Tips for new GMs:

0. PTU is not particularly balanced between Classes that purely support Pokémon
(ex: Duelist, Ace Trainer, Stat Ace) and those that participate in combat
themselves (ex: Martial Artist, Rogue, Aura Guardian). Generally, if one player
takes a direct combat Class, then you want ALL players to have at least one of that
Class because they boost a character's power by so much. For the most part, if you
follow the rule that either everyone goes pure Pokémon support or everyone has some
degree of direct combat prowess, you'll have a good time.

1. Starters: Try not to start with Pokémon below level 10. Pokémon below those
levels tend to have to rely on things like Scratch or Tackle, and battles get
boring very quickly with no options. Random starters are not a good idea, as a
player should not possibly have something they hate as the foundation of their
team. Having a lack of choice in-character is fine, but the players should pick out
of character.

For the most part, any Underdog that evolves at least once should be fine as a
starter, but there are some things to watch out for. Steel and Ghost types should
probably be avoided at low levels, because they resist or are immune to the Normal
attacks that are present a lot at low levels. Ghost types also tend to have poor
early-level movepools, and a low HP, so they are either too good, or faint too
quickly.

Starters should usually be special in some way, too. Egg moves are a good way to do
this, and can also help spice up early encounters if you allow them to take a free
one at creation, rather than having to wait until levels 20 or 30. (Just make sure
to keep the restrictions in mind from the September Playtest, in order to avoid
giving players early nukes.)

2. Use the Playtest Packets: A lot of problems that have cropped up over the years
– particularly when it comes to Pokémon or Abilities – have been fixed when it
comes to these things. They’re basically Errata at this point, and are highly
recommended by the devs to use.

3. Wild Pokémon: Don’t roll randomly for these. Place everything with a purpose.
You can use biome charts and things like that for inspiration, but an encounter
will be more satisfying if you put everything together yourself, and consider
things like what might challenge the PCs, or tell a good story, or what the players
might want to catch.

For quick statting wild Pokémon, good advice is to only put stat points into three
or four stats (HP, an attack, and the last into Defenses or Speed). Don’t worry
unduly about BSR if you’re in a time crunch, and don’t bother about nature stat
changes until the PCs have caught the Pokémon – it just makes a lot more work for
yourself.

Remember, try and leave more powerful things until later in the game. If your first
route has Scythers and Druddigons on it, it’s going to be hard for players to
consider picking up that Caterpie or Poochyena later on. Giving less powerful
Pokémon, and especially ones with, shall we say, less fortunate natural movelists ,
Inheritance moves is a good idea to make them stay useful and relevant later on in
the game.

With regards to catching, try to make everything at least useable. Don’t give the
player a physical-focused Pokémon that has Attack as its fifth or sixth lowest
stat, for instance. And also be aware that, since this is Pokémon, players can
catch a lot of things. If you don’t want them to catch something, establish a
reason beforehand, so they don’t feel cheated, or de-level things. Most players
will understand. And also take a look at the boss templates for when you’re wanting
things that won’t be caught mid-battle.

4. Bosses: Climactic encounters are always a high point of RPGs, whether it’s a gym
fight or a battle against a giant Tyranitar. For GMs, there are a couple things to
consider. First is action economy. This matters for normal encounters, too, but
bosses especially. Several lower-level things can easily destroy a single high-
level target just by sheer weight of actions. So, rather than attempting to balance
any encounter by changing levels, make sure that they have relatively equal actions
instead. Adding minions into boss fights also helps, if you don’t want to give the
boss creature itself too many actions.

Gym fights are a tradition in Pokémon, but to make them work in PTU, they’ll end up
looking a bit different from the video games. For one thing, unless it’s part of
the gym challenge, there’s no need for Gym Trainers to be fought to get to the
leader. If you do your job right, the leader should be more than capable of facing
the PCs on their own. And, yes, all the PCs. PTU supports group battles much better
than 1-on-1 fights, and it’s much better for the party, because then everyone’s
participating, rather than people waiting and watching while a series of battles
takes place. Gym leaders (with the help of Gym Trainers here, if you prefer) should
be able to control a number of Pokémon equal to that of the party, and have Trainer
Actions equal to the number of PCs, too. Multiplying their AP values isn’t a bad
idea, either.

5. Breeding: This is… suffice to say, not a super-great mechanic. If you must use
it, make the eggs hatch at a level close to the average level of the Pokémon in the
player’s team, so they aren’t punished for using it. A better idea is to, again,
simply give wild Pokémon Egg moves on an inheritance list already.

6. Resources and rewards: Don’t be stingy with access to TMs, Mentors, and Tutors.
A lot of GMs are a little too hesitant to give out these things, but the game does
assume the players have at least somewhat of an access to them. Don’t necessarily
give them Flamethrower or Hyper Beam off the bat, but try to have the opportunity
to get some flashier moves or Mentor Lessons every now and again.

6a. There are certain resources that probably should be avoided. Chief amongst
these are Lum Berries. Do not use them in your game, and especially don’t let PCs
grow them. They are objectively the best food item in the game, and will trivialize
Status. It’s just better to not have them.

7. Splatbooks: An important thing to remember is that you don't need to use

everything, especially not Game of Throhs, Do Porygon Dream of Mareep, and Blessed
and the Damned. They're not actually core books, and are there to help if you want
your campaign to go in that way, so do not feel you have to, or indeed should, use
them. They're expansions, not defaults. This also applies to classes in the core
book - if you don't want supernatural classes, banning them is just fine. Warper is
generally banned from most campaigns anyways, due to revolving around mostly less
than fun mechanics (Basically all its attacks are some form of "nope, you can't do
that") and teleportation being something that can trivialize situations.

Game of Throhs is probably the least problematic to add mechanically to games,

especially if you don't touch the alchemy stuff at all, and just focus on the
classes. However, do keep in mind that having greater access to combat classes and
elemental coverage is probably going to skew the average power level of your party
upwards somewhat, due to the strength that Combat trainers provide.

Do Porygon Dream of Mareep is, by the writer's own admission, a book that's best to
use for inspiration, rather than using actual mechanics from it. A lot of them,
especially Pokébots and vehicles, are just clunky and awkward to use. Upgrader,
too, suffers from the problem that not enough money means it's useless, while
having too much money will create permanent party power skew upwards. Glitch Bender
is an issue in that not only does it heavily skew a campaign's narrative by its
existence, but it's also not a satisfying or useful class. All of its features are
either reactive or simply too weak or unreliable, leading to a highly disappointing
player experience.

The Blessed and the Damned is a book that takes balance by the neck and wrings it,
hard. It skews both above and below the average power balance. Do not use this book
unless you're sure of what you're doing. Things within are at wildly different
power levels, and it brings with it a lot of narrative significance. If any one
book should not be assumed by default, it should be this one. If anything, it
should probably not be used until later on in any given game, should the plot turn
towards godly things. Like Porygon, this book has been noted by its writer that you
shouldn't necessarily take everything verbatim, and should use it for inspiration.

8. PokéDex Experience: Whatever you do, don't do individual experience. Either cut
DEXP entirely, or, if you want to use it, allocate it for a group, so that anyone
catching a Pokémon will grant everyone experience. Having players at different
levels is... an issue, especially at the levels where they can get access to
higher-powered features (7 and 13). This was mostly just a fix for GMs not giving
out enough experience, and was intended to be taken out for the last few editions.
It was just never gotten around to.

8b. Experience: As a corollary, don't be super-stingy with Trainer experience

especially. A lot of times, Pokémon levels can balloon while TL grows much slower.
Make sure players feel like they're making decent progress.

9. This is not the video game: This cannot be emphasized enough. A lot of the
things which are done in the video games either do not work or are simply unfun in
PTU. Random encounters aren’t super fun – everything should serve some purpose,
because things take so much longer to do. 1 on 1 battles are also not fun, since it
just means a lot of people don’t get to play at any given time.

10. Get more Pokémon ASAP: The very first encounter players should have should be a
chance to get a second Pokémon, whether it be combat or non-combat. Make sure to
provide a not-terrible selection to choose from, and maybe try and not give the
most common Route 1 'Mon, since people will probably be sick of those from the
games. PTU isn't particularly balanced about just having a single Pokémon, so it's
rather vital to get players to having at least two as quickly as possible. And, who
knows, they might get really attached to something unexpected?

11. General GMing advice: Make sure you and your players are on the same page.
Resolve OOC problems with OOC solutions – don’t just passive-aggressively punish a
player. Make sure that there’re always multiple ways to proceed. Just don't be a
jerk. Pretty much anything you could find that's not system-specific applies here,
but it's still a good reminder to have.