How to Read this Guide

This is a guide to GM's to explain the shorthand we use in this guide. There are several types of areas and we thought we'd explain here what they're like and what the various sections mean.

Regions
If a heading doesn't have anything in parentheses after it, it's a general region with whatever worldbuilding info. we decided to stick in there.

Place to Buy Things (Store)
Stores usually have a table listing their wares and the cost. In the traditional Pokemon games, you can walk into a store and sell them anything in your inventory and they'll buy it at half the usual cost. We couldn't imagine someone going into a Walmart and selling a single berry to the cashier, so we put in special used item stores into this game to sell unwanted items. It's your call, though.

Example table:

Wild Pokemon Encounters (Encounter)
Encounter areas list the Pokemon you'll find in a particular area. Your players should encounter wild Pokemon at least once while traveling through, but you should hit the encounter table every once in awhile if they stay there for any length of time.

Areas Full of Challenge (Dungeon)
Dungeons are areas where the players are isolated by walls or caves or thick forests or for some other reason are forced into limited options and presented with a variety of challenges. They're tricky areas to explore, but come with great rewards.

Places to Battle (Arena)
We talk more about arenas elsewhere in the rules, but they're places where the trainers can get into a fight for money.

We use the following format:

Trainer Name

Pokemon 1, Pokemon 2, Pokemon 3

The trainer name is what you introduce the opponent by and then you would probably have generated a Pokemon sheet for each of the trainer's Pokemon in advance.

Gyms (Gym)
Gyms in Pensino are special arenas. The players don't get to claim them when they win there, nor can they simply walk in and start a fight. Gym battles happen in three parts:

The Challenge
The trainers must prove their worth by completing whatever challenge the gym leader deems necessary. This is usually a side-quest in an of itself and is more difficult the more prestigious the gym is.

The Battle
This lists all the trainers and terrain information as per a standard arena.

Victory
If the players win, they get rewarded. This is in part money. But they also get badges, whose badge benefit to the Pokemon is listed in the side-box as well as the privilege it grants the trainer who owns it. Also, the gym leader will hand each trainer a copy of the same TM. So maybe everyone gets a TM for Fly or Strength or Interface. Additionally, every trainer also gets another TM, chosen from among a pool of several varieties. So maybe one trainer gets the TM for Hyper Beam while another gets Extreme Speed.

Playhouses (Theater)
These are places to have Pokemon theater contests.