He was right - as seasoned D&D players, we adapted to Pokemon 5e quite easily, and appreciated the extra freedom the system gave us to creatively battle with Pokemon in ways the video game never let us. It wouldn't be as faithful to the video games as the Pokemon Tabletop United system, Joe conceded, but it would be easier to get into and more similar to the D&D experience, which emphasizes co-operative adventuring and narrative freedom. Plus, Joe thought of 5th Edition as a system that’s 'almost like a gateway drug into Tabletop gaming for a lot of new players,' saying that he “wanted to pick a system more widely known and used because it was familiar, and most people would be able to modify the rules they already knew from playing 5e.” Joe also simply knew D&D 5th Edition best compared to other tabletop systems. Unlike the Pokemon video games’ common one-on-one or two-on-two battles, Pokemon 5e is built to allow larger groups to battle all at once, cooperating with each other. Unsatisfied with what was available, Joe set out to create a system more like D&D 5th edition that emphasized cooperative player-versus-enemy gameplay. 'For me it took the fun out of the flexibility of a system like 5th Edition offered.'

'It was very much like the games, but in order to do that, 90% of the time you were just crunching numbers,' Joe explained. As a Pokemon fan, he sought out a Pokemon tabletop game too, which led him to Pokemon Tabletop United, a fanmade set of rules completely separate from 5th Edition that didn’t quite scratch that itch. After playing his first game, he listened to tabletop-centric podcasts and tried out additional TRPG rulesets like Pathfinder and FATE. Like me, Joe had begun his journey into tabletop gaming with Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition a few years ago. None of that would have been possible without the person behind Pokemon 5e, known online as JOEtheDM. Why Pokemon With a Dungeons & Dragons Ruleset?

I even DM'd my first mini-campaign where all of my stupid amount of random Pokemon knowledge became useful. I could write a whole separate article about how much cathartic fun playing Pokemon 5e with some of my closest friends online over Roll20 brought me in a time I couldn't see my usual local D&D group or play video games due to an injury, but trust me when I say we had a blast. As seasoned D&D players, we picked up the fan-made ruleset intuitively.

Pokemon handbook online free