Roleplay / Neo Pokeforum

One forum, all the generations.

Neo Pokeforum (Новый Игровой Покефорум) is a russian Play-by-Post game taking place in the setting of Pokémon. Created somewhen in the year of 2001 as a message board for the Russian Pokeleague projet, which it has since then split up with, it lives on even now, despite changing names, adresses, administration and core rules every few years and suffering from the disasterous forum history wipes.

Forum's roleplaying system is based around multitude of DM-player pairs, where each player has his quest topic reserved for his character, giving each of them a storyline of their own, while still allowing player characters to meet with each other in crossovers. It is generally thought that all of the quests take place in the same universe, despite occasional huge incosistencies and outright contradictions between individual quests - those are usually viewed as a good thing, because they allow for each player to have a unique experience of his own, being as dark or light-hearted as it suits him. Every member of the forum has quest of his own and many of them are involved in DMing other players or being an arbiter of the pokemon battles.

Combat system on the FRPG is based around dice and formulas for calculating such things as hit points and damage. Each battle is controlled by an arbiter - a player, whose job involves using those dice and formulas to create a narrative of combat. At the end of each battle, rewards are given out to both the winner and the loser, such as levels, attack points, serving as power-ups, and evolution points.

In case the player wants to socialize more, there are five joinable factions - Team Rocket, Deus Vult, Frost Express, Wings of Liberty and Burning Kindness.

The forum can be found here

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Tropes found on the FRPG:

• Abusive Parents: Crow's father was a mob boss, who abused her both verbally and physically, even disowned her at birth.
• The Ace: Schwarze Taube is, perhaps, the best trainer on the forum, holding the largest amount of badges, one of the strongest teams and Reshiram, one of the Olympus Monsю
• Aerith and Bob: The RPG suffers quite a bit from this, having such characters as Tom Allen, Jethro Pierce, Christopher Johnson... And also Ardus, Slight Ryoku and Wei-Wei.
• Adaptation Expansion: Numerous times, most notably - Team Snagem, who go from being Desert Bandits with no particular goals to being Orr nationalists, who want to drive the foreign colonists out, and their leader, Gonzap, goes from being a thug to descendant of khans. And changes his name slightly.
• The Apprentice: Schwarze`s group (Schwarze, N, Molly and Fry) to Janine of Fuschia City, Timber of Cinnabar Island, Silver and Ritchie of Kanto Elite Four, especially the former. The group started as rookies under training of gym leaders and Elite Four members to confront Colress and become professional and high-skilled trainers.
• Alone in a Crowd: Before becoming a trainer, Schwarze reflects that she feels like a bit of a third wheel in her family because her mother and father have each other and constantly tried to control her life. However, since the start of her jorney she step by step becomes more sociable and amiable and befriends Molly, Fry and N. The rest of her group are also some sort of the outcasts, so... The Loners Are Freaks, but The Power of Friendship could change that.
• Alien Geometries: During his Dream Sequence, Allen stumbles upon a perfectly square room with five plants in each of its corners. He successfully fails to pay attention to it.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Cannibals, as per Word of God.
• Always Someone Better: Weiß, who has larger number then badges then Schwarze and a stronger team - which, of course, eventually results in Schwartze losing to her in the Pearl Tournament.
• And That's Terrible: Everyone in Ardus's quest won't shut up about how turning pokemon into shadow versions is horrible and monstrous, even when it's pretty obvious.
• Androcles' Lion: Wei-Wei saves a hondour from a bear trap - said hondour becomes her companion.
• Angst: See the above. Notable in that this is present in every members' of Schwarze's group story. Schwarze often asks herself what is the meaning of life and pokemon battles, Molly constantly tries to become a better coordinator and push herself to the limits during the training, Fry thinks he is a weakling and the third wheel of the group... And N is just the clone, Living Weapon and Mutant. Nice team, huh?
• Anticlimax: In the Autumn tournament, Anton's crazy powerful alakazam somehow got to take a part. Everyone predicted that he is utterly doomed if he ever fights Chaos's Dirty Harry because of Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors at works. However, the poochyena got taken down by Rozalia's riolu in the second round. In the third round, Rozalia faced Anton instead... And then proceeded to surrender instead of battling.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Leslie the starly towards N's Veera the petilil and Schwarze, in particular.
• Ascended Meme: First Chaos brought the Helix Fossil worship on the forum from Twitch Plays Pokémon. Then he actually got the Helix Fossil, instantly doubling the amount of worshippers. And then the Helix became actual, in-universe god.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: T-Rex claims that no natives can possibly inhabit the lost temple in the jungle, despite Orre being full of different tribes. Yeah, right. No natives at all.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Downplayed with Seth. He isn't evil - he's just a bit of an unpleasant jerkass.
• Artificial Human: N is a product of Project N, like Anthea, Concordia and the rest of next generation of mutants, the Litteras.
• Artifact of Doom: The Golden Amulet from Mahariel's quest causes her to have nightmares, in which a dark entity talks to her.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Crow's response to any situation in a pokemon battle is the most powerful attack her pokemon has, no matter the complications. She seems to be gradually growing out of it, after it failed her in the one battle that actually mattered.
• Attention Whore: Argus delights in two things - making people miserable and being center of attention.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Raksha methodically analyzes everything and everyone she sees. Her thoughts usually compose at least half of her post.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: All Deus Vult members in general and Seth in particular. Respect the fedora.
• Bait-and-Switch Comparison: After Ardus and the Crow acquired their starter pokemon, the latter notes that now she has a cute, if a little dense and headstrong, companion... And then goes on to ponder what her pokemon is like.
• Berserk Button: Tom Allen absolutely hates bullies of any kind and confronts them at every opportunity.
  • Out of universe, mentioning Ashes the Combusken - or simply ashes, for that matter - in general vicinity of Chaos makes him instantly fly into berserker rage.
• Broken Bird: Frequently, trainers get their pokemon after defeating their previous trainers, who horribly abused them - for example, Mahariel's tailow is this trope, distrusting any kind of people after being caught by Team Rocket, and going apeshit if contacted.
• Big Good: Eldes, the most active member of Orre's Development Fund, is this in Orre, guiding his organization at healing the shadow pokemon and actively resisting Cipher.
• Bomb Throwing Anarchist: Averted by Deus Vult, who are an organization of anarchist fossil-worshipping detectives. Some of them do, however, have little respect for authority, with Seth mocking police and the government for poor work and the Crow calmly telling khan Gonzam that his lineage and titles don't impress her.
• Black Vikings: Crow is a black italian mafia member. Deconstructed - she is a pariah among her family for being a bastard child and is barely tolerated. Who would have thought that criminals aren't nice people!
• Blood Knight: Jethro Pierce and his starter, Axel, both fit this trope. In fact, Axel even has a cliche that increases chance of critical hit after using the same move over and over.
• Butt-Monkey: "Rare pokemon" salesman from Ardus's quest just can't take a break.
• Cannibal Tribe: One of those inhabits the northern jungle of Orre and is encountered by the Crow. Aside from murdering people, they also worship the Helix.
• Cattle Baron: Henrich Monroe, who's described by Cole as amoral and slimey businessman. Seth assumes that it's just Cole being xenophobic again, but it turns out, that Monroe is actually even worse.
• Characterization Marches On: Due to her backstory being suddenly changed shortly after the character was written, Crow's personality was radically different at the beginning of her quest, and she quickly became more serious as it progressed - though still rather laid-back and quirky, especially compared to her more level-headed companions.
• Chosen One: The Crow turns out to be one.
• City Noir: Every city in a quest made by Chaos inevitably is going to be this trope, complete with The Mafia, crooked police officers and even clothes and cars straight out of The '40s.
• Colour Motif: Rozalia has green eyes, hair and clothes.
• Combat Pragmatist: After being beaten in a pokemon battle, Crow simply punches a Cipher commando in the face and then kicks her while she's down. Trainer's honor is overrated.
• Comfort Food: Doughnuts for the Crow. Donut mess with the detective!
• Complexity Addiction: Seth suffers from a bad case of this, constantly introducing needless complications into trivial things. When he had to find out a location of a plantation, he broke into governmental building and impersonated a worker in order to do it. Occasionally, he inverts in, going into complex situations having no plan at all.
• Clueless Detective: Because it's a start for everyone, each member of Deus Vult seems to suffer from this trope, but Seth - especially so, making outrageous conclusions and very strange leaps of logic at a drop of hat, without bothering to find out the information first.
• Cool Shades: Eldes never takes his shades off.
• Crazy Enough to Work: When Mahariel was surrounded by mighthyenas, Chaos advised her player to attempt to capture the pack leader with her pokeball to scare away the rest - an action, which would have very slim chance of success due to how catching works on the forum. Long story short, Mahariel became one mightyena richer that day.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Numerous characters, including the Crow and Seth, Allen, Leonard and Mahariel.
• Darker and Edgier: As a rule, quests are usually darker then games and especially anime, but to which degree, greatly depends on the DM.
• Damsel out of Distress: The Crow keeps getting captured and kidnapped. However, she has a great track record for breaking out and escaping.
• Death Is Cheap: According to the rules, any damage that is enough to kill a human in the real world, instead sends a character in the hospital with severe wounds. However, even this does not usually happen.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Rivals and antagonists do tend to join Schwarze's side, whether or not they were defeated in one-on-one battle or even if friendship was the intent in the first place.
  • She and N become close friends after she defeats him and stops from dividing Pokemon and humans in the Dream World Arc.
  • In Hans' situation there is a downplayed version. She fights him a number of times but the jerkass guy doesn't become her ally until the Dream World Arc, but only temporally. It's noteworthy that she never called Hans her friend and vice versa, but they both respect each other as trainers and rivals. However, that fact doesn't stop Hans from teasing Schwarze and the last one from throwing the Magmarizer right in his face.
  • In the Colress Arc, several of the antagonist join the League Bureau or the Church after the group foils their plan but averted with G and P who remains extremely loyal to their creator Colress.
• Depending on the Writer: Thanks to the sheer amount of different masters, each with their own outlook on the world of Pokemon, portayal of anything is inevitably going to vary greatlly between different quests. What might be a large city with extensive governmental structure in one quest might be a small rural town in the other.
• Delusionsof Eloquence: Tom loves to use big words and grandiose speeches. However, NPCs are usually not impressed by them.
• Downer Ending : Hey, kids! Turns out, when you try to stop the terrorist group without aid of police or any kind of plan, terrorists may succeed!
• Dream Land: Allen has a connection to it, occasionally venturing there. Dream world is a bizarre and twisted version of the real one, where laws of physics don't exist, and when Tom is stressed, it can turn into pure Nightmare Fuel.
• Dream Spying: Wei-Wei does that after discovering the Halls of Clairvoyance, seeing current events through the eyes - and feelings - of other people.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Sven gets unceremoniously killed off by nameless Mooks... Except not.
• Drives Like Crazy: Averted with the Crow, who's actually a good and careful driver, despite what one might think. Seth, however, believes otherwise and forbids her from ever taking the wheel when he's in the car out of fear for his safety.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Happens a lot in different quests before the tone and the characters are set. The Crow was much more playful and quirky before her biography was set, Ardus was way more arrogant and serious, but the worst offender is Sven. In his introduction, he was grim, tough, disliked talking too much and even threatened to torture a living being, now he's cracking jokes at every opportunity and giving others donuts and booze to make them feel better. Naturally, his changes were lampshaded.
• Epic Fail: Jet Pierce heads to an abandoned house to gather some silver dust from the resident bugs. He ends up burning down the house instead.
• Enemy Mine: Hans may unappreciate Schwarze's skills and lifestyle, but he was willing to put that aside in order to fight N and Dreamworld pokemon with Schwarze's help.
  • After Team Snagem makes the Crow an offer she can't refuse, they unite their forces against the villainous Cipher, in order to cut short their terrorist attack on Gateon.
  • Seth and Wei-Wei unite in order to destroy Henrich Monroe. Downplayed, however - they were never personal enemies and this mission is just the first of their adventures together.
• Evil Gloating: Lampshaded and exploited by the Crow. The Boss and Fake!Ardus insist on monologuing, which gives her opportunities to think of how to beat them.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: When the Crow and Ardus stumbled upon a deserted camp full of pokeballs, the Crow noticed that it's completely pointless to store them in boxes, when PC is a technology that most of the world uses. It takes mere moments for her to realize that PC is only availible to the law-abiding citizens, which tells a lot about the owners of the location they are in the middle of.
• Fan of the Past: Pierce is a fan of Wuxia, while the Crow - of Film Noir.
• Faux Affably Evil: Khan Gonzam might be a true believer in his cause or might not. Fact is, while he may pretend to be polite, he is an unrepentant murderer, who has little patience for failure.
• Fiery Redhead: Jethro Pierce is a male version of this trope.
• Foregone Conclusion: Crow's personal arc runs on this trope. There are fixed points that she is going to achieve no matter what. For example, she was always meant to found Deus Vult - the question was always simply how, when and why.
• Foil: Sven acts as this to the Crow. They both seem to have had difficult childhood and both started as criminals, they both are somewhat idealistic and passionate about their beliefs. Their beliefs themselves, however, are quite different. Sven is also more level-headed, while Crow's quirkiness sometimes borders on insanity.
  • Pastor Fernan acts as Foil to Seth, being more idealistic, compassionate and calm, compared to cynical and rash attitude that Witfield sports.
• Freudian Trio: Allen's party forms a trio - unusually, the protagonist is not The Kirk but The Spock.
  • The Spock: Allen himself. He's cold, rational to the point of sociopathy and the only thing that bothers him is his Revenge.
  • The McCoy: Kyle is the emotional one - fun-loving and simple (but not stupid), he often clashes with Allen's personality, not understanding why a fifteen year old boy can be so brooding.
  • The Kirk: Ruth, the team female, is the balanced one, showing both emotion and capability of unleashing snark upon people.
• Friendly Enemy: Subverted with the Crow and Khan - they are both very calm and polite towards each other and the Crow even respects his goal, but she can't accept his methods and thinks of him as a criminal, not a crusader, while Gonzam sends his people to kill her. The Crow and Sven, one of Gonzam's mooks, played it absolutely straight, however, which eventually resulted in Sven becoming her companion after going rogue.
• Future Slang: Pokecenter nurses tend to be called "Joys", whether or not they are part of Joy franchise. Or whether or not they're female.
• Gratuitous Italian: Expect to hear this from the Crow every few seconds or so. She also steals quite a few words from spanish, such as calling her team "amigos".
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil: Orr holds two villainous factions - sympathetically evil Team Snagem, largely composed of former desert settlers, who try to improve their living conditions, even if it means life of crime, and simply evil Cipher, who just want to Take Over the World (of course!). One of the snagems, Sven, takes great offense, when the Crow compares the two.
• Good Samaritan: Doctor Atkins heals Tom's coma with expensive drug treatment and does not charge a payment. Ruth insists that it's because he's this trope, while Tom is suspicious about his agenda.
• Guilt-Free Extermination War: Lampshaded and discussed by the Crow, who wonders what is the just thing to do with a tribe of savage cannibals, who worship Religion of Evil. Eventually she decides that she has no other real option than genocide, and she is not happy about it.
• Guns Are Worthless: When anyone worth shooting might have a 9 meter metal snake in his pocket, they are.
• Had to Be Sharp: Sven's excuse for becoming a criminal and a member of Snagem Raiders.
• Hates Being Alone: Believe it or not, Reshiram's major fear is being without its friends, specially Schwarze. Legendary Pokemon even said that it is the one most scared of loneliness due to its immortality.
• Healing Hands: N's speciality is healing. He even has a team of pokemon well known for their healing abilities. The only exception is pretty tough battler marowak, the rest of his party are typical bunch of the walking *Magic Antidote s
• Heel–Face Turn: The quickest and funniest example on the forum - Seth is hired by Monroe to get rid of Kel-Tagelm raiders that bother him. Five minutes later, Seth decides that Monroe is an asshole and he would rather help the tribals claim Monroe's plantations as their own.
  • Sven is a bandit and a member of Team Snagem - however, after a short day of Enemy Mine with the Crow and a vague possibility of You Have Failed Me by Gonzam, he decides to defect and run off with her. Must be that high charisma at work.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Moridin is a dog-lover and has an almost complete set of eeveelutions.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Cipher puts up a bounty on heads of Wei-Wei and Seth, leading to
• I Have Your Partner: Cipher captures pastor Fernan and Amita, attempting to stong-arm Seth and Wei-Wei into cooperation.
• I Just Want to Be Badass: As a child Fry was an outcast and orphan and often needed the help of others. In the main story he wants to be as powerful as possible and he won't have to rely on others to Become the most powerful trainer of Fire types.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Fry wants to be an unusual trainer like N, who can read Pokemon minds, or Schwarze, who has a powerful Reshiram on her team, but that's not where his talent lies.
• Indentured Servitude: Life on Monroe's plantations is not very different from slavery - and Wei-Wei's first mission is to end his reign. Seth joins her later.
• In Harm's Way: Jet's reason for joining Deus Vult. He's an adrenaline junkie.
• Insufferable Genius: Tom Allen just loves to shove his intellectual superiority in the face of others. Others are usually umimpressed and politely ask him to shut up - he eventually pisses of a police officer so much, that she threatens to lock him up.
• Jerkass:
  • Victor, the Starter Villain from Allen's quest, is a jerk of cosmic proportions. After having his charmeleon almost murder a girl's tiny zigzagoon, he claims it's her fault for not training him enough. Those actions earn him Tom's wrath.
  • Tom himself very much qualifies - he is extremely obnoxious, especially to his friends, and yet met nobody who he was pleasant with. He even called out his friends on rescuing him.
  • Hans: To other people, especially his friends and family - except for his sister Gretel, who he still insults.
• Kill It with Fire: Jet's reaction towards seeing a room being overrun with thousands of larvae is to suggest forgetting the reason they're there in the first place and just burning down the whole thing.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Eldes's attempts at humour are so bad that Ardus brings it up out loud. Eldes merrily agrees.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Schwarze's bagon Asuka. Despite her childish personality and immature behavior, she's very competent in battle
• Line-of-Sight Name: Method by which the Crow names all of her pokemon. Zexy's name is a shortened version of nearby printer's brand, while Dirty Harry got his after she spotted dirt on his fur. Ardus also picks it up, calling his nidoran after a neon sign he saw a minute earlier.
• Made of Iron: Pokemon, especially in battles, tend to be absurdly tough, able to withstand ridiculous amount of punishment. Outside of the battles, however, their toughness is usually downplayed - however, they are still usually portayed as made of harder stuff then humans.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Happens about every year and usually lasts a year too, the most recent one being Tears of Ice. The rewards for participating are quite solid, but many don't abandon their personal quests for a global quest with a different DM.
  • Deus Vult has one happening right now - and many more planned. It's called "Curse of the desert" and deals with scavenging the wonderous technology hidden in mysterious Jerusalem Complex.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: Twelve of the Litteras. N, Anthea and Comcordiaalso might be counted, too, since they are the prototypes.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The Helix runs on this trope. He might be a genuine benevolent god, who helps the Crow on her journey, sending her visions and constantly appearing wherever she goes... Or he might be just a simple fossil. All the miracles that are performed by him can be attributed either to the coincidences or to the fact that Crow is mentally unstable. "Magic" part seems much more likely, since visions Crow is seeing are beyond anything she might have imagined in drug-induced dreams, while Helix being a god worshipped by natives independently of her is too much of a Contrived Coincidence.
• Memetic Mutation: "Futility" and "decay" are a buzzword for anything that's wrong with the forum, it's inhabitants or quests - for example, slow gaming pace at summers.
  • All hail the Helix Fossil!
• Might Makes Right: Team Snagem's modus operandi.
• Mind Screw: Crow's entire experience in the cannibal caverns is a pure mindfuck. What is a dream? What is reality? Which part of her experience is caused by her psychosis? Does she really have divine help? Your guess is as good as ours.
• Mind Rape: Crow is subjected to it, being tortured by horrific visions shown to her by a psychic pokemon. While it does seem real to her at first, it fails to capitilize on her largest fears, so she manages to retain hope and sanity. Later, when outright fantastic elements appear, she realizes that it's all happening in her mind and managed to wake up.
• Mr. Exposition: The Helix Fossil acts as this to the Crow, showing her visions of Orre's history from the ancient times to the modern days.
• Musical Theme Naming: Tasks in Leonard's questlog have names taken from different old songs, such as "Baby, let's take you home" for a kidnapping case or "Back in the saddle" for dealing with rigged derby.
• Mutant: The Litteras are humans with pokemon DNA, created to look like human and possess the power of one pokemon type (G can create illusions due to her Ghost DNA, while G Jr. can levitate like Claydol and create Bone Blades like Cubone thanks to the Ground one etc)
• Mutual Kill: A variant happens in the battle between Schwarze and the Champion, where Schwarze's swallow manages to defeat opponent's talonflame, but immediately faints due to burn.
• Named After Someone Famous: Happens occasionally. For example, Chaos' poochyena is called Dirty Harry, while Skitty's slowpoke is named Forrest Gump. For a certain degree of "famous", both Allen and Chaos borrow names from Twitch Plays Pokémon.
• Naytheist: Sven of Team Snagem declares that gods don't exist, because no god would tolerate such a cruel world - despite existance of Arceus. Yulidi is of the same opinion and absolutely despises Arceus, considering him a false god.
• Never Accepted in His Hometown: Schwarze is one of the most experienced and powerful trainers of Kanto region. In Pallet, where most people are unaware of the existence of Team Plasma, Colress' creations, Dream World and Reshiram, she's a nobody.
• Never Live It Down: Chaos would like to remind you how an arbiter took his torchic away five years ago, going as far as to describe his current character having nightmares about her torchic being stolen from her In-Universe. Guess what happened - if only temporary - an hour later?
• Noble Bigot: Cole hates foreigners and is part of nationalistic gang, he also refers to native tribals as "savages". However, he's cool about hanging out - and actively helping - with Ardus and Fernan - both outlanders - because they seem okay to him.
• Noble Savage: Wei-Wei, despite being somewhat of a jackass. Her initial concept was essentially "Evil Pocahontas".
• Non-Indicative Name: Team Snagem. They're not as much of a team, more like a gang or an army - and their goal is reclamation of Orre, not petty pokemon theft.
• New Game Plus: Jim went through this, discarding his team, but retaining all of his inventory.
• No True Scotsman: Team Snagem claims that it's composed of little people, who fight against The Man. However, everyone who isn't a part of Team Snagem is a traitor to the people and government’s puppet, therefore deserving to be subjugated and ruled by Snagem. Sven even scornfully calls city dwellers philistines.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: Cipher admin Dakim meets Seth and Wei-Wei with a huge dining table.
  • Similarly, Gonzam of Nomads offers some exotic food to the hungry Crow. She refuses to touch anything.
• Oireland: Must exist somewhere, since both Kanto and Orre have plenty of oirish people in it.
• The Old Gods: The fossil gods that are worshipped by various tribes of Orre, including kel-tagelms. The Helix is one of them.
• Omniscient Council of Vagueness: Presides somewhere in Orre and manipulates current events in their favour.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. There are two bulbasaurs on the forum, belonging to Ami and Raksha respectively, both called Lance, there has been two torchics named Yankee (one in the honour of another) and a couple of mons called Shadow - current one being mightyena belonging to Lakena.}
• Permanently Missable Content: After generation shifts, if a mon lost an access to an attack in the games, he can no longer learn it on the forum as well - for example, no mightyena can learn double edge anymore.
• Physical God: Lord Helix, an omanyte and an avatar of the Helix. He's not all-powerful, but he's certainly a god and certainly in flesh.
• Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Members Deus Vult, sans Raksha, don't seem to be doing any detective work at all, with Ardus being busy with bringing down gangs by using force, Crow being on the run and Wei-Wei being, well, Wei-Wei. Thankfully, it has changed - their first mission involves invertigation of strange weather, unearthing secrets of the past... And beating up terrorists.
• Police Are Useless: In Orre, because they are outgunned, outnumbered and largely corrupt.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Henrich Monroe is a greedy magnate with shady dealings, who practices Indentured Servitude which is basically like slavery. He's also very, very racist towards natives and considers them an animal. A special effort was made by Chaos to make him utterly unlikable bad guy.
• Pokémon Speak: Sometimes. In some quests pokemon do speak that way, but in some, like the ones mastered by Hanto or Chaos, they growl, squeak and make other animal noises.
• Powered Armor: Cipher terrorists sport powered suits.
• Precious Puppy: Reshiram's usual disguise is a form of the cute white blue-eyed vulpix.
• Pretentious Latin Motto: "Deus Vult", which doubles as agency's name.
• Private Detective: Deus Vult is an entire organization of them. It's actually required for the members to dress in the suits and hats.
• Psycho Electro: An Virra, electric gym leader of Kanto. She's absolutely, murderously nuts and is Token Evil Teammate to the Kanto League.
  • Wattson is a Downplayed example. He's not a psycho, just Crazy Is Cool.
• Rabid Cop: Detective Brannigan from Tom's quest really likes to throw accusations around, but doesn't insist on suspect's guilt when it's pointed out that the accusations she pulls out of her ass don't have any evidence behind them.
• Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Somewhat literally. After seeing Crow's table manners, Sven in despair asks her if she even can wear dresses. She proudly answers "no" and preemptively shoots down idea of high heels.
  • When she reveals that she likes espeons - pink pokemon that evolve through Power of Love - Sven bursts out laughing and absolutely mocks her for having a girly side.
• "Reason You Suck" Speech: Seth delivers a very unexpected one to Eldes, calling him out on his belief that promises of money can buy everybody and his view on humans as resources. If Eldes was affected, he did not show it.
  • Crow delivers a long-winded and absolutely brutal speech to Rozalia that explains why he fails as a human being. His mistreatment of his pokemon has somehow earned him a strong and diverse team, but having strong pokemon makes him neither a good trainer, nor a good person.
  • Crow also delivers a bizarre version, more like "Reason I suck" speech, to her Enemy Without.
• Reformed Criminal: Flashbacks reveal that Crow wasn't always the most law-abiding citizen - she is either this trope or Boxed Crook. Either way, she had criminal past and was part of a criminal family.
• Retcon: First foundation of Deus Vult was retconned out, thus making Crow's remarks about having friends in Pyrite and being head of a little organization very weird in retrospect, as well as Allen's repeated invocation of organization's name.
• Revenge: What Tom Allen is absolutely obsessed with - the only reason he lives is to find people who killed his parents, and he has no goals or ideals that are not directly tied to his vengeance.
• Rightful King Returns:
  • Gonzam the Nomad of Team Snagem is the rightful heir to the khanate of Orre, which is ruled by colonists from seaside after the line of kings has died out in massive massacre. He is crowned khan of Orre and Team Snagem and wants to restore the khanate of desert settlers, which are currently under the government of Orre.
  • Also N of Team Plasma.
• Rite of Passage: Wei-Wei spends 24 hour in a desert as her passage into adulthood.
• Saintly Church: Johto's Church of Enlightment, represented in Sheevhar's quest by pastor Fernan.
• Samus Is a Girl: John Galt turned out to be the Crow using a false identity. It was extremely obvious, yet absolutely no one saw that coming.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: The way Victor continues to get away with his crimes receiving only as much as a slap in the wrist, which shows Pallet's police force in a different light than how they were shown when Tom talked with the captain himself.
• Ship Tease: Numerously, between Seth and Wei-Wei, Seth and Crow, Crow and Sven.
• Shout-Out: After hearing Gonzam's backstory, the Crow propositions to rename his organization into "Great Khans".
  • Upon meeting Ardus, Dot cracks a joke about how "Lannisters always pay their debts".
  • Who is John Galt?
• Silent Snarker: Leonard's gastly, Richard, can't produce human speech, but he's quite capable of telling his trainer what exactly he thinks about licking his enemies.
• Small Girl, Big Gun: As if goddamned charizard, arcanine, meganium and yanmega were not enough on Schwarze's side, now there's Reshiram, which is itself one of the Olympus Mons
• Small Name, Big Ego: Fry always claims to be the best trainer of Fire types, but never seems to succeed in any of tournaments and major trainer battles.
  • The Alligator gang claims to be the kings Pyrite. Meanwhile in the real world, they are a bunch of overgrown bullies, who only prey on the weak, and criminal-wise they were on the very bottom of the food chain until they got the shadow pokemon. And even then, they couldn't control them long enough.
• Spell My Name With An ß: Weiß.
• Smoking Is Cool: Seth, Crow and Jet all smoke. They also drink.
• Spirit Advisor: Wei-Wei is guided through her journeys by the spirit of her father.
• Split Personality: Moridin and Mortis are completely different people (who even have different genders) that happen to share the same body.
• Starter Villain: Everybody gets one before moving on! Ardus has faced Alligators, a street gang with a grudge against him, Allen's foe was Victor - resident jerkass, who might or might not be be a pokemon murderer, while Mahariel fought a gang of Evil Poachers
• Stand Your Ground: Ardus and his comrades are trapped in the attic of Golden Road house, and berserk shadow pokemon are rushing to kill them. Luckily, police is already on the way and there's a very convenient choke point on the stairs... What happens next is considered In-Universe by people to be a Moment of Awesome.
• Stepford Smiler: Schwarze acts this way at times, as Molly and Reshiram note that she hides her pain from her friends.
• Suspiciously Apropos Music: Happens in Qasar's quest, where radios play songs that either hindlight or foreshadow something in his journey.
• Super Prototype: Played with. N's inherent ability, Wave Breaker, just happens to be super effective against next generation of Colress' mutants, although G notes that it would probably be fairly damaging against ordinary humans and pokemons as well.
• Super-Soldier: Like all the Litteras, N has enhanced abilities based on one of Pokemon types.
• Team Pet: Reshiram for Schwarze Taube and for the entire group because he's always in his vulpix form. The few times we see his true form in the story were in the last chapter of the Dream World Arc, when he battled N's Zekrom, and later confronted Kyurem in the Colress Arc finale, summoned by the Saint Monarch Olivia, on the board of the flying Ark of the Saints, the quest adaptation of the Plasma Frigate.
• Teens Are Monsters: Rozalia's backstory involved him being beaten to death by his peers, for little reason. This hindlights the world he is originally from as Crapsack World, while the one he travels to after death as significantly better one.
• That Reminds Me of a Song: Leonard's gastly, Richard, is capable of singing some songs (generally 50s-60s hits), which he frequently does during the road trips, leading to this trope.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Hans' default attitude towards Schwarze.
• Theme Naming:
  • All of Mahariel's mons names end with "-el".
  • All the quests made by Chaos have names of olds songs and noir films.
  • The first destination of Deus Vult agency is a place called Jerusalem Complex. What are the odds?
• Turned Against Their Masters: Ocasionally, shadow pokemon can become berserk, attacking anyone or anything that happens to be near. Usually, the nearest thing happens to be their master. Alligators learned this the hard way, when all of their shadow pokemon attacked them at once.
• The Prankster: Reshiram loves putting pranks to N and Schwarze
• The Rival: Hans, Weiß, Emily, Theodor "T" Rex and sometimes Fry to Schwarze.
• The Team: The Crow was voted in as The Leader of the group. She's somewhat heroic, if there's dark streak in her. Seth is The Lancer. He second guesses Crow, undermines her leadership and acts as her foil - they are similiar, yet very different. Jet Pierce isTheBigGuy. Hiss primary motivation seems to be to fight a good fight and kick a lot of terrorist ass. He's not even that interested in the reward. Raksha is the sole normal person in the group and the only one who can actually form coherent thoughts, so she naturally fills The Smart Guy role. Her being exceptionally intelligent is just a bonus.
• Technical Pacifist: Schwarze and N certainly aren't afraid of dishing out violence should the need arise, but given their rather vocal opposition to the pokemon battles, they merely do it to protect their friends and never with the intention of actually harming anyone, even Colress and his creatures.
• Terrorists Without a Cause: Cipher doesn't seem to have any goal beyond intimidating Orre into submission.
• Token Minority: Two of them. Crow is a black woman (with very confusing heritage), while Wei-Wei is native american.
• Training from Hell: Schwarze's group training during the Colress Arc is very tiring, but effective. However, Ritchie knows that the "hell" part can be unhealthy and dangerous for them, especially Fry, and keeps an eye on it to prevent any escalations.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: Crow's flashbacks usually start with the words she heard last.
• Unfortunate Names: Ardus. Lampshaded by Dot, who makes a point of calling him Anus when he's being an asshole. No wonder he later decides to be known by the name Seth later.
• Unstoppable Rage: Every once and then shadow pokemon enter berserk state, when they attack anyone or anything (sometimes, including themselves) they can reach. Wild shadow pokemon have Unstoppable Rage nearly as their default state.
  • Crow enters one, when she sees Sven's brain being eaten while he's still alive. She enters it again once she realizes that she's being mind raped and none of last horrific events are real.
• Unreliable Narrator: Crow and Seth both share one trait - their biographies as written in their character sheets are either Blatant Lies or are missing very important parts.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: Snagballs, Team Snagem's signature devices that allow non-wild pokemon to be captured, are unavailible to the player characters.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Seth and Crow, lampshaded by Raksha, who calls them "mortal friends".
• Villain with Good Publicity: Henrich Monroe is viewed as humanitarian and a hero by the majority of Orre's citizens. He's... not.
• Violation of Common Sense: Nobody in Deus Vult trusts the Crow - some think that she is The Mole, some believe that she lacks leadership skills, some - both. Naturally, she is elected the leader by her peers.
• The Voiceless: Pokemon are usually unable to speak, with a notable exception of Schwaurze's Reshiram. Leonard's gastly is also able to speak... sometimes.
• Weather Dissonance: Happens all the time in Orre's south, causing both awesome rains that have turned the desert fertile and horrible sandstorms. Deus Vult is sent to investigate.
• Weak, but Skilled: Fry's abilities are mundane compared to the other three members of group, but by normal standards he is still a powerful one. His true strength lies with his quick thinking and unusual tactics, making him the sole member of group to defeat the most number of the Litteras
  • Wei-Wei is one of the physically weakest characters on the forum, but she's incredibly fast and agile.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Sven calls out the Crow on stealing Helix Fossil from the museum. When she retorts that she merely took it for safekeeping, because otherwise it would fall in the hands of the Cipher, he reminds her that she shows no intention of ever returning it, but instead plans on bringing it back to life.
• What You Are in the Dark: Crow manages to take down a tribal who nearly killed her. He's lying defenseless before her, and she is torn between letting him live and finishing him out of revenge. After heavy inner struggle, she finally decided not to kill him.
• Why Did It Have To Be Fire: Bizarrely for a trainer with a fire starter, the Crow is becomes uncomfortable even after seeing open fire from afar, as shown in her battle with Rozalia. That appears to be primary reasons for her teaching Zexy to use heat wave as opposed to flamethrower. An actual forest fire causes her to have a Screw This, I'm Outta Here moment, despite her usual bravery.
• Wicked Cultured: Khan Gonzam might be Well-Intentioned Extremist, but he's a villain nonetheless. However, he is still very polite, educated and intelligent.
• Wretched Hive: Orre in general is a country-wide wretched hive full of criminals, crooked cops, bought politicians and simple jerkasses. Sheer number of different criminal empires that operate in the region staggers - Team Snagem, Team Aqua, Team Magma and Cipher all actively make this place worse, with Cipher being the most horrible ones. Pyrite, meanwhile, is considered wretched hive even by Orre's standards.
• Worthy Opponent: Schwarze to Hans and Weiß.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Monroe used to be useful to Eldes and his Fund. Now he's not and Eldes dropped elephant-sized hints to Seth that he can deal with Monroe however he likes.
• Young Gun: Fry is rather reckless when he is first introduced. Thanks to Ritchie's training and his confidence issues, he grows out of it.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Kitten White is poisoned and must find rare gems for her poisoner to give her doses of antidote.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Snagem Raiders. Sven and Gonzam claim that they are just people, who want to take back the nation that was taken away from them, while everyone else views them as bandits and raiders, who are half the reason Orre is a Crapsack World. The other half is Cipher, who everyone agrees is evil.
• Zeerust: Johto's (and sometimes Orre's) technology in quests run by Chaos is somewhat strange - for example, Leonard uses a pokedex that runs on vacuum tubes.

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