The Pokemon franchise spans almost every medium that art can take - Writing, drawing, animation, music, video games, card games, and likely a few others I can't think of. However, as a series, there's a gaping hole: Not a single official tabletop Pokemon RPG has been made. A couple of fan teams have put their hat into the ring, however, most of these translations are either extremely rules-heavy, or simple ports of the iconic creatures into other games. Almost all of them make keeping track of your team a nightmare.
Enter the RPG format known as Powered by the Apocalypse (PbTA.) The rules of almost all PbTA games are fairly light, leaving much of the rulings to the character sheets themselves. And in addition to those character sheets, every character has a playbook.
Playbooks are very well-organized, having a set number of stats and "moves" a character can use. Remind you of anything? Already, the parallels between a PbTA character and a Pokemon are fairly tight. But this also eliminates one of the biggest problems with other Pokemon RPGs. By giving each Pokemon its own playbook, it's impossible to forget what Pokemon you have and what they can do unless you lose that playbook.
A Pokemon playbook could help keep track of each individual's XP and evolutions. It would allow for easier custom Pokemon designs for creatively inclined GMs and players. In fact, housekeeping duties for the prepping GM would be made much easier. A GM can plan what Pokemon might appear during a given play session and prepare playbooks for each encounter.
Put simply, the playbooks present in PbTA games could solve many of the issues with porting Pokemon into a tabletop RPG. Even from the game designer's side, adding new Pokemon to the game becomes easier. Just make new playbooks!
If you're looking for other potential influences on the design of Pokemon games, check out this article. It explains the parallels between the Pokemon TCG and another Wizards of the Coast-designed game: Magic the Gathering.
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