Pokémon: Real Trainer Mode

[Athena]

A guy who works on a different video game I play came up with a his own spin on making a Pokémon "challenge" mode for those who want to play the game in a bit of a different way. I thought it was really cool, so I figured I would share it with you guys.

Blog Post with Information and Rules Sheet download

Pokémon promises the experience of being a pokémon trainer, travelling the world and training monsters to fight each other, but it doesn’t really deliver on that experience because you have full control over your pokémon in battle. You’re just a guy with six funny-looking heads, the exact same as any other JRPG party. RTM takes control of your monsters’ actions out of your hands, via four simple tables and a six-sided die. With this system, you really are just standing at ringside, watching your guys fight. You can shout “Use Thunder Shock, you &^$#@*%!” at Pikachu, and maybe he’ll listen, but probably he won’t.

As such, the basic premise of the challenge mode is to take control out of the players hands. Logistically, this is mostly handled by rolling dice for various Pokémon actions, with the formula tweaked to provide an experience that's challenging but certainly not impossible. Instead, the difficulty makes you think and play Pokémon in a different way, focusing on research and planning. There are also rules for item and PC, death, and other things.

The Dropbox link in the Blog post above contains the full rule set, and I think it's pretty fascinating. I'd certainly like to give this a go next time I do a playthrough of an older Pokémon. Definitely check it out!

 

[Scattered mind]

Is there any way a Mac user (like me) can open the dropbox file? I think it's a zip file and I think it doesn't open because of Mac not supporting zip files.
Sounds really interesting. I certainly need some new format for playing since I've already had enough with Nuzlocks and a new Pokemon is still far from us

 

[Athena]

The Internet tells me that Mac OS can zip and unzip files just fine, but since I'm not familiar with Mac OS at all, I can't give you much more information than that. I suggest that you might want to look into it since that seems like it would be a useful thing to know. In the meantime, I've re-uploaded the .PDF files onto my own dropbox that you can download (hopefully) here and here, but I'm not super great at Dropbox so I hope those links work.

 

[Scattered mind]

The Internet tells me that Mac OS can zip and unzip files just fine, but since I'm not familiar with Mac OS at all, I can't give you much more information than that. I suggest that you might want to look into it since that seems like it would be a useful thing to know. In the meantime, I've re-uploaded the .PDF files onto my own dropbox that you can download (hopefully) here and here, but I'm not super great at Dropbox so I hope those links work.

Problem solved. I thought it can't open them but I was wrong. Sorry for the bother !

WOW, That's a lot to read but it looks so fun! The mechanics also make the game better for a playthrough imo with a lot of possible fun and unpredictable situations.
Now I just need to decide what game to play with these rules. Maybe roll a dice ?

 

[Athena]

The actual rules are fairly simple and can be referenced easily with the quick guide cards on the last page. A lot of the other writing is just kind of more details and info, as well as some additional rules, like Frenzy mode, and options for more difficulty settings.

I think I'd like to do a playthrough with these rules myself, too. Perhaps after I'm done with my SD one. I think I'd like to do it with a game that's already fairly easy just to kind of see the difference, so I'll probably opt for either X or ORAS.

I definitely think rolling a dice to pick which game to use the rule set with is most fitting, though!