We Are All Pokemon Trainers Discussion

The anniversary date was an "ideal but not definite" — it depends on how long RP!Tagg is on vacation, and the pace Author!Tagg takes care of his plans for the vacation.

And I definitely think the flow would be distinctly better if the party happened first, now that I've been thinking about it.

I'm fine with either of Tagg's plans.

Personally I'd prefer after the party, because that gives me a better shot at having RP!Blitz involved. Plus that means potential for an auric cyborg to go on a rampage in an Iron base, and that's always fun to watch =v

But whatever works best overall!

I heard rampage!

I like rampage! :D

I... hm... if Tagg'd prefer the second or it doesn't get in the way too much, let's go with that?

Also I'll probably be closing this year's Mon Census in about a week, so be sure to add your characters if you haven't yet and desire to do so!

Okay so I had a idea recently. As anyone in the chat knows about my "Bad Ideas With Silence™". Basically the idea was a new narrative way to get Mega-Stones and Key-Rings.

The long and the short of it is a figure in Kalos who spends their time living in a cabin in the woods forging Key-Rings and collecting stones that they will give to trainers who come to visit them, but only after those trainers have proven themselves in trials to show they are capable, truly want, and possibly even deserve the stone and the power of Mega-evolution.

The figure itself I don't have a name for but I do have some basics down, largely that they are very eccentric and might not be human. They look human but we're not certain if they are human or not, considering they seem somewhat mystical.

This is all I have currently, criticisms of the idea would be appreciated so I could figure out what to change.

OK, I'd hate to pop a question like this about my characters specifically here, but it's pressing me enough I'd like the whole community's imput.

Recently, I've been kinda phasing out Team Umbra and several related characters, in preparation for them to eventually be mostly retired once Umbra and Ammy's wedding finally happens later this year, and have been introducing a bunch of new characters as replacements of sorts. Narratively I feel like this is a good idea, as starting fresh with a mosty new cast has given me a ton of ideas, wheras I'm mostly done with Team Umbra's stories. In terms of emotionally, however... I would be fine with it, but I feel like some of the new characters have been around a while and I can't get people to care? IDK, they might need more focus or more time to simmer, but it worries me still, and I'd like advice on how to handle all this, since I'm getting the feeling most of you just want TU back and I'm torn on that myself.

edited 25th Jan '18 10:13:36 AM by Umbramatic

As the other person who introduced a whole set of new characters after the end of 20K, here's my input:

- There's no need to make anything Absolutely Final. Remember, I tried to do the same sort of absolutely final retirement with Kai, and then the Alola arc passed and suddenly she's back in the fray and particularly in the middle of a new huge personal arc. To a lesser extent, Skye and Diane were the same way — they're a bit more of a background presence nowadays minus the Yangverse plot, but I certainly have things for their future laid out.

- You've introduced a lot of characters in a short amount of time. This point is a bit more of a cautionary one. For me, it was just one new team that became relevant all at once. For you, you started fresh again once the Entralink arc hit, and also there's all of the Enforcers as well. That's... a lot. I've always had the "only introduce as many characters as you know you can handle" warning every time e.g. a newbie comes asking if it's okay to introduce a second PC, and it still stands to mention here. Having 10-15 characters running around is a lot to handle, and it inherently means that their development is going to be a lot slower than with 5 characters over the course of as many years. It's difficult both as an author to maintain, and as an audience to keep track of. And especially, it can be overwhelming, and we all know how badly overwhelming yourself tends to go.

- Old characters can make it easier to integrate the newer ones. We like things we're familiar with, that's just human nature. Having older characters to fall back on may sound like it's taking away from the newer ones's screentime, but that's really only the case if you're trying to keep them completely separate, distinct groups. Let them integrate a bit. Try taking the time to just write little scenes between one of your old characters and one of your new ones, to allow for more familiarity between them. Fanfic mode is only truly dangerous and unfun when you're forced to move your plots along through it; when used as simple idle filler for your characters to familiarize themselves with each other, it tends to be way more enjoyable as a writer.

I feel like I do have more advice, but I can't think of it because it is 10:30 in the morning. For now, these are good things to keep in mind.

Key Stones

I do have concerns about introducing a character for the purpose of distributing Key Stones; my main worry being it homogenizes the narrative. This could be hypocritical given I introduced the Ersatz Alliance in the first place, so I should further explain: while I am not quite worried about "proliferation" of special items, I do feel that any in-story method of obtaining one should generally operate on It Only Works Once. (ie, maybe one person can simply buy a Thing, but then the next person needs to rap battle for it, or fetch-quest a shipment, or work a temp job, or battle the Inventory Control System, or...)

I am less concerned about them as a source for simply Mega Stones.

Characters

Bittersweet's advice sounds about right; adding in two related tips:

- Not everybody needs equal screentime all the time. Have you ever tried playing a Pokemon game with an entire box of active mons, keeping them all leveled in sync? That becomes a slog really fast. And sometimes you simply don't have ideas. (Shoot, Cephas didn't really even have a personality until this past Christmas.)

- Limit your number of plots in progress. From a project-management standpoint, things usually get done faster if you keep a small limit on your in-progress plots. (I wouldn't advise going above 3.) This does mean "don't start something new just because you are blocked on your current items," which can be a bit discomforting to get used to.

Thanks Tangent and Bitters. For now my goal/plan is:

• Don't introduce any new human characters not already planned publicly or privately until next arc at least, and space out the planned ones as much as possible. (Somebody please slap me if I try otherwise.)

• Try not to focus on giving everyone equal screentime, especially if they aren't supposed to be that important beyond a supporting role or a character arc or something. (eg. the Enforcers... for now)

• Try to get my characters from diffrent groups to intermingle more, in both fanfic mode posts and plots.
  • Somewhere down the line start mixing/shuffling my cast herds a bit.

• Only focus on three or less plots at a time when I can.

I might think of some others when I ponder it more/when people give me more tips.

I also am starting to think my self-doubt here is being triggered by being generally kinda depressed, so once the Yangverse plot is done I might step back to focus on other stuff and just do the AU plot and a thing with Pippi RP-wise

edited 26th Jan '18 12:18:51 PM by Umbramatic

Silent post

Silent: You know my involvement in this. :P

Aaaaanyway, me and the other people in the Alliplot chat cooked up a proposal for a new ability, one that the Dark Hide boss the group is fighting probably has. The thing is, it's intended to stay almost completely out of the reach of our heroes' Pokémon, being the exclusive domain of bosses and especially Out Of Context Bosses.

We call it:

Now what does this meaaaaan? Well, even though he is not quite a Pokemon, let us use Mindscape!Grima as an example.

Grima:    Woohoo!   

He would obviously be Dark/Dragon, so that would mean Fairy moves would be 4x-effective against him, right? Riiiiight? Not with the Outsider ability, which sets all his normal weaknesses to neutral damage.

Grima: -tanks a Moonblast-    Suck it, Fairies!   

Sounds broken, right? It kinda is. But not entirely - Outsider remaps a Pokemon or Glitch's (or Grima's) weaknesses to its relevant lore! Like, say, Grima's weak to a special sword, right? Blade, sword, and razor attacks should do the trick.

Grima: -takes a Solar Blade from Artoria-    THAT HURT MORE THAN IT SHOULD HAVE   

But again, this ability is not meant to be actively available to the protagonists except mabye in very rare circumstances with permission; it almost solely exists as a way to make boss fights more clever and difficult for our heroes. Dark Hide, ideally, will not be the only boss to have this ability; Mobius at least has more Outsider bossmons in the wings...

But thoughts, questions,suggestions?

On another note

First, Human!Molph◊ by essyl/prayforelves!

Second, a bust shot of Leeya◊ by Mari!

Third, Kan'al'coel◊ by starsoverheaven!

Thoughts? :3

edited 27th Jan '18 10:40:35 AM by Umbramatic

Random Idea that may never see the light of the sun

So uh

Apparently y'all forgot about a thing in GSC, It's maybe because of The Berenstein Effect, It sure is going to be the cause IRP if it ever happens

So uh

TIME MACHINES

aka: that one place you never went to during your normal playthrough of Gold/Silver/crystal

So the idea was:

WHAT IF everyone in the world of Pokemon We Are All Trainers (I hope it's the good order) forgot about thoses time machines, and one day someone finds one in an old Pokemon Center back alley.

My idea being!

Back to the future plot but it's multiple time periods!

Sorta like the trilogy

Yeah sorta. A very simple draft of the plot being someone (maybe Phaz's father, because he's been mentionned once during the Space Arc (that one glorious Persterlog) and he's a mad-ish scientician) looting the tech and making it working but having to work their way back into the real present with some other peeps randomly teletimeported.

...Shenanigans ensues.

Outsider

I'm for it since the use of Delta to denote Out of Context Bosses when it doesn't make sense is a bad compromise, and also so long as it stays STRICTLY in the hands of Antagonists, like how enemy units in FE Fates have Point Blank, Divine Shield, etc. when there's no way to obtain them as heroes.

Silent!Post

@ Silent, re: Outsider: For the most part, yeah, your ideas make perfect sense. That said, the last part... kinda goes without saying. It's an Ability. Ergo, it would completely replace any other Ability the species would have anyway; a Pokemon with Outsider wouldn't have Levitate or Soundproof, it would have Outsider and that's it. Abilities don't really have "stacking" as an option, mechanically, that's what keeps them from becoming broken.

As for the time travel thing — that's not modifying anything, it's a canon feature of the G2 games. Remember how you had to go to a specific spot in the G2 Pokemon Centers in order to trade back to G1? That's literally called the Time Capsule. It's not a plot reference to any sort of media, it's literally just a time travel plot, which would be just as Pokemon-y as any other plot, just set in a different time period. And presumably any instances of going back to previous IRP events wouldn't be (permanently) interfered with, and even if they were, retcons are a thing we've done plenty of times in this RP without issue.

edited 26th Jan '18 8:44:10 PM by BittersweetNSour

Just thought I'd let you guys know that Chapter 54 of PMD: Reflecting Balance is finally up!

The new chapter can be found here, here or here.

What's good, homeboys?

Ya'll got a Discord or something I can speak to you in? Not about anything serious, don't worry!

Unless you don't want to put up with me again. In which case: Understandable, have a nice day.

There's a link in my sig!

Yeah, I had an inkling that was it. Wanted to be sure, just in case.

So. Robots.

Yeah, there's more of them running around lately. Yeah, there should be less of a focus on them. But just what exactly do we do about it?

We probably don't want an overfocus on straight-up robot shenanigans, that is obvious. That said, a moratorium on everything related to robots, AI, and cybernetics, Porygon-powered or otherwise, is not really reasonable. This discussion is on how to tone them down, not eliminate them.

But thoughts?

edited 28th Jan '18 7:00:05 PM by Umbramatic

Well I'm basically done adding them in. They serve more as mooks for my villain team, and narrative reasoning is because they don't want to use pokemon.

I'd say limit what the robots can do and make certain Pokemon are still at the forefront, make them mooks or if you have to make them more unique, make them Rotom or Porygon run. But make it clear that they aren't going to be a common occurrence or serve some sort of narrative purpose.

My replicants were approved as Porygon run infiltration machines for a team that doesn't want to use pokemon, their narrative purpose is quite clear and they won't be sticking around majorly once all is said and done. Their abilities are limited and as demonstrated against actual pokemon they have difficulty.

So to TLDR. Give them clear (approved) narrative purpose but make sure the narrative isn't all around them, make sure pokemon are still at the forefront.

^Ditto Silence.

In a world with Porygon, Poké Balls, and various future tech, robots would clearly exist. But they need to be controlled by Pokémon, and they need to have clear drawbacks (EMPs and stairs, anyone?)

edited 28th Jan '18 7:37:25 PM by SwiftSeraph

Re: Cybernetics: Those are a thing that exist IRL. As long as they're just limb replacements even if they're more advanced than we currently have, I don't think those need special approval. Anything further should probably at least be workshopped in chat.

Re: Robots, echoing what Silence and Swift said.

Swift: >Stairs

also Silent!Post