This is a build-from scaffold for grounded, fiction-first Pokémon adventures — a framework to build projects from, not a finished game. The dex is filled, the types are wired, and the books define how it all plays. Your job as a builder is to make it your world: your region, your towns, your people, your trouble.
The creature-first rule
The whole framework rests on one decision: Pokémon are creatures with temperaments, not stat blocks. Read any entry in the dex and you'll see it — a Pikachu's cheeks are batteries and "the cute is a warning"; a Charmander "carries its own mortality at the tip of its tail." Every type, every field, every convention exists to keep that voice alive. When you add content, write entries that could sit next to those.
Deliberate non-decisions
The framework leaves these out on purpose, and you should think twice before bolting them on:
- No stat blocks. No HP, no attack/defense numbers, no damage dice. Moves are described by what they cost and what they do — a Thunderbolt drains the cheek pouches; an Iron Tail leaves the creature off-balance. The condition ladder (fresh → winded → struggling → failing → down) carries the physical weight instead.
- No XP economy. Growth is story-shaped: evolution has a trigger, moves are learned in scenes, bonds rise and fall. The Player's Handbook says it plainly — you grow by what happens to you, not by what you count.
- No type chart as law. The classic matchups are guidance in the handbook, not a simulator. Fiction decides.
Numbers appear only where they serve play: money in ₽, the bond and condition ladders, the two-dice roll thresholds, ball quality, rarity penalties. That's the whole economy of the system, and it's deliberate.
The audience
The pitch is a Pokémon journey for people who already have lives — rent, work, obligations, and the troubles that come with them, wrapped around a real partner bond. Every chapter of the Player's Handbook was written to that promise. When you build content, build for readers who want weight: characters with pasts, factions with agendas, places with secrets. Keep it fun and keep it warm — trouble, not trauma.
Setting your content line
The framework ships deliberately neutral on content, and it stays that way so the decision is yours. The stakes it models are ordinary ones — money, work, reputation, the people you disappoint — and they carry a story without needing anything heavier. Tone travels further than content anyway: a world can be bleak, dangerous and morally complicated at any rating, and the three ladders this framework runs on — bond, condition, reputation — do that work on their own.
If your setting does reach for heavier material, own it in three places. Say so on the project's cover, so nobody arrives unprepared. Write the boundary into your GM instructions, so the GM can hold it mid-scene rather than improvising a line under pressure. And keep the table's safety rule from the Player's Handbook intact — anyone can call a halt, and when they do, play stops. A content line stated once on a cover page and never again is decoration; a content line the GM actually enforces is a design decision.
One more thing if you are publishing a fork for other builders to clone: they inherit whatever you set, and so do their players. State it plainly rather than leaving it to be discovered mid-session.
The two books
- The Player's Handbook is what players read at the table: how the world plays, how rolls work, how battles and captures run, how life outside the battlefield bites.
- This Builder's Manual is what you read when you add to the world: how the file types fit together, what makes an entry fit, how to extend without breaking the fiction-first promise.
If a rule appears in the Player's Handbook, don't copy it here — extend it, reference it, or explain the intent behind it. The books answer different questions for different people.
