Pikachu, I Choose You!

Not really. This post is about settings. I think it is very important to think about the logic in your setting: how do people live, what are things like, etc. If you don’t have a clue about the day to day of life in the setting, it comes off as a little “off” when you stop to think about it.

A lot of people enjoy Pokemon. They did some things in a smart way: start the “players” out in a given region; let them explore and learn about the pokemon that live there; add new regions as they become bored. A good way to structure any campaign.

It might just be me, but I think they got a few things wrong.

Is everyone a vegetarian? You don’t see any animals besides pokemon themselves. Pokemon don’t seem to seriously hurt each other (in the wild, they might drive a pokemon away from their territory, but they don’t seem to be out to kill anything). People don’t eat pokemon (it would be strange to be eating creatures that you generally become friends with).

Why don’t kids go to school? It seems like that by the time they are 11, they are off chasing pokemon. Is all necessary learning done in a different way or is it done by age 10?

What do people really do to earn a living? In the video games, it is a little more clear that you can make money from pokemon battles/contents. However, not everyone seems to have a pokemon. What do they do?

Sure, none of these things makes Pokemon a bad setting. It just leaves you wondering about the wrong things which can take away from enjoying your campaign. So please think about the little things in your setting. You and your players will have more fun.

Nicktoon Settings that would be fun in Risus

• Avatar: The Last Air Bender
• Fairly Odd Parents
• Danny Phantom
• El Tigre
• The X’s

Fast not only as a system…

…but also as a gaming tool for a certain setting game.

Gaming adaptations (from novels, movies or TV shows) have a huge bunch of pages to set the scenario and to precisely stat the people who inhabit it. It’s great to have such encyclopedic knowledge at hand, but it’s a tedious reading and requires time.

Risus is great for an almost instantaneous play.
If everyone in your group enjoys Battlestar Galactica (no Shatner in it but it’s still a fine show… ;·) ) and you’ve watched almost every eppie, the most important part of the setting has already been explained much better than any handbook would. Let’s gather and start playing.

There’s still a fine tuning to be done (like if using funky dice or not, or allowing pumpin’ clichés) but nothing that would delay the gaming session for days or weeks.

And, at the end, if the precise handbook gets into your hands you can use it as a reference book and keep Risusing or export your campaign into the new system, as Ruminator showed us before.

I will admit that I like to read through other RPGs (usually those that are freely available as as PDF)…however, when it comes time to actually try them out, I always start thinking about how much easier it would be to just use the setting for Risus.