The Pokemon Battle Effect - Part 1

Essential for RPGs or just a relic of its multifaceted past?

It occurred to me that many RPGs have almost two games operating inside of itself at any given time.

You have the world exploration and interaction component and you have this tactical combat component.

The World Exploration Phase

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In Pokemon, you’re thrown into a world where you have control of just your character. Just some dude or dudette who’s walking around interacting with the world, searching for items, solving puzzles, and exploring.

Shortly after waking up, you bumble out your own door into this town. You walk around and bumble some more until you’re finally in some old dude’s barn-turned-lab with a bunch of monsters trapped in balls and you get to pick one to be your friend/slave/gladiator.

So you choose between the three and your choice of pet goes, "whatever, man." (I guess that's consent?) 

Well whatever you do, his niece or nephew feels as though you’re jacking his swag and has beef with you. The game changes. You have this new game. This new thing called Combat. 

The Combat Phase

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You’re thrown into this whole new screen with different, more limited interaction choices. Music has changed, the screen has changed. All of sudden things have Hit Points, Power Points, moves and levels. 

So you kick his or her ass and you're off to run errands and begin a journey that will lead you to Pokemon master. Awesome! 

The entire game operates in this pattern. You're running around going town to town doing stuff, and whenever things need to be solved through combat (pokemon battles) your screen swirls and converts into the Combat UI.

Each success makes your monsters get stronger and you're given more options.

Sound familiar? It should to anyone who plays Dungeons and Dragons because that swirl and music change in Pokemon is exactly what is going on when your GM or DM calls for you to “roll initiative.” 

So I'm here to look at why RPGs with dedicated combat aspects are so popular, what exactly it is that they add and detract from gaming, and, lastly, take a peek at a Fantasy RPG system that threw that dedicated combat shit in the garbage.

Peeling back the VeiL of D&D combat

Swiggity Swetal I'm comin' for your metal!

D&D and Pokémon have similar formats because at the most abstract level, they are resource management games with a plot. 


Combat is puzzle solving. The Fighting! Action! Swashbuckling! Magic! The things that get you excited are basically just a colorful dress-up over a resource-management problem. 

You have a set number of resources (Life points, Magic, Movement, Action types) and you all must use them in a way to overcome whatever you’re facing, effectively solving the puzzle. It gets harder though. Because you’re not just solving one puzzle. You’re solving an adventuring day’s worth of puzzles. Your limited budget of actions, magic, and life must now be stretched even further! 


Oh but it doesn't end there. Nope. Now, solving puzzles with the same pieces can be stale. It's repetitive. To keep it fresh, designers sometimes make some of your resources you use have no or reduced effect in a puzzle.  You see that armadillo/tick bastard-child looking monster? That;s your classic rust-monster who'll take away all your gold and metal items like a bad divorce.

Additionally designers let you unlock new, exciting resources to add to your puzzle solving toolkit after you defeat enough of the easier puzzles. Now designers have made a game where you’re managing resources effectively for as long as you wish to play!

And that, in short, is combat for Dungeons and Dragons.

You got Tactical Combat in my Story Based Game! 
You got Story in my Tactical Combat game!

Overlaying a puzzle on top of storytelling allows players to feel like they’re progressing in a way other than narratively. Defeating puzzles in Dungeons and Dragons literally empowers your character to defeat puzzles. Your character “grows” in power and the scope of abilities increases with this growth. It’s a measure of non-narrative progress. It’s a quantifiable value-system that measures character progression and development. That is a staple of the RPG genre: character development/progression.

A dedicated combat system in an RPG also allows for the strategic and tactically inclined to approach RPGs. Since the history of RPGs is firmly in the domain of Wargaming, someone who’s background isn’t literature-laden or fiction-focused can still discover and enjoy the hobby. 

In the next part of this blog, I will discuss in further detail benefits and drawbacks of having a mechanically dedicated combat system in an RPG. Following of which, I'll take a look at a system that doesn't use one at all: Dungeon World.