I recently replayed Pokemon Red for the first time in decades. Folks are talking about Pokemon whether it be in new video games, the cards, or even bringing them to the tabletop in new ways. It’s all got me thinking how I’d do Pokemon at my table. Here are some of rough ideas I cooked up while I was taking a shower.

To me, the core fantasy of Pokemon is being a trainer exploring the world and growing and evolving your lineup of pocket monsters as you go. So in my game, the PCs are trainers.

Really, the specifics of your trainer’s physical prowess or even intelligence seem to have little effect on their ability to effect change in the world. That almost always comes entirely from their Pokemon (I’m taking inspiration from the original anime here somewhat for this as well). So in my game, I’m not worried about building mechanics around the trainers themselves — everything comes from the Pokemon they have in their pocket. So you’d cook up flavor for your trainer (name, looks, age, town of origin, etc.), but no rolls are being decided by that.

Maybe I’d throw in a simple “fate roll” sort of thing if a situation would arise where you have no Pokemon, but really, if something requires a roll to see if you can achieve it - it requires a Pokemon to do it! If a Pokemon isn’t needed, your table can likely easily deduce if you can accomplish it or not (keeping in mind that we are in PokeEarth here so like… a kid trainer isn’t going to try and physically assault a Team Rocket member with a pocket knife or something - but they would have their Onyx smash them up into the sky).

Before I dive into specific Pokemon stuff, here’s some more broad ideas I’d like to build around as they feel clean to me, at least in this wide view shape everything is in at the moment.

This is a d100 (roll under, in most cases) game because Pokemon start at Level 1 and max out at Level 100. Keeping everything structured around levels all the way down to the base rolls helps remove all the automated background nonsense that happens in the game. We’re going for the feel and spirit of Pokemon here, not a complete mechanical recreation. The worst thing you can do in adapting a video game to tabletop is forget that the best part about video games is how they automate all the bullshit in the background. I want to avoid unautomated bullshit, as much as possible.

While we’re at it, default Pokemon HP is equal to their Level as well. Your trainer doesn’t have HP, but just like in the base game if you are outta Pokemon, you’re down and out. So in that way, you could have 1-6 pseudo-HP in the form of non-knocked out Pokeballs on your belt - maybe on the character sheet, I make it look like a Pokeball version of a Blades in the Dark clock or something.

If your Pokemon is strong against the Pokemon they are facing, you take advantage on your rolls in the fight (and they get that same benefit if they are strong against you).

XP tracking is for chumps so I’d use a special roll around seeing if your Pokemon levels up after a fight. You’d roll a number of d10 equal to the opponents next highest even 10 above their level (if they are Level 26, you’d roll 3d10). You then try to roll above your Pokemon’s current level. If you do, they level up! For example, your Squirtle is Level 3. You beat a Level 5 Rattata. You roll 1d10. On a roll of 4-10, you’d level up!

There’s probably some weirdness here if I looked at more possibilities, but that’s for future me to worry about. I think you could have a Level roll for every Pokemon on your side who participated in the fight (just like in the game), but if you split Level rolls across Pokemon, you roll each one with disadvantage to reflect the lower XP. Also, little things like if you beat a Pokemon 5+ Levels above your own, you take advantage on the roll or if you beat a Pokemon 10+ levels higher than yours, you automatically level once but roll to see if you level twice!

Since you’d likely play this with a group at your table, each trainer throws a Pokemon into a group fight and enemy Trainers either throw multiple or have multiple enemy Trainers as well, but their Pokemon will never outnumber yours (since everyone, mostly, plays fair in this world). That said, I’ve heard Team Rocket has been known to break the rules!

Each Pokemon has it its own skill tree (basically just adapted from the abilities they would learn, when they would learn them - I’d be using Red/Blue). You use the abilities as your out of combat skills in sort of any way you can reasonably justify and that the table and the Professor (that’s what the DM is called here, of course) is okay with. In combat, they’d have little rules (super short, a sentence each) for how they work.

Base damage for a standard attack is equal to your Level. Strong attacks deal double their stated damage. Weak deal half. You get the idea. Just like real Pokemon, the fights aren’t rocket science, but we want simple, fun interactions that give you a reason to use some of the non-attacks and mostly find cools things to do outside of combat with them.

On that note, I imagine a typical session to be more like an episode of the anime than the actual video game. 3-5 fights across a session and that’s probably on the high end.

Okay fine, we’ll talk about actual, specific Pokemon and some of their starting abilities:

Bulbasaur

Tackle: In combat, this is a basic attack. Out of combat, you can knock someone down, break a small item, etc.
Growl: In combat, enemy Pokemon’s next attack deals 50% damage. Out of combat, this can alert someone of danger, intimidate an enemy, etc.

Squirtle

Tackle: See above.
Tail Whip: In combat, the Pokemon’s next attack deals 50% more damage. Out of combat, this create an opening, smack something out of the way, etc.

Charmander

Scratch: In combat, this is a basic attack. Out of combat, you can create marks on something, damage a small item, etc.
Growl: See above.

Rattata

Tackle: See Above.
Tail Whip: See Above.
Quick Attack: In combat, this attack always strikes first (I’d need to come up with initiative speed order or whatever, imagine that’s something that’s variable like in actual Pokemon). Out of combat, you can rush under a closing door, quickly grab a small item and return to the trainer, etc.

I see these abilities and the higher level ones almost being like the sentences in Realis where they start broad but weak and become more and more specific but way way stronger as you progress. HMs would have really powerful descriptors out of combat as well.

I think there’s a fun nugget of something here - really I think the key aspects of having your Pokemon be the entirety of your skillset (which you can only have 6 Pokemon with 4 Abilities each total, and you’ll need to swap out and adjust over long-term play) and having all the in-combat abilities be used almost like an open-ended magic system outside of combat is the fun bit here to making something that would look and feel pretty much like the game and anime without being super bogged down.

Next time, I’ll have to cook up how you might catch these things… seems important.