Recently, I replayed Pokémon Red Version and when down a bit of a mental rabbit hole thinking about how I’d recreate it in TTRPG form. Well, I never got entirely out of that rabbit hole - therefore I present you know with my playtest rules for the game.

Want to give it a read or run a playtest yourself? Well, here it is:

These two documents include the basic rules, items, status effects, and Pokémon you are able to encounter in the opening locations of the Kanto region. You’ll notice some things have changed from the original idea - mostly switching to d20 (over d100). That’s how it goes sometimes when the rubber meets the road on actually doing the legwork. This version feels more accessible to me than the original idea, something I think is worth considering when making a broader-appeal fan game thing like this.

The region guide gets you from Pallet Town, the starting location of Red/Blue/Yellow, all the way to Pewter City and its gym so you get Routes 1 and 2, Viridian City and Viridian Forest as well. What’s here is EXTREMELY a direct adaptation of Pokemon Red/Blue.

In the future, I intend to have a more flavorful version of this region that leans more into the tabletop aspect of a fully-featured world with various little sub-situations and interesting bits going around, but for now, a direct pull felt best for testing.

My intention here was to create enough for a few sessions of playtesting to see how it feels without going super overboard on writing/prep time only to find that the thing sucks. Additionally, there are spots here where you’ll need to use your best judgement as the Professor (that’s what I’m calling the GM, even though the text doesn’t say that yet) - especially around things like deciding Wild Pokémon levels, Team battle makeups, etc.

If you give it a read and have any thoughts or questions, please drop them in the comments below! If you run a playtest, I’d be EXTREMELY interested to hear how it goes. Either way, I’ll report back with my own playtest experience in the coming weeks.