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EVERYONE: Creative Liberties in your game-based fics

matt0044

matt0044

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In my fic, Pokemon Adventures: Black & White, I take liberties in changing up the game storyline and characters.

For example, the Unovan Legends of Zekrom, Reshiram and the Hero that ruled the region are elaborated much more and are altered a bit. I also explain it briefly when my main characters reach Nacrene City as Thomas Thimble (Hawes) tells them about the Dark Stone rather than having no one know what it or Light Stone is.

I also make the three main characters originally come from various large cities in Unova before they became orphans and were brought to Nuvema Town. Angelina (Hilda) was born in Castelia City, Alice (Bianca) was born in Nimbasa City (coincident, right?) and William (Cheren) was born in Milstraton City. I also given them backstories to expand on each of the three. In fact, each one of them were best friends with the Gym Leaders on their respective hometowns.

What do you think? And what about your fics based on games? Do they take liberties in storytelling and adapting?
 
I always take a few liberties in mine where gameplay and story segregation mostly apply, such as:

-only being able to carry six at a time: This is fudged a bit, as obviously it's probably possible to carry more, but all my characters only have teams of six. If, however, they have an egg or a Pokemon they're carrying for someone else, that's not counted, but they only ever have one of those at any time. (One character is an assistant to a breeder, so she carries around other people's Pokemon/some eggs as well as her own team which she uses as security)

The team of six is explained that while it's probably possible to carry more, most people find managing more than six to take too much effort.

-HMs. I should not have to teach a bird how to fly, or my Machoke how to punch a rock.

-Once again: not really disregarded, but referred to. All Pokemon in my fics only know four specialized "moves". It's implied that knowing more is possible, but this is too much of a strain on both the trainer and the Pokemon to handle.

-The Pokewalker. Completely disregarded.
 
Kanto Trainer Red, at 7 chapters thusfar, has:

-Set the events on a different planet to Earth known as Sinumonas, with three moons.

-Adapted things from other games, such as the Rocket Admins.

-Team Rocket are significant threats, to the point that the Pokémon Rangers, law enforcement here, are in a sortof war with them. So far, they've knocked out Red but were actually intending to kill him outright with poisoning, the admin of one group killed one teen just because he found him annoying and are organized enough they're alerted to a threat by yelling things out when defeated ("I'm steamed!" for example, was an alert that Rangers were in the area).

-Team Rocket aren't the creators of Mewtwo, though not really artistic since it was never said who had in the games, just people assume it's them because of the goddamn animé.

-There's proper law enforcement.

-Blue is a member of Team Rocket, though Red has only caught a glimpse and doesn't actually know.

-Super Smash Brothers Brawl will be canon to it's events.

That's all I know...
 
Instrutilus said:
-Team Rocket aren't the creators of Mewtwo, though not really artistic since it was never said who had in the games, just people assume it's them because of the goddamn animé.
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Yes, but the Special Manga does that too.
 
The main difference I have in Stainless Steel is the obvious- nixing the turn-based system and using attacks for things outside of battles.

With The Gray Dawn, I'm kinda trying to rework the world in different ways, but not to the extent of Legacy's fic.
 
As I'm making my first fic which relies completely on games,I try to dig every bit of information about the characters that are provided in games.

About carrying six Pokemon I created a Pokemon League rule which puts a limit six Pokemon at once because having more would make battles unfair,boring ant too long.People that are not participating in Pokemon battles can use as many as they wish eg. construction workers can use as many Machops as they need.

Also I will make Pokemon make serious injuries to humans who have no Pokemon instead of a game's 'whiting out'.

I also refer to the country which the game regions are located simply as Japan.
 
Technically not part of a fanfic, but in the RP Knight Pokémon University, I establish the following:

  • No Pokémon are "newly discovered"; they are merely left unmentioned until officially revealed by Game Freak. My character Colin Sonan had a copy of The National Pokémon Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition several months before Generation V was released, with the appropriate section of the book simply being left untouched until that time.
  • The planet is pretty much outright stated to be Earth, with my other character Joanie Aimes and her back-up girls explicitly hailing from New York, as well as System Error's character Professor André González hailing from France.
  • Red didn't catch Mewtwo; he just exposed its existence.
  • Leaf is written in as Red's twin sister.
  • After Red disappeared, most people believed him to be dead.
  • Ethan lost to Red, and upon returning from Mt. Silver rambling about his loss, he was thought to have simply gone mad.
Among several other differences which do not occur to me at the present time.
 
The games always inspire how my stories go, as in where they travel to, what order they travel in, certain events that happen. But The Galactic Verse is much more violent than the games.

With the stories released so far, it includes murder ranging from being shot to decapitation, very intense violence, bad language, slavery, kidnapping, extremely sadistic and violent magical multiple personalities, dramatic explosions, to name just a few :)
 
Well, Bright World's first chapter was actually written a month before BW's Japanese release, so I had to plan a lot of the story based on assumptions of what little information we knew at the time. However, as time has gone on and we've learned more, I've managed to work the overall story to be closer to the games, but there is still some major differences; particularly in what characters are prominant (I think Caitlin and Grimsley being in Chapter 4 kinda shown that).

I also like to expand on things a little, like the Gym Leaders and Elite 4 having a completely different fuction (alongside their usual role) which was alluded to in Chapter 4.

Then there's the differences between Black Version and White Version; with Opelucid City being the most significant. I'll mention that when I get around to it in the story, but yeah, both versions of the city exist in Bright World.
 
I gave N a vuvuzela.



Biggest creative liberty ever :XD2:
 
Joshawott said:
In the third version, N's final speech should be interrupted by-
Click to expand...
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ


In all seriousness, though, I really don't take many creative liberties, honestly.
 
What do you guys think of this? Trainers in my Pokemon fanfics use any number of Pokemon in a battle against a wild Pokemon they want to capture in order to make said capture. For example, in my fic, Angelina uses her Oshawott and Pidove both to capture a Minccino.

This also applies to battles against rogue Trainers like hunters or Team Plasma where anything goes. This way, I can make things more interesting.

There are only rules in fair battles like between friendly Trainers, Gym Leaders or even Elite Four members.
 
Sazand*ra said:
Uhh... let's see... a Garchomp knowing Razor Leaf for one.
Click to expand...

This is one thing I don't do in my fics. I like to keep their moves the same as they are in the games, with a few exceptions for special reasons. I had a friend who I based a character on, and he wanted the character to have all these Pokemon that could learn moves they normally can't, like Brave Bird for Drapion...
 
I write fanfics to tell stories, and if I need to add in some elements to tell a good story, then I do so. I do my best to keep things as kosher as possible so that it remains as true to the series as it can, but sometimes your own changes can bring a lot more life to the story and keeping it within canon.
 
Well, basically I think ALL stuff in my game-based fic are creative enough to be completely different from the game.
Simply because although I take the game ONLY AS REFERENCE. All the things like characters, items, places, even Pokemon, have some minor difference from the canon game.

By the way, if you are following all the same stuff as canon, even the way how Pokemon battles, then it is really not "creative" anymore.
 
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