Greenlit: Regional Guides to Aspiring Gym Leaders

Hello everybody.

So, I'm one of those people that do a lot of challenges and I thought it could be fun to explore the concept of monotypes "in-universe" - mostly giving some tips and helping to compile some information that's already available (like where can you first get a Pokémon of your type and so on).

Ideally, I think we could do one of these for every region, although I'm not entirely sure how to convey things like version differences, or generation differences in the text - since move and encounter pool differences are relevant to the discussion. Especially when talking about Kanto, since there's a relevant Kanto League in Gens I, II, III, IV and VII and within Gen I there's at least 4 different versions of the game with encounter and move tables that are very different from each other.

In broad strokes, I think the section of each type could mention:
- General Pokémon availability for each type
- Basic coverage tips
- A general "viability ranking"
- Maybe a slight dip into more competitive waters by mentioning some interesting combos and strategies you could do with that type

The tone I had in mind was something more or less along the lines of the Husband Guide, a bit humorous but firmly in universe.

Hi! I reckon that's a good pitch and would be a useful guide for anyone wanting to take on such challenges.

The section for each type makes sense to me - I quite like the viability ranking in particular, and possible combos.

Would one thing you would include for the first article be the general rules/subrules for such runs? (Monotypes are straightforward but people can ask about games where HMs are required).

Cubchoo said:

Ideally, I think we could do one of these for every region, although I'm not entirely sure how to convey things like version differences, or generation differences in the text - since move and encounter pool differences are relevant to the discussion. Especially when talking about Kanto, since there's a relevant Kanto League in Gens I, II, III, IV and VII and within Gen I there's at least 4 different versions of the game with encounter and move tables that are very different from each other.

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Hmm... version differences could be a separate subsection. For regions with several games (especially Kanto), we can easily set the article up to span separate pages, and have a table of contents at the start (and top/bottom of each page as well). The question then is how to split across pages, e.g. a few types per page and discussing each gen within the sections for each type. (That said, Kanto is only in the latter half of GSC/HGSS, so maybe less important to cover here.)

This sounds like a brilliant idea! +1

I think when talking about past versions, you could perhaps talk about it like a shift in the ecology of an area/region? Like "In the past, Sandshrew could be found here. In more recent years/generations, the locals population has dwindled/migrated further in x direction to route y"

So, thinking about it, I think the easiest and clearest way to express everything might be to work with an out-of-universe perspective.

With that in mind, I think this should work as a (very) rough outline:

For Kanto at least, I think the Monotype Explanation and Generational Breakdown can be their own page and from then on have like, 3 ~ 4 types per page? (Especially since Dark and Fairy are more or less non-entities this region.)

Sounds like a cool idea!

I think my one critique is that breaking down all 18 types at once would be pretty overwhelming. This might be me being pessimistic but, I feel like having that much text would either lead to less information (less information as in because you need to talk about all 18 types, so you'd keep the information to the minimum so the reader doesn't get overwhelmed) or to having a lot of information and people just ctrl + f their types and ignore the rest of the article.

For me, I think it would be better to maybe break this up into 3 (more or less) articles and releasing them every week (or however long), focusing on a few types (mixing up both popular and unpopular monotypes) per article. This would not only let you be able to give ample information and each type the attention it deserves but, it also won't overwhelm the reader with just a flood of information.

As for the talk about region seperation, I feel like it'd be better to talk about only regions (you could even go as far as specific games too, since one type would work in a remake and not in the OG version) where said monotype would be feasible. For example, a Dragon-monotype would be incredibly boring in Kanto/Johto games and there wouldn't be much to talk about really but, they certainly would be very doable in SwSh and X/Y with the variety and there'd be lots to go over. Like you could maybe do a top 2 or 3 regions each monotype run would be feasible and/or most enjoyable (though for the likes of Water/Normal/Flying/Grass which are pretty much doable in any game you could maybe just break it up and focus on one of these types in each article?)

I think you could also maybe do a difficulty meter for each type when you start talking about monotypes for each of the regions. For example, a Bug-monotype in GSC would be pretty difficult compared to like a Bug-Monotype in Platinum

Though this article sounds very cool as someone who likes to run monotypes. Give me a s/o if you need any help!

That is a valid concern, yes. For a number of types early gens would be ... very uniform to say the least, maybe a type first approach would be better.

Structurally speaking, I think we can more or less draw some lines on the sand based on general availability.

New Types:
- Dark
- Steel
- Fairy

Universal Types:
- Grass
- Water
- Fire
- Normal
- Flying*
- Bug*

Scarce Old Types:
- Ghost
- Dragon
- Ice

The rest:
- Fighting
- Poison
- Ground
- Rock
- Electric
- Psychic

* Strictly speaking, not universal because of BW

I think doing the non-universals in groups of 2 or 3 and letting the universals each have their own article (or maybe do 2 universals per article) could work as a way to balance amount of information and amount of articles.

That makes sense to me, and thanks for raising those points, Wuzzy!

Multiple articles is fine, especially if it's more managable. Meanwhile we can also set up an article series so it's easier to navigate between each of these articles (or even link them manually).

Which type/s would you want to write on first?

Also, please PM me a desired username and emaill address so I can set you up with a Daily account for putting the first article on (and writing in too, although it's alright to write it elsewhere first before porting, just needs a bit more effort there.)

I think doing Dark, Steel and Fairy should be a good start.

They have less content due to being relatively newer types so they should be quicker to write and easier to gage how much space will be needed for future articles (which should have more content).

So, I've been working on the drafts, and I think we're gonna get very very long articles if we continue on with this pace. I'm only halfway through the Dark section and we're already around ~170 lines, which makes me feel we're gonna crash into the same problem Wuzzy had mentioned before.

Maybe something a bit more simpler should work? A proposed new outline would be something like this:

The main difference here is in scope and presentation.

Instead of using prose to mention a lot of the encounters, we can have tables (either graphical or textual) to convey the information.

Instead of having to mention every major trainer that could be trouble (which usually oscillates between "pretty easy just use X" or "it's nearly impossible unless you chart out your battle" and doing the charting out would kinda rob players of half the fun.), we don't even mention them, except maybe in a general "We recommend you get this Pokémon if possible" sense.

Pikaboo said:

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The new outlines seems fine by me. Html tables can be placed in articles easily enough (you can even make the tables in something more managable like Excel, and then have a online table generator convert them for you). Shortening the scope seems sensible.