Training Minigame

A set of rules for handling training and other “downtime activities” for trainers, in the form of a
roll-and-write dice game.
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After defeating Team Rocket, our heroes arrive to Celadon City and decide to take a month of
downtime before challenging the local gym leader. They’ll spend that time training their
pokémon, doing odd jobs, dueling at the local parks to acquire some cash (or items), and
researching the pokémon habitats around the city for interesting additions to their teams.
The more they focus on one of these tasks, the better expected results, but to the detriment of
other activities.

Setting up
1 - Downtime narrative
As storyteller, try to answer the following questions (with input from your players):

How much time are the characters going to spend training before their next
challenge? Where will they spend that time? What will they try to accomplish? What
kind of items are they actively looking for? What local pokémon interest them?

The answers will help you define the rewards for the minigame.

2 - Determine expected rewards

With the dowtime narrative locked down, think about the expected rewards in that
time frame. How does a month of training compare with the experience gained in
the previous session?

You can adjust these rewards as you see fit, but here are some suggestions

Downtime XP (as % from $ or item Pokémon

previous session) equivalent Encounter

A week between challenges 10% 100 Bidoof

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A month of preparation 30% 500 Ponyta

“One year later…” 100% 2000 Totodile

3 - Determine ranges
Once you determine the expected reward in XP, $, and Pokémon Encounter, fill it as
the “Average” row in the Reward Table (example given at the end of the document.)
Then fill the rest of the table using small decrements and increments (just
something to motivate players to do well in the minigame.)

4 - Start the game!

To play the game, you’ll need two dice, a sheet of paper, and a pencil.

First, draw three 4x4 tables (each cell will contain a single number.) These represent
a trainer’s three activities: Training (XP reward), Dueling ($ reward), and Exploring
(encounter reward.) Then write down the trainer’s social attributes as dots to be
filled plus the disobedience of the pokémon to be trained.

Training (XP) Dueling ($) Exploring (Encounter)

Tough ◯◯ Cool ◯◯◯ Beauty ◯◯ Smart ◯◯◯

Disobedience ◯

Each player fills their tables by rolling two dice at a time, and writing down the results
according to the placement rules. Then each table is scored and each reward is determined
looking at that score in the Reward Table.
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Placement Rules
● Each turn, you roll two dice, “Effort” and “Rest” (each corresponding to a different
color.)
● Write both results in any table, next to each other (horizontally or vertically.)
● Once you start filling a table, continue filling it until it’s complete. Then move on to
another table.
● If the last remaining spaces in a table are all separate, just write the results
separately (without spending ‘Smart’.)

Special Actions
Tough: Spend a Tough point to reroll an Effort die.

Beauty: Spend a Beauty point to reroll a Rest die.

Cool: Spend a Cool point after rolling your dice to change tables. Write your result in
the new table and continue filling that table until it’s complete (then you may roll before
selecting any table to continue.)

Smart: Spend a Smart point to ‘unlock’ a roll. Now you may place the results
separately (but still in the same table.)

Disobedience: Training a disobedient pokémon makes filling tables harder. For

each point of disobedience, you automatically reroll a result that consists of a number pair.
(But hey! Maybe the one you reroll is a pair of 1s!)
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Scoring a table

1 2 4 2 → 0
1 3 4 6 → 0
6 4 4 6 → 2
3 5 2 2 → 0
↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↘

-1 3 1 2 0
Total: 7 (An average result)

For each row and column, and for the first diagonal, you get a partial score according to the
four numbers in that row. Select only the first rule that applies:

This row has...

● Two or more 1s. Its score is -1.

● Four of the same number. Its score is 3.
● Four numbers in perfect ascending or descending order. Its score is 3.
● Two pairs of numbers (e.g. 2,2,3,3 or 6,5,6,5.) Its score is 2.
● Three of the same number (e.g. 3, 3, 4, 3). Its score is 1.
● Three numbers in perfect ascending or descending order (next to each other). Its
score is 1.
● Nothing special. Its score is 0.

Then add the total result for this table and check the Reward Table.
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Reward table:
(To be adjusted by the storyteller. This example assumes a month of downtime, and 20 XP
awarded to pokémon in the preceding session.)

Table Score XP $ (or item equivalent) Pokémon Encounter

1 or less 2 200 None

2-3 4 300 Boring

4-5 5 400 Common

6-7 (Average) 6 500 Common

8-9 7 600 Uncommon, or common

of wanted type.

10 8 700 Uncommon of wanted

type

11-12 9 800 Rare, or uncommon of

wanted type

13+ 10 900 Rare of wanted type

Training Multiple Pokémon:

So far we assumed a single pokémon got all the XP reward for the Training table. Adding
more pokémon to your training sessions is easy, and you’ll get more overall experience, but
you won’t be able to get the highest results for your main pokémon.

Training two pokémon. Blue: Totodile. Green: Bulbasaur.

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This is an example for two pokémon. Totodile will get the total score of just the first two
rows. Bulbasaur gets the total score of the entire table minus the first row. (So the trainer
‘gained’ a whole row of experience by double training.)

The trainer can adjust the lines so the training is more even between pokémon, or add
more pokémon to the table, but keep in mind:

● Two pokémon can only share one row.

● Each pokémon needs at least one row all for itself.
● A line can’t skip rows.
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Training (XP) Dueling ($) Exploring (Encounter)

Tough ◯◯◯◯◯
Cool ◯◯◯◯◯
Beauty ◯◯◯◯◯
Smart ◯◯◯◯◯
Disobedience ◯◯◯◯◯

Training (XP) Dueling ($) Exploring (Encounter)

Tough ◯◯◯◯◯
Cool ◯◯◯◯◯
Beauty ◯◯◯◯◯
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Smart ◯◯◯◯◯
Disobedience ◯◯◯◯◯