Thoughts on Pokemon Jr. Adventure Game

​There is no surprise in the fact that I missed this little RPG boxed set when it came out in 1999.  I was only an expectant father, and I had missed the Pokemon craze of the 90s entirely.  Moreover, the box hung on racks like any other boxed cards sold for CCGs at that time.  Nothing on the box tells you that it is an RPG or related to RPGs.  I didn’t become aware of the game until earlier this year when someone on the gaming Slack channel I frequent shared pictures and his thoughts.  It sounded cool enough to pick up off ebay for $10 and see for myself.
 
The box comes with an instruction booklet, an assortment of Pokemon cards, a d6, checklists of all available Pokemon cards, two tokens for flipping, and a set of counters for tracking wounds. 
 
Play is designed to imitate the Pokemon video games, in which a young protagonist is given their first Pokemon by a professor and then they head off across the land to gather more Pokemon and train up their skills.  After covering the basic rules, the instruction booklet includes an adventure to walk first-time players and Narrators through the game.  The Narrator is the game’s GM.  They assume that a parent will play the Narrator to their children and their children’s friends.
 
The designers—who, sadly, are unacknowledged in the booklet—successfully seized on the two things at the heart of the Pokemon video games: exploration and Pokemon combat.  The first, exploration, is achieved by the adventure itself, outside of any dictated rules or procedures of the game.  The text of the adventure prompts the Narrator to ask questions about the physical world during play.  For example, in the first scene, the protagonists go to Professor Oaks lab to get their first Pokemon.  The Narrator is told to ask, “The lab is part of a larger building. What does the lab look like?”  Also: “There are computers and machines in the lab. What else do you see?” This invitation to the players to partake in the describing and building of the fictional world is a beautiful way to have the children talk about the exciting parts of the world that occupy their imaginations.  The players can surprise themselves and each other with their observations, their memories, and their creativity.  It leaves room for the adult Narrator to be taught about the world by the enthusiasts in the room (if indeed the parents are not themselves enthusiasts).
 
The adventure itself is impressively long, well beyond the basic opening scene and battle that I expected.  The adventure is varied and gives the players different challenges and experiences, and it introduces them to popular characters from the show and game, like Team Rocket, Police Officer Jenny, and Brock.  Players catch wild Pokemon, find a rival, and battle a gym master.  Pokemon solve non-combat problems.  The only disappointment is that Wizards of the Coast never produced the additional sets that were intended to follow this one, with more Pokemon cards and more adventures.  Had I had this game when my son was 8, he would have been thrilled to his Poke-loving heart to have played.
 
The combat mechanics are surprisingly elegant, given how complex they could easily become.  The price for avoiding that inviting complexity is that you don’t have cool features like Pokemon attack types having special affects on other Pokemon types.  But before we look at what’s missing, let’s see what’s here.  The Pokemon cards are two-sided.  Half of each side is an illustration of the Pokemon.  The Pokemon’s Hit Points are in one corner, falling primarily between 7 and 10.  Each side shows a different attack move.  The attack move has a name, the odds of success, and the amount of damage it does.  The odds of success are written as the numbers on a six-sided dice.  For example, on one side of one of my Bulbasaurs is a Tackle attack, which succeeds on a 5 or 6, and which deals out 4 Hits.  When I declare Bulbasaur is using their Tackle, I roll the d6; on a 1-4, Bulbasaur misses, but on a 5-6, Bulbasaur hits and does 4 damage to their opponent.  Some attacks have an added special ability.  On the other side of Bulbasaur, for example, their Leech Seed attack does 1 Hit on a roll of 3-6, but in addition, the player gets to flip a coin, and on heads, Bulbasaur can attack with Leech Seed again.  Because within the Pokemon universe Bulbasaur has more attacks than Leech Seed and Tackle, you can have multiple Bulbasaur cards, each with different learned attacks.
 
At the time the game was made there was no way to turn your Bulbasaur into an Ivysaur or to teach them more attacks.  And since the game was quickly discontinued, we’ll never know what they planned to do in future expansions.  I can see why they would want to keep the game simple at first, and grow it in complexity with future products, and the designers clearly left room in the game for that growth.  I would love to have seen where they took the game.