so on to get a rough sense of how it will behave in RP terms, but we wont be making explicit calculations baased off of those statistics. We wont be tracking pp either, instead I would like people to be generally aware that repeatedly using powerful moves is going to be draining for a pokemon and leave them vulnerable. This is something you'll have to watch out in regards to your pokemon but it might be a way to defeat an opponent's pokemon as well.
Evolution
To keep things simple, I'd like to reference in game mechanics for evolution as much as possible. So if your pokemon would evolve at a certain level in the games or require a certain item than thats how it will work here too. If you have a pokemon with an odd, or very specific means of evolution that would be difficult to replicate in an RP than we will work some alternative out on a case by case basis.
Pokemon that evolve through trading: Since there are many popular pokemon that evolve this way I didn't want to remove this system entirely, but in an rp it isn't reasonable to ask people to invest time and effort in a pokemon that will only evolve when traded away to someone else. In real life you would get around this by trading a pokemon to a friend and then immediately trading back but this is a bit gamey and unrealistic in an rp setting. My head canon is that pokemon that evolve this way need the experience of working with multiple trainers to learn different approaches to combat, so to evolve pokemon like this you need to loan them out. When you do this you'll give your pokemon away for a limited period of time, one story chapter or side story and borrow a temporary pokemon of your own. Once that segment is complete, you'll get your pokemon back and it will evolve.
what does evolution actually do?
Since we aren't tracking individual statistics like atk and health its a fair question to ask what the point of evolution is apart from aesthetics? To keep things simple I've decided that when pokemon evolve they will receive some bonus levels to simulate the sudden growth in power. The first time a pokemon evolves, it will receive five bonus levels and the second time it wil receive 8. Since I do not expect us to reach the pokemon level cap of 100 this will be an effective increase in power with no down side.
this is unfair to pokemon that don't evolve! I agree! That's why pokemon that don't evolve will still receive these bonus levels at certain milestones. If your pokemon doesn't evolve than together we will work out a pseudo evolution for it, a level it must reach or an item you must obtain that will help it grow stronger at which point it will gain bonus levels as though it had evolved, you may mark the ocassion by changing your pokemon's appearance in a subtlle way, perhaps it simply grows larger or develops a unique marking or coloration, but you don't have to if you don't want to. If your pokemon evolves only once than you can use this pseudo evolution system to access the second allotment of bonus levels.
Obtaining evolution items. Many pokemon evolve through the use of an item such as an elemental stone or held item. To balance the advantage you'll gain from doing so such items will be difficult to obtain, you'll have to devote some of your precious free time towards side missions to either earn the money to buy these items or towards searching them out yourself.
Free Time
There are many ways to help your pokemon grow stronger, but a trainer on a journey only has so much time in a day. To simulate this delicate balancing act, I'm using a free time mechanic. After each main story mission, you'll be awarded free time, which you can spend by writing a scene describing a small adventure or challenge your trainer faces. Writing these free time scenes is the only way to achieve many important things.
For example:
Battling other trainers to level up. Whereever you go there'll be an endless stream of trainers to challenge, win or lose, you'll receive some extra levels to allocate to your pokemon. You can challenge your fellow players to battle if you would prefer or face off against npcs controlled by me.
Learning unusual moves: I mentioned before that your pokemon will only automatically learn moves from its level list. To learn more unusual moves you'll have to write a scene in which you put the pokemon through some kind of training or testing to help it learn, you can collaborate with other trainers to write a joint training scene if you would like. You can even teach your pokemon your very own, custom moves this way.
Obtaining rare items: If you want a rare item, especially those needed for evolution, you'll need to write up a scene in which you seek it out, describing where you look, what kind of measure you take and what kind of trouble you run into along the way.
Catching or otherwise obtaining a pokemon: One of the most important uses of your free time will be adding new pokemon to your team. Like with seeking out an items, you'll need to describe what kind of plan you have for seeking out and capturing your desired pokemon and some pokemon will only be able to be caught in certain regions of the map.
Earning cash: In Arkona it hasn't always been possible for trainers to make a living purely off pokemon battles, so they often make money by handling requests or side jobs for the people of towns they enter. These would be things like driving away dangerous swarms of wild pokemon; using your pokemon's abilities to help with work like farming or construction; or hunting down ne'erdowellls like minor criminals or even illegal team members. Mechanically earning money in this way allows you to "bank" your free time, you can spend the money you earn later to easily accomplish something later that would otherwise take time. For example, you want to catch a numel, but you aren't in a region that attracts fire pokemon, so instead you earn some money by rounding up a local gang of purse snatchers with the help of your pokemon. Later on when you arrive at an area where numel are available, you spend the money you earned hiring a local guide and he helps you easily find and catch a numel, so you do not have to spend your limited free time searching for one. When you spend money you already earned this way you don't even need to write a scene since you already put in the effort you can just get your reward.
Free time difficulty.
Depending on what you want to achieve, you might not be able to reach the goal right in one free time session. If you're trying to catch a super rare pokemon or teach a very powerful, very unusual move, you might need to work on it for multiple free time sessions. Its important to note that the difficulty of a goal can change depending on where in Arkona you are. In the thick, humid Nomazor jungles, catching almost any leaf type pokemon is relatively easy, but it would take much much longer to find a fire type for example, this is true of certain items as well, if you look in suitable areas than you'll have an easier time.
If you want to do something but you aren't in a suitable area it might be best to work on something else in the mean time, or earn some extra money and then travel towards the region where your goals will be easier to accomplish. you can tackle the gyms of Arkona in any order you wish, so you can make a beeline for the area where your favorite pokemon is waiting to be caught if you want to.
Even learning new moves can be easier in the right location. A bulbasaur can technically learn curse, but it would be tricky for them to do so and might take while, but if you train them in a haunted manor the latent ghost energy in the area will make it easier for them to grasp the technique and save you some time!
Of course, some things are just always going to be difficult no matter what. A custom move for your pokemon for example will always be a long process. But pokemon is about exploration to a great extent, so if you epxplore and make use of the environment around you you can achieve great things!
AtlannianSpy
Alarmed and Strangerous
PVP Combat
Although battling other players isn't mandatory, I expect at least some players to be interested in it. When facing off against other players its iimportant to come to an agreement before the battle begins about how it will be resolved. You don't have to determine the outcome of the fight in advance, though if that is an acceptable option to both parties its an excellent way to avoid drama, you can flip a coin or hash out the outcome through discussion. If you want a more freeform / gamey approach to the fight then that's fine too, just make sure you're both on the same page.
If a combat can't be resolved between players happily, or both of you simply want a neutral opinion, then I'm happy to step in and moderate, but I would prefer if people try to work it out between themselves first.
Players who battlee each other will both receive experience, which will be determined by my: The loser will generally receive a little bit more to encourage graceful losers and reflect that defeat is often more enlightening than victory.
Although battling other players isn't mandatory, I expect at least some players to be interested in it. When facing off against other players its iimportant to come to an agreement before the battle begins about how it will be resolved. You don't have to determine the outcome of the fight in advance, though if that is an acceptable option to both parties its an excellent way to avoid drama, you can flip a coin or hash out the outcome through discussion. If you want a more freeform / gamey approach to the fight then that's fine too, just make sure you're both on the same page.
If a combat can't be resolved between players happily, or both of you simply want a neutral opinion, then I'm happy to step in and moderate, but I would prefer if people try to work it out between themselves first.
Players who battlee each other will both receive experience, which will be determined by my: The loser will generally receive a little bit more to encourage graceful losers and reflect that defeat is often more enlightening than victory.
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