The Gaming Den

IGTN wrote:What are we doing about setting for this? It obviously needs a write-up for Kanto (or just pull that from online pokemon guides), since people are going to want to go there. Should it also have another region of its own?

Also, I like the idea of doing a more fantastic setting than the psuedo-modern Pokemon world. Something with orc and sahuagin pokemon trainers in it. It can still have all of the pokemon tropes thrown in. The question for that is this: do we want to make it as its own setting, or do we want to do an adaptation of an existing setting?

It seems like there are plenty of regions in the Pokemon setting. Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Mintale, Pokemon Island, the Sevii Islands, and Sinnoh are all part of one country, while the Orange Islands and Holon may or may not be part of that country and Orre, Fiorre, Almia, are part of a different country (though Fiorre and Almia are probably the same country as each other). That being said, the Pokemon universe is specifically transplanar: Sinnoh connects to the Distortion World through a hole in the sky, and the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games take place in an entirely different world that communicates with the world that the rest of Pokemon takes place in only intermittently through portals. Also, there are time portals. Like in Chronotrigger, it's actually kind of awesome.

Which I think gives the rather obvious answer of having the default setting be some sort of alternate dimension that communicated both with Kanto and Greyhawk through portals. Possibly time portals. Whatever one calls it, having a region that has Quasits and Charmanders seems like a good bet.

Now, conceptual space is certainly an issue. But violating conceptual space limits is kind of the point of Pokemon. You know, hundreds of Pokemon and hundreds of powers. But even so having more than about one kind of sapient humanoid race per town seems like it would turn things into more of a clusterfuck than they already are. That being said, having different cities be set up Heroes of Might and Magic style seems like a good target. The Heroes IV storyline offers a pretty compelling reason this might have happened: with the people jumping into portals after Armageddon's Blade set fire to the Heroes III world. An influx of fantasy races, monsters, and whatever into a Pokemon World through one of the great portals is totally something that happens.

So I dunno. Going the Heroes of Might and Magic route, there could be a Swamp City that has a lot of Beastmen in it; a desert town that has a lot of Orcs in it; a forest town that has a lot of elves in it; an underground town full of troglodytes (or dark elves going the Heroes V route); a mountain town full of tinker dwarves; a grasslands town that is basically a human deal; a fire town full of imps; and a ghost town full of the undead. This is frickin Pokemon, so having a trainer be a tiny red winged imp is not even a problem - but we might want the Infernals to just be Pokemon. In any case, the humans from a more traditional Pokemon world want to have gotten there first so that certain basics of Pokemon culture can be relied upon. The refugees in every region have to deal with the Cop, for example. Officer Jennies and Nurse Joys for example, are must-haves.

The Badge System wants to happen. The idea is that each gym has appropriately leveled tests for giving out a first badge or a third badge or whatever. So you can go challenge the gyms in any order. That's important, because you can't expect every player to come from Pallet Town and march through the cities in "proper" order. So for example, if you go to Planetsore City Gym, which is in a meteor crater full of lava, you can go to the Infernal Gym, and you can get the Blasphemy Badge. If this is your first badge, they send out a couple of modest Fire and Dark Pokemon. Maybe a Houndour, a Magog, and a Thoqua. But if you already have six badges they pull out the crazy and sick an advanced Houndoom, a Magmortar, a Salamander, and a Marilith on you. Similarly, you can go into the woods and go to the Gloomwood City Gym and if it's you're first gym battle they put you up against like a Caterpie, and a Firebeetle, and maybe a Spinarak. If it's your fourth Gym battle, they test you with a Phase Spider, a Parasect, and a Pinsir.

But there's something to be remembered about making slash fiction like this: it can all too readily turn into slash fiction. I don't want to read peoples' stories about capturing a Marilith and then defeating Dawn's Buneary in battle and then having the Marilith use her Charm Monster move on dawn and then "capturing" her and then "training" her with the rest of the pokemon until she wears her collar without shame and follows the orders of her trainer without hesitation. At least, not unless they are very well written.

-Username17

The idea of there being non-human races that have prominence in the setting raises an interesting divide. There are a lot of Pokémon that are essentially humanoid beings. Does this mean that there's a city constructed and run by Hitmonlees somewhere? Because if you're going to have orcs and sahuagin and whatever else, you're going to have to pick some arbitrary point in the D&D/fantasy canon and say "these are 'mons you can capture, and these aren't."

You could always just say that the stuff from D&D that you can capture and train is generally non-humanoid, because people are going to want to capture sentient things like unicorns and outsiders. But if you can have a "ghost town" full of sentient undead and those are out-of-bounds for capture, being able to stuff Gengar and Rotom in Pokéballs seems weird. The Infernals example seems particularly apt; the idea that succubi and mariliths are part of some empire-building civilization but Jynx and Mr. Mime are just pets is kind of strange.

The line is going to be arbitrary, but that's okay--the question is, where should it be drawn?

FrankTrollman wrote:I don't want to read peoples' stories about capturing a Marilith and then defeating Dawn's Buneary in battle and then having the Marilith use her Charm Monster move on dawn and then "capturing" her and then "training" her with the rest of the pokemon until she wears her collar without shame and follows the orders of her trainer without hesitation. At least, not unless they are very well written.

I lol'd.

Anyway, I tried to post this last night but my Internet didn't feel like working:

Are we using the full set of Types? That covers: Normal, Fighting (totally different!), Ghost, Psychic, Dark, Steel, Rock, Ground, Flying, Water, Fire, Ice, Dragon, Bug, Grass, Poison, Electric and Your Mum.

Furthermore, what do we do re: immunities? For instance, I don't think "I'm a Flying type" should automatically grant Ground immunity, instead flying at this moment should grant you immunity to most Ground moves (and some others).

Likewise, do we say that Normal and Fighting (remember: Hyper Beam is Normal) can't effect Ghosts but throwing rocks at them is okay, or do we just make a physical/energy divide (and not give outright immunity)? Should Normal be unable to be haunted by Ghosts? I don't have so much of a problem with Steel being poison-proof (even if we just make it "not very effective" and immune to the status effect) and Dark being evil, soulless creatures that are immune to psykers. Ground is also odd: it's supposed to represent critters that live underground (hence being immune to lightning: they're under the ground), but clearly if they're not actually underground right now, I don't see how that should be relevant.

Immunities to status effects, on the other hand, seem fine. Fire can't be Burned (but can be set on fire, it just doesn't hurt them), Poison and Steel can't be Poisoned or Badly Poisoned (or they treat Bad Poison as regular Poison?), Ice can't be Frozen, and all that.

Ground has to be immune to electricity on account of puns (US English).

Really, I'd keep the same not very effective/super effective chart, type immunities and all. For powers that don't make sense, we either preserve the thing that the original game had and keep them nonsensical (since they still make sense according to the game's internal logic, and so behave predictably according to the rules you're given). Alternately, we can fix the sense here by changing their not very effective behavior lines, so Hyper Beam can still work even when negated by being targeted on a Ghost pokemon.

The game itself divides attacks into special and physical, and by the current generation type doesn't determine that (so you can have a physical fire move, such as Fire Punch, and a special fire move, like Flamethrower).

If you don't want to keep the original type chart as-is, you might consider having the special/physical divide matter beyond just whether you use defense or special defense against it--for example, perhaps ghosts are immune to a thrown rock by a trainer because that's physical normal, but hyper beam is physical special and therefore blows a hole in their Poképlasm.

A lot of the strengths and weaknesses are lame puns. Rock is strong against flying because you can get two birds with one stone (seriously). I wouldn't mind them being rethought.

And I think they should be rethought, because I don't want to write a "super duper effective" and "immune" effect line on 500 powers. I understand that Gyrados is weak to Lightning, but I just don't even see a reason to keep track of the fact that he is double weak to it. But at that point you're seriously altering the type valuation. And that's OK.

---

For 3.5 Pokemon, I made the rule that creatures of the appropriate types were Pokemon if their advancement line said they normally advanced by Hit Dice rather than Character Class.

-Username17

Most of the type system's "balance" also relies on specifically being in the games, because it factors into things like when you should and shouldn't switch, and also helps adjust things like not all pokemon having an equal number of base stats (many of the the stronger ones have weird type combos). If you've got more than one pokemon on the field (which you might in this version?), then just "good", "neutral", "bad" is all you need.

And yes, a Hitmonlee city would be cool.

Cool, I like the idea of simplifying it to Super/Regular/Not Very Effective, and maybe giving some abilities lines like "This move won't affect creatures not standing on the ground" or "Ghosts treat all (____ stat) moves as Not Very Effective but their own attacks using these stats are also Not Very Effective (exception: Ghosts using ____ against Ghosts are Super Effective").

Hitmonlee cities actually suggests a level of darkness in the setting that I'm not sure is appropriate. If Pokemon are people, that implies that People are pokemon. I know that Pokemon World is a Spartan slave holding warzone, but it seems like it's a bit much if the only reason that you don't pokeball defeated trainers is the fact that society as a whole frowns on that sort of thing. Even with Pokemon and humans being separate, it can get pretty icky if you over think it:

William Broom wrote:But if a Pokemon is defined partially by not being human, then what defines a human in the world of Pokemon? Their sentience doesn't really set them apart since Mewtwo, Meowth, Lucario and so on are all Pokemon with at least human-level intelligence and self-awareness. In fact, the only thing that humans really have to differentiate them from Pokemon is that they cannot be trapped inside Pokeballs (Evidenced by the battle dialogue 'The trainer knocks your ball away.')

And since Pokeballs are presumably created by humans, one can imagine that there was actually no difference between humans and Pokemon before the invention of the Pokeball. Divisions would have been made along more sensible lines i.e. humans, Lucarios and other sentient Pokemon would have been classified as 'people' while the dumb Pokemon would have been 'animals'. Then one day, a human invented the 'Pokeball', essentially a terrible weapon designed to subjugate every other living creature on the planet. At this time, or soon after, the word 'Pokemon' was invented to create a perception of non-human creatures being somehow separate and inferior, in the same way that the Nazis regarded Jews as animals rather than humans.

Quite frightening when you think about it.

So while it would be kind of interesting to play in a free-for-all world of rampant slave holding, where the newly immigrant orcs and dwarves only recently got the right and ability to have pokeballs of their own, and the rich and powerful ones kept humans amongst their stable of pokeslaves, that's also super fucked up. We're talking "playing in actual Ancient Greece" levels of fucked up.

-Username17

Well the games mostly treat pokemon as just a monster thing that does stuff, but in the show, the pokemon are pretty definitely "people" even though they're not human. They're self aware, have the full range of emotions, and get full episodes devoted to them. But then you enslave them anyways, to do battle and become top slavemaster of the world.

Clefary have their own colony on Mt Moon, but people still capture them. I suspect the only reason that people don't capture humans is because pokeballs can only do their matter/energy conversion magic on the highly morphic poke-DNA that the pokemon have.

Pokemon is way fucked up to start with Frank.

Lokathor wrote:Well the games mostly treat pokemon as just a monster thing that does stuff, but in the show, the pokemon are pretty definitely "people" even though they're not human. They're self aware, have the full range of emotions, and get full episodes devoted to them. But then you enslave them anyways, to do battle and become top slavemaster of the world.

Clefary have their own colony on Mt Moon, but people still capture them. I suspect the only reason that people don't capture humans is because pokeballs can only do their matter/energy conversion magic on the highly morphic poke-DNA that the pokemon have.

Pokemon is way fucked up to start with Frank.

+1

Even without going into that the actual kids show and comics get pretty fucked up. Like the trainer who was actually a slave driver, using pain to train his pokemon. (hell, he may have been a gym leader, I can't remember)

And some fan things actually embrace that fucked up-ness (pokegirls) hell, the fact that it's not even uncommon for there to be slash fics about trainers falling in love and having sex with their pokemon means that the whole thing is pretty fucked up and people kinda gloss over the unpleasant implications to greater or lesser degrees.


I actually kind of like the idea of the darker setting, but that's just me.

I just like that following Pokemon to any sort of logical conclusion leads to something like this.

Jilocasin wrote:I just like that following Pokemon to any sort of logical conclusion leads to something like this.

Yeah, but the current conversation seems to be going more like this:

-Username17

She looks way too excited about that.

And yeah, I'm all in favour of not taking it to the "logical" conclusion, not making it all about slavery and capturing other people, and likewise not involving human-on-Pokemon lovins.

Prak_Anima wrote:I actually kind of like the idea of the darker setting, but that's just me.

This is my go-to material for a horrible pokemon interpretation.

I'm in favor of allowing people who want to keep everything the original pokemon games brushed under the rug where it is.

That said, if the setting can be written with sidebars about how to make it dark and bring up how the pokemon world is Ancient Greece-level fucked up, that would work. Similar to the morality options in the Tomes.

More Movelists. In theory, "Oh, It's a Snaaaake!" could extend to Dratini/Dragonair and Onyx/Steelix. It definitely covers Ekans, Arbok and Seviper. Magical Fairy covers Jigglypuff trio, Chansey, Clefairy trio, a bunch of those other ones (with a certain amount of sharing with a Cheer/Support list) and Celebi.

Oh, it's a Snaaaake!

• Wrap
• Bind
• Leer
• Scary Face
• Bite
• Aqua Tail
• Lick
• Tail Whip
• Gunk Shot
• Poison Jab
• Stockpile
• Swallow
• Spit Up
• Acid
• Haze
• Iron Tail

Magical Fairy

• Metronome
• Sing
• Pound
• Double-Slap
• Cosmic Power
• Sweet Kiss
• Encore
• Baton Pass
• Minimise
• Wake-up Slap
• Lucky Chant
• Moonlight
• Healing Wish
• Hyper Voice
• Roll-Out
• Defence Curl

Koumei wrote:She looks way too excited about that.

And yeah, I'm all in favour of not taking it to the "logical" conclusion, not making it all about slavery and capturing other people, and likewise not involving human-on-Pokemon lovins.

That's fair. Having moral options sidebar and an optional section on the Book of Pokemon Vile Darkness would probably be good. "Hentacle uses Darkslime on Trainer Misty: it's super effective!" and all that.

So anyway, assuming for the moment that people want the planar exiles setting so that they can grab their favorite D&D stuff, how's this for a Pokemon League:

City	Location	Secondary Race[/b]	Gym Specialty	Signature Pokemon
Planetsore City	Lava Pit	Dwarves	Demons (Dark/Fire)	Houndoom
Gloomwood City	Forest	Elves	Vermin & Ooze (Bug/Poison)	Phase Spider
Banemire City	Swamp	Lizard Folk	Reptiles and Plants (Dragon/Grass)	Hydra
Port Friendship City	River/Ocean Shore	Pokemon	Humanoids (Fighting)	Machamp
Sandcone City	Desert	Orcs	Tunnelers (Ground)	Hippowdon
Abysshome City	Under Water	Sahuagin	Aquatics (Water)	Empoleon
Blizzardwatch City	Mountains	Frostlings	Aberrations (Psychic/Ice)	Will-o-Wisp
Dungeondelve City	Under Ground	Troglodytes	Undead (Ghost)	Dusknoir

And yeah, even though Abysshome is at the bottom of the sea, there are still totally ways to buy a ticket to be transported to the airfilled parts of it, just as there are watery parts of all the other cities.

-Username17

So I'm working on a bit of a setting write-up, but before I go too far I want to know what kind of general level of technology and development people are looking for with the whole planar exile thing. I'm sort of assuming closer to modern than medieval, especially if there are going to be ways to gate yourself to Kanto. If it is closer to modern we can expect some culture shock from races coming from Greyhawk.

And just to be clear, I am also completely in favor of avoiding the tentacle loli rape, Buneary furry porn, and darker aspects of slavery in the pokemon setting. With room for those optional Book of Pokemon Darkness sidebars.

Sounds reasonable. As for tech level, the general technology level of Chronotrigger, Eberron, Erathia, or Final Fantasy seams pretty popular. So people have steam ships and even electronic devices, but no one feels ridiculous carrying a sword. And flying machines are hot air based or huge unique things or both.

One of the keys I think is that electricity is easy to come by, but is an artisan rather than industrial commodity. It's seriously made "by hand" by squeezing Voltorbs and Chinchous. So while you can have a battery powered repeating crossbow, you need to have a Pikachu hand-wind it for you. There's nothing to "plug it into." This encourages Tesla-esque super science without making basic amenities and modern weaponry ubiquitous.

-Username17

I would be interested in seeing something about the almost inevitable situation when the players decide themselves that they are going to have their PCs crusade to put an end to the whole Pokemon slavery thing.

For Abysshome, Bulbapedia tells me that Generation III games (I've only played Gen I and Gen II games) included underwater areas. Those underwater areas took two HMs (Surf and Dive) to access, but they did exist. Likewise, the old Pokemon games have all had sea-only routes, and cities you can only access by them, with gyms even (at least in I and II).

Still, needing two HMs for one town might be a bit much. Maybe it has an above-ground portion you can surf to?

Also, for Blizzardwatch, where do I find info on Frostlings? And what does Pokemon as a secondary race in Port Friendship mean? Is it a town of humans from the pokemon world with a labor caste of pokemon or something?

Also, I expect that there will be some substantial cultural differences from Pokeworld humans and D&D humans. If nothing else, Pokeworld is loosely based on modern Japan and Greyhawk is medieval europe. So how do they interact in their cities? Do they build separate districts? Do they speak the same language, or are we handwaving that?

It would serve to cut it off from Pokeworld a bit, while still leaving it accessible, if the languages of our world and Pokeworld were different. So the D&D humans (Greyhawkers, Faerunians, whatever) have acclimated to speak at least a pidgin form of the same language as the pokeworld immigrants speak, but the pokeworld immigrants have been away from home for long enough that they can't easily communicate with the people from the original Pokeworld.

Since the original Pokeworld has power plants, computers, GMOs and bullet trains, cutting them off somehow would be a good way to tune down the technology.

What I'm envisioning here is that the dimensional portal was open for a while, and a whole bunch of people rushed through and built a colony, and then the dimensional portal closed, and, although they had modern-ish technology (maybe industrial-revolution era, maybe later), all of their replacement parts had to come from home, so it eventually broke down. Then the portal to a D&D world opened soon after the initial colonization, and so we have all of the new D&D immigrants. There could even be a fair bit more cultural mixing here, since the D&D immigrants were connected to their home bases and were also more self-reliant (a wizard doesn't break down and need imported replacement parts). Then, recently, the connection to Pokeworld opened up again, recently, although it's out in the wilderness and small, so there's no huge flux going across.

All of this can take place over a century, or even a half-century, so there could even be people old enough to remember the old pokeworld, although then the language can't change as much (although closing the portal is enough of a change). With the connection closed, time could have flowed at different rates, so 10 Pokeworld years could be however long we need to fit the story we want to tell. If all of the old technology is broken down and they can't (or don't want to) portal enough volume across to fix it, then it doesn't matter how connected they are.

If we're going for a portal closing at around the middle of the 20th century, then the original portal has to have been nuked shut. This is Japan, after all, and the atomic bombings are kinda a big deal. This adds some more interesting things to the history, too.

IGTN wrote:For Abysshome, Bulbapedia tells me that Generation III games (I've only played Gen I and Gen II games) included underwater areas. Those underwater areas took two HMs (Surf and Dive) to access, but they did exist. Likewise, the old Pokemon games have all had sea-only routes, and cities you can only access by them, with gyms even (at least in I and II).

Still, needing two HMs for one town might be a bit much. Maybe it has an above-ground portion you can surf to?

Well, each of the games is structured so that you must complete the gyms in the proper order. This is often handled by having fallen trees or rocks covering the paths between cities or putting city connections as down for repairs or whatever until you hit the proper plot point. That kind of thing is super annoying and there seriously should not be any special order you have to visit any towns. Abysshome is probably reachable by an underwater tunnel as well as from a portal network. Individual characters don't need any HMs at all to get there from any city.

Also, for Blizzardwatch, where do I find info on Frostlings?

The Frostlings are the Ice Goblins from Age of Wonders. I find them slightly more compelling than the similar Bracadan Gremlins. But either one is fine.

And what does Pokemon as a secondary race in Port Friendship mean? Is it a town of humans from the pokemon world with a labor caste of pokemon or something?

Not just a labor caste, but several major other castes too. Up to and including Pokemon Pokemasters. It's been well established that Fighting and Psychic Pokemon can work for wages and even capture other Pokemon in Pokeballs. So I assume that the Gym Leader in Port Friendship is like Mewtwo or something.

Also, I expect that there will be some substantial cultural differences from Pokeworld humans and D&D humans. If nothing else, Pokeworld is loosely based on modern Japan and Greyhawk is medieval europe. So how do they interact in their cities? Do they build separate districts? Do they speak the same language, or are we handwaving that?

Humans in Pokemon World seem to learn Comprehend Languages as children. They are able to understand the speech of Pokemon pretty early. Maybe it's like D&D Gnomes? Having a couple of languages seems pretty reasonable. The Pokemon world has some "foreign" people who speak French or German (they are from some other country than the one that most of Pokemon takes place in, of which there are at least two - represented by stuff in Almia and Orre).

In any case, if Read or Die taught us anything it is that having people combine archaic British stuff and Nipponese stuff is totally awesome. And while we're on the subject: Jean Henri Farbre is totally a Pokemaster.

It would serve to cut it off from Pokeworld a bit, while still leaving it accessible, if the languages of our world and Pokeworld were different. So the D&D humans (Greyhawkers, Faerunians, whatever) have acclimated to speak at least a pidgin form of the same language as the pokeworld immigrants speak, but the pokeworld immigrants have been away from home for long enough that they can't easily communicate with the people from the original Pokeworld.

Linguistic shenanigans seem unnecessary. But I agree in principle that communication with Pokeworld should be difficult or impossible. Otherwise, everyone would be riding around on motorcycles and getting from place to place with airplanes and watching TV. And with heavy Psychics running around, I don't think that futzing with native tongues would even help. Alakazam doesn't need to speak to you, because he can auto-translate with his line of sight telepathy and mind reading.

Just set current Gateways to Erathia and Pokemon World to "no" and move on. The last thing we need is to have a literal cameo from Ash Ketchum.

-Username17

Right. So "don't care" on the linguistic shenanigans, "yes" on broken down old tech with no replacement parts. Perfectly doable. I can see "Speak with Pokemon" as a racial trait for Pokeworlders, and possibly everyone.

Abysshome: If a city is going to be in the water, it should be in the water. There shouldn't be an easily accessible portal to it or a tunnel that people can just walk through. A ship going out to it is good, though. If you want to emulate the original games, the boat can even be out if you want people to Surf there, and work and have an alternate adventure if people aren't, depending on the needs of the campaign. Or they can even be two alternatives in some campaigns. Just list both possibilities in the setting write-up, say that sometimes one possibility doesn't work, and go with it.

I can see Mewtwo or something like it as a gym leader. It does kinda bring out the slavery aspects to Pokemon, though. Still, it's stuff that the anime series has actually done, and they still manage to gloss over the slavery aspects most of the time, so it's fine. Should the gym leader be a fighting type (same as its minions), or a psychic type who keeps his fighting-type minions in line with sheer psychic power? Also, how does it keep itself from being caught? Does it just have some thing where pokeballs don't work on it? This is a D&D world, so you can't rely on social protection.

Perhaps once a pokemon is caught, it has its pokeball, and can't be caught in others unless the connection is broken first. So then the gym leader at Port Friendship would possibly even have its own pokeball hidden somewhere.

This does end up with no plain human gym leaders. This is fine, if the point of the gym leaders and so on is to showcase the world.

ADVANCED POKEMON: THE SETTING

The first thing to really flesh out is what is going to be the clearly defined distinction between POKEMON and NOT POKEMON. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and just say that any of the 493 are automatically pokemon and we don’t have to worry about some Lucario rebellion. As IGTN pointed out, inclusion of DnD anything is going to require some conversion so it's not actually any more work to simply decide at that point whether or not the creature counts as a pokemon. All that really matters is this: a pokeball hits you, do you get sucked in? If yes, get ready for some Stockholm syndrome. If no, congratulations, you just got the vote! Of course, being a pokemon doesn't necessarily stop you from being a trainer, or having a functioning society, but at the very least I hope there's some taboo about training the same kind of pokemon you happen to be (or is in your evolutionary line).

Taking it a step further I think it’s safe to assume that there is no crazy power imbalance between races, and their corresponding city-states, as the result of one person inventing the modern pokeball first. There can certainly be power imbalances for other reasons, but any setting where you have people going all over creation to challenge gym leaders should be relatively stable. And seriously, pokeballs have existed in some form or another since prehistory, it can't be that hard to make them. Although with the whole planar exiles thing elves, dwarves, sahuagin and the like may have had some difficulty originally obtaining them. Regardless, they’re handheld now, and every racial group that matters has them and knows how they are crafted. It’s at the point where you’re a fledgling trainer and you and your friends buy swords and some pokeballs. Then when the asshole bartender inevitably asks you to get rid of the giant rats in his cellar you head down there and instead of swording them to death you throw your pokeballs at them and BAM, you’ve got your first pokemon. I mean sure, it’s a Rattata (maybe a Raticate if you’re lucky), but not everyone knows a famous crazy professor.


NOT SINNOH, NOT GREYHAWK
Prepare for trouble! And make it... holy crap! What's that?!
I call him Hellfire, he's my Balor.
At some point in the past some humans from Sinnoh, or wherever, discovered some gateways and stepped through, taking with them their technology and aspects of their culture. This happened around say the middle of the industrial revolution in Pokeworld. Later on the other races came through from DnD land to a world sparsely populated with humans that work and live with a huge variety of strange creatures. It was pretty weird to be sure, but some of these humans even reminded them of adventurers from their own world. Children and adults that travel around the world seeking fame, money, power, and knowledge through the use of magical creatures contained in tiny orbs. The portals are long gone and quick and easy travel between the worlds no longer exists.

So the history goes something like this.

• Pokeworld humans discover a portal to a new world, they go on through like the expansionist pseudo-Japanese that they are and build a colony.
• The portal to Pokeworld remains open for enough time for them to bring plenty of pokemon through and to establish a couple of functioning colony cities.
• The portal closes, and they are completely cut off with no idea what happened. However, pokemon that they did not bring with them start to show up. Say from the Mystery Dungeon universe through one use Chrono Trigger type gates.
• DnD land guys start to show up through a newly opened portal. Some Pokeworlder trainers inevitably try to capture the not-humans, so from the get go it's obvious who is pokeball fodder and who isn't.
• Some of these races establish their own city-states right away *cough*Sahuagin*cough*, others do it a bit more slowly.
• The new portal closes permanently and the other races begin to fully establish themselves.
• Gyms are built and to facilitate communication between races and the Pokemon League is created.
• ?
• Present day.

Alright, so we're talking a setting that has room for steam engines, flying machines, Mareep powered Tesla coils, the occasional ball lightning super-science, and other sorts of electronic devices. There is one caveat though, this is not a world with access to 20th century equivalent industry so most of the technology should be comprised of components that a person can make (and repair) with relatively simple tools, not something that's made from a machine,that was made from a machine, that was made from another machine. This is all good because it allows trainers to have a huge amount of potential interesting gadgets to play with and also lets them carry around weaponry that the elderly Pokeworlders would've consider incredibly archaic.

There's plenty of room for adventure and excitement in a setting like this. Poachers and terrorist organizations are a must have. Some of the Team Whosits might even be competent in the ways they go about achieving their goals. Rampaging and otherwise dangerous pokemon are definitely going to be out there somewhere, maybe there's just been a mass evolution of magikarp and Abysshome City is in trouble. Individual rogue trainers are of course required and can easily serve as BBEGs, and instead of killing them and taking their magic items you beat up their pokemon and turn the guy over to Officer Jenny. The gyms and eventually the elite 4 are pretty obvious things which have to be included. Then there's always the possibility that terrible demons of darkness will sweep across the land stealing the dreams of children. We're not exactly limited.

The Trainer Races
I'm gonna be the very best!
Why?
...because I have daddy issues.
There has to be some justification for amicable dealings between some wildly disparate races, unless we just want to handwave the whole thing. I'm assuming a passing interest in some sort of reasoning. So, given that these guys are planar exiles there isn't really any pressing reason for them to exhibit the more vile aspects of their Monster Manual natures, and any xenophobia has cooled from "I'm going to kill it if it doesn't look like me" to "I'm going to live mostly with my people, but traveling trainers are okay". At the very least you have to have an expectation of safety when you go to Abysshome to get the Deep Badge. Fortunately there's another reason why these races are not at each others throats. Lots Of Room. There just aren't that many people in the world yet, and of those that are, the prime real estate for each race is very different.

Sidebar: Magic. Yea or nay?

I'm of the opinion that any wizards or other spellcasters who came through the DnD portal either lost the ability to use it or had it changed in dramatic way. Reason being, I'd say that power should come (mostly) through your pokemon. I don't really want some wizard casting Planar Binding and then throwing a pokeball at the thing they just summoned, or even worse, using Plane Shift.

The Eight Cities

Planetsore City: Fire and Darkness
When the second portal opened and the dwarves came we had already set up the beginnings of a mining town on the edge of a caldera we discovered early on. The dwarves expressed a great deal of interest in us and our mining techniques, primarily our usage of Rhydon for tunneling quickly through solid rock. They came and built homes in the walls of the caldera, exceeding our own population in the town in no time flat, and discovered the method of crafting pokeballs before a year had gone by. From them we learned a great many things as well, metalworking techniques and methods of smelting and refining ore that we would desperately need in the years to come, as much of our machinery went into disrepair without proper replacement parts.

The City of Lava Today
Planetsore City appears on the horizon as a low mountain, accessible from two roads, one from the north and one from the southeast. There is also one large airship port at the top of the western part of the caldera. The city itself is built in primarily two parts. The human section of the city is built on the outer slopes, while the the dwarven section is built on the inner side with homes and workshops carved directly from the rock face. At night the lava flows in the bottom of the crater are visible as a soothing red glow from most of the dwarven parts of the city. Tunnels connect homes and businesses just readily as the intricate system of walkways that lead from one ring of the inner city to the next, all the way from the airship port at the top to the gym at the bottom.

In the present day Planetsore City is a productive community that is the primary supplier of refined ferrous metals to the rest of the world. Some of the most renowned artisans living make their home here. Despite their inclination towards the use of Fire and Dark types, the inhabitants are actually a fairly cheery lot. Every year the Festival of Fire is held (think something like the Hiondori Fire Festival except with Charizards flying in formation lighting up the sky with their fire breath) and for about a week the population of the city increases by half with everyone wanting to witness the spectacular shows put on by both the people and the pokemon. It's a hotspot for trainers that want to catch some fire pokes or learn how to battle them effectively. And of course for anyone aiming at a shot at the Pokemon League the Planetsore Gym is a requisite stop.

There are three major powers at work in the city. The gym leader, Edric, has quite a bit of influence and as representative of the Pokemon League is responsible for monitoring the actions of trainers in the city. Stonecrush Ironworks is primarily owned by the Ferro family, one of the original founding families of the city. They live in the nicest section of the outer city, which they essentially built from scratch. The day-to-day operations of the ironworks are overseen by two people, a human who runs the shipping department by the name of Marcus Ferro (a younger son who actually enjoys business more than lounging about basking in wealth) and a dwarf who oversees production named Errus Hull. These two are the most visible members of the ironworks and very little gets done in the city without first getting the go ahead from Stonecrush Ironworks. Finally there's the lord-mayor, Markus Black, who oversees the governance of the city and all the nearby outlying towns.

Danger abounds in and around this city as well. With nearly fifty years of abandoned mining tunnels there's no telling what kind of things you could run into just under the surface. Recently rumors have been flying about sightings of what many people believe to be the legendary Heatran, and there are factions breaking out between those who think it sacred and that it should be protected and those who see even the possibility of it as a great opportunity and challenge. So far it's existence has not been confirmed but among those two groups tensions are becoming very high.

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More on other cities later. If someone else wants to take a crack at them please do.

Gloomwood City
Banemire City
Port Friendship City
Sandcone City
Abysshome City
Blizzardwatch City
Dungeondelve City