Builder's Manual · Chapter 1

What This Framework Is For

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.

Manual updated Aug 22, 2026.

A build-from setting template for grounded Pokémon games: the first three generations written as creatures rather than stat blocks, a light 2d6 system, two handbooks, and a character creation wizard — with the world left deliberately blank for you to fill.

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CreatedSep 22, 2026

UpdatedSep 22, 2026

Team Rocket Edition

Kanto looks bright. You work in the shadows that pay for it.

This is a scaffold, not a finished game. Three generations of the dex are written out as creatures rather than stat blocks — 389 of them, each with a temperament, a build, what it can't do, and where it lives. The type chart is wired, the gear is priced, and seventeen places are drawn as archetypes rather than a named region, so you can call them anything.

The system underneath is small on purpose. Roll two dice and add one of six traits; 10+ is clean, 7–9 costs you something, 6 or less and the world pushes back. There are no hit points and no experience — a creature rides a condition ladder and a bond ladder, and those two meters carry the weight instead. A Player's Handbook and a Builder's Manual, nine chapters each, explain how to play it and how to build on it.

Clone it and make it yours: your region, your towns, your people, your trouble. The character creation wizard is already built, so players can roll their own trainer on the way in. **Trouble, not trauma — the content line is yours to set, and the Builder's Manual shows you where to declare it.**

Glimpses

Author's note

Built as a starting point for other builders rather than as a campaign. Two pregens are playable out of the box and one game start is configured; everything else is meant to be replaced. The pieces most worth keeping are the two handbooks, the twelve file types, and the seventeen archetypal locations.

Known gaps, so you're not surprised: moves are still free text rather than their own file type, the root map needs a background image and its pins linked to your own places, and the mirrored halves of the type chart are maintained by hand — edit those in pairs.

World Map