How to NOT do a TTRPG Adaptation of a Video Game

Hey all, apologies for the delay in posting here! Between a medication change and a horrible bout of food poisoning, myself and the blogging thing have been passing like ships in the night.

A recent post on the NSR Cauldron discord reminded me, regrettably, that Pokemon Tabletop United is a game that exists. Some time ago I had played in a campaign using this system; I came away with some profoundly negative impressions of it and the idea of adapting Video Games to the TTRPG space, and this random reference to it got the gears turning again as to why I feel that way.

PTU is far from the first fan made TTRPG adaptation of a popular video game franchise, and it won't be the last. It probably isn't even the worst one out there, just one of the more popular and developed ones over the years by virtue of Pokemon being more popular than organized religion.

At first thought, an adaptation of a popular game franchise into a TTRPG seems like a perfect fit; after all pretty much every video game RPG out there owes its existence to D&D and other tabletop games, surely this can be a two way street right? PTU in particular commits all 3 major sins that I see games like this do; it focuses overly on mechanical complexity over roleplaying and general vibes, it tries to recreate the math used in the video games themselves, and it is trying to adapt fiction that is about sole protagonists and battles into something designed for ensemble play without fully considering what that means. Let's dig into each part of this.

So, So Many Rules

Downloading PTU (currently at version 1.05 as of this writing) immediately greets the player with a disgusting 10 different files. One of these is a simple text changelog file, and 2 of these are character sheets (one for Pokemon and one for Trainers, naturally) and finally we have a PDF file that is just labeled Useful Charts and another labeled Indices and Reference. That means that we have 5 actually useful books here! A core book that itself is over 500 pages, a Pokedex bestiary that is over 700 pages, and 3 genre supplements, the shortest of which is at 71 pages. This is, to put it bluntly, a LOT of rules, far more than even the most complex versions of D&D come with right off the bat. And, like the games they are based on, nearly all of these rules and advice center around the core mechanics of Pokemon battles (although Pokemon Contests do get their own chapter).

This is a game that really, really wants you to be battling Pokemon, which, fair enough since that's what nearly every Pokemon video game is about in one form or another (shout outs to Pokemon Snap for bucking this trend though). But that sort of misses the point of the rest of roleplaying games, which is the shared story telling, decision making, and problem solving. If I wanted to play "more pokemon but different" there are about 5000 different romhacks I could download of varying degrees of quality.

I'm all for a well designed combat subsystem (although this isn't that, more on that in a bit) but if you are making a tabletop RPG you should be taking advantage of what makes the medium unique and interesting. Which brings me to my next point.

I Hope You Brought Your Calculator

Video games, as with any computer program, rely an awful lot on math it turns out. Which is fine since computers are also really great calculators and can do most of these calculations required faster than you or I could find the calculator app on our phone. This is a huge strength in the digital space, the ability to do nuanced math formulas for various things and have that output quickly and seamlessly.

This is, unfortunately, not a strength of most TTRPG gamers, many of whom seem to struggle remembering the basic math of "Roll a 20 sided die and add a fixed modifier to the result". PTU does not give a flying fuck about any of that though, and features some pretty hefty addition and even multiplication to the mix.

This might work just fine in a sufficiently automated virtual tabletop environment, sure. However, I would argue that if you need a computer just to make playing an ostensibly pen and paper role playing game not totally insufferable, you have made a bad game and you should feel bad about your work!

What Genre are we Playing Here Exactly?

If for some reason you live in a cave that has cut you off from all internet access and someone is bringing you a print out of one of my blogs to read (in which case I have a LOT of follow up questions), you may be wondering what Pokemon is even about!

From a genre perspective, pretty much every official Pokemon story is about a 10 year old kid who leaves home to become a "Pokemon Master". They accomplish this task by capturing, taming, and battling with monsters called Pokemon and going through their region's "Pokemon League". This involves them challenging and defeating 8 gym leaders in various towns before challenging the "Elite 4" best trainers in the region, usually followed by a final challenge against a champion of said league. Along the way they usually also thwart the evil plans of a criminal organization for some reason (again I should point out your character is supposed to be TEN YEARS OLD).

These stories are pretty simple and straightforward, and there is certainly room for a clever GM and a willing group of players to invent something outside of that scope. But an important note here is that Pokemon stories are generally about sole protagonists and sole fights. Even the Pokemon Anime, which tends to feature a small ensemble cast, usually involves people fighting their own battles. This kind of drama is something that is great in fiction and especially great in video games where we are looking to put a sole player in the driver seat. And there is probably a cool little solo or duet TTRPG that someone could make about this kind of story.

Now you might be thinking "But Gordon we can just change the story to be about an ensemble cast" and yes, you are technically correct (the best kind of correct). But you are also then throwing out all of the media and material that was supposed to anchor people in the experience at the table in the first place! You are saying yes we are playing a game about people who capture monsters and fight with them, but every other genre conception you know about is simply not applicable all of a sudden! You have now increased the cognitive load on players and lost a lot of the advantages of playing an adaptation of a familiar media!

The book, to its credit, does give some decent campaign ideas towards the back in the section on running the game. This section though is far too brief in my mind and follows an unfortunate trend in most RPG books where the book assumes the readers already have a fair amount of familiarity with the medium. This especially puts a big burden on your GM who has to be creative to solve their way around these inherent problems.

Wrapping Up

I'm not saying you can't do a good TTRPG adaptation of a video game. I'm not even saying you can never make a good Pokemon TTRPG (I hear Pokeymanz is great, for example). However, I will also put out there that in an age of adaptation after adaptation, where our fandom is constantly weaponized against us in the pursuit of greater profits, that not everything needs an adaptation.

It's important to consider whether each piece of fiction is suitable to be adapted to the time honored tradition of sitting around a table with your friends and rolling dice. And in doing so, we can make better games and make sure those people rolling the dice are having a good time.