Sounds sweet, what do you have so far?

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>>59289523
Mechanically, here was how the original version worked.
>You'd pick a starting color of pikmin (Red, Blue, or Yellow) and then pick a place to put your onion.
>Then, you'd start with five little dudes and start exploring the world. The GM would drop in monsters and obstacles based on what they could find in the environment, and placing down items from their own stash of toys/junk/weird things to impede or change your path.
>There was no hard day/night cycle like in the game, but instead a functional knowledge that each session of the game was a single "day" and that if you left any of your dudes behind, they would be dead.
>Combat was decided by a combination of numbers and odds. You needed at least X amount of pikmin to fight a creature, but your chances of winning (which were at the time decided by rock paper scissors) were based on how many you could bring. Each number of pikmin past the amount would give you an extra shot at victory, with the goal being a best-of for your rock-paper-scissors games. Every loss would result in some of your pikmin getting eaten.
>A major part of it was finding new types of pikmin via exploration or feeding special creatures to the Onion, granting you weird and interesting powers.

And that was about it at the time, considering that I made the game when I was about 9 or so. I think what it needs for the rework is a solid set of rules for numbers and conflict, and more depth into its character creation and army control. The base concept of running around in your backyard using it as a game board was super fun though.

>>59289675
Idk anything about pikmin

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>>59290021
Here's the basic premise:
>You are Captain Olimar, a tiny alien dude from the planet of Hocotate, where you work as an interstellar deliveryman. One day while flying your spaceship you are hit by a comet and crash on a hitherto unknown planet (which is Earth)
>Surrounded by poisonous oxygen, and with your ship having scattered its core systems around the landscape during its crash, you look to be in a dire predicament.
>Until you find these little leaf-headed plant-animals you call Pikmin. They grow out of the ground, like following you around, and get made by this flying tripod thing that looks like an onion.
>Using the help of these pikmin, you travel across the landscape of earth hunting for pieces of your spaceship so you can escape, before your life support system runs out. Along the way you fight all manner of dangerous wildlife and terrifying hazards, and find other varieties of pikmin who can do different things like breath water or fly especially high when thrown.

Then there's Pikmin 2, where after your escape, your delivery company goes into major financial jeopardy when a massively valuable cargo goes missing. You and your bumbling coworker Louie go back to the planet to salvage the strange artifacts you find to help repay your company's towering debt. These strange artifacts of course are relatively mundane items like batteries or small toys, with strange and baffling descriptions created by Captain Olimar trying to discern their use without context. He also makes cool ecology studies of the wildlife in between getting almost killed by all of it.

Then there's pikmin 3, which I'm less familiar with but involves a different planet and company following after Olimar and Louie to try and get juice from the various fruits of Earth to sell and also end a famine I think?

>>59290478
In three you need the seeds from the fruit and the juice.

>>59290478 there is another game where crash again and to collect energy for your ship.

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>>59290595
Oh yeah, Hey! Pikmin. I'm actually playing that right now. It's not bad for a little 3ds game.

>>59290630
Try to unlock the secret boss it's really cool.

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>>59289523
>>59289675
Ok preface anon: You're my kind of people and do not stop with your idea. I've wanted one of these forever and just not realized it. That said, here's some notes.
>Combat
The rock paper scissors thing works fine for small encounters, but doesn't really capture the 'Pikmin' style of tactics and the general feeling of being outclassed in every way but brains by the wild. For large encounters (almost all of them), you'd want a little more crunch.
Take pic related for example. Can eat 3-15 of your troops in one motion. Before just walking up and rolling, do you attempt to sneak behind it while it slumbers and spam the back? Sideswipe and aim for the eyes? Send some Rock Pikmin to its feet to trip it up? What would each option do to the battlefield? Hitting it in the back might get you an extra surprise attack, going for the eyes could potentially blind it in exchange for placing your Pikmin closer to its mouth, and tripping it could stun it while putting the Pikmin near the beast's falling area at risk of crushing. Large enemies would benefit from having certain body points that change the way the beast battles and act as targets for thrown Pikmin on top of a regular health bar. The source material has a ton of good mechanics and ideas that transfer well to tabletop if you look out for 'em.
>Character
You'd need stats for the Captain, like how many Pikmin it can throw at a time, how speedy and quiet they can be, and how much damage they can take before getting knocked down. Also having base stats for an individual Pikmin would be fundamental.
>Teamwork
Ever since Pikmin 2 working as a team of captains has been a big deal. Giving all the players a 100 Pikmin limit between them would mean splitting up teams to cover ground and work out puzzles and reconvening when things go south. Imagine any other game where you'd have to share your primary weapon with the rest of the party. This could be something nuts.

>>59290977
Don't forget about upgrades and targeting body-parts

>>59290977
Pikmin also, need separate stats and stat modifiers for lear, bud, and flower.

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>>59290977
>>59291016
>>59291338

So what it sounds like to me is we have a few mechanics we need set up that are core to the system. Here's what I'm seeing so far.

>Target combat.
Perhaps something similar to how Monsters and Other Childish Things does it, but we need the ability to go for specific spots and get specific results. Since combat is almost entirely ranged (save frantic Captain punches) targeting is the primary means of combat granularity and complexity.
>Simple but functional Pikmin Stats
Individual Pikmin is a necessity, but considering the sheer volume of them we can't go for something too complex. We need stats for them that are easy to understand and easy to work with, and change based on leaf/bud/flower. Perhaps Power, Knockback, Flight and Grip?
>Captain Stats.
Individual captains need stats that both govern their resilience to damage, their stealth, their speed, their throwing power, and their ability to direct Pikmin effectively. Perhaps some kind of trait or abilities that are purchasable with XP to make them specifically better at using different types of pikmin or other such utilities.
>The Pikmin Limit and Teamwork Mechanic
I don't even know where to really start with this one only that it's fucking awesome conceptually.

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>>59291642
Alright so after thinking over it for a bit, here are some of the ideas I've got mechanically.

PIKMIN
Pikmin have a total of four stats, which govern what they can do on their own. Importantly, unless commanded by a Captain, they'll kinda just laze about and probably get murdered. Also importantly, Pikmin can only take a single "hit" of damage, and will die. Notably however, status effects like fire or poison don't actually cause immediate damage, but instead put a "countdown to damage" on what they hit.
>Heft
This is how heavy a pikmin is, and is how much damage they do on impact. It is a static value, modified only by the location it hits.
>Grip
How long and how easily a pikmin can hold on to a creature and smack it to death. This is the amount of sucesses a monster must roll over to fling the pikmin off, otherwise it does half it heft per turn as damage.
>Attentiveness
How quickly a pikmin is able to respond to a command and follow the Captain. Basically a combination of movement speed and initiative. Also what you roll against to get them up with a whistle after a knockdown.

I'm thinking the dice system is pool based, with a number of successes being the primary goal. Creatures have a static amount of health, but armor depending on the location, and with different effects caused by hitting them in the right places, giving them kind of vehicle rules.

How does that sound for a start?

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I am monitoring this thread.
I don't know shit about tabletop games, balance and shit. But I feel like running around your garden and having to deal with too many stats and datas from the game can be a pain in the ass.
I guess keeping it simple should be in the back of your mind.

>Pikmin can only take a single "hit" of damage, and will die
For example, this is great. Every other stat should be very easy to remenber for each pikmin.

>>59293033
Yeah, ideally this is the kind of game where you have a single little character sheet, maybe laminated so you can write on it with dry erase, and it has one side and simple, clear cut rules.

Hence this thread, so we can work our way through it and try and fix it up into something nice.

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>>59292904
I was thinking then that each creature is divided into hit locations based on its size and type. For smaller things like Dwarf Bulborbs or Skittering Leafbugs, they just have one hit location and a set amount of defense on it. For larger things like proper Bulborbs, Wollywogs, or other such beasts, they've got more than one location, likely two or three, and weaker spots have different armor values determining how much damage gets through.
I think that this is a game that would require a good monster manual, with a single page each for the creatures therein, something the GM could keep ready and reference quickly, but with relatively simple mechanics all around.

Visually I could see it with a nice little drawing of the creature in profile, with armor values attached to its parts, and a little paragraph talking about what it is and its special abilities. The drawing would also have the locations where it can kill pikmin from, and how many it can hit at a time.

Shit, I might just sketch one of these up, this sounds fun.

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Working on making a proper stat up sheet for a bulborb but it's still slow going, so I'll just bump the thread with this in the meantime.

Are there any particular mechanics you would want to see in a pikmin game? Any things you really like?

>>59295396
I like the idea of giving the players different classes for a slight edge (before we make this too intensive with stats and numbers) to choose from based on the occupations from the games
>Survivalist(Olimar)
Pikmin directed by them have boosted rolls for problem solving and making attack formations
>Gourmand (Louie)
More likely to figure out which treasures are edible and get a minor boost above what food normally does when eaten
>President/Big Boss
Able to command Pikmin from a further distance than normal
>Mechanic (Alph)
More likely to figure out ways to turn treasures into ship improvements/repairs, alongside increased rolls against (the very uncommon) mechanical enemies
>Biologist (Brittney)
The best at studying how the flowers and wildlife around them can operate to their advantage. Also more likely to figure out weak points on big enemies
>Captain (Charlie)
Pure macho leadership, has a little extra health and power alongside a dive that lets them take hits aimed at comerades if they’re in range.

>>59296453
Fixing this, President might work better as Businessman/woman, keeping the increased range but adding a slight boost to the Pokos gained from treasure sold.

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>>59296453
>>59296528
These seem perfect, though I'd definitely make a few adjustments for the sake of rules clarity. I'm thinking the Buisinessman/woman should definitely be primarily pokos based since the idea of a distance measurement for them means we'd have to start measuring that too, and the Mechanic instead of just getting ship improvements could also try and figure out how to make gear out of things, like the upgrades in Pikmin 2. Also maybe something more distinctive for the Captain besides just a power dive? I think it's something that feels a little weak thematically, though mechanically it could be great.

I figure each of these could get a PbtA-style "playbook" which is just a class-specific character sheet with their abilities on it, so that that way they know to keep track of their bonuses and particular strengths/actions, like the Gourmand being able to sniff out food items or the Biologist being able to hunt down the presence of specialty fauna like Spectralids or Iridescent Glint Beetles.

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>>59293413
Alright, here's my rough idea for creature stats.

RED BULBORB
Health: 25
>This is the total amount of hits it can take, with most individual pikmin doing perhaps 2 per turn grappling and 4 on impact.

Location:Eyestalks
Resistance: 2
>Resistance is the statistic that determines how many hits a pikmin needs to reach to get damage through on that location.
Target:4
>The number of successes a thrower needs actually land pikmin on that part intentionally. Otherwise they're randomly distributed.
Threshold: 8 damage/Blind
>Once enough damage is done through a single part of the body, different effects can happen. In this case, blinding.

Location:Spots
Resistance:4
Target: 2

Location:Legs
Resistance:6
Target:0
Threshold: 15 damage/Knockdown.

Location:Snout
Resistance:3
Target:1
Danger: 5-15/forward/melee
>Danger areas are the places where pikmin can be killed, and the number determines the amount of pikmin it can eat when it attacks, if they are present within range for it, in this case forward facing and in melee range.

>>59298400
I think the resistance thing can be nice, but I think that the threshold can be brought down 'together.' Meaning each pikmin doesn't have to individually beat through the resistance to start doing damage. I'm also assuming this is -the- red bulborb, not the dwarf.
An idea I'd like to put through for Dwarfs is that they all can be killed instantly with a well placed throw. I don't see too much of an issue with that being kept.

>>59298880
Yeah, this is a regular Red. Dwarf Bulborbs only have a single location and a total resistance of 2, meaning pretty much any throw will kill them flat out. Smaller creatures keep a single location pretty much.

As I was thinking about it, I think resistance might work as "the amount of damage you need to deal to this part before it starts actually feeling it and losing health", kind of like an armor value. Hence how swarming tactics can break down easy to reach locations via sheer mass.

>>59298966
> "the amount of damage you need to deal to this part before it starts actually feeling it and losing health"
Yeah, this is how I interpreted it. My suggestion was to have that value shared between all pikmin so they each individually don't have to break the armor value. Which, it sounds like you are planning that anyway.
I love Pikmin 2 a lot. I consider it my favorite game of all time, so I'm really looking forward to seeing where you go with this.

Monitoring

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You are a man of fine taste op.
I think that a Pikmin RPG based around 2 would be the best choice since it's loot hoarding and cave exploration lends itself to TTRPGS fairly well.

I was always interested in the unspoken history of Earth in Pikmin. Some kind of horrible appocalypse must have happened, and the obvious bioweapons that are the Pikmin and other monsters were probably a major factor. Ecological damage must have been extreme.

>>59299938
But they're all so tiny

>>59299938
I always preferred the idea that the world of pikmin is literally one right out of sight. The kind of thing that's happening in the ditch behind the cul de sac or the small park that no one goes to or in the middle of the woods when no one's watching. A whole secret and magical world, just underneath our noses.

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>>59299717
The caves I was actually thinking could be interesting, especially if we keep with the idea of having the intended game board be a physical place or photos of a physical place you go to like a backyard. Caves then are the chance to design an instanced challenge unfettered by the rest of the world around it.

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Something I just realized actually: What the hell do nectars do? Regular nectar upgrades pikmin into their flowered states, sure, but what the hell does the ultra-spicy or ultra-bitter sprays do? Do we have them as just emergency supplies cooked up by the Biologist?

Bumping for interest.

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>>59302598
Alright, here's an idea: Purple and Red nectar can be distilled into sprays as an action by a player, though it's difficult unless you're a scientist or a survivalist. Ultra-Bitter sprays act as complete freezes, a useable item in close range that completely freezes a monster caught in it for a number of turns equal to the amount used, at minimum 2. Meanwhile Super-Spicy spray grants all pikmin it's used on an entire extra action, letting them attack, move, or do anything twice in a single round. However, its difficult to make and short lived. If they fail their action, the power is wasted.

Alright, in any case I forgot my laptop charger at work so I'll be intermittendly bumping this to keep it up, but there might be a lack of really complex parts because phone keyboards are terrible.

>>59306679
Another important question is how should the splitting of the pikmin forces function? Should it be something the players divvy up as they need, or should it have some kind of direct dependence on the specific character?

>>59306679
>distilled in 1 action
That seems like more of an out of combat preparation thing. Using it in an action, sure.