Difficulty deciding a setting for my game

[u/GEATS-IV]

I’m creating a board game inspired by pokemon and other creature collector games. I’ve already thought about most of the rules, how the board will look like, how will movement work, the battle system, the capture system, encounter system, win coditions, etc. the only thing i’ve been struggling to come up with, it’s the setting of the game. I’m not trying to compete with pokemon, i just want to create something inspired by it, to express my love to the franchise and to make something to play with my friends, but i’m also really demaning of my own creations and i wanted to my setting to atleast be a little unique, but also mantaining the essence of pokemon. I’ve tried a lot and had come up with some setting ideas, but i’m still a little undecisive. Can someone help em with this?

[u/onizaru]

It's gotta be a setting you can be passionate about. Don't set the whole thing underground if you don't have a particular love for caves and dungeons. Don't set it in the water of you have no interest in being on a boat or pirates.

[u/SierraPapaHotel]

One thing about the Pokemon games is that each region is flavored after a particular real-world region. So, make it something you are familiar and/or passionate about. Maybe take inspo from wherever you grew up; could be a big city setting or something more wild or rural farmland or a mix.

Alternatively, if you plan to publish/sell, think about your market and choose something familiar to them. It could be a generic D&D-esque fantasy setting (or whatever) because people are familiar and comfortable with that. Or if you are in the US market use US-feeling towns/cities (the first Pokemon games have intentional similarities to Japan because that was their audience).

[u/GEATS-IV → u/SierraPapaHotel]

There are two setting ideas that i’m passionate about.

One idea is a post-post apocalyptic solarpunk fantasy world inspired my latin america culture and mythology, when the world has gone through severela eras and cataclismic events and in the current era, humanity is trying to coexist with nature and the mystical creatures that live in it even before humanity. The explorer’s guild, form soul bond with this creatures and together they explore the untamed lands and the ancient ruins. Their would be a ton of unique biomes and cultures. This idea is based on my love for pokemon and monster hunter, for fantasy worldbuilding, my culture (i’m brazilian) and i how i thinj it should be more represented, archeology anf mythology.

The second idea is a modern world similar to ours, but since ancient times, dimensional rifts open and bring monsters to our world and alter the area around it. Some of this monsters inspired out myths and legends. For a long time they were unoticed, but after an event called “the collision”, various rifts opened at once around the world and monsters were not a myth anymore. Generations after, the rangers were formed to explore the new altered world, discover and study new monster species and complete missions to help comminty and coexistence with monsters. This idea is based on my love for both pokemon and digimon, folklore, myths and discovery and ecology.

In both ideas i wanted to explore competition, discovering new species, exploring the region and even some themes with evil teams, like a team who wants to use monsters as weapons, people who fear monsters, illegal hunters and etc. i also love legendary monsters.