Pokémon Ranger Paradigm

We love to chase the idea of tabletop Pokémon, or Tablemon if you will. It’s like Pokémon but with your imagination. Who doesn’t want to escape the pixely grid of the video games (or the nasty-looking worlds of all the 3D ones except Arceus my beloved), step between those two-by-two trees blocking the world, and do fun things with those simultaneously cute/cool/lame creatures that only the realm of language can allow? Many such cases, of people trying to capture that feeling or outright adapting Pokémon (in its setting or even its rules) to a tabletop format. It just unfortunately never really pans out.

I think this is because Pokémon is structurally difficult for a cooperative game. Pokémon is generically speaking a classical JRPG: you as the player control a party of characters in various situations (especially turn-based combat). Where Pokémon differs from similar games in its genre is that the player themselves has a representative outside of the party of characters: the Pokémon trainer. Rather than playing as the party or a main character within the party, you play a character who controls the party while being excluded from it as an equal participant. It’s been done, but it’s hard to imagine (and even harder to play) a tabletop game where everyone is a trainer with their own handful of Pokémon, because that becomes a party of parties. If we retrace the lineage of the JRPG from more typical dungeon-crawly affairs, it makes more sense if the players’ characters are the Pokémon and the game master has a special character acting as the trainer—or, as per the spinoff Mystery Dungeon, just play the Pokémon and exclude the trainer altogether, which both Pokémon Dungeon Crawler and Into the Oddish emulate. But I’m gonna be so real with you, babies. I don’t want to play as the Pokémon. I want to play with the Pokémon. Both as a player and also from the perspective of the character.

But there’s another spinoff: Ranger. I never played it because it’s more of an actiony game geared towards those who think of Pokémon as being more cool than cute, so I guess you should take this all with a grain of salt since I’m reinterpreting it through my view of what makes Pokémon fun. In the main games, there are these NPCs who are sorta like national park rangers except they’re everywhere because the premise of Pokémon’s setting is that humans have attained perfect cohabitation with nature (I’m 90% sure that Cecilily posted a video where she refers to the society as eco-socialist, which is a fun thought). Instead of training and keeping Pokémon, the rangers just call upon Pokémon in the local ecosystem when they need help.

This to me is a way more appealing possible translation of Pokémon and its subgenre to a tabletop format. I’d be remiss to not mention Animon Story, in which you do play a human trainer of a cute Pokémon-esque creature, but it focuses on a singular special relationship (more like the Pokémon cartoon) rather than one’s relationship with many or all creatures, or to humanity’s relationship with nature in general. The Mystery Dungeon style ones may comment on that relationship thematically by taking place in a post-human world but that kinda kills the entire vibe. I don’t want the theme present only by its actual subject being conspicuously absent and, more importantly, I want to be in the shoes of a character who gets to appreciate and nurture these creatures. That’s my enjoyment of Pokémon. I don’t even need to collect them all. I don’t really want to do that, or even really do dog-fighting with them except that I accept it as part of the premise. I just want to play with them!!!

I kinda want to start a new campaign centered on the Mediterranean (if my friends will let me, because they have really been enjoying the Caribbean setting). If I do, I thought it'd be fun to treat tutelary deities like Pokémon. I guess nothing's stopping me from doing the same for orishas. Either way, this paradigm is how I'd like to frame any setting-stuff or rules around the spirits: you can't own them, and most people don't have a special relationship to one in particular (though individual characters might!), but you will encounter them and you can explore how humanity relates to them (as a proxy for nature). Something like Isaac's framework for Indonesian magic by way of spirit blessings would also be useful here! Just very excited to think more in these terms.