Pokemon Worldbuilding Role Play

[Kaytina]

Hey everyone. I've been thinking and I am trying to put together a small RP group to help build up a new Pokemon region for role playing. The end goal of this is to create a thriving Pokemon region on an RP board where new trainers can come in, role play, and battle gym leaders over wifi to earn their badges. But I thought it wouldn't be all that interesting if I just went and built the whole world myself and expected people to flock to it and ask to be gym leaders. That would be boring. So instead I wrote up this:

Upon taking your first steps in Sirae you will notice it is unlike any region you may have previously visited. While there is an abundance of pokemon in wild grasses, desert sands, lakes, rivers, forests, and seas, there is a distinct lack of trainers. While all ten major cities and countless villages in between them are filled with people, there is not a single gym. And even more importantly, there is not a single pokemon center or pokemart! That is because there is no Pokemon League in Sirae. There are very few trainers that live in Sirae and of the many trainers that were raised here, most have moved to other regions. Sirae has a rich and complicated history of conflict between people and pokemon. There are many scars in this land that span generations. Many humans fear or even hate pokemon. Many pokemon are the same toward humans. You have arrived to this divided land and rather than leave, like any other trainer seeking glory and battle would, you want to help heal this land and help the people and pokemon live together like they do in the regions you've explored before. But you cannot do it alone.

With the lack of pokemon centers, the RP will focus on other means of healing your pokemon, such as herbal medicine, various refreshing drinks, and berries. And with no pokemarts to buy pokeballs from, you are stuck with just your starter until you can convince a town to allow a pokemart to set up and do business in their town. Each town and city will have its own dark history with pokemon. You, and any companions you have with you, will have to figure out how to convince the humans and the local pokemon to get along. This will lead up to the ultimate goal of opening up our own gyms, populating the cities and towns with pokemon centers and pokemarts, and then creating a Pokemon League with an Elite Four and a Champion. The title of Elite Four member and Champion will change hands. There's more to this, but we'll worry about that when we get there.

The Sirae region is based on the Middle East. Sirae is Arabic for "Conflict." Simple. Like how Kalos is Greek for "Beauty." It's going to use the land shape encompassing Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Israel with analogue cities to major cities in the region. Though the area isn't going to be completely bound by the geography. It's not going to be 90% desert. The landscape in the region will be an equal dispersal of grassland, desert, mountains, lakes, forests, and whatnot. I want to fit the Dead Sea in there at some point though. No IRL conflicts will be present in the region. This is still Pokemon, after all. This is not literally the Middle East. It's just based on the Middle East.

No original pokemon. We're sticking to the 721 existing pokemon. My end goal for this to make an RP board that can have battles done over wifi. Can't use original pokemon in the 3ds games now can we?

If anyone is interested, let me know. I'd like to get at least 2 more people to start things out. Then I will look at making an RP board. Any thoughts or questions?

[Haneroze]

The setting is quite interesting. It sounds to me like a region somewhere between Pokemon Colloseum and Pokemon Ranger along with a touch of maturity.

I just have one problem with what you're trying to do. Doing RP battles on the 3DS Wi-fi is not something that I see will work very well. This means everyone that joins must have a 3DS and a 6th gen game to be able to participate (which I don't). Furthermore, it means you have to do some extra effort to capture in-game the pokemons you got in-RP, and making sure they are maintained at the same level they are in-RP. Which can get very troublesome if it's not available in your version, and you have to add in breeding if that pokemon can only be caught at a level higher than you got it in-RP. And that means you need to keep your current save intact if you want to continue participating to the RP, but many people love starting fresh since you can't rechallenge the trainers and gym leaders (or you can but they'll be too high level for your new team).

I would suggest using a battle simulator like Pokemon Online instead. There, you can set up your team exactly like they are in-RP, level included. Apparently you can even save the battle replay to be visible on the net, so you can post it in RP threads for everyone to see. 

That method however rises to a different problem. This makes it difficult to actually place RP elements inside of battles. Stuff like character development, sudden event modifying or interrupting the battle... Or maybe the fact that in-game battles are not very RP at all (No pokemon bothers to try dodging attacks like Scratch? Skills like Teleport that doesn't do anything at all in a trainer battle? EARTHQUAKE IN A TRAIN?). What's your take on those, and how to you plan on handling those?

[Kaytina]

The way I figure it, the board will be in two stages. 1 will be the exploration of the region and building up the relationships between the local humans and the pokemon denizens. For convenience sake, we would be to ignore levels in role playing, since there aren't any levels in the anime from what I know. (Otherwise Ash's Pikachu would be level 100 by now and would easily kick anything's ass in Kalos.) There would be no wifi battling at this stage unless the players really want to go at it. After an area of Sirae has been "saved" (I use "saved" for lack of a better term.), the players who helped that area will be able to choose if they want to set up a gym in one of the area's towns or cities and who in their group should be the leader. Leader will then pick their type.

The next stage would begin after the entire region has been "saved". A Pokemon League will be established, the top players who had the most influence in the region overall will be picked to be Elite 4 members, then a tourny will be held to decide the Champion. All of this battling will be done over WiFi using the setting that forces pokemon to be level 50. There would be certain restrictions, like no legendaries. After a Champion is decided, the Sirae region will be just like any other region, but just with battles done over WiFi.

So the first half is just full on board-only role playing. Then the second half would be setting up the WiFi league. That's the way I see it after 2 months of not thinking about this idea.