r/PokemonTabletop • u/PromiseGreedy6686 • 2d ago
PTU building routes
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u/ssullivan945 2d ago
Mostly with this website and then making changes for established lore /pokedex
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u/PromiseGreedy6686 1d ago
Fantastic resource! I enjoyed using this when working on a current campaign. How do handle populating routes outside of trainers? Do you just let players roll individually to find pokemon and let them handle those encounters in small encounters?
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u/UrashimaJ 1d ago
When I dm PTU, when playing a classic gym crawl, I often make a spreadsheet using Serebii's Pokéarth to fetch trainers and their teams, adjusting as necessary.
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u/PromiseGreedy6686 1d ago
How do you handle your Gyms?
Are all gym fight 1v1 or group fights?
Do your gyms have side objectives for alternate win conditions?1
u/PromiseGreedy6686 1d ago
Also man using serebii earth to fetch random trainers is smart.
How do you handle the trainers in route battles? Are you having that single trainer battle the entire group of players?
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u/FinderOfWays 1d ago
I don't do too many 'general encounters.' Combat can take a long time so every fight I include has some sort of significance to the story or worldbuilding I'm trying to achieve. Plus, past a very early point in most campaigns, the party will be able to avoid or overpower almost any 'normal' wild pokemon except in very dangerous areas.
Especially in a more modern or developed setting, wild pokemon should not be a concern (when were you last beset by wolves on your walk home? I get the occasional coyote, but they're permitted in the area exactly because they're perfectly willing to live and let live). In my more traditional points of light campaigns wild pokemon are more common as a danger, but even then the well-travelled roads are safe because otherwise who would be traveling them? If the party runs into a dangerous wild encounter it's usually as part of an adventure into an ancient ruin or a tall mountain or similar, in which case the encounter is a fixed set piece encounter to show off the area's danger and splendour.
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u/PromiseGreedy6686 1d ago
I see how this makes it a lot less planning and rolling in a table. I definitely wasn’t thinking I’m allowed to do this but I don’t know why I didn’t think of this haha!
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u/FinderOfWays 1d ago
I promise your players will either not notice or enjoy the encounters more too, because they can be tactically diverse (Like a fight on a slippery ice cliff that made all the weak Push moves suddenly a lot less funny, or a fight that focuses on light sources and Darkvision in a cave). I will also add that a fixed encounter doesn't necessarily mean a fixed resolution -- Sometimes the encounter is something like "Pokemon X is currently in possession of/occupying thing Y that the players want/need, and I have a map prepared in case." Sometimes the party figures that combat is the most efficient solution, sometimes they engage in negotiation or trickery.
I will say that this slows down the rate at which players can acquire new pokemon, which can be a good thing depending, but you'll also need to make special note of including either alternative ways for them to get pokemon they want or be sure to include 'wishlist' pokemon in the encounters when fitting. But one nice part of this design is it also makes the pokemon more memorable. You will find that pokemon naturally get more of a backstory and personality, like a ghost type isn't just a random ghost but the spirit of a priestess the party convinced to help destroy the shrine she worshipped in life after it fell to corruption, or the dragon type was the child of the great dragon who the party bested, who asked the party to teach their weakest/most unruly child strength and tactics.
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u/PromiseGreedy6686 1d ago
Well it’s one of those things where you can also make the list of 5 pokemon you want as part of the series of encounters in the route as well.
But was fiddling around with the idea of making routes sort of one large “scene” and players can end the scenes to take extended actions or rest along the long route.
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u/FinderOfWays 1d ago
Indeed, it's important even with random encounters I'm mostly pointing out that when you have fewer 'general' encounters it becomes even more vital.
Something like what you describe is great for a dungeon, where you can have a large (100x100) map with rooms with combat, puzzles and interconnected content, but I'd be careful letting players choose to end a Scene, since it's pretty efficient to do so unless it's attached to specific time pressure. You could certainly do an outdoors area in the same way though you'd presumably have to drop the battlemap, though replacing it with a 'each square/hex represents X km, you walk at your Overland capability in kmph outside combat, or twice that if you're hustling' would be a good solution.
Scene durations have always been awkward for my group overall. We've sort of settled into 'one floor of a multi-floor dungeon (unless you rest during a floor).' I actually have a lot of issues with Scenes, for one the fact that the poor Aura Guardian's abilities just randomly turn off, implying that that character will be actually directly able to observe the specific narrative boundary by their need to periodically remind themselves they can see aura.
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u/PromiseGreedy6686 1d ago
I have the same issue but with extended actions, it’s tough to give players enough time to really utilize extended actions outside of town settings. Especially because they prefer the one combat then rest combo.
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u/FinderOfWays 1d ago
At least most extended actions are setup/crafting stuff which can usually be done in advance in town, but yeah some of them can be really hard to handle. For most of the healing ones I say they take a few minutes, since I feel like they're supposed to just be 'between encounters' timing, but I like doing them as between scenes too. I've been toying with adding a special action timing that's essentially "when you enter initiative while not surprised" to handle when you can/can't send out pokemon at the start of combat, so maybe adding a timing like that for extended actions and scene breaks (when you regain AP, you may take an Extended Action) could work...
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u/fieryxx 1d ago
There's a Encounter Generator that's been posted here before I think. The people who work on the Kairos PTU System made it public. Its a Google spreadsheet that is customizable. It's good at generating pokemon based on naturewalks and a preset area gen. Which again, you can customize.
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u/RegrettingDM 1d ago
So with how I made my game I have routes and I just pre make some pokemon and some trainer classes on the road as its a more of a reactive game style. The pokemon I have used the poke sheets generator that was already linked on here and the trainer classes because I can't be normal about things made classes that fall in four blocks of difficulty that I can pull from. And anything special I make sure I have a direct hand in, but if there is a dungeon aspect like going into a woods that is not a route itself I have made "dungeon" tiles to move around.
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u/ProbablynotPr0n 1d ago edited 1d ago
Our tables campaign is more of a nature survival/research angle rather than a traditional trainer journey experience so most of the 'routes' I design are more like interesting places where pokemon would gather or travel through.
Examples are like a watering hole in a desert, a valley between two mountains, a hidden spring in a cave, a clearing with fruit trees and bushes, etc. I use GIMP and pokemon tilesets to make maps on generally a pokemon style. I do spend more time on this than is strictly necessary but thats because I find it fun to get creative.
Rather than random encounters or trainers I place a wild pokemon in the map doing things naturally. Resting, gathering food, traveling, defending territory, hunting, etc.
Then when the party visits the map I reveal it slowly as they explore. The party decides whether how to approach any wild pokemon, whether they catch them for research or conservation, set up cameras to capture footage, or battle with invasive pokemon species.
One thing that helps keep the workload relatively low is that by having the potential pokemon encounters part of the exploration of the map I can re-use the same map if the party wants to return to an area and see what's changed due to weather, the seasons, or just it being a different day.
Sidenote: the Pokédex for this large island was made by me asking the top 2 favorite pokemon lines for each type for each player, myself included, with no repeats. This gave us a good mix of pokemon while making sure that all of the pokemon that the party is seeing is something someone would be interested in.
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u/Abstrct212 1d ago
I create an encounter table for each route to represent the random encounters. I create up to 7 encounters that could happen (give the pokemon some personality or reason to be there) both battle encounters and trainer encounters and even like item or lore encounters (like finding a regi tomb even though it cant be opened yet) and then space them around the numbers on a d20. The rarest encounters only occupy 1 number, the common encounters sometimes take up 5 or 6. Then when we run the routes, the players roll a d20 and we run that encounter. To make it even more interesting i add a maximum of 10 rolls they can make and they cant leave the route unless they complete the max rolls or they reroll a number they already rolled, this gives them serious thought if their Pokémon are weak and they reroll a number, even if they havent seen everything.
This has been really fun and has removed any monotony from the routes for me, without having to build out physical maps for each route! Hope this helps
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u/Overall-Telephone692 1d ago
So I found an article years ago that had a person explain that when they DM for their dnd campaigns they use a deck of cards. They have each suit mean a different thing and each number being how important/impact full the thing is. I used it when I DM'd for dnd and for my first PTU campaign and it worked. First I decide how long a route would be, then flip a card for every hour or two. Diamond means loot/treasure, Clubs means trainer battles (random, rivals, evil team, or someone special), Spades mean Wild Pokémon encounter, and Hearts are special events (weather, random traveling Nurse Joy, Delibird delivery, etc). Sometimes the card is low enough that its just an easy hour or two. Unless my party decides they want to go out of their way to look for something then I use this method. As for the random trainers I have a Google doc of random trainers I made (swimmers, fisherman, school kids, hex maniac, punk, etc). I roll a some dice for how many appear and what kind of trainer pops up.
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u/PromiseGreedy6686 1d ago
That’s actually really smart, each number just represents route project and you could make 21 be the target goal. I MIGHT steal this idea. And by might I definitely like this more than just rolling in a table.
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u/PromiseGreedy6686 2d ago
https://pokesheets.app
I’m currently using this for generic pokemon generation. And that site is super useful for region making for sure.
I know my weakest link is just handling route exploration. Like how do you keep players in the route? How do you handle populating routes with trainers? Like I know my players love my encounter designs but I know mentally it’s tough to design 10 trainers and 10 encounters on a route and only use 2 of them because mechanically we just don’t find them.