First of all, I wanna say this is not an original idea
With that out of the way, I'm surprised to see this not been suggested before (I checked through just to make sure) but, this idea is a Pokemon Draft Challenge.
If any of you are familiar with Fire Emblem drafts, a Pokemon Draft is essentially the same thing but with a different game. This is a group challenge in a sense, ideally you'd want at least 4 players (no more than 6, maybe 8 for games with a larger Pokedex like X/Y) who are
COMMITTED to finishing the run. The aim is to be strategic about your Pokemon choices to either benefit yourself or to mess with your opponents (for example, in a game like Black/White 1, you could draft all the Water-types to mess up the other players due to the limited number of them). As the "cream of the crop" Pokemon start to get drafted, you will have to make new strategies and integrate the lesser-viable options into your teams.
The drafting process almost always follows the snake draft format, which is traditionally used in like fantasy sports leagues. How a snake draft goes is like...
You have 5 People, let's name them Person A - E,
- Person A drafts Charmander first (thus making Charmander unusable for the other 4 players), and the drafting goes in order to until Person E
- The order then reverses for Round 2, where Person E will draft first, while Person A will draft last (to give equal opportunity for those in the last few slots to not be stuck with a disadvantage)
- For Round 3, Person A will draft 2 Pokemon because they will end Round 2 and start Round 3 of drafting (likewise Person E will draft 2 Pokemon during Round 4)
- Cycle repeats until you hit a cap (usually around 8-10 mons per person depending on the game) which then concludes the drafting process
https://www.playdailyfantasysports.com/what-is-a-snake-draft/ this website breaks it down more if you're still confused on what a snake draft is.
The drafting process should be done in a private group chat (whether through Discord or the forums) to avoid flooding. Ideally, you would all coordinate timezones and draft at the same time but, life's not perfect and you could give each player a 24 hour notice to draft a Pokemon or else they'll just get a random Pokemon (for that round only). The main thread could pose as a sign up thread for groups (can also have free agents sign up where they are interested but don't have a group yet) and a place where people can log their runs if they want to.
General rules of a draft are usually...
- Everyone plays the same game, groups should come to a consensus on what game they plan on drafting
- Starter is free (though you can put the starters into the drafting pool and force people to draft early game Pokemon)
- If the starter is not free, then players can use a starter (for Pokemon XD, Teddiursa) until they can catch their earliest available Pokemon
- Any Pokemon a player has drafted will be unusable for everyone else
- Any leftover/undrafted Pokemon will be banned from being used
- The goal is to beat the Champion, Red in HGSS/GSC, Greevil in XD, Agnol/Evice in Colosseum
- Optional! SOYO drafts (Screw Over Your Opponent) are basically the same thing but, you draft for the player in front/behind you with the goal of making it harder for them to complete the game (it's fun in a game like Colosseum where like 75% of the available Pokemon aren't great to begin with)
This can be a competitive challenge, ideally the winner of the group will be the one with the lowest play time (though you could do stuff like least amount of party KOs as well but, that'll be annoying to keep track). However, I have been apart of casual drafts where the aim is just for players to use Pokemon they would almost never use, without the random nature of like a Scramble challenge since players have some agency over their choices.
Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED Talk \(ㆁヮㆁ✿) (not really suggesting it, just wanna see how much traction/discussion it'll get)
