Storyteller's FAQ

Green boxes contain questions and answers.

How do I balance fights against player Trainers?

• Generally, fights of equal rank and number will make a balanced fight. If your Trainers have three Pokemon at rank Amateur, an enemy trainer with three Amateur Pokemon in the fray will be a fair fight.
• The Action Economy is also very important, IE, if three allied pokemon are attacking one enemy, the enemy, even at a higher rank, simply can’t keep up with three different Pokemon attacking it. (AOE attacks can help balance this.)

How should I run a gym for 3-5 players?

• Use “Anime Style” team sizes for official battles, where even if a Trainer has six Pokemon, they only use one or two in the fight. This keeps battle lengths down.
• If your group is willing to share the spotlight, single battles between Trainers and Gym Leaders can be dramatic battles worth spectating.
• If you don’t want to run single combats, have the league run double or triple battles against Gym Leaders and let your PCs all fight as a group. (Galar’s Star Cup rules are a good reference.)

What are suggested ranks in the Pokedex for? Is that what rank the Pokedex entry is describing?

• All entries in the Pokedex are Starter Rank. The suggested rank is a guideline of what rank that Pokemon might be encountered at in the wild, but NOT a requirement. You can have a starter rank Dragonite or an Ace rank Caterpie appear in your games.

How should I calculate the amount of money Trainers should receive?

• The Pokedollar (Pokebuck, Poke, etc.) is based off of the yen. Therefore, the easiest conversion method is taking two decimal places off of the Pokedollar amount, and that will be your dollar amount (A Potion costing 400 Pokedollars would be about 4 dollars). Think about how much a trainer of that age could receive from an individual based on this.

Are there any prewritten Adventures/Modules for Pokerole?

• As a matter of fact, quite a few are hosted on this very wiki. Jump the Home Page and scroll down the the Modules list. They're also listed in the sidebar, by title only. All four are for Trainer games.
• A special call out to Pokexplorer’s Summer Camp! A module specifically designed to help newcomers learn the system and help new GMs easy into GMing. Good for people who have never GMed before and/or never played Pokerole before.
• There are currently no pre-written adventure for Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Games.

What Rank is recommended to start at?

• Beginner is the recommended starting rank for newer players. The Devs refer to starting at Starter Rank as “Hard Mode” due to the lower power level, so if you do start at Starter, be sure to rank out of it quickly.

Should I be making a National Dex for my campaign? How would I do that?

• There are different schools of thought on making a national dex for your game. The highlights of both are listed here, and you'll have to decide for yourself which you'd like more.
• No National Dex You can use any Pokemon you want for the environment your players are adventuring through, and they can catch whatever you'd like. If you want to make a Pokemon rare in the area/region, you can decide that on the spot. It's far less overhead to not have to maintain a list in advance as well.
• National Dex You can make regions feel more distinct by only offering certain Pokemon. You'll want to confirm with your players what Pokemon they want to have on their teams, so you can be sure to make them available. You'll need to work out the entire dex for each region in advance. Unless a player is trying to “catch em all” (a… questionable goal in a TTRPG) the players will likely not notice the limited dex size.

How long is a Scene?

• It is as long as you decide. They usually are delineated by a change of location or the passing of time without any specific action. Scenes often last less than an hour.
• Vampire V20 describes a scene this way: “a time and place in which actions and events take place moment by moment,” (p. 513) and “like the basic division of plays and movies, a scene is a compact period of action and interaction that takes place in a single location. This could be the storming of a Tremere chantry, or a moonlit conversation on a park bench. There are exactly as many turns in a scene as the scene requires - there might not even be any turns if the scene consists of nothing but dialogue and character interaction.” (p. 254)

How can I make or get maps?

• There are many already made or located in #maps.
• The world wide web may have such things available if you search.
• If you wish to make your own, any image editing software such as Paint, GIMP, Photoshop, etc will work. However, there is a lot of software specifically for making maps. Tiled, Inkarnate, and Dungeondraft seem to be most popular among pokerole GMs.
  • The PokeRole Helper Bot free, open source; good at making quick random PMD-style grid-based dungeons; browser/ discord
  • Tiled free, open source; good at grid-based maps; win7-11, mac, linux
  • Inkarnate free or subscription (5$/mo or 25$/yr in 2024); good at raster maps; browser
  • Dungeondraft paid (20$ in 2024); good at integrating with roll20 and foundry; win10, mac, linux
    • Kamidio has a list of asset packs
  • Wonderdraft paid (30$ in 2024); good at world maps; win10, mac, linux
  • Shmeppy subscription (5$/mo in 2024); good at quick and dirty live grid-based maps; browser
  • Dungeon Painter Studio paid (early access 15$ in 2024); good at grid-based maps; win7-10
  • Campaign Cartographer 3 paid (45$ for the base software in 2024; there's lots of add-ons to buy); good at raster and vector maps; winXP-10
  • Donjon free; good for quickly making random grid-based dungeons or hex world maps; browser
  • Worldographer paid (40$ for the base license in 2024; additional paid add-ons for towns or more icons); good for making hex world maps in D&D 1e style; not suggested for use by Azelo; win?, mac, linux, java
  • RPG Maker paid (25-80$ in 2024); good at ???; winXP-11, mac (depending on version)
  • Dungeon Alchemist paid (early access 45$ in 2024); good at AI-powered 3d grid-based maps; win7-11, mac, linux
  • QGIS free, open source; good at relating databases to vector map features; win7-11, mac, linux
  • ArcGIS for Personal Use subscription (100$/ year in 2024); good at relating databases to vector map features; browser, win10-11