Pokemon Polyhedral: Micro Edition
A downloadable game
Pokémon Polyhedral: Micro Edition is an A6 size solo RPG that is narrative lite and dice heavy.
Roll dice to encounter Pokémon. Roll dice to capture them. Roll dice to level up and evolve them. Roll dice to use your team to defeat Team Rocket, Gym Leaders, and the Elite Four.
While it's designed as a solo game, I play tested it along side my partner. We came up with house rules for trading Pokémon between us and had a nice time playing it together. So the rules could be used for more than one player as well.
My goal with this game was to create something I could play when I didn't want to think too hard, wanted to use my dice sets I love, and fill random empty pages in my notebook. It's a little grindy because of the lack of narrative but it's part of what I find enjoyable about it.
Notes on Game Set Up:
While we played some quick games on small A6 pieces of paper, I recommend setting up a Pokedex page (or a few) with lines numbered 1-151, leaving some space to mark when you've seen the Pokémon and whether you've captured it. I leave space after it too so I can update it's XP as well.
I keep my Party on a small piece of paper and I swap out when I make changes. When you take Pokémon out of your Party, it helps to make sure you update their XP before crossing out names or starting a new piece of paper.
Then I use pages to list out encounters and keep track of wins.
My new recommendation is to play this with note cards. List the Pokemon you successfully catch on the top of a notecard and use it to track it's stats and modifiers. Leave room to cross out it's species name and write the new one when you evolve it. Keep 6 in your hand and keep the rest in a PC pile.
Encounters are still easiest to play out in a notebook or regular paper.
Ultimately, set up is up to you. Whatever makes it the most fun for you have at it!
Reminder: This is my hobby and I make no money whatsoever from it. It is not a public good. I will get to updates as my health allows. I really appreciate people understanding and will ban those who don't.
Update June 2025: Just added a plain text version of the rules. I hope they're passable while I wait for some feedback to improve them.
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i noticed the comment thread about accessibility and i just made a plain text/txt version of this! would you like it uploaded or maybe sent to you so you can add it to this upload?
[sorry i know that thread is old lol, i just came across this recently]
I'm actually working on one at the moment. I appreciate your efforts though! If I'm unable to finish mine, I'll reach out.
Honestly surprised how addicted to this one I became! Absolutely loved playing through it!
Downloaded and printed this and am loving it so far, but could you clarify a couple things for me, please?
1.) What happens when I faint?
2.) Do my Pokemon have to be healed some way if they faint?
3.) I'm still pretty new to TTRPGs, so when you say an opponent's Pokemon's XP is determined by rolling "1d10%", is that a typo or does that mean something different from rolling 1d10?
Thank you, I'm really enjoying this game!
1) If all your Pokemon faint in a battle, the opponent wins.
2) There's no mechanic for that in the Micro Edition though I'm working on the Mini edition and it'll probably have it in there. In this one though, it's assumed once you've left the battle, they're healed.
3) It is my inelegant short way of saying to roll the 2 digit d10 (10, 20, 30, etc).
So glad you're enjoying it!
Okay, thank you!
by "you may generate a Team Rocket Grunt" do you mean it's optional or a set rule?
my dumb brain might be not understandinglol."May" means it's optional. That's when you unlock the option.
Hello! Are you open to hacks for this system? I really love your rules and I have an idea to put this system into a hex crawl!
Absolutely! I'm still planning an extension of this game at some point but I like to leave my stuff open for people to make their own. The one thing I will say is that I prefer hacks of my stuff to be at name your own price with a free option since I give all my games away for free. But obviously if you want to charge you're free to. It's just my preference.
That's an amazing game! Two questions: what's the beneffit of the evolution? And how i determine if its a wild pokemon encounter or trainer/gym leader encounter? And please share your house rules, this game its great!
I'm so glad you like it!
The benefit of evolution is primarily to complete your pokedex - so bragging rights mostly. It's entirely optional.
Team Rocket Grunts appear every 10 wild pokemon encounters. Gym leaders + Elite Four can be faced at will but must be faced in order.
My house rules were mostly for trading and battling. For trading, if we agreed on a trade we just struck out the pokemon we gave up and added the one we accepted; it retained the level and xp it had in the other persons game. For battling, we used best 2/3 mechanic and any relevant modifiers based on xp.
If you have anymore questions let me know!
Thank you!!
This inspired me to make my own pokemon solo game! Check it out!
I'm just getting into solo RPGs and came across this, this seems awesome! Can't wait to see the next edition! A Digimon one would be awesome to see
Hey there! I was thinking of printing out copies of this for Little Free Libraries. Would that be cool?
Absolutely! I hope they are enjoyed there!
Just wanted to pop in and say that I still regularly leave these with a set of dice in little free libraries. Thanks for being so cool about it!
This made my day to see! Thank you so much for sharing - I hope they are enjoyed where ever they end up!
This is interesing. but ive never played a Tabletop RPG before so i just wish there was more explanation when it comes to rules. Like it never tells you how much exp a trainers pokemon should be worth.
Thank you for the feedback! I'm looking at making a Mini edition (1 full page) where I'll have more room to explain.
Very very cool. Elegant, covers much of the gameboy game. I’d recommend adding some sort of element system (water type vs fire type etc.)
Hoping to include an element system in the next edition I make!
This is the best!!!!