Hey everyone! If there are any Pokemon TTRPGs that I have left out of the video, feel free to share them here! I'd also love for folks who have played any of these games to share stories from their campaigns!

Some systems that I have found out about since finishing this video:

Pokemon Tabletop Evolution by Azurespider: An update on PTU that is in development but seems to have many of the kinds of customizations that I discussed in this video. Looks neat! https://azurespider.itch.io/pokemon-tabletop-evolution
Animon Story by Zak Barough: A rules light system that uses the Forged in the Dark ruleset that also gives Digimon vibes. https://zak-barouh.itch.io/animon-story
Pokemon Tabletop Reunited by Asgeeon: anonther update of PTU that is primarily built for FoundryVTT that is in public beta. https://2e.ptr.wiki/en/rules

Great video, clearly passionate about your gaming. I'm glad you were able to enjoy PTA enough to talk about it. Warms me up inside to see people enjoying PTA and gives me the inspiration to keep pushing forward with updates. PTA3.5 is coming out some time next year. It's not a system update, but as the entire movelist is getting an update, we're giving it a '.5' to differentiate it.  I hope you check it out when it's ready, even if you can't fit it into an already clearly busy game schedule!

The story writers of pokemon XD and Coliseum really understood how to make a smaller map and they made the most of it. Also made a good story without Gyms and a league.

I volunteered to run a 5e campaign at a local comic shop, but only one guy and his daughter ended up signing up.
The game "devolved" into Pokemon where she went around either catching or battling all the 5e monsters 🤣
Her dad pretty much played as her henchman 😂It was honestly one of the most imaginative and fun 5e campaigns I've run! 🤘
I definitely need to check some of these out!  Thanks for the video! 😃
Edit: omg, your player's characters were great 🤣

I remember learning about how d&d groups in prisons will sometimes use a card shuffle instead of a dice roll and getting the idea of using a shuffle of Pokemon cards to decide on the wild Pokemon encounters

Hey! Creators of the game A Monster's Tail! Really touched to be featured!! Thanks for giving us a look!

Having you as a dm sounds like a dream bro your house got an entire stationary shop attached

Funny how just as I was thinking about starting up a Pokémon TTRPG adventure with my friends, I get this video recommended to me. Great stuff, thanks for your hard work!!

Yelling from the back of the crowd: ”Lancer isn’t that crunchy actually! D&D 5E is capable of worse on a regular basis!”

My 4 year Long Term DM has been running a Homebrew Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Themed D&D Campaign! They've adapted extensive lore with the legendaries as patrons/gods/powerful pokemon of influence, created playable pokemon races for us to choose from, and formed rules for super effective typing moves! It has been really fun (we are 30+ sessions in) and we are already prepping for a second campaign even before this one ends!

Algorithms scare me… I’ve never seen any of your videos before, and yet Youtube knew to throw this video in my feed. I am currently in the process of designing my own Pokémon RPG. This is my second shot at it—I made a system in 2020 to run a Mystery Dungeon campaign with some friends. It worked, but ended up a lot crunchier than we would’ve liked, which basically meant the system itself took a backseat. That’s what scares me about the crunchy systems. Pokémon is fundamentally designed for combat, which should make it the primary resolution mechanic. If resolution becomes a slog, it both slows down the game as a whole and disincentives the players from engaging with it.

This video was a great overview of the current landscape! I’ve read quite a few of the RPGs discussed here, but I never actually played any of them. One thing which apparently hadn’t dawned on me was that (for at least some of these systems) gym battles are assumed to be 1-on-1. Here I am trying to make sure every type of battle involves each player, but somehow there are systems which assume that the other players will just happily watch a single player take on the GM, occasionally punctuated by using a cheer move?

The despair segment at the absurd crunch was comedy gold 😂

Omg, I've been running PTU for ages and had no idea there was an updated Pokémon generator. Thank youuuuu.

I've been loving running games in my medieval Pokémon world and exploring that fantasy.

I encourage everyone to watch the Unbeatable Podcast. It is an incredible Pokemon TTRPG live play run by the creator of an original game. It is VERY dynamic and MUCH faster than other variants on the theme.

I absolutely love Pokeymanz! It's such an amazing system. You discussed it not having as much customization as the crunchy systems, but I argue that, at least where Pokémon are concerned, it offers a great deal of satisfying customization while still being as simple as it is. I love how it strips Pokémon down to their absolutely core components: what they do (Moves), how well they do it (Move Dice), and how they do things differently from other individual Pokémon (Special Ability). That alone is enough to make a perfectly individual Pokémon. Their Moves and Ability are what define them. If your Pokémon has Power-up Punch, it is strong. If it has Quick Attack, it is fast. If it has Truant, it is lazy. If it has Intimidate, it is intimidating.

Pokémon usually would be limited to their official learnsets and Ability pools, but that is very flexible in Pokeymanz. It can be discussed with the GM that your Pokémon has a Pokédex entry explaining how it intimidates its prey and that it therefore should know Intimidate, even if it doesn't have it in its ability pool. Or you can discuss with them that your individual Pokémon is actually way cuter than average, and has Baby-Doll Eyes as an Egg Move because of it, even if, again, it isn't usually an Egg Move it has. There is so many ways in Pokeymanz for you to make your Pokémon so uniquely yours with absolutely no complexity whatsoever. Especially if it's your "I Choose You!" Pokémon.

I'd say comparing PTU and PTA with Pokeymanz is similar to comparing LEGO with Play-Doh. LEGO is ultimately more rewarding to build stuff with, but with Play-Doh, you don't have to deal with tracking down each specific piece that you need just to build what you want to build. With Play-Doh, you just make your own pieces. It's perfectly intuitive.

Trainer creation is alright. You can do about everything you can in PTA and PTU, including the old man with Hyper Beam, although I'd love more mechanical variety, especially in battle Edges. The point is, trainer creation in Pokeymanz offers all the flavor variety you need, but not as much play style variety as PTU (again, when it comes to the trainers, not the Pokémon, I still think Pokémon creation is close to perfect).

what won my like was the music accreditation in the corners that pops up.

I’ve personally been doing a solo campaign to build out a fan region of my own, and using a modified version of a Monster’s Tail as the rule set, so it was very fun to see that system touched on in this video!!

It’s a whole different vibe, but I’d love to see a vid like this touching on the handful of solo-ttrpgs there are that are either Pokémon themed outright or have fanmade Pokémon “mods” for them!

Always very important to give your trainers 'Maximum Edge'

the moment that first rule set came down on the table my mind instantly just went "TWENTY EIGHT STAB WOUNDS!" like fucking clockwork, I swear to god memes have irreparably altered how my brain understands sounds

Holy cow I'm so happy to se someone else geek out about the design and play of Pokemon fan TTRPGs as I have! I have a discord RP group where we use a very rules-light homebrew system , and I feel so heard when you articulated what exactly makes turning specifically the Pokemon video RPGs into tabletop RPGs... but also, what makes them so damn rewarding. My favourite thing to do with Pokemon TTRPGs is to tell stories that make the Pokemon world feel so much richer. The protagonists are characters that would otherwise be background characters - or straight up unnoticed - by the young trainer taking on the gym challenge in canonical media. And you get to RP out the bonding moments between a trainer, their Pokemon, and their friends that you can only play in your brain's imagination while playing the video game.

In my specific use case, I've had to homebrew a rules-light system because not only are the other players less experienced in TTRPGs and are more interested in character moments than strategic battling... we're also RPing in an oddly specific AU where 'hybrids' - former humans who shift between Pokemon and humanoid form - only recently emerged must find their place in the world. So there's yet another layer of game design complexity added in from this very premise. How do you apply how a character feels different between forms to their mechanics? How do you reflect a character having dangerous powers but no experience or courage in how they roll their dice? It's in this setting that I've seen characters really stand out compared to the rest of their species and have incredible character arcs. And... the system has a long way to go before it can answer these systems perfectly.

This has gotten me inspired though, and I think it made me realized that maybe I'm burnt out of fighting bad guys and I might want to try more of a 'explore an area and follow your curiosity' story to GM next time, like you suggested. So thank you so much! I'd also love to geek out about Pokemon TTRPG design and find others who want to talk about such a very niche topic with me. Your video made my day. :)