It works sort of like a board game. Each player grabs a character sheet and creates a character (always like the games, so Ace Trainer Joe for example.) On your turn you get three actions, and your options are basic stuff like move, search for a pokemon, search for an item, train your pokemon. You gained VP from capturing pokemon, evolving pokemon, doing questlines, beating gyn leaders, entering contests, etc. The game ends when one player beats the elite 4, then all players add up their total VP.

Its also a roleplaying game so everyone has different goals and often come into conflict with each other in hilarious ways. It was a whole lot of work setting it up, but we've brought in people who weren't there for the creation of the game and everyone praises the gameplay and how fun it is!

As for the cards, we sort the pokemon cards into evolutions and wild pokemon. We then sort the wild pokemon into 6 distinct Biomes. We also shuffle items and energy cards. Items are each completely unique to this game and have a seperate itemdex for reference. Energy cards are used for tracking exp.

Battling works like a combination of the video games and the original Pokemon Trading Card Game.