What do you do when you’re surrounded by Bidoofs, one of which is making you forget your most powerful attack, one of which is running in circles smashing its head into rocks, confusing both you and it, and one of which is slowly staring you down, gathering energy to use a deadly bullrush attack that’s gonna knock you on your ass? You run.

That’s what my Pokemon Trainers learned yesterday in our second session of Pokemon World, the Pokemon RPG I put together that is just the Pokemon TCG with some simple tabletop RPG elements added in, like XP and Trainer Level.

In Pokemon World, when the group wants to catch Pokemon (they all travel together so I don’t have to “split the group”) they tell me where they want to go. Ostensibly, there are many areas for them to go to, each of which has its own set of wild Pokemon that can be found there. Some places are more dangerous than others. Yesterday, there were only two options: Grassy Fields 01 and Grassy Fields 02. Grassy Fields 02 was a more souped-up version of Grassy Fields 01, with slightly stronger Pokemon and slightly different rest-and-recovery rules that make staying there more dangerous. But you have to travel through Grassy Fields 01 to get to Grassy Fields 02, so there was really only one option when they were setting out from town: Grassy Fields 01.

Earlier in the morning, I put this little beauty together and got three copies printed out at Kinkos:

So this is mainly what Grassy Fields 01 had in store for our intrepid trainers: a bunch of Pidgeys, Rattatas, and Bidoofs. Which are cool the first time you see them, but really annoying after you realize that’s all there is. Of course, that isn’t all there is. There was also one Tangela:

Not an amazing card, but 20 damage is respectable at their level, and the ability to inflict two different status conditions from one card is good. Particularly since Paralysis makes it easier to catch Pokemon, which is a surprisingly difficult prospect in this game.

Anyways, the Tangela appeared twice actually, even though there was only a 1-in-10 chance to pull it each round. But the highlight and theme of the session was the rampaging hoards of Bidoofs. There were five or six Bidoofs in the set of 10 possible wild Pokemon, and they were constantly on the field. I made sure to find several varieties of Bidoof to keep things interesting, and it was definitely a good decision. Rather than every Bidoof being the same, it was always a moment of excitement to see Bidoof but then also see which Bidoof you were facing. Because if you take a look at that sheet up there, you’ll see that though they are all the same Pokemon, they are actually wildly different in their abilities. The first and least-exciting Bidoof was one that dealt no damage but had some interesting utility moves:

This creature actually would’ve been a great addition to any of their teams (it’s Scavenge ability is particularly effective when you only have one Trainer card in your deck of five cards!), but my players didn’t catch on to this, and a Bidoof that does zero damage was not interesting to them. Then there was one that had a 20 damage attack that confused both itself and its opponent, which definitely made it a threat and something they might want to catch:

My new player, who only had a Chimchar when they set out to Grassy Fields 01, ended up catching this Bidoof late in the day and he was totally psyched to make it his second Pokemon. We only saw the third Bidoof once and he fled before he could be caught:

It’s a good card: one energy to instantly sleep your opponent is great. His damaging ability is a tossup but not terrible. Plus he’s got 60 HP which is good for their level, too. Plus everyone laughed when I said, “Bidoof uses… Self-abandonment.” Looking back, these “lame” Bidoofs were actually just as good if not better than the Tangela I included which was supposed to be the prize!

But the Bidoof that really defined the play session was this guy:

Rollout: three energy to deal sixty damage to your opponent – Ouch! Sixty damage is a lot! When we began today’s session, no one had a Pokemon with more than sixty hitpoints, which means this is a one-hit kill move on anything you’ve got. Coupled with his seventy hitpoints, which, again, is more than any of our trainers’ Pokemon, and you’ve got a serious opponent here. You have to either catch, kill, or incapacitate this guy before he gets three energy, or you’re going to start losing a Pokemon every round (and as I’ve said before, half the players only had one Pokemon, with our best player having four). Already this guy is a serious problem when he shows up. But to make matters worse, he benefited from a new rule I had for wild Pokemon: wild Pokemon with seventy or more HP start the battle with one energy already attached. So instead of having three turns to deal with this guy, now you only have two – or one if you lose the starting coin-flip and he goes first. So this guy just ran roughshod all over the players. Pretty quickly everyone figured out that when this guy shows up, your best option is to flee, which is a bummer because you only get to encounter three Pokemon per hunting session. My best player, the one who had three or four Pokemon at the start of the session, managed to catch one of these badboys (an accomplishment he was quite proud of) through a combination of his Ghastly’s paralysis and exploiting the Bidoof’s weakness to his Diglett’s Ground attacks, yet he still lost two Pokemon in the process!

When I informed them that Grassy Fields 02 was available for them if they wanted to see some new Pokemon, they all shook their heads: “We can’t even handle Grassy Fields 01 with these Bidoofs. We’d get slaughtered in Grassy Fields 02” was the general sentiment. I hadn’t intended for the intro catching zone to be such a gauntlet. The terror Bidoof forced most players to flee when he showed up, so they lost several chances to add Pokemon to their roster.

He would’ve been more manageable without the bonus energy rule. But I added the rule because higher-level Pokemon mostly have high-energy cost moves: two, three, four energy costs are not uncommon. Which means when that Pokemon is encountered, there’ll be several rounds where it does nothing but add energy. This gives the trainers free rounds to deal damage and impair the Pokemon, which I want to minimize. Complicating things are my rules for wild Pokemon fleeing: the Pokemon may flee before it even uses an attack. Giving them one energy to start creates more action.

Still, my players complained a lot about this Bidoof, specifically about his starting energy. I listened to their complaints and I considered removing the rule. But I know his antagonism is what made his eventual capture so sweet. So rather than changing the rule, in the future I’m going to be more careful with my wild Pokemon. I had a stack of ten cards that I drew from to see which wild Pokemon each player encountered. There were two or three of these terror-Bidoofs in that stack, which meant we saw him almost every round. There probably should have been only one.

A couple Pidgeys and Rattatas were caught also. Somehow, one of my players still only has one Pokemon, despite this being his second session of playing. He claims it’s because he loves Fire Pokemon and will only let other Fire Pokemon join Charmander on his team. Back in town, they headed to the PokeCenter to restore their Pokemon to full health, then we did some battles against some NPC trainers that were a little below the average level for the group. We fought Girl Scout Melissa (Oddish and Gloom), Spelunker Joe (Zubat and Golbat), Facebooker Lisa (Oddish and Growlithe) and Skateboarder Anthony (Oddish and Gloom). Three of my four players won their battles. The fourth was on his phone and not paying attention and lost a battle he totally should have won but he forgot to use his Jelly Donut:

He’s so far been collecting birds: He has a Pikipek, Pidgey, Pidgey, and Rattata. This solely through the random chance of the wilds.

Anyways, it was a fun session overall. Though there was kind of a sense of running out of things to do, as basically the only options I have for them currently are: 1. Hunt for wild Pokemon, 2. Battle each other, 3. Battle not-too-strong NPC trainers. The sense of a world around them is not too strong yet, though this session’s introduction of specific places to go hunting Pokemon, as opposed to last week’s generic “tall grass” definitely helped with that. I’ll write a post that explains all the rules to the game soon, as I know it’s probably difficult to follow without knowing how the game works. But, essentially, they are playing the Pokemon TCG with two big distinctions: first, you have to catch Pokemon before you can add them to your deck. Second, everything costs money, from PokeBalls and consumables for use in the wild, to adding Trainer and Energy cards to your deck. It’s pretty fun so far. I’ll have another blog post about it later this week for a session I’m gonna run for a bunch of middle-schoolers. Thanks for reading : )