Getting Started

Welcome to the world of Pokemon: Tabletop Adventures.

To play you’ll need the following things:

Players

As a Player, you’ll create a Trainer, who might choose to take a up a profession, or Class, and capture and train Pokemon to fight alongside their Trainer. Like the protagonists in the Pokemon franchise’s games, manga or anime, Players will be the center of the game’s action.

A Game Master

One person must fill the special role of Game Master, or GM, who controls every non-Player Trainer or Pokemon. They must build adventures, narrate, control non-Player Trainers, non-Player Pokemon and referee and make judgement for any rules that are not perfectly clear.

Books and Dice

Players will need access to the Player’s Handbook and Bestiary. Players have restricted access to the Pokedex section of the Bestiary and should avoid metagaming by only looking up a Pokemon’s Pokedex entry when they’ve used the Pokedex on a particular Pokemon. The GM should have access to the Player’s Handbook, the Bestiary and the Game Master’s Handbook. Players should use the Character Sheets to help organize information relating to their Trainers and Pokemon. Always use a pencil when writing on your character sheets! Information for your Trainer and Pokemon are constantly changing! You will also need gaming dice (d4, d6, d8, at least 2 d10 for use in the common d100 roll, d12, d20). When rolling dice in Pokemon: Tabletop Adventures, you always want to roll high, the only exception is when you roll two d10s to generate a d100 roll. Whenever you roll a d100 roll in Pokemon: Tabletop Adventures, you will want to roll as low as possible.

The Game

The game is played in a world where many fantastic animals are able to be energized and stored nicely in a machine called a Poké Ball. These animals are called “pocket monsters,” or Pokemon for short, and they are carried as tools, friends and partners by Pokemon Trainers. Trainers have various skills and abilities each defined by a Trainer’s goal. There are Ace Trainers, who focus all of their energy into making their Pokemon the best fighters they can. Breeders, who raise Pokemon as if they are their own children and groom them up to be powerful. The Researcher gathers information and serves as a party’s go-to guy when they confront a creature they’ve never met. Rangers are nature guards who dedicate their life to the protection of a wild creature’s habitat while employing wilds in their feats. A Capture Specialist is a techie Trainer who can tweak equipment, including the Poké Ball to expand their collection. The Coordinator employs their Pokemon in Contests instead of battle as she shows off their beauty. Finally, the Psychic and Martial Artist get their hands dirty and fight the beasts with their own supernatural powers.

A Trainer may explore the world and battle at Gyms to gather Badges which allow them entrance to the Pokemon League Championships. They may compete in Contests to enter Grand Festivals. Maybe they’ll uncover a secret plot to destroy the world and try to stop those who would use Pokemon for evil. They may be breeding the most powerful Pokemon as their goal. No matter the destination, Pokemon will be valuable allies and tools in your journeys.

There are several types of people in the Pokemon world. Naturally trainer types are also various. There are rangers, ace trainers, capture specialists, researchers, coordinators, breeders, master of martial arts and even humans who naturally can use psychic or mystic abilities. When these trainers focus their practices, they can demonstrate unrivaled mastery of their chosen profession.

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