04: Pokémon Battles and Capturing Pokémon!

note: The first post covers Pokemon Battles, while the second post covers Capturing Pokemon.

Before we get started, it's worth noting that this is written with PVP roleplaying where you and your opponent are pasting back in forth in mind rather than a roleplay post where you control both parties. As such it will be focusing on some fundamental principles of roleplay combat in addition to mechanics.

In the pokemon games, combat is simple, turn based bouts of One move versus One move. In roleplaying, however, things are a bit more complex. Like in real fights, practical aspects become involved. For example, an individual can exploit the environment to say, use a tree as a shield to block an incoming attack. Because of things like this, the key to transitioning smoothly to roleplaying pokemon combat is to take the time to think of how the pokemon mechanics translate to a more dynamic environment. Watching fight scenes from the anime and the pokemon movies might help with this, as if you cannot properly visualize how it would work in execution, you can't properly roleplay combat.

Two key factors that must be kept in mind when roleplaying combat is Power Playing and Godmodding. Doing either of these is a massive taboo and is in violation of the site rules. Power Playing is when you roleplay yourself as being basically invincible. Dodging everything with ease, launching barrage after barrage of high level attack without any fatigue, etc. Since this site uses stats, unless you can logically justify it with statistics [for example, if you have 200 speed while your enemy has 30 you can easily justify never being touched] it is power playing. Godmodding on the other hand is where you take control of your player's character. For example, if you say your opponent or their pokemon says/does something they haven't done in their post that is godmodding, as is automatically hitting them [launching an attack and saying it hits, eliminating any possibility for them to counter or respond]

So, you know what to avoid, but how about what to do? Well, for a start, a good rule of thumb is to take the time before you start writing your post to visualize the scenario and figure out what is happening. Create a list of points in your head of what your post needs to cover and then expand upon them to add detail and flesh the scene out. Ideally you want to aim for your post to be detailed and descriptive so anyone who reads it can immediately grasp what is going on. Proper use of adjectives here is key. Don't worry if you're not a master of English, however, as roleplaying is an acquired skill, and nobody expects you to be Shakespeare. Simply do your best to produce an interesting and fair post.

Mechanically, pokemon can use two moves per post: One non-combat move and one combat move. A non-combat move is an ability such as harden or sunny day, while a combat move is an attack like Flamethrower. Charge moves such as hyper beam cannot be used with a non-combat move. If the Combat move used has 40 power or less, the user may use a second combat move. [To determine power, reference a site like Bulbapedia. At present we are using Gen V statistics] Certain moves don't properly translate to certain environments. For example, Rock slide, a move that disturbs the nearby terrain to cause a barrage of rocks to fall down on an opponent doesn't really work when not fighting in caves or the shadow of a mountain. As such, trainers may make logical adaptation to certain moves. Continuing with the Rock slide example, a trainer can for example have their pokemon stomp against the ground sharply, causing rock to rise from the ground and crash down, hitting anyone who gets in the way.

Capturing pokemon is a simple process. Each area that you can capture pokemon in will have a stickied topic titled "Area Pokemon" inside this topic will be a numbered list of pokemon, along with two levels, the lowest level the pokemon can appear at and the highest level the pokemon can appear at. The numbered list of pokemon will also tell you a certain dice you should use. Now, at first this looks confusing but it is rather simple to follow. To work you through this, we'll create an example topic showing you exactly how this is done. In this example the NPC Master Blue wants to capture some pokemon in Mount Moon. First, blue needs to create a post entering the location, then he can roll the dice to determine the pokemon he will encounter.

After creating the initial entrance post, Blue now needs to roll a dice to determine what pokemon he can encounter. To do this, he presses the reply button. Inside the message body, he puts "(rolling)" the brackets are there to indicate that the post is OOC [out of character] beneath the preview and send buttons there is a field called Dices Roll. Because Mount Moon says to use the fifty sided dice, he selects that dice from the drop down box. As blue wants to encounter two pokemon, he sets the amount of rolls to two, then presses send to submit the post. The red account will automatically post in the thread, giving the two numbers that resulted from the dice roll. In this case, blue rolled a thirty and a thirteen. In the Mount moon area pokemon list, Number thirty is Cranidos, while number thirteen is Sandshrew. Now Blue needs to post encountering these tow pokemon.

Blue wants to capture the Crandios, but he doesn't want to capture the Sandshrew. Mount moon pokemon can span between level Ten and Level Twenty Eight, and since Blue is a veteran pokemon trainer, he decides he wants the Cranidos to be Level Twenty Five. Since he doesn't want to capture the Sandshrew, he makes it level ten. The level of the pokemon that appear in the thread is up to him to decide.

Blue starts off his next post with some OOC text:

"(Sandshrew Level Ten, Cranidos Level Twenty Five)"

Next he roleplays encountering and scaring off the Sandshrew, before finally stumbling across the Crandios. Since the Crandios is level 25, he needs 1200 words to capture it. Blue however has an ultra ball, which Reduces the Word Count Requirement by 1500. Because of this, Blue needs his post to be at least 250 words, as his Ultra ball cannot reduce the word count requirement below this point.

Word Count Requirements By Level:

Now that blue has captured the Cranidos, all that's left to do is for him to fill out a pokemon template for the Crandios and post it along with the link to the topic where he captured it inside his topic in Bill's Registry in the pokemon library.

Click here to see the example topic with Blue

To Recap:

Create a topic with an introduction post entering the area.

Roll the appropriate dice for your area. The dice you should roll is stated in the Area Pokemon topic. Be sure to set it for multiple rolls rather than rolling several times in a roll to avoid spam.

Compare the rolled numbers to the numbered pokemon list in the are pokemon topic. In the start of your next post be sure to state the levels of all pokemon rolled like this:

(Sandshrew Level Ten, Cranidos Level Twenty Five)

All pokemon rolled must make an appearance. Make sure if you're going to capture a pokemon that you meet the word count requirements.

If you capture a pokemon, write up a pokemon template for it and place it in your registry along with a link to the topic you captured it in.