Pocket Deckbuilding Theory

Let's talk about building decks in Pokemon TCG Pocket (which I'm going to abbreviate as "Pocket" from now one, because holy heck what a title). If you didn't know, Pocket is not a 1:1 digitization of the card game that's existed in physical paper for years. It's more like a digital-only reboot of the card game. The rules have been tweaked and the card pool started from scratch, so what I'm talking about here will NOT be applicable to the paper game.

I'm going to assume you've already learned the actual gameplay mechanics: energy, attacking, retreating, etc. If you don't know how the game works, go back and do the tutorials (which also gets you some useful rewards and a free deck). This post is about learning enough about gameplay to inform your deckbuilding. We'll cover a mix of theory and practical application.

Pacing and Pendulums

The absolute biggest thing to understand is that Pocket battles are won and lost by pacing. Gameplay has certain rhythms to it. The biggest ones are the production of 1 Energy per turn, and allowance of 1 attack per turn. These rhythms produce a sort of "pendulum swing" that can be observed, predicted, and acted upon. This forms the foundation of Pocket battle gameplay. For illustration, consider a hypothetical battle between a fighting deck and a fire deck. We open with the following two cards in the Active Spots:

You may notice that these are basically the same card. Pocket keeps the math of HP, damage, and energy costs on a pretty tight leash, which creates a firm "core" for the pacing we're going to illustrate. Hitmonchan will be given 1 Energy and reduce Heatmor to 50 HP, and then Heatmor will do the same to Hitmonchan. This process repeats for a few rounds, until whoever went first (Hitmonchan) will KO their opponent. Then that KO'd Pokemon is replaced, and the replacement continues the rhythm by getting to KO the already-weakened Hitmonchan. But then Hitmonchan is replaced and we start all over again, repeating until we reach 3 points for the win. This back-and-forth is the "Core Pendulum" of Pocket battles, and every decision you make—both in play and in deckbuilding—is about predicting, disrupting, or enforcing this rhythm, such that the final swing of the pendulum is in your favor.

Surplus Turns

The second thing to understand is that the Core Pendulum creates a secondary phenomenon that I call "Surplus Turns." When you started fighting with your Heatmor, you had to devote your first turn to setting it up (playing it and devoting one turn's worth of Energy to it). However, it doesn't get KO'd until the third turn—and it doesn't need any of the resources (cards or Energy) that are generated by those extra two turns. In other words, every turn a Pokemon is active without requiring resources, is a "Surplus Turn" generated by that Pokemon. You can then spend those Surplus Turns on other things, like powering up a Pokemon on your bench. More powerful attacks require more Energy, and possibly some evolutions—both of which are resources that you get once per turn.

Every strategy interfaces with this concept.

If you're the Heatmor player in the above example, you can see from the beginning that you'll lose the game if the Core Pendulum is left unmodified. So how do you modify it? By overpowering it with a bigger, stronger Pokemon. Instead of continuing the initial rhythm with a second Heatmor, you can spend your two Surplus Turns energizing and evolving, say, an Arcanine. Since Arcanine has more HP and deals more damage than Hitmonchan, you've created an imbalance in the Core Pendulum: you only need one turn per KO, while your opponent needs several, and that means you win.

Of course, your opponent also had two Surplus Turns to develop something, so maybe you're still at equilibrium. That's when you start getting into the interesting deckbuilding choices. You can try to break the equilibrium of the above Heatmor-into-Arcanine example in basically two ways: go bigger, or go faster.

Big or Fast

If you opt for the "go big" route, then you're looking to overpower your opponent with large amounts of HP and damage on a single Pokemon. As such, this usually means you're looking for a big, beefy EX Pokemon, like Charizard EX or Gyarados EX. This comes with the drawback that your opponent gets two points instead of one for a KO, but you're usually so all-in on that Pokemon that you were never going to come back from losing it anyway, so it doesn't matter. What matters is that your game-ender needs a lot of setup. You can accomplish this by trying to inflate the number of Surplus Turns you get, usually by putting out a "wall" (ie, Druddigon) that requires no investment but holds off your opponent for a while. Alternatively, you can try to reduce how many Surplus Turns you need in the first place, usually by generating extra Energy via cards like Moltres EX, Misty, or Manaphy.

If you instead opt for the "go fast" route, then your goal is to reduce how many Surplus Turns your opponent gets to benefit from—though this inherently limits your own access to Surplus Turns as well. This means you're looking for Pokemon that can deal a lot of damage with minimal investment. Sometimes this is an EX Pokemon like Pikachu EX or Starmie EX, but sometimes it's a regular Pokemon like Ninetales, Skarmory, or certain versions of Primeape.

Deck Composition

Pocket battles are usually not just a slugfest between whichever Pokemon just happen to be out in front, and your deck likewise should not just be a pile of Pokemon. In fact, in most cases only around half your deck should be Pokemon cards: 2-4 for your early game, and 4-6 for your late game. More Pokemon beyond that will tend to feel like "clutter" that just gets in the way, leaving you wishing you'd drawn something else instead. You want to draw Charmander, Charmeleon, and Charizard every game; not spend half your games with Charmeleon, Magmortar, and Infernape sitting uselessly in your hand.

The rest of your deck should be Trainer cards, which you can think of as tactical maneuvers. They'll let you make moves to better your position, without using up your precious turn-based resources (like Energy or attacks). For example:

• Potion (or Erika) can buy you another Surplus Turn if it changes how many attacks it takes to KO your Active Pokemon. Alternatively, you can extend the life of your game-ender if it suffered from early pressure by a faster deck.
• Giovanni, when used at the right moment, can let you KO a Pokemon a turn sooner, denying your opponent an entire Surplus Turn with one card.
• Sabrina can send your opponent's Surplus-Turn-generator to the bench and expose a would-be game-ender to an early KO. Alternatively, it can bench an early threat and replace it with something that's not ready to attack or retreat, thus buying you another Surplus Turn.
• X-Speed and Leaf are incredibly important. If what should be on the bench is instead in the Active Spot (whether because of an unlucky opening hand, or your opponent's Sabrina), these cards let you correct the situation without using up your precious Energy, thus preserving your Surplus Turns. But you can also use them to switch from your opener to your ender without waiting for the KO (especially relevant in matches between decks of similar speed), or to replace an injured Pokemon for one that's still fresh, allowing you to "skip" a game point on the Core Pendulum's swing.
• Professor's Research and Poke Ball just help you get the cards you need, as consistently as possible. There's a reason they're easily-accessible promo cards instead of requiring packs. Put them in every deck. Do it. Eat your vegetables.
• Pokemon Communication helps smooth our your draws. If you're ever sitting on a handful of evolutions without their Basics (or vice versa), PokeComm will help you straighten that out.

There's More... But Not Now

I think that covers the core principles of Pocket deckbuilding. Every deck can be extrapolated from these core concepts—even the wacky ones. You're ready to start building! Keep these principles in mind (in both building and playing), iterate enough that you can adjust your list thoughtfully, and eventually you'll have decks that are effective while still feeling like they're "yours." Happy battling!

Literalist Roleplay-Gaming: a Primer

Let's talk about my favorite way to engage TTRPGs: a philosophy of play (and by extension, design) which I've lately taken to calling Literalist Roleplay-Gaming. I recently wrote about how there are actually multiple separate hobbies sharing the name of "TTRPGs," and I used Literalist Roleplay-Gaming as a quick example. Today, we're expanding past that two-paragraph synopsis and giving this model a proper explanation (and since it's my favorite, a bit of sales pitch will probably bleed through as well).

The Basics

As the name implies, Literalist Roleplay-Gaming is the literal approach to roleplaying games. Whereas some of the fields under the TTRPG umbrella only use that name due to shared history, we're using it as a literal description of what we're doing: we're playing a game, specifically of the roleplaying type. For us, a roleplaying game is exactly what it says on the tin: a game of roleplaying.

Note that "game" here means something more specific then just any recreational activity. Just because you do something for fun doesn't make it a game—sort of like how nobody confuses ordinary recreational drinking with playing a drinking game. There's loads of people who do recreational roleplaying as its own thing, but we're talking about using roleplay not as a standalone activity but as a core component of playing an actual game.

For us, the term "roleplay" likewise means something specific. Much like in many non-TTRPG contexts, "roleplay" means stepping into the shoes of an imaginary person, and engaging an imaginary scenario through that lens. It doesn't mean performing the character as an actor would, and it doesn't mean authoring the character as though you were writing a story, it means experiencing that person's situation in an imagined reality. The beating heart of roleplay is, "Here I am, what will I do?"

Finally, LRG wants "roleplay" and "game" to be integrated. To use the drinking game analogy again, nobody thinks they played a drinking game just because beer was served at game night; the gameplay has to be centered on the drinking for it to be a drinking game. Similarly, Literalist Roleplay-Gaming (which I hyphenated for a reason!) views the imaginary space of roleplay and the mechanics of the game rules as inextricably linked. If play drifts away from mechanics entirely, we LRG fans feel we've stopped playing the RPG; but also, if the mechanics don't feed directly into the imagined space, we likewise feel robbed of our roleplay. Our favorite experiences come from the synthesis of the two.

The Implications

Let's have a look at some of the things that tend to be true of TTRPGs under the Literalist Roleplay-Gaming model, especially those things which set it apart from the other fields under the TTRPG umbrella.

Channels of Agency

Folks in TTRPG spaces talk a lot about "player agency," often in the context of new and interesting ways to let players influence the play experience. Literalist Roleplay-Gaming, however, tends to channel agency almost exclusively through the character. In other words, we would rather notice that a chandelier exists and spend a point of our character's Stamina to swing from it, than to spend 1 Plot Point to add a chandelier to a scene so our character can swing from it. The former is grounded in the roleplay, while the latter circumvents it, pulling us out of the world and putting us back at the table.

Obviously this concern applies to the designs of the games we play, but it also applies to the informal play culture. There are innumerable bits of advice on the internet about adding looser versions of the above example to games that don't natively support it. Perhaps the most famous is the "Rule of Cool," in which a player can be allowed—on a case-by-case basis—to do something their character isn't quite capable of, as long as it's sufficiently awesome. However, in addition to being a meta-decision rather than a roleplay-driven one, this delegitimizes every past decision and worldbuilding detail that culminated in this situation where the action isn't possible. To the LRG way of thinking, the Rule of Cool actually reduces agency rather than supporting it.

The above is mostly about player agency, but GM agency matters too. The GM is in a bit of a different situation, since they're populating the world from nothing. How does the LRG philosophy of play apply when there's no objective reality to align with? The key is internal consistency. Yes, the GM could put "anything" into the path of the players, but should try to align with whatever else has already been established, to keep things cohesive and believable. This also means that there's no "fudging"—meaning you don't secretly change the outcome of rolls or the stats of an obstacle in order to curate the experience on the fly. Once you put something in place, it is what it is. As the saying goes, the dice fall where they may. The un-curated outcomes are part of the desired experience.

Dual Nature of Rules

Speaking of letting the dice fall where they may, the rules of the game serve two very important functions in the Literalist Roleplay-Gaming model. First, of course, the rules are important because it's a game, and a game is defined by its rules. But the rules also pull double duty as the voice of the world. When a character in a story succeeds or fails, it's because of the author's decision. But when you succeed or fail in a TTRPG (at least, under the LRG model), it's the product of how your characteristics intersected with the characteristics of the world—and that intersection was created by the game's rules.

To put it another way, the rules create tangibility in the imaginary world. They give it substance. The ability to push back on you, to require something of you before you can work your will. Literalist Roleplay-Gaming enables worlds that are more full of life than those of narrative media. In effect, the world becomes a separate entity in the roleplay. Rather than only being acted upon by you, it can also act upon you in return, and therefore becomes truly inter-active. Consistency in the rules of the TTRPG helps make this possible.

No "Flavor Text"

You know how in a game like Magic: the Gathering, cards often have "flavor text" at the bottom? This text tells you something about an imaginary world but, crucially, is fully isolated from gameplay. Your Lightning Bolt card would function exactly the same no matter what the flavor text said. This is antithetical to the Literalist Roleplay-Gaming philosophy of TTRPG play. Remember, we want "roleplay" and "game" to be integrated. If it happened in-universe then it happened in-universe. And since that universe is where we play, those happenings matter. 

That doesn't mean there's a promise that every detail will come up or become relevant, but we play with the implied acknowledgement that if it comes up, we'll treat it as true. Your alien pilot having purple skin might be a cosmetic detail with no explicit mechanics attached, but we play with the assumption that if you somehow find yourself needing to hide naked in a field of purple flowers, your alien pigmentation will remain factual and be handled accordingly (whatever that might mean in context).

This is sort of the flip-side of the "meta" mechanics we touched on earlier. Due to the integrated relationship between roleplay and gaming, we're disinterested in meta-mechanics that don't plug into the imagined realities of the game world—but equally so, we also accept that anything we establish as true in-universe has at least the possibility of becoming mechanically relevant in the right circumstances. Everything is real and nothing is flavor text.

Investment of Self

Something that tends to happen in Literalist Roleplay-Gaming is an investment of "Self" into the character being roleplayed. Players will retell the events of their adventures by saying "I did this" and "We did that," in sharp contrast to the third-person descriptions given by the viewer of a TV show. Now, this doesn't mean that LRG fans are failing to roleplay a character who's different from themselves. Rather, it means that we roleplay by stepping into that other person's shoes. In a sense, we alter our sense of self into that of the character, and then engage a scenario as that other self.

This makes LRG uniquely positioned to create experiences that feel first-hand rather than observational. It's hard to describe how different it feels to live through situations as your character, rather than, for example, using TTRPGs to create a story about your character. But it is different, and I highly recommend giving it a go sometime. It's the closest you'll ever get to actually visiting another world. 

Common Misconceptions

Often, when I try to talk about this philosophy of play, people draw wrong conclusions or make weird assumptions, so it's probably worth the time to address some of them.

"So you mean wargames?"

No, I don't mean wargames. I get this misconception a lot, and I think it stems from a stunted understanding of how TTRPGs originated. When I explain to someone that I'm not doing what they're doing, they assume that I must not have made the transition from wargames yet. But that's not true (and I've personally never played a wargame in my life). The Literalist Roleplay-Gaming model can be applied to any genre or tone, with or without combat.

"So you mean crunchy, rules-dense games?"

If you start looking at lots of TTRPGs that exist, you'll find that the ones whose mechanics most consistently align with Literalist Roleplay-Gaming ideals tend to be bigger, crunchier, more mechanically-detailed games. Those with more meta mechanics, or which aren't very game-like, or prioritize something else over roleplay (such as story-crafting) often tend to be smaller, lightweight titles. However, this is nothing more than historical coincidence. You could easily create an LRG-friendly game that fits on the back of a postcard, it just hasn't happened much so far. LRG is about how rules and roleplay intersect, not about how granular and detailed those rules get.

"So you never use houserules?"

On the contrary, houserules are 100% acceptable in Literalist Roleplay-Gaming! I think people tend to enmesh the concepts of on-the-fly fudging and agreed-upon houserules, and thus assume that declining the former equates to declining the latter, but that's not remotely true. Remember, consistency is the key: if we've all agreed on a houserule, it can be consistently applied, in keeping with the LRG philosophy. But fudging and Rule of Cool are a different beast, disrupting the imaginary world's tangibility due to lack of consistency. It's kind of like Uno: nobody's playing by the book, but any given group is playing by a consistent set of rules.

So That's That

Literalist Roleplay-Gaming. It's awesome. It rules. Give it a try sometime. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!