TCG How do you think TCG battles would work with real pokemon?

[Arcaninehero]

I feel that all of the pokemon would be present on the field, with the trainer walking around their benched and active, attatching tools and using items. Supporters just appear on the battlefield when needed, I guess?

 

[Salmancer]

This is a solved question. It would be Pokémon: Path to the Peak. Whose answers are

• No visible trainer characters
• Items and Pokémon Tools appear out of thin air.
• Stadiums form around the combatants.
• No Supporter cards were ever played in ways that physically interacted with Pokémon characters.

I mean, you could go and say that Pokémon Path to the Peak isn't a fully fictional take on the premise, given its literally about the real world, real competitions, and real cards, and the Pokémon action takes place exclusively in the imaginations of human characters, but I think as long as the work does not also abstract the cards out of the events of the work, these are largely workable tenets. I'm of the opinion that abstracting away the cards defeats the point of a trading card game adaption. At that point, it makes more sense to just incorporate the elements of the Trading Card Game you want to use into a regular Pokémon story, saving yourself the mental gymnastics needed to do things such as justify Stadiums arbitrarily appearing and disappearing and why the benched Pokémon just sit around while the Active Pokémon fight. Therefore I would stick entirely to the Path to the Peak interpretation. Following this, the obvious answer as to what a Supporter card would do is make the character appear and do something to the entities on the battlefield. If the Supporter only affects players, then there's no way to make it work and we just ignore animating that within the fictional battlefield. (Iono was played in the show, and did not physically interact with the human characters. I personally think this was a mistake caused by the license granted by The Pokémon Company for the show only including the Pokémon characters and not the human characters, so if I were in absolute control I would actually have Supporters appear to the game players in their imaginations as necessary.)

I do understand that the question is really about "we are abstracting the cards away, and having this story take place in the fully fictional Pokémon world". If we insist upon this, then yes, you probably do have a trainer run around a battlefield alongside their Pokémon in play, using items and giving Pokémon Tools to their Pokémon as necessary. Or heck, technically their opponent's Pokémon too, as Crushing Hammer and Pokémon Catcher have to look like something and the answer in this scenario is that the trainer attacks one of the opponents Pokémon with these items. Stadiums are beyond me, that's why I said abstracting away the cards is a trap of an option, but we can work with Supporters. The flavor of cards that can put Supporter cards into the player's hand, like Pokégear and VS Seeker, suggest that the trainer is calling or otherwise contacting the Supporter character. Which you could depict the results of in one of two ways.

• Maybe the Supporter character then comes to the battlefield to help out the trainer who called them before leaving.
• Maybe the Supporter character just talks to the trainer who called them, which empowers the player character based on the effect of the Supporter
• Maybe some Supporter cards act in the first way, and then others act in the second. Professors who just make the player draw cards sound like they are best interpreted as just giving the player really good advice, which matches the second. Characters whose cards heal a player's Pokémon or allow the player to switch their Pokémon could be interpreted as showing up to perform that healing or to carry away the Pokémon in question, respectively, as per the first case. Evil bosses who force an opposing Pokémon into the Active Spot sound more like they're getting their hands dirty, so maybe its the first case and they show up to drag the Pokémon in question forward with the help of Grunts. Or maybe the evil boss is blackmailing the opponent, so the opponent is literally forced to make a bad strategic choice by switching in the Pokémon the boss tells them too, a case two scenario.

Either way, to implement supporters in a fully fictional setting likely means justifying why they'll help one trainer in one battle then help that trainer's opponent in the very same battle. That's a tall order, and one you might just want to avoid completely by ensuring both sides in any given battle coincidentally never use the same Supporters. (In Magic: the Gathering the flavorfully similar Planeswalker card type is justified by the world having grey morality in contrast to Pokémon's black and white morality. Planeswalkers would really swap sides if the other side is offering something they want more than their initial side. Additionally, summoning a planeswalker is flavored as the player giving them something (I think it's mana), and them having loyalty counters that serve as health emphasizes that a planeswalker helping out the player is only a temporary arrangement.)

EDIT: The solution that best fits the letter of this question without causing logical problems for basic game actions, though an extremely cheesy one, is to have real Pokémon but have the trading card game still be a trading card game. The effects of the cards are just adjudicated through advanced hologram technology and/or magic. Pokémon cards don't exist by this metric, evolution is caused by some other means. One answer would be literal "evolution cards" that are played onto Pokémon just as normal Item cards are.

 

[ninazrdl]

Sure. At least that sounds more real than Yu Gi Oh, where the cards just magically come into live.
You can ask your pokemons to stand back, and call them in when their cards are chosen. Use all the items as usual. If you have a N's Plan card, I suppose you can bring an envelope from N, and open it when you use the card. So on.
The human cards can act like helpers, I guess? Like how you can phone your friend and ask for help on the who wants to be a millionaire shows, you phone the corresponding trainer and ask for their support. With pokemon world technology they can even send item parcels in I guess.
For the locations, you can just use holograms, but some gyms and leagues have this exaggerated battle fields, so maybe if your TCG league is doing well, you can afford to make a really good battle field that can actually bring different locations here.