 We're doing our ads at the beginning of this video. Today's show is sponsored by the Crystal Punk Kickstarter. Crystal Punk is a brand new 5e setting that combines dark fantasy and cyberpunk in order to create a unique world full of cultist corporations, evil guards, magic-fueled technology and, of course, all those edgy tropes to get your inner middle schoolers' heart pumping. Backing the project will earn you a PDF or hardcover that will come with tons of new races, subclasses, magitech equipment spells and a unique class for the setting called the Evolutionist. But hey, don't take my word for it. Crystal Punk is so confident you'll love their setting that they have the Evolutionist class, a short story and several test kits available on their Kickstarter. Click the link in the description below and pledge today. Crystal Punk. It's like rock candy, but don't feed it to your grandpa. Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappy and it's time to take a good look at the vicious and terrifying world of powerful, wandering monsters, child gambling and legalized dogfights. No, this isn't America's dystopian future. It's the wonderful world of Pokemon. But today, I won't be alone. We have a special guest who's an expert in most things Pokemon and D&D, a skill set that I assure you will be on full display as I read from the script that he wrote out for me when he proposed doing this video. Wow, Stuart. You look good today. Howdy, friendos. My name is Stuart. And for the past four years, I've been DMing a Pokemon campaign over on my channel called the Loading Crew. At the moment, it's the largest and most ambitious Pokemon campaign of its kind and, to my knowledge, it's the most popular. After you're done watching this video, be sure to head over to my channel where Davy and I will be talking about the best tips and tricks for running a great Pokemon campaign. Because, believe you me, just knowing how to run the system is half the battle. Running a satisfying campaign is something else. And in this video, we're going to go over a homebrew game called Pokemon Tabletop United, or PTU for short. We're going to talk about what you need to run the game, what makes PTU special and unique, and what some of the best tools are that you can use to help you run it. And you might be asking, why are we covering a homebrew system? Well, there's basically no official Pokemon campaign setting of any kind. There's Baby's First D&D game published in the 90s called Pokemon Junior, but that was discontinued after like one release. Even the Dragon Ball ZRPG lasted longer than that, and I didn't even know there was a Dragon Ball ZRPG. PTU is a system created by a group of unnamed developers, and all the materials needed are available on their website at PokemonTabletop.com. There's a handy little table with all the links you'll need to download and play the latest version of the game. The zip file contains all of the books and rules that you'll need in order to play. You might be intimidated by the amount of books and pages, but don't worry, that's what we're here for. Really, the most important PDFs are the Pokemon Tabletop United Core Book and the Pokedex, so make sure that you have them handy and nearby because you're gonna need them pretty often. The most important book, though, is the core. That'll function as your player's handbook and something of a DM's guide as well. This book seems incredibly daunting at first, but really, it's not as difficult as it seems. Unlike in D&D, where you pick a class and you level up and you are restricted by a very specific set of powers and abilities, you can pretty much pick up anything you want that you qualify for. You eventually start building arc types, and it's more like you're building a person rather than a template for an adventurer. There are classes per se, but the focus is mostly to grab the features that you want in each of them. The game is incredibly customizable and flexible, and it makes your growth as a character very organic. For example, you might start off as an ace trainer, but along your journey, you might decide that you want to pick up some cooking skills. So you take some levels in that class, and the food that you make can also buff your Pokemon during fights pretty well. Or maybe you start off as a hobbyist or a coordinator, but halfway through the campaign, you decide that it might be more fun to be a capture specialist. There's no built-in penalties for deciding to switch off. But if you're like me and you don't want to sit back and just watch your Pokemon do all the work for you, you can take one of the battle style classes. Just like in the anime where some trainers decide to abuse the animals directly, there are psychics who can use the power of their own latent psionics to make Pokemon attacks, hex maniacs for those of you who spend too much time on rule 34, aura users that can harness the power of their own aura into special attacks, or ninjas if you want to pretend that you're playing Naruto. And if that's all complicated for you, you can always just go straight fist to cuffs as a martial artist. Punch that dog, just hit it right in your face. Or you can mix and match, and while there are certain optimizations you can do, the sky's pretty much the limit here, as long as you meet the requirements to do it. A huge chunk of this book is just trainer classes, and if you're one of those people who like breaking games, this might be your ultimate playground. But that isn't the only thing. After all, what is a trainer without their Pokemon? Once you're done picking up your first class, you're gonna need to pick a starter Pokemon. You can choose to do the typical fire, water, or grass rotation, or you can skim through the pokedex and pretty much pick any basic evolution that's labeled as an underdog. Sorta. It's recommended that you don't allow ghost or steal types as your starters, but hey, you do you. They don't even need to evolve twice, or even one time. It depends on the GM, really. Pokemon and trainers operate on similar stats. Unlike the strength, dex, or wisdom of D&D, you have HP, attack, defense, special attack, special defense, and speed. Each Pokemon has a base to those stats, and each time you level up, you add one to pretty much any stat you want. And this is where we start getting into the shortcomings of the system. There's a lot, and I mean a lot, of bookkeeping. Not only do you need to keep track of the stats and abilities of your trainer, you've got to keep track of your Pokemon. And since Nintendo's marketing department has been drilling, gotta catch them all into your head since the early 90s, you're probably gonna have not just one or three character sheets, but probably more. And if you're my players, way more. However, fear not, friends, for there are tools out there to make keeping track of your Mons easier. If you plan on playing Pokemon for any amount of time, you will absolutely want to learn how to use Roll20's character creation options. I do have a video on that. All you gotta do is make an account on Roll20, and then you go ahead and create a game and make sure that you label it as a Pokemon tabletop United Game. Boot it up, bam. You probably saved yourself hundreds of hours of work and thousands of trees. MrBeast would be proud of you. Using Roll20 not only helps you keep track of your characters, but also pretty much streamlines combat. Because each Pokemon has a different set of moves, abilities, and stats, it can sometimes be overwhelming. Instead of keeping track of all that, Roll20 lets you click a button and plop out the damage. You can also set it up so that it automatically calculates the opponent's weaknesses and resistances and other stats, but that's a video for another day. Feel free to do your own research. If you haven't used Roll20 before, you'd be surprised at what you have available to you. Also, it's completely free. There is also a companion crowdsource Excel sheet that can be used to create Pokemon and manage what skills and features your trainer has. And it's directly compatible with Roll20. You just need to export the information into a fancy... Dijon? Mustard? Oh, no, no, it's called Jason. Why did I say Dijon? Anyway, most importantly, it could be directly imported into the Roll20 sheet. It's less hassle and it's easier to level up important abilities and it's just a time saver for everybody. Buuut if you want to know some of the best practices and ways of running a Pokemon D&D campaign, head over to Stuart's channel on the Loading Crew and we'll talk about some of the best ways to run a campaign. I hope you enjoyed this collab, but yeah. Davy out.