Post by lichlord on Jan 24, 2017 23:47:48 GMT
Ruthlessly copy+pasted from the Pokemon - Pen & Paper Handbook*, this campaign features the Pokémon Ranch!
Pokémon Ranch
The PC systems that were once popular with Trainers have given way in the past few years to a return of the Pokémon Ranch. Although the PC Storage System is certainly a modern-age improvement to the Poké Ball concept, the method by which Pokémon were being stored –
a process that used to involve the Pokémon being scanned by a computer and then converted into purely digital data or 'digitized' –
was ruled to be incredibly risky and opened up too wide a range of threats to the digital Pokémon, including data corruption or even data loss. The process by which Pokémon are drawn into Poké Balls – which is sometimes referred to as being 'energized' – is far safer, for any conceivable scenario wherein the Poké Ball becomes compromised in some way, the Pokémon is simply freed from the ball unharmed. So conscientious Trainers saw the value of a real-world location where all of their captured Pokémon could be safely kept and switched over to the Pokémon Ranch instead of storing them on a PC.
Your Ranch, just like your Trainer’s backstory and appearance, is totally created by you. It's your Ranch, so it can be anything you want it to be – your parents' house, your Professor's lab, an actual ranch, or anything else you can think of. It's all fun fluff that is entirely up to you. "Ranch" is just a catch-all term used by the regions to refer to the many, many different locations where Trainer-owned Pokémon live and play while they are not on a Trainer's active team of six. They are government-owned-and operated, but only exist in a barebones state at this level. Buying full ownership of the Ranch allows you to begin its customization.
As long as you are not in the middle of a battle or otherwise occupied in some way, you can conveniently teleport Pokémon to and from your Ranch using the buttons on your Pokédex. The state of your Ranch has a lot to do with your prestige and acclaim in the Pokémon world, and an upgraded Ranch can grant you certain rights and privileges in the game. If you want to begin improving your Ranch, you’ll first need to buy full ownership of it for $3,000.
* - Credit for PPP goes to Eric Shoemaker aka "Doccit", and Drew Wilsford.
Facilities & Utilities
Full-Ownership - Requirements: $3,000 - You are now full-owner of the Ranch, and you may make other purchases and improve the facilities.
Hire Retainer - Requirements: $1,500 - The Retainer hangs around your Ranch, doing basic work. They have a Level two lower than yours, to a minimum of 1, and Pokémon determined by the GM. They will do what you ask, within reason, so long as it does not involve leaving the Ranch for more than 6 hours. If they find one of your requests to be unreasonable, offensive, or otherwise objectionable, they will refuse, and if you insist, they will cease to be your Retainer, returning $500 to you.
Hire Specialist* - Requirements: Varies - A Specialist is a Retainer of a specific class or role. Examples include a Smith for crafting weapons/armor, or a Mentor for Tutoring services. Prices vary by role, determined by the GM.
Villa - Requirements: $5,000 - You commission the building of a Villa. The Villa can accommodate 10 people living inside of it, and is quite luxurious and warm. While you are not around, it will be used by the staff of the Ranch, but you can always stay the night there comfortably and free of charge. Can only be purchased once per Ranch.
Battle Grounds - Requirements: $5,000 - You commission the building of a pitch for Pokémon battling. You can specify the general atmosphere and kinds of hazards you would like to be in the arena to the builders, and they will comply with your requests as well as they can while remaining compatible with the regulations of the body which locally governs Pokémon battling. This can only be purchased once per Ranch.
Festival Grounds - Requirements: $5,000 - You commission the building of a park area with a cobblestone square, a fountain, plants, and many places to set up booths and stalls for the holding of events. You can specify any specific features that you would like to the builders, and they will try to accommodate your requests. Particularly extravagant features may merit an increase in cost.
Cultivated Wilderness - Requirements: $3,000 - You can pay to have an area of land around your Ranch cultivated into fields for Berries or Apricorns (you decide which at the time of purchase). Each day, if you have the appropriate equipment, you may collect Berries or Apricorns from this location as though you had found them in a Pokémon sanctuary. Alternatively, you could cultivate the wilderness into a biome that your GM finds appropriate to the climate that the Pokémon Ranch is in, and once per day you may search it for a Pokémon sanctuary (which will contain no Apricorns or Berries) as though you had completed an encounter there, with a -3 penalty to the Attention check. You cannot find treasure caches in biomes you have cultivated.
Condominiums - Requirements: $6,000 - You can commission the building of a few houses around your Ranch that can be rented out by the Ranch owners or sold. Many people find the idea of living around an idyllic landscape full of many varieties of Pokémon quite appealing, and the number of homes available around your Ranch will naturally grow over time after you have installed Condominiums. Can only be purchased once per Ranch.
Poké Mart - Requirements: $2,500, Condominiums - You can have a shop built to service local Pokémon Trainers. The store stocks everything that a normal Town Poké Mart does. Each week you can try to collect revenue from the Poké Mart from your investment. The GM determines how much you receive, and it may well be nothing some weeks. Can only be purchased once per Ranch.
Beautification - Requirements: $1,500 - You can install some new cosmetic feature on your Ranch which is proportional to the cost. Especially extravagant features might require paying for two or three Beautifications. One Beautification costs $1,500, but contributes $2,000 to the Pokédollars spent on improvements to the Ranch for the purposes of fulfilling requirements for Privilege Purchases.
Hold a Tournament - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. Variable cost (see Information), Battle Grounds, at least $7,000 spent on Ranch improvements - This is a one-time event. You can invite Trainers from around the land to enter your Tournament and compete with you and your companions. There is an entrance fee, but you and your companions are exempt from it. The Tournament attracts three Trainers for each person in your adventuring group. The Trainers and their Pokémon are all the same Level as the average Level of your group. First place prize in the Tournament is four times the amount that you paid to host it. You may host a Tournament no more often than once every two months.
Hold a Festival - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $1,500, Festival Grounds, at least $7,000 spent on Ranch improvements - This is a one-time event. You can invite people from the surrounding area to attend a Festival held on the Festival Grounds of your Ranch, and you hire performers and exhibitionists to provide entertainment while you are doing so, which you decide the nature of and which must be approved by the GM. The Festival endears your party to everyone who attends. Aside from the people in the surrounding area who will attend, you can specifically invite up to twenty people. So long as they do not hold an extremely fierce grudge against you and your companions, or live an incredible distance away from the Festival, they will accept your invitation.
Open an Unofficial Gym - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $3,000, Battle Grounds, at least 20 Pokémon in the Pokédex - You can open an Unofficial Gym, and build your Gym facilities in the area surrounding your Battle Grounds. Although it is not recognized by the Pokémon League (or local equivalent), Trainers will come to it to test and hone their skills at battling. You may designate yourself or one of your companions as the Gym Leader, and your Retainers staff the Gym while you are away. You may give Pokémon that you have caught to your Retainers so that they may battle in your stead, and they will return them to you any time you request. When you return to your Pokémon Ranch, there will always be a Trainer eagerly awaiting battle with you. Their Level and the nature of their Pokémon are determined by your GM.
Open an Official Gym - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $3,000, Unofficial Gym, at least 60 Pokémon in Pokédex - Your Unofficial Gym gains recognition by the Pokémon League and you are now able and required to issue an official Badge to those who defeat your Gym. People in the area of your Gym's associated League will recognize the Leader of this Gym.
Start a Criminal Team - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $2,000, at least 4 Retainers, at least 30 Pokémon in Pokédex - You start a secret Criminal Team, similar to Team Rocket or Team Plasma, and you become its secret Boss. You can convert as many of your Retainers as you like to Grunts for no cost. Grunts will behave just like Retainers, but they will also act on your behalf outside of the Ranch as well for any amount of time you wish. They will also never find any of your requests to be unreasonable, offensive, or otherwise objectionable. You may hire more Grunts for $1,000 each.
Hire a Grunt - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $1,000, Criminal Team - A Grunt handles all of the Ranch-related aspects of a Retainer, but they will also perform tasks that require them to leave the Ranch for more than 6 hours. They will have no problems fulfilling any request, no matter now heinous.
Open a Museum - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $5,000, at least 40 Pokémon in Pokédex - You can open a Museum somewhere on your Ranch dedicated to some topic of your choosing related to Pokémon. The Museum attracts patrons from the surrounding area, who support the upkeep of your Ranch by visiting. The museum also contains the facilities to create a Pokémon from a fossil that you have found on your journeys for free.
Open a Pokémon Research Facility - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $5,000, at least 50 Pokémon in Pokédex - You can open a Pokémon Research Facility and put the building anywhere on your Ranch. When you hire a Retainer from now on, you may choose to hire a Researcher instead to work at the lab for the same cost. You can have your Researchers devoted to a project of your choosing. Good examples are cloning a Pokémon of yours, creating a new kind of Poké Ball or other Item, synthesizing a Mega Stone, creating any of the Pokémon that can be man-made, or anything else that you can imagine Researchers doing that your GM also finds appropriate for the setting. Generally speaking, three Researchers can complete a project the likes of which I have described after working for a few months, but the time-frame for any particular project is strictly up to the GM. Obviously, the more Researchers you have, the quicker projects get completed.
Hire Researcher - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $1,500, Pokémon Research Facility - The Researcher will maintain the Research Facility and will also devote himself to the research and development of a project of your choosing.
Open a Safari Zone - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $6,000, at least 70 Pokémon in Pokédex, at least 3 plots of Cultivated Wilderness made into Biomes, not into Apricorn or Berry fields - Your patches of Cultivated Wilderness become a Safari Zone, which people can pay to enter into to try and capture Pokémon. The area is fenced off now. Each week you can try to collect revenue from the Safari Zone from your investment. The GM determines how much you receive, and it may well be nothing some weeks. You may explore the wilderness that you have turned into a Safari Zone as per normal.
There are many more things available, but I think that should be plenty to display for now.
Pokémon Ranch
The PC systems that were once popular with Trainers have given way in the past few years to a return of the Pokémon Ranch. Although the PC Storage System is certainly a modern-age improvement to the Poké Ball concept, the method by which Pokémon were being stored –
a process that used to involve the Pokémon being scanned by a computer and then converted into purely digital data or 'digitized' –
was ruled to be incredibly risky and opened up too wide a range of threats to the digital Pokémon, including data corruption or even data loss. The process by which Pokémon are drawn into Poké Balls – which is sometimes referred to as being 'energized' – is far safer, for any conceivable scenario wherein the Poké Ball becomes compromised in some way, the Pokémon is simply freed from the ball unharmed. So conscientious Trainers saw the value of a real-world location where all of their captured Pokémon could be safely kept and switched over to the Pokémon Ranch instead of storing them on a PC.
Your Ranch, just like your Trainer’s backstory and appearance, is totally created by you. It's your Ranch, so it can be anything you want it to be – your parents' house, your Professor's lab, an actual ranch, or anything else you can think of. It's all fun fluff that is entirely up to you. "Ranch" is just a catch-all term used by the regions to refer to the many, many different locations where Trainer-owned Pokémon live and play while they are not on a Trainer's active team of six. They are government-owned-and operated, but only exist in a barebones state at this level. Buying full ownership of the Ranch allows you to begin its customization.
As long as you are not in the middle of a battle or otherwise occupied in some way, you can conveniently teleport Pokémon to and from your Ranch using the buttons on your Pokédex. The state of your Ranch has a lot to do with your prestige and acclaim in the Pokémon world, and an upgraded Ranch can grant you certain rights and privileges in the game. If you want to begin improving your Ranch, you’ll first need to buy full ownership of it for $3,000.
* - Credit for PPP goes to Eric Shoemaker aka "Doccit", and Drew Wilsford.
Facilities & Utilities
Full-Ownership - Requirements: $3,000 - You are now full-owner of the Ranch, and you may make other purchases and improve the facilities.
Hire Retainer - Requirements: $1,500 - The Retainer hangs around your Ranch, doing basic work. They have a Level two lower than yours, to a minimum of 1, and Pokémon determined by the GM. They will do what you ask, within reason, so long as it does not involve leaving the Ranch for more than 6 hours. If they find one of your requests to be unreasonable, offensive, or otherwise objectionable, they will refuse, and if you insist, they will cease to be your Retainer, returning $500 to you.
Hire Specialist* - Requirements: Varies - A Specialist is a Retainer of a specific class or role. Examples include a Smith for crafting weapons/armor, or a Mentor for Tutoring services. Prices vary by role, determined by the GM.
Villa - Requirements: $5,000 - You commission the building of a Villa. The Villa can accommodate 10 people living inside of it, and is quite luxurious and warm. While you are not around, it will be used by the staff of the Ranch, but you can always stay the night there comfortably and free of charge. Can only be purchased once per Ranch.
Battle Grounds - Requirements: $5,000 - You commission the building of a pitch for Pokémon battling. You can specify the general atmosphere and kinds of hazards you would like to be in the arena to the builders, and they will comply with your requests as well as they can while remaining compatible with the regulations of the body which locally governs Pokémon battling. This can only be purchased once per Ranch.
Festival Grounds - Requirements: $5,000 - You commission the building of a park area with a cobblestone square, a fountain, plants, and many places to set up booths and stalls for the holding of events. You can specify any specific features that you would like to the builders, and they will try to accommodate your requests. Particularly extravagant features may merit an increase in cost.
Cultivated Wilderness - Requirements: $3,000 - You can pay to have an area of land around your Ranch cultivated into fields for Berries or Apricorns (you decide which at the time of purchase). Each day, if you have the appropriate equipment, you may collect Berries or Apricorns from this location as though you had found them in a Pokémon sanctuary. Alternatively, you could cultivate the wilderness into a biome that your GM finds appropriate to the climate that the Pokémon Ranch is in, and once per day you may search it for a Pokémon sanctuary (which will contain no Apricorns or Berries) as though you had completed an encounter there, with a -3 penalty to the Attention check. You cannot find treasure caches in biomes you have cultivated.
Condominiums - Requirements: $6,000 - You can commission the building of a few houses around your Ranch that can be rented out by the Ranch owners or sold. Many people find the idea of living around an idyllic landscape full of many varieties of Pokémon quite appealing, and the number of homes available around your Ranch will naturally grow over time after you have installed Condominiums. Can only be purchased once per Ranch.
Poké Mart - Requirements: $2,500, Condominiums - You can have a shop built to service local Pokémon Trainers. The store stocks everything that a normal Town Poké Mart does. Each week you can try to collect revenue from the Poké Mart from your investment. The GM determines how much you receive, and it may well be nothing some weeks. Can only be purchased once per Ranch.
Beautification - Requirements: $1,500 - You can install some new cosmetic feature on your Ranch which is proportional to the cost. Especially extravagant features might require paying for two or three Beautifications. One Beautification costs $1,500, but contributes $2,000 to the Pokédollars spent on improvements to the Ranch for the purposes of fulfilling requirements for Privilege Purchases.
Hold a Tournament - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. Variable cost (see Information), Battle Grounds, at least $7,000 spent on Ranch improvements - This is a one-time event. You can invite Trainers from around the land to enter your Tournament and compete with you and your companions. There is an entrance fee, but you and your companions are exempt from it. The Tournament attracts three Trainers for each person in your adventuring group. The Trainers and their Pokémon are all the same Level as the average Level of your group. First place prize in the Tournament is four times the amount that you paid to host it. You may host a Tournament no more often than once every two months.
Hold a Festival - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $1,500, Festival Grounds, at least $7,000 spent on Ranch improvements - This is a one-time event. You can invite people from the surrounding area to attend a Festival held on the Festival Grounds of your Ranch, and you hire performers and exhibitionists to provide entertainment while you are doing so, which you decide the nature of and which must be approved by the GM. The Festival endears your party to everyone who attends. Aside from the people in the surrounding area who will attend, you can specifically invite up to twenty people. So long as they do not hold an extremely fierce grudge against you and your companions, or live an incredible distance away from the Festival, they will accept your invitation.
Open an Unofficial Gym - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $3,000, Battle Grounds, at least 20 Pokémon in the Pokédex - You can open an Unofficial Gym, and build your Gym facilities in the area surrounding your Battle Grounds. Although it is not recognized by the Pokémon League (or local equivalent), Trainers will come to it to test and hone their skills at battling. You may designate yourself or one of your companions as the Gym Leader, and your Retainers staff the Gym while you are away. You may give Pokémon that you have caught to your Retainers so that they may battle in your stead, and they will return them to you any time you request. When you return to your Pokémon Ranch, there will always be a Trainer eagerly awaiting battle with you. Their Level and the nature of their Pokémon are determined by your GM.
Open an Official Gym - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $3,000, Unofficial Gym, at least 60 Pokémon in Pokédex - Your Unofficial Gym gains recognition by the Pokémon League and you are now able and required to issue an official Badge to those who defeat your Gym. People in the area of your Gym's associated League will recognize the Leader of this Gym.
Start a Criminal Team - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $2,000, at least 4 Retainers, at least 30 Pokémon in Pokédex - You start a secret Criminal Team, similar to Team Rocket or Team Plasma, and you become its secret Boss. You can convert as many of your Retainers as you like to Grunts for no cost. Grunts will behave just like Retainers, but they will also act on your behalf outside of the Ranch as well for any amount of time you wish. They will also never find any of your requests to be unreasonable, offensive, or otherwise objectionable. You may hire more Grunts for $1,000 each.
Hire a Grunt - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $1,000, Criminal Team - A Grunt handles all of the Ranch-related aspects of a Retainer, but they will also perform tasks that require them to leave the Ranch for more than 6 hours. They will have no problems fulfilling any request, no matter now heinous.
Open a Museum - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $5,000, at least 40 Pokémon in Pokédex - You can open a Museum somewhere on your Ranch dedicated to some topic of your choosing related to Pokémon. The Museum attracts patrons from the surrounding area, who support the upkeep of your Ranch by visiting. The museum also contains the facilities to create a Pokémon from a fossil that you have found on your journeys for free.
Open a Pokémon Research Facility - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $5,000, at least 50 Pokémon in Pokédex - You can open a Pokémon Research Facility and put the building anywhere on your Ranch. When you hire a Retainer from now on, you may choose to hire a Researcher instead to work at the lab for the same cost. You can have your Researchers devoted to a project of your choosing. Good examples are cloning a Pokémon of yours, creating a new kind of Poké Ball or other Item, synthesizing a Mega Stone, creating any of the Pokémon that can be man-made, or anything else that you can imagine Researchers doing that your GM also finds appropriate for the setting. Generally speaking, three Researchers can complete a project the likes of which I have described after working for a few months, but the time-frame for any particular project is strictly up to the GM. Obviously, the more Researchers you have, the quicker projects get completed.
Hire Researcher - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $1,500, Pokémon Research Facility - The Researcher will maintain the Research Facility and will also devote himself to the research and development of a project of your choosing.
Open a Safari Zone - Requirements: Privilege Purchase. $6,000, at least 70 Pokémon in Pokédex, at least 3 plots of Cultivated Wilderness made into Biomes, not into Apricorn or Berry fields - Your patches of Cultivated Wilderness become a Safari Zone, which people can pay to enter into to try and capture Pokémon. The area is fenced off now. Each week you can try to collect revenue from the Safari Zone from your investment. The GM determines how much you receive, and it may well be nothing some weeks. You may explore the wilderness that you have turned into a Safari Zone as per normal.
There are many more things available, but I think that should be plenty to display for now.