CSI: Johto

[honest]

Quite simply, I'm looking for 3-5 players for a police drama set in and around Goldenrod City in the Johto region.


Interested? Read on.


You will play as a member of (Or auxiliary to) Goldenrod City Police Department's forensics team, and there is a serial killer on the loose in your city. The police have established a lockdown, barring all Pokemon trainers from leaving the city while they carry out the investigation, but the Pokemon League is putting big pressure on them to raise the ban and allow travel again. The clock is on for your team to find the killer before any more innocent people die.



Your character will start with one or more pokemon to help them in their work. Team members will be detectives and forensics experts, auxiliaries can be just about anything, from circus psychics to projectile experts to hardened ex-criminals.



This game will not be freeform, but instead use a version of the FATE system (Dresden Files, Spirit of the Century) with additions for the setting. The system is quite narrative heavy, so expect emphasis on story and character development rather than stats.

If you reply to this thread, I will be happy to talk you through character creation. (Trust me, it's not hard.)



Here's a quick template to get you thinking in the meanwhile:

Name: (Would be helpful)
Visual appearance: (Always useful)
Concept: (Who are they? What do they do? Sum them up in a phrase.)
Pokemon:
Background: (Where do they come from? Do they have a family?)

What is their best quality?:
What is their worst flaw?:
What do they want out of life?:

 

[The Anonymour]

Reserve me two spots, please. (Twins, of course)

 

[honest]

If you're sure you're up for playing two characters, then okay.

 

[The Anonymour]

Name: Joseph and Joshua “The Clones” Antonimous

Visual Appearance:



Joe and Josh stand tall for their age at six foot, and have a pale complexion. They have black, messy hair (though Joshes is approximately an inch longer) and bright, turquoise eyes. They have slightly longer and sharper canine teeth than average, meaning they can make them protrude slightly from their mouths and back again. They each have a thin, four-inch long scar on the side of their face (right for Joe, left for Josh) because they were born Siamese.

They usually wear black, sometimes “mixing-it-up” with blue’s, green’s and pinks (Josh normally dresses more gothic). They’re never seen without a pair of fingerless gloves (style may vary). They each have a silver chain around their neck that have a small, glass vile on it which is said to contain the water from the lake of a Lugia. They wear them for good luck.

Concept:
Psychotics in a box. (Well, you said a phrase XD)

Pokemon:

Joe: Veanasaur, Staraptor, Umbreon, Arbok, Dewgong, Houndoom.
Josh: Charizard, Pachirisu, Espeon, Ambipom, Gyrados, Mighteana.

Background:
They were born in Snowpoint City, Sinnoh. They had a normal and happy childhood, often visiting the Snowpoint Gym (where their mother was the Gym Leader) up until they were six, when their mother sadly died from breast cancer, leaving Candice to take over the Gym.

They never knew their father, as their mother went to a sperm bank and never married, so they moved to Pallet Town in Kanto to live with their Aunt Delia. There, at age ten, they began their journey. They travelled the four regions, competing in contests and various tag-events.

Best quality: Well, I suppose it’d be always trying to get a smile on everyone’s face, be it by being funny and sarcastic, or annoying.

Worst quality: They can let their emotions get the better of them. If they’re extremely upset, they can fall into what I call a ‘food coma’. If they’re extremely angry, they can lash out at innocent bystanders.

What they want out of life: They haven’t really considered this concept. To them, life is infinite, ever-changing, winding, mutating. They can get out of it what they want, as long as they try.


Oh, and don't worry, I can handle it. I RP with Joe and Josh all the time.

 

[honest]

Alright, you might want to think about exactly what your characters are doing to help the police.

The following are some details about the system I'll be using and the rules for character creation.

For this game, I am using the FATE system.

http://www.faterpg.com/dl/sotc-srd.html#the-basics

Each character begins play with five aspects, fifteen skills, five fate points, and one pokemon. The pokemon may be of any stage and type, but may not be legendary.

Fate points may be permanently spent on stunts, or kept for spending on actions.

A character's starting fate points minus the number of stunts they have taken is their "refresh", or the number that their fate points are reset to at the end of each scene.
If a character has more fate points than refresh, they keep the new, higher total, but if their total falls below it is reset to its original value.


The core mechanic

For every skill check or what-have-you, roll 4 six-sided dice. Any die showing a 1 or 2 is treated as -1, any die showing 3 or 4 is treated as 0, and any die showing a 5 or 6 is treated as +1. This gives you a result from +4 to -4, which is then added to the appropriate skill modifier.

For example, Joe is trying to climb a wall. The target number is 4, and Joe has Good (+3) Athletics.

Joe rolls 5 3 4 1 on 4d6, for a total of +0, so he only gets a 3 on his check, and fails to climb the wall. If he wishes, he can also spend a fate point for an extra +2 and succeed in climbing the wall.


Aspects

Your character will have five aspects, as follows. Pokemon puns are allowed, but not encouraged.

1. High concept. Summarise your character in a phrase, e.g. Fiery redhead, mad scientist, or corrupt cop

2. Background. Think of an aspect that reflects where your character came from, e.g mobsters killed my dad, wrong side of the tracks

3. Trouble. Think of something about your character that has gotten them in trouble, a flaw, if you will. e.g. out for vengeance, mean drunk, sucker for a pretty face

4 & 5. Write down two things that the other aspects don't tell me about your character, be they good or bad. e.g. ace marksman, killer instincts, it's not just a day job . Anything, really. The following excerpt from the FATE srd may help you.

You may have noticed that a number of the aspects throughout this book are “bad” aspects – they indicate a downside for a character, either in their directly negative connotations, or in their two-edged nature. Aspects like Drunkard, Sucker, Stubborn, and Honest all suggest situations where the character will have to behave a certain way – making an ass of himself at an important social function, falling for a line of bull, failing to back down when it’s important to do so, or speaking truth when truth is the path to greatest harm.

So why put such aspects on your sheet if they’re only going to make trouble for you? Simple: you want that kind of trouble.

On a basic, game-rules footing, “bad” aspects are a direct line to getting you more fate points – and fate points are the electricity that powers some of the more potent positive uses of your aspects. We’ll get more into how aspects can generate and use fate points later on in this chapter.

Outside of just the rules, a “bad” aspect adds interest and story to a character in a way that purely positive aspects cannot. This sort of interest means time in the limelight. If someone’s trying to take advantage of the fact your character’s a Sucker, that’s an important point in the story, and the camera’s going to focus on it. “Bad” aspects also immediately suggest story to your GM; they tell her how to hook your character in. From the perspective of playing the game to get involved and have fun, there’s nothing but good in this sort of “bad”.

Clever players will also find positive ways to use “bad” aspects. The Drunkard might get looked over more easily by prying eyes as “just a drunk”; someone who’s Stubborn will be more determined to achieve his goals. This brings us the “secret” truth about aspects: the ones that are most useful are the ones that are the most interesting. And interesting comes most strongly from aspects that are neither purely good nor purely bad.

As a rule of thumb, when picking an aspect, think of three situations where you can see the aspect coming into play. If you’ve got one reasonably positive situation and one reasonably negative situation out of that set, you’re golden! If they’re all of one type, you may want to reconsider how you’ve worded your aspect – try to put a little of what’s missing in there. Ultimately, though, one aspect that’s “all good” or “all bad” isn’t that much of a problem, so long as you have a good mix throughout your whole set.



Skills


Most things in the system are rated according to the ladder below (when we say “the ladder” throughout the text, this is what we mean). Usually, the adjectives are used to describe things – someone might be a Good Pilot or Poor at Academics. The adjectives and numbers are interchangeable, so if a player or GM is more comfortable with numbers, it is equally valid to say Pilot: +3 or Academics: -1. The best compromise is often to use both, as in a Pilot: Good (+3) or a Academics: Poor (-1). On this scale, Average represents the level of capability that someone who does something regularly and possibly professionally, but not exceptionally.


+8: Legendary
+7: Epic
+6: Fantastic
+5: Superb
+4: Great
+3: Good
+2: Fair
+1: Average
0: Mediocre
-1: Poor
-2: Terrible


Most people are Average at the things they do for a living, like Science for a scientist, and are Mediocre or Poor at most other things. It is only when they are driven to excel that they surpass those limits.

A player will start play with fifteen skills,


1 Superb
2 Great
3 Good
4 Fair
5 Average


Pokemon start play with no skills, but their skill points can be bought with stunts. Their skills follow similar rules to players, that is, there must be 2 skills at average before one may be raised to fair, and so on.


New stunts


Pokemon trainer [-1 refresh]

You gain 3 pokemon slots, each worth 10 pokemon skill points. These may be used to add members to your team, to a maximum of six, or to add skill points to your existing pokemon.


Pokemon specialist [-1 refresh]

You have an exceptionally strong bond with pokemon of a certain type. Choose a pokemon type. The bonus for using a same type attack for pokemon you own increases to +3. However, you may not also specialise in pokemon of any type that is super-effective against specialism. (A fire specialist may not also specialise in water pokemon, a psychic specialist may not also specialise in dark, ghost or bug)

You gain 2 pokemon slots, each worth 10 pokemon skill points. These may be used to add members to your team, to a maximum of six, or to add skill points to your existing pokemon.

You may take this stunt multiple times, each time choosing a different pokemon type.


Special rules for Pokemon.

A player may use his fate points on behalf of his pokemon. Pokemon, except in special cases, do not have fate points. However, each pokemon has an aspect of the same name as one of its possible abilities, which it may tag for free once per scene.

A player may opt to have his pokemon to take physical backlash from an attack in order to increase its power. Every box of backlash taken will increase the power of the move by one shift. A pokemon may also take consequences to power a move in this manner. (e.g. for explosion)

A pokemon may opt to sacrifice a shift of power to have a move effect an entire zone. Whole-zone moves are indiscriminate, hitting both allied and enemy pokemon.

A pokemon may also sacrifice a shift of power to make a move harder to evade. Each shift sacrificed adds +2 to the target number to evade. Likewise, a pokemon may sacrifice 2 accuracy to add to the power of an attack by 1.

Moves such as Sandstorm and Raindance add temporary aspects to a scene, which may be tagged as appropriate. One or two shifts of success means the aspect may be tagged once, three or more shifts means that the aspect may be tagged throughout the scene.



Defensive and stat boosting moves

Instead of making an attack, a pokemon may use its action to temporarily boost one of its stats. Pokemon roll the stat they wish to raise, and may spend shifts of success to enhance the duration of their skill boost, minimum one round.

Example: Flareon has good [+3] defense, and wishes to raise its defense.

It rolls 6 6 2 3, or +1, giving it a total of +4.

Now it can choose to raise its defense by 4 for 1 round, 3 for 2 rounds, 2 for 3 rounds, or 1 for 4 rounds. It can now also roll its defense as a block against incoming physical-type attacks.


Evasion

To evade, a pokemon rolls a speed test, target number equal to the power of the attack it is evading. Weakness and resistance bonuses do not apply. If it passes, it evades and takes no stress, if it fails, it is hit.

Taking hits

When your character or pokemon takes stress, mark off that box (and only that box) on the appropriate stress track. For instance, if your character takes a two-point physical hit, you should mark off the second box (and only the second box) from the left on the physical stress track. If your character takes a hit and finds that box already marked off, you should “roll up” to the next empty box on the right and check that off. If there are no empty boxes to the right (in other words, the hit would “roll off ” the end of the stress track), the character is either taken out or needs to
take consequences to absorb the hit.

As a rule, pokemon concede defeat before taking consequences.


Consequences

Stress is a transitory thing, but sometimes conflicts will have lasting effects on a character. These effects are collectively called consequences, and they are a special kind of aspect.
Any time a character takes stress, he may opt to take a consequence to reduce the amount of stress received from the attack. Whatever the consequence, it is written down under the stress track.
Normally, the player taking the consequence gets to describe what it is, so long as it’s compatible with the nature of the attack that inflicted the harm. The GM arbitrates the appropriateness of a consequence and there may be some back and forth conversation before settling on one. The GM is the final authority on whether a
player’s suggested consequence is reasonable for the circumstances and severity.


There are four levels of consequence severity, each of which cancels out a greater amount of stress from an attack. Consequences may not be taken after the fact to cancel stress already recorded on a character’s stress track.
Consequences linger for varying lengths of time after appropriate justification is established to begin recovery.

Mild consequences cancel out 2 stress.
They last for one scene after recovery
starts. Think of things that are bad
enough to make you say “Walk it off/
rub some dirt in it!” (Examples: Bruised
Hand, Nasty Shiner, Winded,
Flustered, Distracted.)

Moderate consequences cancel out
4 stress. They last until the end of the
next session after recovery starts. Think of
things that are bad enough to make you
say, “Man, you really should go take care
of that/get some rest.” (Examples: Belly
Slash, Bad First Degree Burn,
Twisted Ankle, Exhausted, Drunk.)

Severe consequences cancel out 6 stress.
They last for the next scenario (or two to
three sessions, whichever is longer) after
recovery starts. Think of things that are
bad enough to make you say, “Man, you
really need to go to the ER/get serious
help.” (Examples: Broken Leg, Bad
Second-Degree Burn, Crippling
Shame, Trauma-Induced Phobia.)


Each character may take one of each severity (though some stunts and very high skills may increase the number of consequences that can be taken at a certain severity); once the consequence slot is used, it cannot be used again until the current consequence is removed. Multiple consequences can be “stacked” at a time, combining their rating for the purposes of absorbing an attack. So instead of taking a severe consequence to cancel 6 stress, a player might take a mild (2 stress) and a moderate (4 stress) which would add up to cancel 6 stress.

When your character takes a consequence, remove the appropriate amount of stress from
the attack. If that reduces the stress to zero or below, you absorb the hit completely. If there is any stress left over, you need to mark it on your stress track. So, if your character gets hit for 5 stress and you decide to take a moderate consequence, you’re left with a 1 stress hit. Keep in mind that the normal rules for taking stress apply for this—empty boxes get filled in, filled boxes “roll up” to the right. That means that, even if you take a consequence, the leftover stress might take
you out anyway…be careful about this!



Status effects (nb: I may or may not use these, depending on how much of a headache they turn out to be)

A pokemon may add a status effect to an attack of the appropriate type by sacrificing shifts of power as stated, or attempt the attack by itself at no penalty. Status effects may be evaded separately to the attack itself. Weaknesses and resistances do not count for defending against status effects, although immunities do.

Paralysis- [-1] Usually electric. Using special attack to attack speed. Shifts of speed lost are recovered at the end of the scene.

Burn [-3] Fire only. Using special attack to attack attack. Shifts of attack lost are regained at the end of the scene. A pokemon that is burned must also defend against an attack equal to the inflicting pokemon's special attack bonus with its HP or take a box of stress each round on its turn.

Sleep [-3] Using charm to attack resolve. A pokemon that takes mental stress from a sleep attack must defend against an attack equal to the inflicting pokemon's charm bonus with its resolve each turn or remain asleep. Once a pokemon has woken, it no longer needs to make these checks.

Confusion [-2] Using charm to attack resolve. A pokemon that takes mental stress from a confusion attack must defend against an attack equal to the inflicting pokemon's charm bonus with its resolve or attack itself using its attack attribute. A pokemon that makes the check by three or more shifts is no longer confused.

Infatuation [-2] Only pokemon of opposite genders. Using charm to attack resolve. A pokemon that takes mental stress from an infatuation attack must defend against an attack equal to the inflicting pokemon's charm bonus with its resolve, or be unable to attack inflicting pokemon.

Freeze [-3] Ice type only. Using special attack to attack speed. A pokemon that has taken speed penalty from freeze must defend against an attack equal to the inflicting pokemon's special attack bonus with its speed or remain frozen. Against an attack that does not deal damage, pokemon gain a +1 bonus to speed to avoid being frozen.

Poison [-2] Poison type only. Using special attack to attack HP. A pokemon that is poisoned must defend against an attack equal to the inflicting pokemon's special attack bonus with its HP or take a box of physical stress each round on its turn.



Pokemon skills-

All pokemon start with all skills at mediocre (+0), but these may be raised by investment in stunts. Pokemon get a +2 same type attack bonus on attacks incorporating one of their own types, and a +2 or +3 bonus on defense against their 0.5 and 0.25 resistances respectively.

However, pokemon have a -2 or -3 penalty defending against their *2 and *4 weaknesses. Pokemon skills follow the skill pyramid, with the exception that the lowest number may be higher than one.

A pokemon gains an inherent bonus on any stat it would grant an EV for equal to the EV value granted, representing its natural tendencies. A list of these values by pokemon can be found here. These do not count as skill points.

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_Pokémon_by_effort_value_yield





Special defense - Adds armour against special attacks. Additionally, it is rolled as a block against special attacks when a pokemon has used a move that heightens special defense.

S.Defense Armour
average-fair +1
Good-Great +2
Superb-Fantastic +3

Defense - Adds armour against attacks. Additionally rolled as a block against attacks when a pokemon has used a move that heightens defense.

Defense Armour
average-fair +1
Good-Great +2
Superb-Fantastic +3


Special attack- Increases a pokemon's elemental strength as well as the potency of its attacks. For example, a Squirtle would roll special attack to put out a fire.

Attack - similar to might & fists for a player. Increases a pokemon's physical strength as well as the potency of its attacks.

Speed - establishes pokemon initiative, similar to alertness for players, and may be used to attempt to evade attacks.

HP - similar to endurance for players

By default, pokemon have 3 boxes for their Health stress track. Better than Mediocre HP increases the number of boxes as shown here.

HP Health
Average-Fair +1
Good-Great +2
Superb-Fantastic+3

Charm - Used in competitions. A pokemon may use its charm to make someone like it, confuse, or weaken another's resolve. Untyped or normal typed status effects come from Charm.

Resolve- By default, pokemon have 3 boxes for their mental stress track. Better than Mediocre Resolve increases the number of boxes as shown here. Resolve is also used to defend against mental attacks, such as deceit from humans.

Resolve Mental health
Average-Fair +1
Good-Great +2
Superb-Fantastic+3



Leveling up your pokemon

Upon the completion of any story-critical battle, participating pokemon will earn one, two, or three skill points, depending on the opponent faced. These skill points must be assigned according to the usual rules.