Pokemon battle RP/ forum game

[dracobreeder]

I thought it would be really fun to bring pokemon into bunni even more, so I created this thread. Here's how it works;
1.Battles: Two trainers go up against each other to earn exp and sorni tokens. (The currency in this thread, I will post a section about them.) Battles will be determined and decided by judges. (See section 3) All battles must be fair, so don't go challenging a newbie if you've been on the thread levelling up for ages.
2. Your team: You start off with one basic pokemon given you by a judge. If you are unhappy with the pokemon you are given you can swap it. You are allowed a maximum of 2 swaps. If you don't like the 3rd pokemon you are given you can go back and choose the pokemon you were offered that you like the most. Judges decide when your pokemon evolve. You can build up your team by requesting to go into a capture situation. One of the judges will take on the role of a random wild pokemon.
I've got to go now, but I'll keep posted on the other rules!

[Ivernus]

Question: Are you going to use the online resources to determine the stats of pokemon and the available moves they have? Or is it going to be more free-form. I would be interested to see how this turns out so I'll lurk the topic for a bit

[zlyfire]

I'll lurk it to-hits 'Lurk' button-
You should put a registration form for judges. anyone can be a trainer, but judges have to be approved and on a lot. And will their be contests? we can look up the contest mode of the moves we use :p

[dracobreeder]

Um... answers will probably revealed as I post, but if they aren't by the time I've posted all the details, feel free to ask.
3.Judges: Judges will be selected to organize things and I will choose 2 other people to join me as judges. I have been thinking about who would make good judges and am ready to give them the job pretty quickly. Judges will still have their own trainer/character to RP but will be restricted to doing certain things.
4.RP: There will be quite a lot of RP sense, like a new region for this RP,(I will make a map later) travelling the region, and similar things.
5.Sorni: Sorni tokens are the currency in this region, which can be exchanged for things like TMs, pokemon,(traded from judges) keys to secret areas etc.
6.Trainer sheet: Your trainer sheet will look like this:
Name:
Age: (10 to 18)
Trainer type: (Ace, school kid, geeky person(Yes, really!)etc.)
Background:
Appearance: (Ideally a picture please.)

Here's my sheet:
Name: Kirsty
Age:12
Trainer type: Painter
Background: Raised around pokemon all her life, always drawing pictures of them in her spare time.
Starter pokemon: (judges get to choose) Smeargle
Apperance:http://bunnibunni.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=185&pictureid=1382
To apply to be a judge, add this form to your trainer sheet.
Judge application form:
What pokemon games you've got:
How you'd rate your pokemon knowledge out of 10:
Most fascinating piece of pokemon trivia you know:
Right, that's it, but if you have any questions, just ask! :-D

[elpuntthing]

Hi. Draco's already told me that I can be a senior judge if I apply. So, here's my form.

Name: Jessica
Age: 14
Trainer type: Pokemon breeder
Background: Brought up in a regular house (in a city), but when she was 8, her family moved and they started a Pokemon farm. She (like me) is obsessed with Houndour.
Starter Pokemon: Houndour, of course!
Appearance: http://bunnibunni.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=178&pictureid=1383
Pokemon games I own: Mystery Dungeon Blue Rescue Team; Diamond; Pearl; Soulsilver; Ranger (The first one). If I think of any more I'll add them.
Pokemon knowledge rating: Umm... 6?
Most fascinating piece of Pokemon trivia: Houndour is #228 and it's shiny is blue. I know a lot about Houndour. ^_^

[dracobreeder]

Yep, accepted as a judge, but I'm sure that you know better pokemon trivia than that. The most fascinating piece I know is that smeargle has the smallest move pool, yet also has the largest move pool. Beat that! :-p

[elpuntthing]

What's wrong with Houndour? :(

Fine, uh... The move 'Dragon Rage' always does exactly 40hp damage.

Happy?

[dracobreeder]

Aha, good picture too! ^_^

[screwbaII]

It sounds pretty ambitious, I think I'll wait for you to put in all the details before deciding on this one. I as of yet don't understand how this is actually going to work so I'll wait until the idea is fully realised and then decide if I'll join :)

Also I'm pretty sure anybody who has ever read the dragon rage information in the game would know that it does 40 damage every time. Why not do rarer trivia like there are five forms of missingno, or one way to bug out the old blue/red/yellow versions :P Or maybe something like best places to EV train for a specific stat. How chaining pokemon works even? I'm just grabbing from all over the place.

[dracobreeder]

Umm, all the details have been posted. If you want to know anything else, just ask!

[screwbaII]

but... you haven't really explained how it's going to work. How are pokemon stats determined? How do battles work? How do you choose a person's 'starter' pokemon? How is leveling up determined. How are Pokemon moves determined. etc. etc.

You've left out so much of the actual gameplay that it feels very incomplete. I just feel like you haven't fully thought everything out and that could mean that this won't be very successful :(

[elpuntthing]

Screw, I agree. From what I've worked out from talking to Draco, the judges will award exp. points at the end of a battle. I think Pokemon moves will be chosen by the trainer when the pokemon learns them. Starters were explained earlier. The trainer will be offered a pokemon and must decide whether to take it or leave it. If they don't like it, they will be offered another pokemon. If they don't like this one, they will be offered one more. If they don't like this one, they must either keep it anyway or pick one of the ones they were offered before.

I'm not sure if this information is right, ask Draco for confirmation.

[Ivernus]

I think the point screw was trying to make is, we have the details and concepts but not specifics. To use an example, people will be awarded experience but how is this awarded, what determines the value. Pretty much the concepts are named but the specifics of each one is not explained.

Random Pokemon Trivia: There were alot more than 151 Pokemon in the Original Gameboy Games (Red/Blue), most of these pokemon having been dubbed the 'Poke-gods'. If people are interesting I can link up a good sight for explaining how to find them/catch them etc

[elpuntthing]

I'm sorry you two, but I just don't know any more. :(

[dracobreeder]

Yeah, sorry, I didn't really have time.
Battles (Judges guide)
The way it is determined for how much hp a move deals, look up the average amount of hp dealt, pick a random number very close to the average, then apply weakness and resistance.(Weakness will be +10 on average, and resistance -5 on average.)
The judge will decide the amount of exp given by considering how well the battle was played, and the level difference. (More exp will be given if the opposing pokemon is higher levelled than you, not quite as much if the opponent was around the same level, and quite a bit less if opponent was a lot weaker.)
Starter pokemon are selected at random, but they always have to be basic and not rare or legendary.
If there's anything else you want to know, don't be afraid to ask! I don't bite! Well, a little bit if you really annoy me...

[screwbaII]

So basically it's just completely arbitrary? Ehhhh I'll pass. I was thinking it would be more like a D&D style to balance it up. Or at least have dice rolling. I just don't like the idea of arbitrary numbers sorry.

Few other things I think I should point out to help you out (you can consider them, or just ignore them, I don't really mind but I'm just trying to help):

Firstly, there are some pretty powerful basic pokemon, especially the ones that don't evolve. You would be better off offering the starter pokemon from all of the games and probably the pokemon found in the area between the first two towns from all of the games (e.g. pidgey). This means no one starts out particularly strong, and elements would be simple to begin with so people could get more of a feel for the game without it being too complex.

Secondly, you do know everyone is just going to pick the highest above average but still within average range number for every attack that has that. That's one reason I don't like arbitrary choosing.

Thirdly, critical hits, misses and evasion. I think you need to do something about those since moves like evasion would be pretty useless if you didn't.

I guess the way you're going to do it pretty much throws fairness out the window. Think of it like this, if you were playing monopoly and you could choose everything including: the number of spaces you moved, the amount of money each place was worth, how much you put the rent up for and being able to pick and choose chance and community chest cards, then you're obviously going to do everything you can to manipulate the game into your favour since the point of the game is to win and make everyone else bankrupt. If you relate this example to your rp, obviously people are just going to choose everything that favours them. You see it in freeform rps all of the time. E.g. Sword slashes at person, person magically dodges a direct hit and stabs back, other person magically dodges a direct hit. You understand what I'm saying? Random chance is what makes games balanced and 'fair', and I know this isn't a game but it's based off a game, and that game uses well defined chance and numbers. So I would suggest finding out how the game mechanics in the pokemon games work and applying them here (with evidence of what you're doing). If you want to do that, and you want help with that, Ivernus and I will be happy to help you in your research.

You could argue that the judges are a 'neutral' position, however just because there are judges, it doesn't mean their choices won't be corrupt either, especially if they favour some people over others. It would be the equivalent of a neutral banker not playing in the monopoly game assigning random amounts of money to people who passed go, and if they particularly liked someone in the game they would give them more than someone they didn't particularly like for example. The 'neutral' party is always going to be bias in some way, it's impossible for a human not to have categorised others in a way that would affect their attitude toward them, it's just basically how we work. I don't mind the 'judging' aspect if it was like an opinion of the match (like they held up cards like 9/10), but something like experience being arbitrarily given with no baseline as to what the numbers should be seems a bit iffy to me.

The thing I'm trying to point out here is it's probably a bad idea to have a freeform rp where numbers are involved. Yours sounds more like it should be D&D considering that it is too technical to be freeform since you're trying to add numbers into it. You could do a few things: one is to make the rp simpler, for example not have numbers and just have freeform battles where trainers just rp the battles without worrying about how much damage they're doing and the trainers just decide at what point they think their pokemon would faint and the winner gets to level up, unless the pokemon they are battling is like say 3 or less levels below them, at which case they get no benefit from fighting them, whereas if a pokemon three or less levels below wins a match they could get two level ups.

Or you could have a D&D style rp based on random chance and dice rolls, but you would need to put a lot more work into it and research on the mechanics behind the pokemon games. This way would be more effective for what you're trying to do.

Or you could just leave it like it is, but I'm just going to point out that if you do there are probably going to be a lot of arguments in the thread, especially by people who think that they are being dealt with unfairly through judging inconsistencies and what-not.

So again, if you want to make the rp based more D&D-like (like how pokemon level up, gain experience through battling, how evasion and critical hits work etc.), Ivernus and I will be happy to help you research these things and come up with some kind of system to help with keeping the rp fair, consistent and balanced. Otherwise I would suggest waaaaay simplifying what you have by taking out the numbers and making it completely freeform.

Anyway, hope this helps and clears up a few things. (I should note that Ivernus was going to and might still post something similar to this, however this may be what he was planning on saying anyway).

[dracobreeder]

Yeah, I might need help shaping the RP, especially seeing as I've got loads of homework to do this weekend.:mad::businessbunni:

[screwbaII]

We're on holidays for a week XD So, if you need help just tells us what direction you would like to go with this and we can help you work out the smaller details.

[dracobreeder]

Yeah, I think it would be better being based mainly on luck. Could you help me re-shape it?

[screwbaII]

Sure just tell us what you want us to work on first.

[zlyfire]

heres a dice roller. i think i put it up at one time before, but here it is again.
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dice/dice.htm
true, some people might not be fair about it and still either decide togo with highest possible and be lying, but the bunni community shouldnt be fullof liars anyways, right? if you have another way to do it, ie some neutral juudges(screw and ivernus, though they will be busy with their own rp) they could use the dice roller and say the exact number, etc etc. just my opinion