Belonging outside belonging game where you just hang out with pokemon, no battling.
Strong moves focused around play. Weak moves focused around naps.
Wait no, that's if the PCs are pokemon. The PCs are humans right?
Strong moves where pokemon let you get close (like when you bathe them or trim their claws) and weak moves where pokemon don't let you get close and anything you need to do you need to do while keeping distance and respecting their space.
Well I certainly want to be a pokemon. And I'm not as interested in playing my own trainer. I think two players working separately creates better tension/harmony.
Of course, other players might want to be both a pokemon and a human in the same scene.
I think if you try to allow for both of those things, then you lose focus. You risk making a less polished less well made game in favour of trying to do too much at once.
Oh that sound pretty good. Is the culture of fighting a setting element? I could see some people considering it overwhelming but I'm not opposed to playing both and if you include hack rules where people can play 1 or both then there's enough. I dunno. If you want someone to review it, I'd be happy to.
First thoughts:
I really like the setting map.
So to clarify my understanding, you play a pokemon and their trainer? Can you trade away one of the roles temporarily to make scenes easier with your pokemon?
I like the Fire playbook quite a bit. 2 suggestions on it:
Feud with a friend might be better expanded to something like start/act on a feud with a friend. Maybe. Something that makes it a little smaller. I'm imagining feud as a long term fight and that might be a misunderstanding.
Go over your depth might be better rewritten as "get in over your head" or "get stuck in something you can't handle"
I like how you're implementing duo and shared moves.
I really like the other roles as well. Lots of neat moves.
Do the pokemon and trainer share tokens?
I also like the setting elements. I think there is a lot of potential there. I wonder if the constant battles element should be darker to highlight more of why we left but that may not be necessary.
This is really an excellent draft in my opinion.
I"m glad this was helpful and more glad that is was encouraging. You've got some great ideas here and helping people feel good abotu good ideas is like... my issue statement. #carebearwarrior?
I'm curious about this and want to follow its development. I think what you have is definitely neat and could result in a bunch of different games.
That makes sense that we need the outside setting elements. We need the belonging that we belong outside of. I think it's really neat.