Video Game / Create-a-Pokémon

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The Create-A-Pokémon Project (or CAP Project for short) is a process and metagame on Smogon. During the process, the competitive community comes together to create a Pokémon with a distinct, specific role in a custom metagame. Afterwards, the Pokémon is made playable on Pokémon Showdown!, Smogon's official battle simulator, where it is further playtested, analyzed, and nerfed/buffed (if needed).

Starting from Generation IV, The CAP Project has, as of writing, created 38 fully-evolved custom competitive Pokémon:

• 11 in Generation IV
• 6 in Generation V
• 5 in Generation VI
• 6 in Generation VII
• 5 in Generation VIII
• 5 in Generation IX

In addition to the fully-evolved Pokémon, The CAP Project contains a sub-project dedicated to designing pre-evolutions for these custom Pokémon.

A popular spinoff, Pokémon Battle-By-Post (BBP) was formed to keep the forum alive between the release of Gen. V games and until the Gen. V metagame stabilized.

All CAPs so far can be found here. A working dex of all CAPs so far can be found here.

Create-A-Pokémon gives examples of:

• The Artifact:
  • CAP 2 Revenankh still retains Air Lock (exclusive to Rayquaza) as its Ability rather than Cloud Nine (which functions the same but it's more accessible) even though CAP now forbids giving any exclusive ability for any Legendary or Mythical Pokémon.
  • Custom abilities and moves have been banned since partway through Gen. V, while several Gen. IV CAP Pokémon (CAP 1 Syclant, CAP 4 Fidgit, CAP 5 Stratagem, CAP 9 Colossoil) have custom abilities or moves.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: While there were earlier attempts to translate the CAP Pokémon into other languages, the Chinese Smogon community was the first to attempt an serious 'official' localisation. The issue being, none of them are familiar with the CAP Pokémon outside of their competitive presence in tournaments, so several CAP Pokémon have ended up with Chinese names that are unrelated to their designs.^*For one example, CAP 12 Tomohawk is a griffin with a mohawk whose name is derived from the Tomahawk, the National Weapon for First Americans, thus, a reasonable localisation in Cantonese/Traditional Chinese would be 鉞獅鷲, meaning tomahawk griffin; the 'official' translators from the Chinese community instead thought that it was an eagle, with the tomahawk instead being the Tomahawk missile, and thus its name in Mandarin/Simplified Chinese 飞弹鹰, meaning missle eagle. Time will tell if these get rectified or if other language localisers will be sure to double check their suggestions.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Most Create-A-Pokémon Pokémon have fluff that makes them predators of Delibird. Even the shrimp^*CAP 10 Krilowatt and cone snail^*CAP 14 Mollux.
  • It's not even exclusive to the main forum. The Training mode of Battle CAPacity pits you against a sack that shows multiple signs of containing a Delibird. You're training against that thing.
• Competitive Balance: All of the CAP Pokémon are made with the Pokémon metagame of their debut generation in mind, and hence, they attempt to fit in.
• Dark Horse Victory:
  • The designers for most of Generation VIII's CAPs^*Quanyails (CAP 27 Astrolotl), Gravity Monkey (CAP 29 Chromera), Unsee (CAP 30 Venomicon), and NoahIOTJ (CAP 31 Saharaja) had never won a primary design poll prior to making their winning submissions.
  • Many designers for the Generation IX CAPs similarly had never won an art poll either; in particular, BlorengeRhymes, who designed the entirety of the CAP 32 Hemogoblin line, is also the first artist to design an entire three-stage evolutionary line for CAP after the overhaul in CAP design process.^*The first artist who had designed an entire three-stage evolutionary line for CAP was Elagune's CAP 3 Pyroak line, but, as noted below, it was during a time when CAP was less stringent.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Among the Gen. IV CAPs, most had gender differences, some have custom abilities^*CAP 1 Syclant's Mountaineer, CAP 4 Fidgit's Persistent & CAP 9 Colossoil's Rebound or moves^*CAP 5 Stratagem's Paleo Wave & CAP 7 Kitsunoh's Shadow Strike, while the first three^*Syclant, Revenankh and Pyroak were created just for Rule of Fun. Starting in Gen. V, CAPs not only are permitted to only have official moves and Abilities, they have a more meticulous design process meant to test how certain attributes would affect how the CAP would function in competitive play, while gender differences has more or less been phased out for introducing extra work for the artists and spriters.
• Game Mod: The Create-a-Pokémon Project is one of these for the Pokémon franchise, for the primary purpose of introducing Original Characters into its competitive metagame.
• Gone Horribly Wrong:
  • CAPs do not always turn out the way the process hopes they do. The most notable example is CAP 10 Krilowatt, which, rather than fulfilling its point of being a utility counter, instead abused its ability Magic Guard to spam fast, recoil-less-Life-Orb-boosted attacks from its bizarrely expansive movepool. It even had the raw bulk to be virtually unkillable — and it was the last straw before the CAP Pokémon received a massive nerfing.
  • CAP 11 Voodoom is a subversion — it turned out to be nigh-incompatible with its intended partner Togekiss, but it worked very well with Zapdos. As its point was to inspect how offensive pairs worked, it is considered one of the more successful CAPs, despite failing the proposed concept.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • Several CAP Pokémon before movepool revisions were far more potent than the standard Mon, leading to teams made entirely out of CAP Pokémon that could do very well in the metagame. Additionally, the revisions to buff up the first three CAP Pokémon were this as well: while Syclant generally averted this trope (thanks to Scizor still being more effective than it, although Syclant gained an interesting niche as a suicidal Spikes lead), but Revenankh turned out to be nigh-impossible to kill due to the increased bulk it gained, and Pyroak turned from a Master of None into a Dragon-Dance-spamming Game-Breaker.
  • CAP 13 Necturna dodged a bullet transitioning into Generation VI, where the move re-learner allows Pokémon to relearn Gen. VI event and egg moves. Necturna would then be able to have access to Sketch more than once, thus breaking its concept. Instead, Necturna still has access to only one Sketch move, provided by one of either two explanations: Sketch is no longer in Necturna's egg movepool, thus forcing it to be kept from a Generation V transferred Necturna, or that the Sketched move counts as the egg move, and hence Sketch can't be relearned until Necturna forgets the Sketched move.
• Grandfather Clause: Even though CAP now doesn't allow any more custom elements to be made^{The only exception?}Frameworks, and even then the custom element must be exclusively a Moveset Clone of an existing Secret Art introduced at that point correlating to the aim of that particular framework. For example, a move that has a chance to inflict a status condition and transforms said holder into an alternate forme, based on Relic Song, is a legal choice for a framework based on Meloetta. A move that inflicts the target with a Curse effect, however, is not., older CAP Pokémon such as Syclant and Strategem retain their custom Secret Arts.
• Hidden Badass: One thing that should be noted about CAP is that it (as of writing, at least) focuses exclusively on each of the CAP Pokémon's competitive in the Singles metagame. There are also technically unofficial formats based on other metagames, such as CAP Little Cup, CAP Monotype or more importantly, CAP Doubles, where certain other CAP Pokémon^*One notable example is CAP 4 Fidgit, who is built to enable as much support as possible. It flounders in normal CAP because it can't deal much damage on its own, but it can definitely enable Geo effects such as Tailwind and, crucially, Trick Room, that run rampant in that format. tend to be much more competitively viable.
• Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: The Gen IV and V CAP Pokémon tended to be in the Field egg group to avoid egg move legality issues, no matter how non-mammalian the design was^*One notable example is CAP 14 Mollux, a mollusk Pokémon who is part of the Field & Fairy egg group rather than the more logical Amorphous, Bug or Water-1 egg groups. Come Gen. VI, though, egg moves can be passed on through both genders, thus allowing new CAP Pokémon to have more reasonable egg groups.
• Nerf: Movepool revisions were this for Syclant through Krilowatt.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Almost all CAP pre-evolutions tend to be cute.
• Running Gag: Up until Generation V, Delibird tended to be a popular punching bag for CAP Pokémon.
• So Last Season: Prior to Gen. VII, CAP Pokémon released in previous generations were not updated with moves from future generations, barring one Sketched move from CAP 13 Necturna. Even after this stance was changed, while retroactive changes or new additions can cause old CAP Pokémon's roles to shift, newer CAP Pokémon tend to outshine them due to relevance to the concurrent metagame.
• Sophisticated as Hell: One moderator's post answers the permissibility of the move Doom Desire for a concept as current policy states while he ends the post with "Dems be da rules, folks."
• Spin-Off: The Create-a-Pokémon Project was a popular-enough Game Mod to acquire its own spinoff games.
  • Battle CAPacity pits all the CAPs at the time, as well as a few submissions for CAP 6 from Wyverii and CAP 7 from DougJustDoug), against one another in a Fighting Game.
  • Pokémon Battle-by-Post uses CAPs as a battling Play-by-Post Game.
  • A group of people, back during Generation IV, attempted to make a ROM hack of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen with CAPs in it, although it quickly became an Orphaned Series.
  • Within Smogon's own Pet Mods forum, there exists an derivative version where people came around to create CAP-like Pokémon within the Generation I metagame.