POPULAR: Simple Questions, Simple Answers

[Greninjaman]

Ah, @Greninjaman, you just said a few posts ago that there were six pokémon you wanted to write in, so I was working off of that. Nevertheless, you clearly want to write in ten pokémon, and there's nothing stopping you from doing that.

I think we might be more able to help you if you explained what your goals are. We know you're rewriting the anime, but not what constitutes the rewriting. Are you writing this as if it were an episodic TV show or is it more of a novelisation? You want to write ten pokémon in Ash's party — are you going to have him cycle them out for the same reasons as he did in the show, or not? I seem to recall you were prepared to write this with Ash travelling solo, without Misty and Brock as companions, so I can only assume you're prepared to make serious changes. Of course, if you want to make lots of broad, significant changes in the rewrite I can't help but suggest that you consider whether you might enjoy writing an Original Trainer Journey.

In any case, regarding handling ten pokémon the fact is, if you want those ten pokémon to all be around at once and to be important characters then that's going to be hard. You can do it, it's just very challenging to do well! It comes down to this, though: splitting the 'screentime' evenly between characters means that the more characters you have, the less time each of them will have overall. Eventually there is a tipping point where focus episodes are too sparsely spread or broad episodes have too little time per character. Where that point is depends on individual preference.

The other thing I'm wondering about is why you want to write in all ten pokémon at once. After all, each time one left the party in the anime was one of the most significant moments for both plot and character. What's the reason for this plan?

I'm not sure I can give you tips that will definitely help you, especially without more information. But having a good balance of chapters focusing on each character and by tracking the time spent on them you might be able to keep them equally significant. You may also want to consider whether every pokémon needs to be really important. After all, they are kept mostly in their balls in canon, by way of the premise.

In any case, best of luck to you with figuring this out.

Sorry about that. I have been going back and forth on this for a long time. I am really sorry.
You know, in reading this, I probably am better off doing just six... my plan was to take each episode and rewrite them to how I would do them, adding episodes when needed.

You are right, the more characters there are, the harder it will be to give time and focus to them...

One benefit to only having six Pokemon is that you can more easily and effectively develop those Pokemon over the course of the entire journey. I mean I do that in the games as well in thinking about. I understand my desire now. I tend to create a team and stick with it in the games. I want to emulate that in my story. Plus in thinking about it, Ash didn't really use Muk, Krabby, and Primeape at all (Heck, the writers should not have bothered giving Ash Primeape if the next episode it appears in is the last episode it appears in. Same with Krabby).

I do greatly apologize for the constant changing my mind. I shall still use the idea that @Misfit Angel provided (making a chart to track Focus Episodes).

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Glad to hear you've figured out a plan.

On the subject of Ash giving away pokémon, I have never really had a problem with that. I think it's good that the anime had examples of untrainable pokémon, and pokémon that wanted to do something with their lives besides battling. Ash's willingness to let his pokémon leave him for their own best interests is pretty much the only one of his character traits that I actually really like.

 

[Greninjaman]

Glad to hear you've figured out a plan.

On the subject of Ash giving away pokémon, I have never really had a problem with that. I think it's good that the anime had examples of untrainable pokémon, and pokémon that wanted to do something with their lives besides battling. Ash's willingness to let his pokémon leave him for their own best interests is pretty much the only one of his character traits that I actually really like.

Yeah. Krabby, muk, and Primeape are omitted. I'm still getting Caterpie, just so Ash can take on Brock.

 

[Greninjaman]

How do you interpret this? It's the same thing with the anime. Why use a big machine when the person you are trading with is right next to you?

The way I have it is that they don't need the trade to evolve.
Will that work?

 

[Ambyssin]

Of course it can work. This is fan fiction. Which means you're welcome to interpret your own ideas. You think having to trade 'mons to get them to evolve is silly and wouldn't make narrative sense? Then ignore it. I'm pretty confident that trade evolutions are passed over in the majority of trainer fanfics.

 

[diamondpearl876]

Merged, and if you have a broader question/concern about game mechanics, please use the existing threads about such topics. Thanks.

Anyway, I tend to view trading evolution to be situational, where trading happens because it's in the pokémon's best interest. A trainer with a haunter, say, doesn't really have the time or means to care for a gengar because gengar are notoriously the most difficult ghost-types to handle and/or the trainer was in over their head when they caught it as a gastly to begin with. So they trade the haunter/gengar away to a trainer who can take proper care of it. Just as an example.

 

[canisaries]

I see no reason why trading evos couldn't be retconned to be something different in fics. Even in Karrablast and Shelmet's case, the Pokédex doesn't mention anything about trading, but instead "evolve when they receive electrical stimulation" in the same place. It would make perfect sense for them to just evolve when struck with an electric-type attack.

For the mon that have held items, you might as well just consider them the same as the held items that cause evolution upon leveling up, or even simple elemental stones. For the ones that that evolve from trading alone: I'd either pretend they had a level cap, or come up with some held item with the same effect.

In any case, there are a lot of things in the Pokémon games that require compromises or creative solutions on a fanfic author's part. One simple case I've worked with would be how Inkay evolves. In the Pokémon world, people probably wouldn't have a damn clue as to what "hold the 3DS system the game is playing on upside down" would mean, so a quick fix is to just have the mon in question "level up" while upside down, however the author may choose to execute the "leveling up" action.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

I like to interpret trade evolutions as being "evolve during an extreme change in life circumstance" with a new human partner being the easiest and least awful way to achieve this.

 

[Greninjaman]

Hi guys! I am here with a very interesting problem (nothing to do with the anime rewrite). It is about a crossover story, where a character with no experience with computers (or technology for that matter [Like a character from the Golden Sun games]) goes into the Pokemon World. How do I work such a character into the story since Pokemon has technology (Poke Balls, PCs, healing machines...)?

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

@Greninjaman, I would like to help you with your problem, however you ask a very broad question! Your entire story is a crossover, and your question is essentially asking how to implement that at the most basic level. It's hard for other writers to answer questions like that fully since it involves first making assumptions about the nature of your story in order to tell you how you could write it in the first place, and because it involves talking about an extensive topic (i.e. every conceivable consideration when introducing a character to an unfamiliar setting) with very wide parameters.

I will give you the following suggestions as a starting point:

• Your Golden Sun character could treat advanced technology with the same attitude as they do magic.
• Your character could learn about technology the same way that children, the elderly and people from isolated communities do in our world. Pokéballs aren't exactly rocket science.
• Your character could rely on a friend to handle technology for them.
• You could try reading stories with the same trope to get a feel for how one might handle the issue.

Good luck.

 

[Greninjaman]

@Greninjaman
I will give you the following suggestions as a starting point:

• Your Golden Sun character could treat advanced technology with the same attitude as they do magic.
• Your character could learn about technology the same way that children, the elderly and people from isolated communities do in our world. Pokéballs aren't exactly rocket science.
• Your character could rely on a friend to handle technology for them.
• You could try reading stories with the same trope to get a feel for how one might handle the issue.

Good luck.

Could you elaborate?

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

@Greninjaman, how do you want me to elaborate? I don't see what might be confusing you.

 

[Greninjaman]

@Greninjaman, how do you want me to elaborate? I don't see what might be confusing you.

An example for each one.
So that I have a basic idea of what you mean. It's not that any of them are confusing.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

@Greninjaman, I feel like my bullet points already are simple examples in and of themselves, but I'll do my best to help you understand better.

• Your Golden Sun character could treat advanced technology with the same attitude as they do magic.

If the character is familiar with magic, have them treat pokéballs as a magic item and expect the rules for them to be similar to the rules for magic. If not, then have their attitude be "it's magic, I don't understand it."

• Your character could learn about technology the same way that children, the elderly and people from isolated communities do in our world. Pokéballs aren't exactly rocket science.

In real life, people who don't understand technology must be taught how it works and how to use it. Just treat this person that way.

• Your character could rely on a friend to handle technology for them.

This really is as simple as having another protagonist deal with all technology for them.

• You could try reading stories with the same trope to get a feel for how one might handle the issue.

I don't have any good examples of stories about fantasy characters managing in a technological setting, but you may find resources such as this to be helpful.

I hope that's more clear for you.

 

[Greninjaman]

@unrepentantAuthor: Thanks.

 

[Cresselia92]

So, I have a quite interesting question: what's everyone's opinion in breaking past some game's mechanisms? For example, having a Pokémon being able to use more than four moves, having Abilities with some general upgrades (like, for example, a Pokémon with Illuminate being able to blind a Pokémon and/or use Flash or other "light" attacks without "wasting" a moveslot) and/or having multiple Abilites and dex-specific traits (kinda like in the PMD series)? This also includes having a Pokémon able to learn some attacks that they aren't normally able to learn, in a way not too different from event Pokémon with special moves.

I'm currently trying to polish some last details for the prelude of my fic, and I would like to hear what the general opinion is, as one of my planned Pokémon will have a whopping 20+ attacks (granted, it is a god-like Legendary Pokémon, but still).

 

[Iggy]

I'm of the mind that breaking the four-move limits is no issue (This topic discusses how to deal with game mechanics, you'll find more opinions there). I have this depend on the specie, though, so don't count on a Caterpie to know much. Other Pokémon in Two Perfect Cowards, I'm looking at you Larvitar, has massive potential and could learn a lot of moves. A certain Slowking in my story, however, knows ALL the moves a Slowking could learn and is even able to teach them to other Pokémon, providing the move is available to the Pokémon.

You could have said Pokémon have a certain specialty in moves they frequently use (thus very effective) and moves they rarely use deal less damage.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

The four-move restriction is a game mechanic rather than an absolute law of the setting. However, having enormous movepools should require serious training. I don't think mastery of several high-exertion combat techniques should come easily! I also don't see anything wrong with pokémon being able to follow simple commands to exercise their power outside their normal move range such as "cut that tree" or "burn that paper" or "punch that wall."

 

[Beth Pavell]

As a rule of thumb I say any mechanic solely there to facilitate gameplay can be ignored.

But the move limit is a curious example. Ignoring for a moment whether it makes sense or not, from a storytelling perspective it's not always useful to allow access to lots of moves. I find that four is too restrictive, especially in the context of a pokémon that's going to make multiple appearances. There are only so many different ways you can combine four moves to make interesting strategies in battle. Six tends to be a good balance between having plenty to choose from, and having so many that strategies become meaningless.

When it comes to breaking movesets and/or Abilities, I would suggest the best way to do it sparingly. I've done both before now, but I wouldn't make a habit of it. On the one hand, you're not novelising Smogon battles (Not least because that would be utterly dull); on the other, if you monkey around with the setting too much you could end up battling against your reader's expectations.

 

[Everhoid]

So. I need someone to give me advice on a story element relating to catching and owning.

An idea I’ve had for a while is if it would be okay to give Pokémon trainers ‘lesser’ legendaries. Eg. Phione, Diancie, Eon duo, Regis, Victini, etc.

This also comes with the backstory that there are more of these Pokémon out in the world.

For example, Diancie is regarded as somewhere between being a legend in old myth, but they are variants of Carbink that forms when a great number of Carbink migrate and do a ritual-ish thing.

Or Victini having been a normal Pokémon in ancient times, but now they are very endangered due to hunting them. Characters that would be closest to them would be conservationists (Rangers) or powerful trainers (usually Frontier Brain and above).


Is this bad? Would characters with lesser legendaries be too Overpowered?