Gotta Fund 'Em All

Ask any pokemon professor whether they’d prefer to treat a gyarados with a sore tooth or serve on a grant review board and they’ll tell you that you “get used to” the thunderbolts! The six of you have a full slate of grants to review, and only two hours to do it – Will eccentric personalities and esoteric theories get in the way of scientific progress?

Long Description

Despite having a career as a prestigious pokemon professor, you don’t actually get to spend much time doing research. Between teaching responsibilities, managing rambunctious pokemon, and the constant battles with Reviewer #2, it’s hard to find the time. And then there’s the grants! Writing grants, submitting grants, and even occasionally reviewing grants – after all, serving on grant committees does tick off that pesky “community service” box. But any pokemon professor with experience in the act would rather treat a gyrados with a sore tooth than try to get six of their peers to agree on anything!

Still, the six of you have a whole stack of grants to review and make funding decisions on, and nobody gets to go home until everyone can agree, however begrudgingly, on how to split a limited pool of money among too many projects. Will eccentric personalities and esoteric theories get in the way of scientific progress?

Some basic familiarity with the pokemon universe is required. This game will contain some references to the first three or so generations (Red/Blue[/Green], Gold/Silver, Ruby/Sapphire) and the first few seasons of the anime, as well as Pokemon Snap, and Pokemon The First Movie (though none of these should be taken to be “required reading” to enjoy the game). Pokemon Scarlet/Violet are explicitly not canon in this game, please pretend they do not exist. Several characters will contain references to meme-worthy inconsistencies in the Pokemon universe or well-known glitches in the games. While some serious subjects will end up being discussed, this is not meant to be a serious game, and we encourage players to have fun with their characters’ eccentricities and fixations.

All characters are written as gender-neutral, and only surnames are specified – players should feel free to assign whatever gender identity to their character that they wish to embrace. This is a costuming-optional game, and players should feel free to dress however they feel (costuming cues may be added to character sheets, but these are merely suggestions). The theme of the meeting is “business casual”, which in the Pokemon universe means something akin to how most gym leaders tend to dress on a daily basis.

This game likely has low replay factor – one of the goals is figuring out which grant belongs to which lab, and what various character’s not-so-secret fixations are. However, in future runs if we end up writing more characters/grants, replayability may be re-considered.