20 Nov

Pokémon Spotlight: Torkoal

Before everyone rushes off to play ORAS, I thought I’d post about a sorely underappreciated Pokémon from Hoenn. Luckily for it, Torkoal is a Pokémon that becomes a lot more attractive in a tabletop format compared to the video games. From a practical perspective, it’s probably one of the most convenient Pokémon a traveling Trainer can own, and its assumed long lifespan from being inspired by tortoises gives them the potential for many interesting plot hooks that couldn’t be written for other Pokémon species.

Artwork by bluekomadori

It burns coal inside its shell for energy. It blows out black soot if it is endangered. – Torkoal Pokédex entry

Basic PTU Tools and Utilities

Artwork by db

We’ve all been there before – it’s thirty minutes til session time, and you’ve just realized you need another set of wild Pokémon the players might want to battle, or maybe you’re new to GMing in general and need a bit of help getting started and managing everything that goes into a Pokémon Tabletop United session. Luckily for you, the community has done a great job of putting together tools for GMs and players alike to manage the prep work and bookkeeping that goes into a successful PTU campaign.

For players too, we realize that PTU can be a daunting system to approach, but Google Docs character sheets can help you fill in relevant information quickly and without needing to flip between game PDFs.

Read on to learn about these tools!
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14 Nov

Campaign Seeds: The Road to Tomorrow

It’s no secret that getting started as a PTU GM can be hard, whether due to the learning curve on encounter creation, or simply figuring out what to do given the vast possibilities of playing Pokémon in a tabletop medium. So what I want to do here is write posts that are explicitly geared towards helping new GMs get started with the system. This will range from fluff content like this post to more mechanically-oriented posts such as sample characters and early game encounters.

Artwork by SIN

All of the campaign seeds in this post defy the usual expectations of a campaign where the players set out to conquer the Pokémon League, but they are not so far removed from the Pokémon source material that you have to build everything from scratch yourself. These campaign concepts can live comfortably within the existing Pokémon regions you know and love, given some adaptation and modification, and they all heavily emphasize travel or exploration, which is an important aspect of the Pokémon franchise.

Another theme I incorporated into these campaign seeds is the idea that from the very beginning, the players are clearly part of something that will have important implications for the future of their society. Criminal threats are fleeting, and when Team Rocket falls, it’s often not too long before a near-identical criminal Team rises to replace them. Fame and glory as League Champion only lasts as long as it takes for someone better to come along and beat you. But in these campaign concepts, the players are creators; they are building structures, making discoveries, and establishing norms that will affect the world of their campaign for generations to come.

Let’s get started. These campaign seeds are listed in order of the least to the most deviation from a “To Be a Master” campaign.
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11 Nov

Polka and Poaching

We’re still chugging away at 1.05, and today we’ll take a quick look at two of the Classes we introduced in 1.04 which will be getting some tweaking to better accomplish their intended goals. Both the Hunter and the Dancer were well received, but after they saw some play, we they discovered they could be just a bit clunky or disjointed.

Artwork by なるもい

Let’s start by taking a look at the updated Dancer, shall we?
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08 Nov

Pokémon Spotlight: Phantump Family

These are two of my favorite new Pokémon from Gen 6 and near the top of my favorite Grass Pokémon too. It’s hard not to get inspired when looking at these two lovely spooky trees, and their signature Ability, Forest Lord, was among the first that I wrote up for the 1.04 ‘dex as we were adding the new Pokémon.

This post will be the first in a series of Pokémon Spotlights that will hopefully give GMs and players alike inspiration for their games. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shoutout to Old Greg’s Daily Pocket Monster blog, which has sadly been discontinued. His posts were greatly appreciated throughout the Pokémon Tabletop community, and I’ll do my best to fill his shoes. Now, without further ado, let’s jump in!

Artwork by 雛瀬かぐや

According to old tales, these Pokémon are stumps possessed by the spirits of children who died while lost in the forest. – Phantump Pokédex entry

Using its roots as a nervous system, it controls the trees in the forest. It’s kind to the Pokémon that reside in its body. – Trevenant Pokédex entry

A Fresh Start! And PTU 1.05 News

Hi everyone! This is castfromhp, and you’re reading the first post of the official Pokémon Tabletop United blog. Here, we’ll offer you a glimpse into the development of the system, ideas and content for your campaigns, and much more.

Let’s start by talking about PTU 1.05. Several months have passed since our last release – longer than the gap between any other PTU releases. Why, you might ask? After 1.04 was done, we all took a much-needed break from actively working on the system and thought we could wait a while as the typo reports and other feedback rolled in before getting back into the swing of things.

Once we did, we realized 1.05 wouldn’t be as simple an update as just fixing some typos and copy-paste mistakes. Several of the Trainer Classes introduced in 1.04 needed revision, some core subsystems are seeing tweaks, and we had assembled a small backlog of new Classes we wanted to finish and implement. And that’s just the start of it! Naturally, this means the release has taken a lot more time than we anticipated, and we’re sorry to anyone who thought they’d be getting a quick turnaround on a new version of PTU.

That said, here’s at three things to look forward to in the next version of PTU.

1. Visual Redesigns

Both The Blessed and the Damned and the Game of Throhs supplement will be getting visual redesigns to bring them up to par with the core book and Do Porygon Dream of Mareep supplement. Take a look at the new The Blessed and the Damned cover as well as the WIP internal layout of the book!

PTU 1.04

PTU 1.04 dropped a month ago, and I didn’t even mention it! How silly of me.

I’ve updated the menu on the left to link to the latest version, but you can also get it here. Older versions, of course, can still be found on the Portal page for the forums.

11 Feb

Under New Management

Hello, everyone! I’m Elemental Knight. You might recognize me from my work in homebrewing up spreadsheets for the Pokemon Tabletop games, or as the GM of a long-running campaign under those same systems.

For a while now, the main PokemonTabletop site has laid fallow – unupdated, and only marginally functional. I’ve convinced the previous administrator, Blazedd, to allow me to take up the reins. This means I can keep it updated, functional, and accessible, with more ease and speed than I previously was.

The forums should still be accessible through the forums.PokemonTabletop.com subdomain, so for most folks, this changeover should be unnoticed. But over the coming weeks, I intend to turn this website from a simple landing page into a hub of Pokemon Tabletop resources and information… Or, at least, a more correct landing page. Until then, though, continue using the forums site as your primary source for all things Pokemon Tabletop.