Personal narratives

You know the typical Pokémon story - leave home, get a starter Pokémon and and a Pokédex, challenge the Gyms (or whatever regional equivalent they have) to get stronger, forge rivalries, fight an evil team, save the world and get crowned Champion.

That's the grand scheme, but because the protagonist is a blank slate, pretty much everything else outside of other characters' reactions to the protagonist is up to the individual player. One of the greatest things about Pokémon games, in my opinion, is that we can craft our own stories as we go along. Nothing else exemplifies that better than Let's Plays and Nuzlocke runs, but even if we don't record them in text or visuals, some of us still play out the stories in our minds.

My question is, have you ever done a run of a Pokémon game with a particular story that complemented or even changed some of the in-game events? If so, which is your favourite narrative that you have played out? Have you recorded it - as a fanfic, a series of drawings or a comic? If not, would you like to try it sometime?

Played a Dark monotype in X as Gundham from Danganronpa. Made perfect sense with the Four Dark Devas of Destruction.

Speaks in a dramatic, self-important way. Named the main character "ForbiddenOne", to give you an idea. Wrote "Spied two people with a strong aura in a conversation," referring to Diantha and Lysandre's conversation in Lumiose City. Encountered Korrina and Lucario less than five minutes later. From the game: "Wait! Lucario! Did you get drawn in by this boy's aura or something?". Worked perfectly.

Battled one trainer in Reflection Cave. Yells "DESPAIR!" after defeating them. Laughed at that because of Danganronpa's focus on Hope versus Despair.

have you ever done a run of a Pokémon game with a particular story that complemented or even changed some of the in-game events?

Nope. Other than the first playthrough in a new region I don't pay attention to the story at all tbh 😅

Whenever I play the games I usually just ditch the trainer aspect and simply treat the Pokemon in my party kinda like characters in a regular RPG. It starts with one character and over time more join, all of them bringing something new to the table. I usually also run the rule of distributing HMs evenly in the party as some sort of "special ability" that's supposed to be only theirs. So, I usually end up with just a single full party.
Newer games makes that uniqueness harder due to all the streamlining in favor of putting more focus on the player (something I'm not a fan of, tbh.).

Another approach I was thinking of a while ago (but not executed) was reverting the whole premise of the games. You are not a kid going on an adventure to become the greatest: society has moved to a point where kids are expected to go on a journey no matter if they want to or not. What's more: they're contractually obligated to deal with threats to the region (aka beat the evil team, fight/catch legendaries, etc.).
And all because at some point a kid in Kanto decided to do something like that, but completely on his own accord which just happened to work out; plus the fact that this is something that was successfully repeated on other occasions (other kids in other regions) so now you too have to live with it.

I do the same thing as @Megan mentioned. Adding party members at different periods of time as I go along.

Also if I name my trainer after myself, then I self insert like I'm actually in the game. Doing, thinking, catching whatever I would if it were real life.

I mostly just end up running monotypes if I do any experimenting outside of the provided narrative. Otherwise my greater joy comes from the grinding and accomplishments and watching the hours played tick up.

Good to hear your takes so far! I used to self-insert hard into the official games when I was younger given that my age matched that of the player characters, but not so much these days, where I play the game knowing I'm controlling a kid protagonist - that's Narrative A. I started doing that since Alpha Sapphire at least, considering that the protagonists were 12 and I was 19 - and the gap naturally grows with each passing generation.

Last time I played Shield, however, I did something I might consider doing for future playthroughs (Narrative B). I focused mostly on my adventures with my team in the Wild Area and on the basic beats of the Gym Challenge, and regarded everything else as part of a flashback to the original Galar Champion's adventure. Of course, it was impossible to ignore the presence of Opal and Piers as opposed to their successors Bede and Marnie, as well as the Eternatus stuff and the Leon battle, but I did fine otherwise. I just wanted to see if I could crown myself the first Galar Champion from Yanura (the region I imagine corresponds to central Argentina, where I hail from.) :D

If not that, I might consider Narrative C, which I first employed in Pokemon Xenoverse: acting as the player character's ghostly companion or chaperone. Since my self-insert character for the Pokeverse is already a physical ghost, all I need to do is become invisible to all but a few people, help the protag build a team (which always includes Mimikyu, guess why!), dispense advice, make amusing quips on the events and characters, and lend a listening ear. See, I'm not too keen on the idea of pretending to be Giovanni's grandchild, so being at their side as a ghostly guardian summoned by their Nana Flora is a fair deal to me. Plus, I love imagining a personality for the protagonist and seeing how it can play off mine, and it also helps me stomach the sheer ridiculousness of some plot points.

Should I get Scarlet/Violet, I'd like to go with B, because the region in that game is supposed to have been the former ruler of my home region. Otherwise, I'm going to use A, like in the rest of the games. For fangames, though, I prefer B or C, because I somehow feel much freer derailing the plots of fanmade games with my presence than the official games.

I have started to generally just create characters in the games as I play, my favorite oc being Oran (Or Ingo) from my shield save, it's fun building up a new character for a new Pokémon game

I did a more boring and popular run - playing as Ash from the anime when going through Yellow, and doing my best to stick with the team he had on hand. Couldn't be accurate to a T though, since releasing Pidgeotto when it evolved to Pidgeot was too hard.

Otherwise, I've tried to RP as my OC a few times... but it wasn't perfect either. She has specific things on her team that are unfortunately difficult to access in each game, so I always end up going with encounters I like and not what I see her actually using. One day I'll write a fic to bring every detail into reality. <3

Well, only my "Lucian run" on Pokémon Diamond comes to my mind. I have narrated it through a series of posts on travel journals lol. The story was about Lucian being transferred to another Sinnoh's dimension by Arceus. He has to travel across the region and start from 0 since he has no new pokemon with him and also quite no memory about how he arrived to the other Sinnoh. During the adventure he tries to understand how and why he was sent there. My run was a psychic monotype, but only with Lucian's pokemon diamond team. It was a cool experience because it was my first run with rules (like being monotype, for example) and also the character really fit my experience: I identify quite much with Lucian and it was also some sort of veteran view on the game, because Lucian already lived the Team Galactic's events in his own time line but it wasn't him to save the World. I focused on everything in pokemon diamond, lore wise, and I analyzed and tried to speculate on everything, because that was what Lucian would have done lol.
Anyway, since it was a different story I changed not physically in the game, but through my posts, some events of the game. For example, Lucian that soon goes to the League as soon as he arrives in the new Sinnoh, then there's this little inside story of Lucian vs Lucian (the main character vs the one of that universe). There are some lines of dialogue all invented by me, that show that Lucian already knew some things about Cyrus, for example. Barry is still the rival, because that's just Barry lol (I love him). And there's some more in depth dialogue with Cyrus and Saturn (in the end). I mean, I didn't really put 100% narrative effort on that, because my main aim wasn't only the story but was to have the point of view of someone who is living the pokemon diamond adventure already having knowledge of the game (the region, the gym leaders, the League, the story, ecc.).
It was a cool experience. I was thinking to do something similar another time btw.

_confused_piplup_ said:

Well, only my "Lucian run" on Pokémon Diamond comes to my mind. I have narrated it through a series of posts on travel journals lol. The story was about Lucian being transferred to another Sinnoh's dimension by Arceus. He has to travel across the region and start from 0 since he has no new pokemon with him and also quite no memory about how he arrived to the other Sinnoh. During the adventure he tries to understand how and why he was sent there. My run was a psychic monotype, but only with Lucian's pokemon diamond team. It was a cool experience because it was my first run with rules (like being monotype, for example) and also the character really fit my experience: I identify quite much with Lucian and it was also some sort of veteran view on the game, because Lucian already lived the Team Galactic's events in his own time line but it wasn't him to save the World. I focused on everything in pokemon diamond, lore wise, and I analyzed and tried to speculate on everything, because that was what Lucian would have done lol.
Anyway, since it was a different story I changed not physically in the game, but through my posts, some events of the game. For example, Lucian that soon goes to the League as soon as he arrives in the new Sinnoh, then there's this little inside story of Lucian vs Lucian (the main character vs the one of that universe). There are some lines of dialogue all invented by me, that show that Lucian already knew some things about Cyrus, for example. Barry is still the rival, because that's just Barry lol (I love him). And there's some more in depth dialogue with Cyrus and Saturn (in the end). I mean, I didn't really put 100% narrative effort on that, because my main aim wasn't only the story but was to have the point of view of someone who is living the pokemon diamond adventure already having knowledge of the game (the region, the gym leaders, the League, the story, ecc.).
It was a cool experience. I was thinking to do something similar another time btw.

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Hey, this one's very interesting! You know, I had been considering doing a similar run with a character from a Pokémon fan game falling into the canon Pokémon world...

...or rather, start with the premise that said character is originally from the canon Pokémon world, and in the conclusion of the run, they are dragged away into the world of the fan game. Oh, and the implication is that all of the characters in said fan game are in the same situation.

I don't know which premise I'm going to use; it depends entirely on which character I'm going to play as and how many of their Pokémon I have at their disposal in a given game. I came up with the second premise while watching playthroughs of Reborn because that game and its derivatives are so tonally different from the canon games, but it might be just as interesting to do the first one. With games that are more in line tonally with the canon games, however, the first premise is definitely more suitable.