You do have a point. It's not something I came up with myself, anyway; it was a Pokémon conspiracy theory I heard that made the most sense to me. But still, even without assuming there was a recent apocalyptic event, there are still huge stretches of wilderness between (usually) small outposts of civilization, and society sends out young tamers (sorry, wrong fandom) trainers out into that wilderness almost as a matter of necessity. And when you consider the damage some pokémon are capable of, it's not a huge stretch to say being a pokémon trainer is a dangerous career. I'd still argue that the wild pokémon themselves are largely responsible for the sorry state of affairs the world as a whole is in.


Partly what Barinellos said. Also, there exists at least one "reform" spell that would forcibly change one's personality to fit in to Equestrian standards, and said spell was planning on being used without the target's consent — permanently changing their identity. You've also got Tartarus, which while barely touched upon is implied to contain enough Spawn of the Underworld to completely destroy Equestria without hardly any opposition. Then there are dragons, which are shown to be capable of pretty much destroying a town on their own, living seemingly without any intervention to ensure a peaceful coexistence. Not to mention that pony civilization (I think the Crystal Empire is its own country) has had to deal with slavery in its past, just as we have. There are a number of ways I could also point to the Everfree Forest as well. All this while avoiding the changeling swarm, which I haven't yet come up with a completely satisfactory explanation for (though this picture does a lot to convince me of one way).

Shouldn't the Consortium = Team Rocket? In which case, shouldn't Bolas and/or Tezzeret be running the last Gym rather than being in the Elite Four?

I seriously doubt that considering the extent which even the wild pokemon are domesticated. I mean, the technology to deal with them is incredibly advanced, so much so that TEN YEAR OLDS are safe enough to wander the wilds with semi-impunity.
I'm not terribly happy to admit it, but after high school I took to writing a more realistic look into the pokemon world in a pseudo "let's play" style of the game. It was well over 100 pages, but when you get down to it, the pokemon world is INSANELY advanced, not recovering from anything.
The size of the cities is somewhat exaggerated, mostly because if you look at any of the supplemental materials, they certainly don't treat those towns as small as they appear in the game.
Incidentally, in case any of you hadn't seen it yet, or just don't want to sleep tonight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAdGv89e0sE


There have been plenty of different teams, so it doesn't really have to have that much of a 1:1 parallel with Team Rocket of all things.


Incidentally, it's something of a dream of mine to see an all lizard starting choice.
Charmander, Totodile, and Treecko.
However, I am honestly open to suggestions. Except Charmander. That's just a thing.

Team Infinite?

Convinced that there are realities beyond their own, Team Infinite, led by the enigmatic Nicol Bolas, seeks to harness the power of [INSERT LEGENDARY POKEMON HERE] in order to power their otherworldly schemes.

In fairness, we're actually maintaining the entire multiplane thing instead of doing towns.
That being said, I honestly would seriously kind of like an excuse to do our own poke-cube, right down to legendaries and OH SWEET GOD I JUST REALIZED URZA WOULD HAVE MADE MEWTWO.

So, does that mean each Gym-Walker is on a different plane?

Absolutely.
Deciding which walker goes where is a bit of a quandry, but I'm sure we can work it all out.

I... can't really argue with that logic, especially considering the level of thought you've put into it. In the absence, though, I will ask questions.

Like, what's your explanation for the large amount of wilderness and concentrated civilization if they are that advanced, though?


I'm sorry, but

It's not really wilderness, is it? Most of those are well traveled footpaths. The better question would be why cars are not the main mode of intercity transportation in the poke world.

I'm... honestly a little insulted. I feel you owe me an explanation.

That is a good question. My theory? Service pokemon (like how [nearly] every 'center has a Chansey), who can be transported nearly-instantaneously from city to city with the transporter/box service. (Also I've adopted Pokepower as one of the main sources of power/electricity.)

I'm... honestly a little insulted. I feel you owe me an explanation.[/quote]
I do apologize for any offense. I didn't mean to be callous -- I just thought it would get more of a reaction from you and/or anyone else.

Something I suggested earlier (I've... forgotten what I said, really) you dismissed because "the first generation was the defining point of the series and is what stuck in people's mind," yet suggesting Team Rocket, which was around for the first and second generations, got the reaction "there are other teams, so it doesn't have to be Team Rocket." It just made me facepalm.

Well, the planes should probably be decided before the walkers are. If we're just using the planes that have had entire blocks dedicated to the for the Gym cities, we have a fairly short list, each with a fairly small numbers of possible walkers.

Dominaria - Urza or Venser

Kamigawa - Tamiyo

Mirroden - Koth or Karn

Ravnica - Jace, Vraska, Domri, or Ral (Domri would be odd though, since he wants to destroy the city)

Alara - Ajani, Sarkhan, Tezzeret, or Bolas (Ajani isn't really suited to be a gym leader and Bolas is shaping up to be a big bad, so that really only leaves two.)

Zendikar - Nissa is the only native and the only one who ever had any type of home here. Everyone else was just visiting. Ob Nixilis use to be a walker, so he could be another option.

Innistrad - Liliana (because she goes with the them so well), Soren or Tibalt

Theros - Elspeth or Xenagos

Lorwyn - I'm not sure here. I don't think the Lorwyn five were ever canonically visited lorwyn. Hmm...

Well, we've seen from both the Power Plant and Team Rocket hideouts that Voltorbs are kept as generators... which implies a certain amount of fridge horror for the existence of the less cuddly mon around. Though there is always this too:
http://extremeconsiderationthemovie.tumblr.com/image/62129795869

It was using someone aside from the rival as the champion.
I just feel it's different with the team and gym leaders.

We're not using just blocks.
Aside from that, it's way more important for us to get the types for each walker down than worry about where they'll be. It's easy enough to match them up afterwards, but typing them is a lot harder... plus we've kinda already done that.

I was actually thinking of a... slightly more insidious method. Not that that isn't already a horrible suggestion. Although, to be honest, a lot of the rationalizations I've adopted kind of hinge on the "recovering civilization" outlook. Things like access to pokecenter-level storage or commonality of electric-types in a given region.

I mean, we have instances of wind power and such, but a lot of towns are just assumed to have power coming from thin air; plus we've seen pokemon being used for all sorts of things.

It was using someone aside from the rival as the champion.
I just feel it's different with the team and gym leaders.[/quote]
But... It's really not... I mean, Team Rocket may be the more tame in comparison, but I can't accept the argument that "rival as champion" stuck more than "Team Rocket as evil team." Giovanni in particular has always stuck in my mind because he wasn't some corrupt official, he seemingly had half of Kanto under his control while maintaining a position of power publicly.

In the fanfiction I'd created, people had reverse engineered mag-lev trains from magnemite/magneton phenomenon.
There was also some really bad fridge horror associated with Porygon.


Team Rocket as evil team is fine but... there's just a certain amount of convention*. I mean, we're not going to make Bolas in charge of Team Rocket. It'll be the Infinite Consortium.
And when it breaks right down, it's a case where Bolas as a gym leader is just not right. Tezzeret overlaps with what we'd want to do with Karn as far as types go, so that disqualifies him as well. The closest we have is Sarkhan as an informer, but even then, as a member of the Consortium, he doesn't work since he doesn't fit.

Amusingly, in the Pokemon Special manga, Giovanni wasn't the only Team Rocket gym leader. Lt. Surge, Sabrina, Koga, and formerly Blaine all worked under Giovanni. Pokemon Special was really cool really... except for Mewtwo's giant spoon. That was just kinda stupid.

*We're basically going to ignore how different Johto Rocket was for this conversation.

All fine points. Really the reason I'm posting before I go off to bed is to say that it was never really my intention to argue for the inclusion of Bolas, just to understand the reasoning behind all of it, which you explained well.

I've probably expended all my investment in this thread at this point, but I'll keep my eye on it.