[Depth is the characteristic of how much material a system offers for a player to really dive into. Magic the Gathering, for example, has phenomenal depth - people can spend endless hours figuring out new cool combinations of cards as they build decks. Depth is the essential partner of Elegance, creating a system that is easy to learn and smooth to play but offers phenomenal opportunity for the players that really want to sink their teeth into the system].
This meant that I'd want Pokemon to be individually simple but collectively complex, so players could quickly grasp what a new pokemon could do and how it might work together with their existing pokemon team. For inspiration I decided to look at highly rated miniatures combat games, which give each character a unique identity and elegant gameplay off of just a few simple abilities. The last thing I wanted was for each pokemon to have 14 different abilities to keep track of, but I still wanted them to feel different from one another.
This led to the idea that various pokemon might have drastically different playstyles from one another. After all, if selecting pokemon was to be a meaningful choice - the pokemon would have to play very differently from one another when possible. After I came to this conclusion, I realized that it gave me the opportunity to address a problem I've always had with D&D. While I like playing the same person in an ongoing campaign, I'll often get bored of doing the same things in combat week in and week out. If various pokemon played differently from one another, the players would be able to change roles in combat simply by switching their pokemon out. People wouldn't have to struggle with doing the same things over and over again every battle.
The more I thought about switching pokemon out, the more I wanted to encourage it. Tagging in a new pokemon can be an exciting moment and contribute to the themes of cooperation that I felt should be at the core of the system. However, the reasons to switch out in the videogames are usually negative in nature. You switch your main pokemon out because he's useless due to type disadvantage and it takes a full turn to do it. Now, taking a full turn might be fine in a videogame where turns go by in a matter of seconds - but a round of tabletop combat can often take 10-20 minutes. Skipping your turn just to switch out, no matter how much sense it made, was never going to feel fun. It was just going to get in the way of the players wanting to play the game.
At this point I heard a shout from across the Game Lab and saw a friend of mine, TJ, howling in victory as he tagged in Zero and proceeded to combo out Phoenix Wright in a game of Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Say what you like about Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and I know you can say a lot, but its fast-paced explosive combat is certainly exciting even if it doesn't always feel fair to the other player. That was a game that made tag-team crucial and choosing a strong team of characters was always something the players were talking about. I literally laughed out loud at this point, but it was clearly the missing ingredient. I was going to combine Pokemon, D&D, Miniatures combat and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Hopefully, it would turn out awesome.
The idea of Marvel vs. Capcom 3's combos thematically fit like a glove into the system's coming emphasis on cooperation and finding reasons to consider how various Pokemon might work together. It could be so easily implemented too, a psychic pokemon could so easily use a telekinetic power to push several enemies into a clump and then the player could switch out for a fire pokemon to blast them all at once. A Trainer's pokemon could work well together and his pokemon could also work well with the other Trainers' pokemon in the party.
I sketched up the ideas and set down what I knew so far.
Theme: Emphasize cooperation and fast-paced tag-team combat that draws lots of interesting options from the combinations of a few simple abilities.
Pokemon would have only 3-5 moves each.
Trainers would have 3 pokemon each, at least at low levels. That's just enough for an interesting team but not so many that we'd overwhelm players' memories. The human brain has trouble keeping track of more than 7 things at once - so with an active pokemon holding 3-5 moves that they'd need to actively track and two pokemon on deck that they can consider when they have time, that should be a manageable amount of information.
I'd use the Standard Action, Move Action and Minor Action set of D&D 4e and similar summoning rules to control pokemon. Pokemon would have no actions of their own and the Trainer would spend their own actions to command their pokemon. For example, a Trainer would have to spend his own Move Action if he wanted his pokemon to move its speed. This works really, really well in 4e and it seems an elegant system to use here. It also puts a natural disincentive to having multiple pokemon out at once since the trainer only has so many actions to go around. I didn't want the trainers to just unload all their pokemon at the start of each battle and having a natural limit like this tends to work better than a nonsensical rule that arbitrarily states, "you're only allowed to have one pokemon out at any time, even when you're fighting for your life".
It would take only a Minor Action to switch pokemon, making it something you could do for almost free. Minor Actions aren't usually spent in combat, unless there's a specific utility power, so the cost to switching pokemon would be miniscule. Let the tag-team battle commence!
Now for the pokemon's moves. I wanted something elegant and something that felt a lot like pokemon to govern what moves could be used - so 4e's at-will, encounter and daily powers were out. After playing around with the idea a little bit, I decided to pull from a mix of 4e's psionic system (which uses a pool of power points to use the more powerful abilities) and Magic the Gathering's planeswalkers. Planeswalkers have 3-4 special moves they can activate, each move costing a certain amount of loyalty counters to activate.
Giving each pokemon a set of 3-5 moves that would cost variable power-points would mean that pokemon couldn't stay in battle forever if they wanted to use their more powerful moves. It would be a great incentive to get players to switch between their pokemon. I decided to give each pokemon 4 power points (hereafter called 'pips') to spend on their moves. After each battle they'd regain 2 pips, if they'd spent at least that many. This created an interesting tension in strategic decisions. Players would clearly want to spend at least 2 pips on each of their pokemon in each fight - otherwise they're leaving money on the table. However, by keeping out one pokemon for too long and using 3 or 4 pips - that pokemon wouldn't be as well rested for the next fight.
This made it so switching between pokemon was highly encouraged. If you were using powers that cost 1-2 pips, a pokemon could only hang out for 1 or 2 turns before it made sense to switch it to another. Naturally, each pokemon would have at least 1 zero-pip move so they could keep fighting even after they'd run out of pips - but the moves that cost pips would be much more powerful. Add that to the combo-possibilities that the inspiration of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was going to bring us and a player wouldn't be switching because his or her active pokemon was useless - he'd be switching because he was about to do something something awesome with a brand new pokemon. Switching would be a col thing.
To make switching even more fun and to enable more cool combinations, I decided to use the 4e Action Point system. Action Points are awesome. In 4e, you get an Action Point every 2 encounters to use in battle. Spending the Action Point gives you a free additional Standard Action. Basically, it lets you attack twice in the same turn. Figuring out when to spend your Action Point is a lot of fun, but players are often reluctant to use them in case they need them later and 4e doesn't encourage cool combos the same way Pokemon Campaigns was going to. With this in mind, I decided to give the players an action point every single encounter. Once per battle, they'd have a chance to activate 2 moves in the same turn - which was perfect for the idea of tagging in a pokemon. One example of this that ended up happening was a player used his Geodude's "Rock Cyclone" to pull all enemies within 2 squares of Geodude next to him - where the tank-like rock pokemon could keep them close. However, he then switched Geodude out with his Minor action for Sandshrew and spent his Action Point to activate Sandshrew's 3-Pip "Earthquake" do deal massive damage to all creature's next to the little shrew. It was truly epic.
So, to sum up thus far...
Themes of Cooperation and fast-paced tag-team combat.
Pokemon would have 3-5 moves.
Each trainer would have a team of 3 pokemon.
Pokemon's moves would be governed by Pips. They'd start the day with 4 and regain 2 after each
battle (with 4 being their maximum).
Each turn the Trainer would get a Standard Action, a Move Action and a Minor Action that he could spend to command his pokemon (meaning trainers would have to be on the board too).
Trainers would gain an Action Point to spend every single battle.
This was a great place to start. Clearly, we still had a lot of specifics to work out but for broad brushstrokes I remember feeling we were on a very good track. In fact, I was so excited by the broad ideas I was worried that something had to be wrong with the theory - the end result couldn't possibly be as fun as the design was indicating. We just had to keep designing to find out.
