Hey Pokémon Trainers, as we get further into testing and development of our Pokémon tabletop RPG, we thought it’d be fun to give you a peek into the design process. So here’s the first entry in our new dev diary series!

I’ll try to keep the preamble short, but first of all, we have a new working title for what we’ve been calling PTU 2.0 up to now: Pokémon Journeys

We’ve heard feedback requesting a new name to better reflect how big of a paradigmatic change the system is from PTU 1.05, and we also feel we’ve long outgrown the “United” label which was originally meant to juxtapose the system with PTA. So that’s what we’re calling the system…for now. Things may change, as always!

If you haven’t taken a look at our playtest docs and drafts yet, you can see them at this link.

Okay, that out of way, let’s talk about how we’re approaching one of the most exciting shifts in Pokémon Journeys: Every Pokémon will have a custom Move list, including many new Moves we’re writing ourselves to fill holes in a particular Type or mon’s repertoire.

It wasn’t an easy decision to commit to curating Move lists for all mons in Pokémon Journeys. On top of the sheer amount of work it creates for us, it also means we hold more responsibility now for the system’s overall Pokémon balance and can’t pass the buck to Gamefreak when a mon has garbage Moves.

But we believe there are astounding benefits to it. The sheer size and scope of some Pokémons’ TM and Tutor Lists in 1.05 was not only unwieldy, but it made certain Moves far too prevalent, such as Ice Beam and Thunderbolt. Early Gen Pokémon could usually enjoy wide coverage from their TM and Tutor options whereas later Gens appeared to have been assigned those Moves with more scrutiny. Extreme disparities existed within generations too. In contrast to the obvious Move lottery winners like Clefable and the Nidos, the Move lists for Pokémon like Electrode would make you think someone at Gamefreak had it out for them.

Let’s take a look at some example Pokémon Move lists, and I’ll explain what we did along the way. But first, a quick disclaimer: everything in this post is accurate as of time of writing, but if you’re looking at this post weeks or months later, don’t be surprised if our drafts look different.
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