Character Generation

“Who are you, really? A brave adventurer, ready to take on the world? An explorer, delving into the caves? Maybe you’re just a working stiff, part of the gears of underground society? Sometimes, you don’t get to be what you wanted, but a lucky few are just built that way.” -Angus Greg, Barkeeper

Creating a Character

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Everyone has to start somewhere, and on Pokemon Below, you start with your Character Generation, or Chargen for short. The chargen command will give you a readout of what has and hasn’t been completed to qualify to get your approval to roleplay, and this article will cover the specific parts and how to get more information about it.

Pokemorphs are generally built around a few facets that you need to know about. Species, Nature, IVs, and Moves are all the components of a basic pokemorph. Then, you need to be able to be visible to everyone else as beyond a two-dimensional lump of stats. This is where Description elements come in, which inscludes your Desc, Short Desc, and Full Name. Finally, there’s an optional name if you’d like to be found by others Player Name and an administrative contact in case the game admin needs to get a hold of you, Player Contact.

Species

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A pokemorph species is which pokemon a pokemorph is based on. This provides you a base level of your statistics (or stats), as well as your typing, and what moves you are able to learn. All pokemorphs are considered to be at level 50 in terms of their overall values, just to make things easy to compare.

If you’re not sure what kind of pokemon you’d like to be, there’s a randmons command that will give you 5 random selected pokemon to consider.

Nature

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A ’nature’ provides two things: a general idea of how a character sees the world, as well as a set of small stat adjustments. To set your nature, use the setnature command. This command will also provide you with the full list of 25 natures including what they add to or remove from, stat wise. The “Neutral Natures” that do not have any effect on your stats are: Bashful, Docile, Hardy, Quirky, and Serious.

Intrinsic Values

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Intrinsic Values, referred to by the initials IVs, are what differentiate any pokemorph from another of the same specie. These are ‘bonus points’ that can be used to buff your base stats to provide a bonus. All characters start with enough IVs to provide a maximized bonus to three stats, or spread them about however they wish. IVs are provided in sets of 3, so each ‘point’ you spend on IVs provides a +3 to the base stat, for a maximum bonus of 30 in any one stat. This means that no pokemorph can have maximum IVs. You can see the number of IV tokens you have left with stats, and once they are all spent you won’t see how many are remaining.

Additional Stat Bonuses: Effort Values

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Effort Values, also known as EVs, are gathered through experience. Experience can be gained by people voting for your excellent roleplaying with vote and can be spent using buyevs. Unlike IVs which are set at chargen, you can only get EVs through roleplaying. Staff can also award experience for participation in plots.

Moves

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Moves are a pokemorphs secret weapon - their link to their primal element, and how they can manifest it in the world. Most moves can be used in general roleplay, but all can be used in combat. Each pokemorph starts with 3 moves that they know, and getting new moves is incredibly difficult, often relying on ancient technology or human artifacts to do so. Pokemorphs can, however, learn a nearly unlimited set of moves as long as they are compatible with their species, but can only ever ’equip’ 6 at most. Changing what moves are equipped is generally done through overnight preparation, and isn’t something that can be done on the fly, and certainly not under pressure.

Moves have “Power Points”, or PP, that indicate how many times they can be used without rest. Some rare tonics may be able to refresh these power points without rest, but in general it’s best fo assume that per day, full combat use of the abilities are limited to their PP maximum.

Due to the exhaustive collection of moves available and the specific side effects and descriptions available, we recommend looking up moves using a 3rd party service such as Bulbapedia to look up moves and pokemon compatibility.

You can get a move with learnmove. While unapproved, you can also forgetmove to remove a move from your character. You can also do a lookup of a specific move in game with movelookup.

Describing your Character

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The second half of creating a character is coming up with background information and descriptions for others to see while in game. This is how most other characters will meet their character, and is just as important as their statistic block and moves. Afterall, a generic Meowscarada is hardly eye catching and might be considered a feral, where as a Meowscarada in a top hat and a formal black-tie suit might just be trying to sell you some snake oil, and is probably safe.

Description

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A description is visible to anyone in the same place in the game as you, and indicates what they would see when ’looking’ at you with the look command. This should generally be at least two paragraphs: The first will give an idea of your physical features, and the second would be their current outfit. Keep in mind that generally you can err on the side of detail. A description should be at least 255 characters in length. An example description is below:

Standing at a fairly short height of 4'8" (142cm) stands this black-furred example a very tired looking sneasel. With short-cropped hair that barely counts as more then just headfur, and that telltale bright red feather attached to their right ear, they might be mistaken for an abnormally large feral sneasal if not for their always tired looking grey eyes and general expression of exhaustion and the lack of permanently on display claws. They’re pretty average in build all around, too, nothing to write home about. When not ready for combat, they sport short white claws on the tips of their fingers - when ready for trouble, their larger claws slide out of the backs of their hands. They are currently wearing a fairly prim an neat Guild uniform. It is a muted slate in color and consists of a button down short-sleeves shirt with breast pocket, and matching cargo shorts. A belt is around their waist holding up the shorts as well as a small adventurer’s pouch that is also connected to a thigh belt. A simple scarf is around their neck as well, in black color. A patch on their shoulder display a the guild insignia and the rank of “C”. Their name is on a patch over their breast pocket: “Pat”.

You can set your description by using setdesc <description>. For new lines, use %r or |\. Tabs can be made with %t or |-. Please note that your description must be all one line when put in!

Features

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Features are unique sub-decriptions supported by Pokemorph Below. You can see what features someone has with @feature <name>. You can use this to provide additional detail that you may not want to put in a description if the description is getting too long as it stands. If you are using advanced colors for your description, you can call out a feature name with the yellow ANSI color. Set a feature with @feature me/<feature>=<description>. Please note that the feature can have spaces in it, but try to limit it if possible.

Short Description

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Your short descripton is a brief, 1-3 sentence quick idea of your character, what someone might see at a brief glance. You short desc is shown in the glance command and in other places. Taking our sneasel friend from above, a good short desc might be…

A short (4'8", 142cm) sneasel wearing a slate Guild Uniform with a black scarf. They also have an adventurer’s pouch attached to their belt.

Your short decription is part of your “Info” which is all set using the setinfo command. In this case, it is setinfo sdesc=<description>.

Full Name

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This is your character’s fullname, if different from their “Character Name” that is displayed in commands. A character named “Pat” might have the full name of “Patrick Lombardi” or “Patricia Ellingson”, as an example. Another “Info” command, this can be set with setinfo fname=<full name>.

Player Name

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Your player name is an out of game contact that is provided to others publically as general information. Another “Info” command, this can be set with setinfo pname=<player name>.

Player Contact

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This field is used for GM/Staff to get a hold of you. Only staff can see this field, and it will only be used in order to reach out to you for things like password resets or administrative information. Another “Info” command, this can be set with setinfo pcontact=<ooc contact>.

Approval

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Prior to approval, you will not be able to be In Character - and the grid is set to automatically reject your presence if you ever lose approval. To be approved, you need to first verify that all the results from chargen are showing complete and green. Then, page a staffer for approval. If one is not available, most staff will have contact information for an alternate contact in their Player field. Use info <staffname> to see this. You can find available staff with the staff command. Please note that once you are approved chargen commands will be limited so you will not be able to reset your IVs or forget the moves you have selected.

Approval grants you the ability to be on the In Character grid.