Video games franchises like Pokémon and animated franchises like Digimon, centered around travelers who explore wild places and tame fantastical monsters, cater to people who enjoy building collections, love learning about the natural world around them, and have a strong affection for "cute pets" and "powerful beasts." The following tabletop RPGs, in turn, cater to fans of Pokémon and other works of media from the "Mons" genre, giving role-players the narrative tools, combat rules, and well-crafed settings needed to tell stories about young people exploring the world, getting into trouble, and befriending creatures who can spit fire from their mouths.
The first Pokémon video game, released for the Nintendo Game Boy in 1996, was purportedly inspired by main developer Satoshi Tajiri's childhood spent collecting bugs and tadpoles in the forests near his home. The basic plot structure of nearly every Pokémon game, consequentially, is about kids and teenagers going for a long trip around the countryside, encountering wild supernatural creatures called Pokémon, taming them through combat, and capturing them through a science-fictional device called a Poké Ball. A villainous organization or ancient monster frequently shows up around the midpoint of a Pokémon game, a threat the trainer and their stable of evolved Pokémon must defeat to save the world. Ultimately, though, the heart of Pokémon video games is the journey of discovering, cultivating, and "catching 'em all."
When creating a tabletop RPG inspired by "Mons" genre of video games, developers have three big design challenges. First, they need to create rules and settings that capture the feel of the franchises they're paying homage to - the Pokémon world's Arcadian countrysides, unsupervised children, and environmentally friendly Solarpunk societies, for instance. At the same time, these monster-catching tabletop RPGs should give players the chance to tell stories and create scenarios even the most modern video games can't simulate.
To this end, most of the roleplaying games listed below employ narrative storytelling rules rather than trying to rigidly mimic the mechanics of a Pokémon computer RPG. Finally, a monster-catching tabletop RPG often needs to be able to represent the concept of bonding in its game mechanics, making the friendship between trainer and monsters a source of power and a core theme role-players can mechanically explore during their game sessions.
Animon Story Is A Great Tabletop RPG For Pokémon & Digimon Fans
The website for the otherworld like in the Digimon games that the Kid PCs stumble into, though the core rulebook lets players and GMs create their own customized settings of adventure.
MajiMonsters: The Monster-Catching RPG Is Perfect For Pokémon Fans
Compared to Animon Story, MajiMonsters: The Monster-Catching Roleplaying Game comes across as a fusion of Pokémon with Dungeons & Dragons, taking place in a fantasy world teeming with magical monsters. In this setting, the fortified settlements and cities of humanity are protected by "Binders," magical warriors who can use magical crystals to seal away monsters they encounter, then conjure them back into the world to fight humanity's enemies. The MajiMonsters: The Monster-Catching Roleplaying Game system can be used to run classic fantasy campaigns of heroic adventure; theoretically, this RPG could also be used to tell stories about the ancient history of the Pokémon world, a time when Pokémon were more feral and humanity was less technologically advanced.
Wreck This Deck Is More SMT Than Pokémon Or Digimon
Wreck This Deck is a solo RPG about magical monster-collectors. Unlike the other Pokémon-inspired games in this article, Wreck This Deck is far more similar to the Shin Megami Tensei franchise in tone. It tells stories about fictional "Deck Runners" who capture Goetic demons and bind them into playing cards of different numbers and suites. When playing Wreck This Deck, players create a spell-book by modifying and altering a real-life deck of player cards.
They do this by using scissors to cut individual cards, markers to draw symbols on them, and so on. By drawing cards from this customized deck and consulting the rulebook, players can create micro-fiction urban fantasy narratives about demon-binding magicians trying to keep a grasp of their soul. SMT fans should definitely check out Wreck This Deck.
Shatterkin: Evolution Is A TTRPG Pokémon Fans Will Love
Shatterkin: Evolution, built around the "Forged In The Dark" RPG system, tells stories set in the town of Fernwood - a tranquil community analogous to the small towns in Pokémon games, right down to the wild monsters wandering outside its borders. Players of Shatterkin: Evolution (currently in Early Access on itch.io) take on the role of both monster-taming "Gemhearts" (small-town kids with a zest for adventures) and "Shatterkin" - supernatural creatures who can evolve into more powerful forms based on the challenges they undertake and the bonds they form.
Unlike Pokémon, a Gemheart typically only bonds with a single creature in a Shatterkin: Evolution campaign, leading to stories where a kid and their monster friend work together to protect their town of Fernwood from wild monster attacks, the criminal activities of the Syndicates (a stand-in for Team Rocket and other Pokémon bad guy groups), and a vaguely ominous force called "The Malice." When rolling dice to see if their characters can overcome challenges, players can improve their chances of survival by spending a resource called Trust (analogous to the Stress resource used in the heist game Blades In The Dark). If a player spends too much Trust without taking in-story actions to replenish it, the bond between their "Gemheart" and their "Shatterkin" can be damaged.
Sources: Animon Story, itch.io – Shatterkin
