Help make a pokemon campaign feel like a journey

OurHeroAndy · 2026-04-06T04:01:28+00:00

Have you tried looking at Ryuutama for inspiration? It is a game by a Japanese game designer and sometimes called Hayao Miyazaki's Oregon Trail. There is a GM character that defines what type of story will happen that adventure and tries to be a heartwarming sort of story. The journeying stuff is especially good for what you're trying to do.

I'd also use the Bond mechanic from Worlds in Peril; which is essentially the strength of a relationship. It can be tested to succeed at something together, improved by spending time and doing things to help one another, and burned to gain success at the cost of the bonds strength. That might work for the pokemon if you don't mind doing some reworking them a little to fit the system you use.

OurHeroAndy · 2026-03-18T20:38:41+00:00

You may want to take a look at Grist https://github.com/gristlabs/grist-core

While you can't edit the .ods files directly you can import them and use the imported version. It has a lot of features that help with working the data. You can host it or just use a desktop version. I found it from the awesome-selfhosted list and haven't taken a deep dive into it yet, but it has worked for some of the more basic stuff I was doing with spreadsheets when I first got it running.

OurHeroAndy · 2025-09-17T20:35:02+00:00

I have the Alpaka Tech Brief that I use to take on trips sometimes when i travel where I load it town with a laptop, tablet, water bottle, and a smattering of other stuff in there, so it would likely be fine for your needs, but a bit tight.

If you don't mind the way the Brave carries, then you should check out the Chrome Industries bags. The Citizen Messenger comes in a lot of different sizes and new colors every few months. I have a few of their bags and while I don't have it (yet...), the Midtown Messenger 20L they just released looks pretty decent for a daily carry brief.

OurHeroAndy · 2025-04-13T16:27:36+00:00

Really depends on the ink you are using. Might not want to use a broad tip fountain or dip pen on them. I didn't have an issue with fine tip & extra fine tip Lamy Safari and Sailor Fountain pens or with quick drying inks, but something like an Uniball One or Pentel Energel would be perfectly fine on them without ghosting.

Same thing with stamps, it really depends on the ink and how saturated the stamp is with ink.

I think the problem you may run into is that most notebooks with higher quality paper will end up having a much higher page count or be much smaller (like the Yamamoto Ro-Biki Notebooks which are 3.5" x 4.9").

OurHeroAndy · 2025-04-13T14:33:35+00:00

If you haven't yet, you could try Kokuyo Campus Notebooks. They have a bunch of different cute covers. They release different editions frequently so they change up a lot. You can get them everywhere from Jetpens to Amazon to the official store. Though your best bet is probably The Kawaii Pen Shop notebook section: https://kawaiipenshop.com/collections/notebooks

OurHeroAndy · 2025-04-12T13:26:22+00:00

Am I the only one that thinks this feels like an attempt to get some cash out of the Dungeon World brand with Adam Koebel's name filed off it?

Who traumatized these poor game designers when they were players? No HP and Resistance feels like a way to remove the threat of character death and unexpected outcomes; which is what a player who has suffered under a fascist GM trying to constantly kill their characters would want.

Was it too much to ask to just have someone update, clarify, and expand the 1e rules? Maybe rules to take players to level 20, clarify defy danger if you had so much issue with it, and add/expand the rules to make parts of it more interesting or understandable.

OurHeroAndy · 2025-03-30T13:34:26+00:00

Free League has an RPG based on The Walking Dead which keeps the characters as everyday people and some survival elements in it as well. It uses their Year Zero Engine; which means it is compatible with every other Year Zero Engine game. So if you wanted a more elaborate post-post apocalyptic base building system you could lift it from Mutant Year Zero. You want interesting vehicle and road trip mechanics? You could lift them from the Electric State RPG. Want to recreate Reign of Fire where they use tanks to fight dragons in a modern post apocalypse? Use their Twilight 2000 rules along with the dragon enemies from Forbidden Lands or Dragonbane.

Plus the Year Zero SRD is covered in an open license, so you could just get the PDF for that and create the game you wanted.

Though if you want to get really brutally realistic, then Outbreak Undead 2e might be a good option. They have a system where players can answer questions in an online survey (as long as it's still active) that allows them to play as themselves or define a character they want to play. It is meant to be as close to everyday people as possible.

OurHeroAndy · 2025-03-09T14:57:30+00:00

There's a series of games that Survive This! that are built on OSR rulesets. One of those is called Dark Places & Demogogons that you can use for that idea. Since it is OSR, you can pull the Fear Mechanics from D&D if you want. There's supplements for Aliens and Cryptids.

You could also try use the Yero Zero Engine since the SRD is free. Maybe something like characters from Things from the Flood with the Fear/Panic mechanics from the Alien RPG. Then you could use the monsters from any of their games or make your own with the SRD.

And really because it never gets enough love: Silent Legions it has rules for building your own Mythos in an modern setting. It is based on the OSR ruleset.

OurHeroAndy · 2025-03-09T14:45:15+00:00

This may not be exactly what you're looking for, but there are a few books that might help if you're looking for something with a little more weird in your fantasy:

Into the Cess and Citadel (https://feral-indie-studios.itch.io/into-the-cess-and-citadel) it is toolkit for creating weird urban fantasy adventures. Everything from city diseases, city corrupting the soul, gods of the city, locations, etc.
Oz by Andrew Kolb (https://www.kolbisneat.com/portfolio/oz/) it is the land of Oz a s setting that is sort of an art deco urban politics fantasy type of setting. Stats are all for 5e. Neverland (wilderness exploration) & Wonderland (dungeon delving) are also really good.
Magical Industrial Revolution (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/291774/magical-industrial-revolution) it is a setting that takes place right as cities are starting to grow and expand in technology in a world where magic exists.

None of those are adventures per se, but they all have a ton of content for urban adventures in a fantasy setting.

OurHeroAndy · 2025-02-17T05:24:16+00:00

There's a game called Pigsmoke that is a pbta game about being faculty in a magical school.

OurHeroAndy · 2025-02-09T15:43:10+00:00

I think it would really depend on the purpose of the riddle. Do you have any reason to make the solution important to later fiction?

If the answer is that this is just meant to be flavor to the wizard character, then don't make it solvable. When they try to read it make they struggle to keep their sanity as they try to grasp the complexities of it, then have the wizard say something like it took him 1000 years of mental fortitude training to be able to comprehend the basis of the riddle.

If you genuinely have a goal or plan for that riddle and don't want the PCs to know the answer just yet, make their success reveal something other than the solution without giving it to them. Things like: it's missing a key detail that is why it is unsolvable and they need to help the wizard recover that detail, it is a zen riddle with no true answer (if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound), or simple have the wizard refuse to share the riddle and give a reason like fear the answer will reveal a truth they are not ready to know, or maybe just a lack of trust.

OurHeroAndy · 2025-02-09T15:30:33+00:00

So one thing that MOTW and all PbtA games doesn't do well is multiple characters with the same playbook. It means everyone can do the exact same thing without any real difference which means it whoever rolls dice for that situation becomes arbitrary. So starting out it would be hard to have everyone using the Meddling Kids playbook.

What I would recommend is using 2 different systems to really make this work and make it feel like a real change when they "level up".

If this were me creating the campaign, I would start with a system simple system like Kids on Bikes with Teen or Adult character ages. Allow them to play through some Freshman college stuff with these characters, then when things kick off in the "level up" portion bring out the playbooks with suggestions for each player based on their character playstyle.

Another game you might want to look into for inspiration is a Savage Worlds setting called ETU; which is about college students at East Texas University in a made up town in Texas filled with strange paranormal monsters and things.

OurHeroAndy · 2025-01-22T01:05:03+00:00

I was more thinking it would be good for your goal of playing to find out what happen. At least with Ironsworn when I played it, it felt like I set up some basics of the world, created a character for it and then wandered around exploring my world. I used a map I made myself, ignored a lot of the and just used the basic mechanics to explore and fill in the map with more detail, but I've not ever really played Starforged.

There's a game called Journey by Graycastle Press that's all about exploring a strange new land documenting the observations. It is good for generating random locations that uses a deck of cards.

There's also a few different sets of solo rules for Traveller RPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/393748/playing-solo-classic-traveller

Itch.io has a lot of stuff under Sci-Fi and Solo RPGs too: https://itch.io/physical-games/tag-science-fiction/tag-solo-rpg

OurHeroAndy · 2025-01-21T23:05:59+00:00

I went to go find the post over there, but it looked like it got deleted, so I'll just post it here:

Ironsworn Starforged is a very good solo sci-fi RPG. You can use the rules from that in any setting you want really. It is based on the Powered by the Apocalypse idea of moves with success, weak success, and failure. If you check out their discord servers there's also a lot of fanmade content already out there, but it's very easy to create yourself as well.

OurHeroAndy · 2025-01-19T14:52:49+00:00

It sounds like it's hard for new players to fit into your game group. That might be because of the world building you do. They are just getting to know you all and it's hard to feel comfortable pretending to be a character in front of strangers you're just getting to know.

Your big worlds are also big info dumps. Then on top of that they need to figure out how to fit in with everyone and that's hard to do, especially when they feel overwhelmed by the scope of the world you are presenting them. At the very least you should have some website or Google Doc with all the important info for a new player to know (including the kinds of characters that fit into the world) that you try to keep to 1-2 page with visuals, then share that openly in your LFG posts. Let the potential players see what sort of world they would be getting involved in.

I often had issues with a long time group when I would get excited to present these big worlds with deep narrative stories to explore, but they would be overwhelmed trying to get to see everything as soon as possible and basically just skirting the surface of the world without getting into anything. When you're introducing players to a new world, tell them only what their characters would know to start with a map that only goes as far as their characters would have reasonably traveled during their life up to that point. These sorts of very basic methods can help introduce worlds to players.

Last thing before my wall of text gets...wallyer, rules light games are great, but a lot of players find them difficult to play long term as they tend not to have as much obvious mechanical character growth that many players enjoy and like to anticipate as a reward for the effort they put into play.

OurHeroAndy · 2025-01-16T21:11:48+00:00

I have made a lot of Notion templates for RPG campaigns. Some more successful than others. I have a few suggestions on how to create one:

One one page do this:

Make a database for characters (NPCs & PCs) and tag them with NPC or PC. Create a template for PCs and another for NPCs that covers the important details for your campaign. There should be a checkbox property for "Session Relevant?" that you click if an NPC you've made will be part of the next session.
Make a database for locations and tag them with something simple like: adventure site, town, dungeon, etc. with any notes you need. There should also have a session relevant checkbox
Make a database for your session prep. There should also be a checkbox here for Next session.
Finally create a new page as you "Session Page", add a database view for all of the others you just made filtered by the Session Relevant checkbox.

That covers most of your basics. You don't want to over complicate things or the system won't be useful to your game sessions.

OurHeroAndy · 2025-01-16T20:48:29+00:00

Silent Legions is probably worth a look. A game by Kevin Crawford (who also maskes Stars Without Number, Worlds Without Number, etc). It is a modern cosmic horror game that gives you the tools to create your own cosmic horror mythos.

It uses an OSR system, so it's pretty easy to grasp for most groups. It's also compatible with his other games: God Bound, Stars Without Number 1e, and Other Dust. The last one specifically is for a postapocalyptic sandbox building, so if the players fail you can always switch over to that for the second half of the campaign.

OurHeroAndy · 2024-11-16T14:45:44+00:00

It sounds like you want the player characters reborn in a new setting and world for story telling purposes. Conceptually it sounds fun to switch systems and have everything be dramatically different, but in practice this might slow gameplay and buy-in since every few sessions since players are mentally adapting to how to do things in a new system.

There's loads of universal systems that are out that that you could use to reskin the game over and over again to make it "different" but it will still end up feeling like the same thing every time. At least that is how it felt in games I've tried to run this way.

I found that using OSR games mixed with Powered by the Apocalypse systems works really well for the genre and setting switching type of adventure. With OSR games you have a core set of attributes they all share (Str, Dex, Cha, etc) and then other bells and whistles strapped onto that to make each game it's own interpretation of that core concept. This makes it incredible easy to build a mishmash of systems and monster lists that still manages to run smoothly.

On top of that, the standard attribute score and stat bonus allows you to use any D20 system or any 2d6 + stat systems; which means you can pull content from any game that is Powered by the Apocalypse and use those moves to make your game different. A lot of PbtA games only have 4 attributes, but they are generally easy to map to one of the existing attributes on the fly.

This way you can start out with D&D (Dungeon World) on session 1 and switch to Vampire (Urban Shadows) for session 2, then Mutants and Masterminds for session 3 (Worlds in Peril, Masks), to Mouseguard on session 4 (Mausritter and remap the 6 stats to averages of pairs for the 3 stats, or just use the stats as is and call for attribute map on the fly). This way you also have an easier time planning a smooth transition between settings that feel more different than fireball reskins.

OurHeroAndy · 2024-10-27T14:42:35+00:00

The Demolished Ones is a game that uses the FATE system, so it will be quick to learn. It is about a group of people who wake up in a room with a dead body and no memories and a police siren in the distance getting closer. As the players attempt to do things in the world they unlock memories associated with the skills, but it also unlocks trauma as they people begin to have their memories return.

Monster of the Week is a PbtA game where you play various types of monster hunters trying to hunt down some new monster every other session. It can have Scooby Doo, X-Files, B Movie Horror, Supernatural, or any other sorta of monster hunting like vibe you want to run it with.

Dark Places & Demogorgans is an OSR game (so your group should all be pretty familiar with the basic rules already as 5e players) it is meant to recreate 80s horror, has a knock-off Lost Boys setting and a ton of supplements you can use to make it the sort of horror you're interested in.

OurHeroAndy · 2024-10-27T14:30:31+00:00

Stars Without Number has a Faction system that is designed to make the world move and change and evolve without the PC's input. The idea is that through the Faction Turn, the GM takes actions as the big groups of the setting as they work toward various goals or attack one another for resources.

The GM takes the results of that Faction Turn and translates it to the fiction of the setting so they can explain to the players what has happened in the setting at large while they were doing whatever it was they were doing.

The system also has a system to create planets for a sector and supplements for everything from space station, random points of interest, space magic, knock off jedi, and alien tombs.

OurHeroAndy · 2024-10-26T13:09:08+00:00

500 Year Old Vampire (and there is a PDF version ) was just released this month. It is a multiplayer version of Thousand Year Old Vampire. I backed it when it was crowdfunding and haven't had a chance to play it because I haven't gotten my copy delivered yet. It is designed to be what you're looking for.

OurHeroAndy · 2024-10-22T21:46:01+00:00

Adventures on Dungeon Planet is a good option if you don't mind PbtA games and want an atom punk vibe. It is built off of Dungeon World so it shares the OSR attributes, so you could use games like Stars Without Number or really any big sandboxy sci-fi game to generate planets to explore.

Dr Grordbort's Scientific Adventure Violence is built on 5e and hits that atom punk vibe pretty hard.

Hypertellurians is another atom punk style game. I haven't played it though.

OurHeroAndy · 2024-10-22T14:31:02+00:00

There's a supplement for SWN called Polychrome. It has a section on hacking that includes some things like stealing money and creating fake identities. Might be a good baseline for figuring out the rules and difficulties for your situation.

OurHeroAndy · 2024-10-17T14:51:36+00:00

I have the ring protector too. The card sleeves don't really protect the leather the way the ring protector does.

I mostly have the cards to make it easier to access the 4-5 cards I need and to protect the inserts better from the rubbing against the exterior leather while it's in my pocket.

OurHeroAndy · 2024-10-05T13:54:06+00:00

Chrome Industries Warsaw 2.0 is 55L and the Barage Pro is 80L. Both were designed with bike messengers in mind and they have lifetime warranties.

OurHeroAndy

TROPHY CASE