PAX Pokemon League

Alright, so while I was working last night and trying to kill time because it was a slow night, I figured I'd read back through some of the gym leader bios on the site from this year's Prime and the recent Australia just to try and gauge some of the ideas that went into the gym leader personas, just because I'm a huge advocate of creativity personally. While I was looking through those, a question popped into my head while I was reading through the bio of this year's Australia champ, Frank Underwood.

How do you guys decide among the accepted applications who gets to fill the roles of champion and elites as opposed to just a gym leader?

I was curious since after looking through a few things and thinking about it more, it almost seems like the Frank Underwood character was specifically created to fill the role of champion and nothing else, and assuming Kaka (who played him) is right in his forum signature about this being the first year he took part in the league from the leader side of things and he ended up being its champion, I can't help but be curious if, when the application for a PPL gym leader spot becomes available, we're allowed to try and tailor it towards trying to claim the role of champion or an elite instead of just a gym leader, or if it just happens to be picked based off of who you guys think has the best character to fit the roles that year. I figured I'd ask while I'm still gathering ideas and Pokemon for a potential shot at being a leader at a future PAX event to get to know the thought process behind the league a little better, assuming I'm not stepping out of line by asking about this.

The application will have a an option to select whether you are interested in being elite/champ. This is mostly to give the admins an idea. Typically for East a thread will be made on the leader forums where people who are interested can put their name forward and some discussion can be had about who fita the role and everything. In the end the admins make the decision who will be in what role.

For South it seems to be more private, people interested pm the admins and they make the decision from there. The Prime admins this year had a theme in mind and approached several multi time leaders and asked them to pick characters to fit, with the champion ultimately being up in the air. Don't know how its been done in the past. Phil (AUS admin) decided to do a mini tournament where interested leaders would battle for elite spots, with the winner of the tournament becoming the champion. It was kind of coincidental that the character seemed to fit well.

Each PPL does things a little differently, but usually the elites/champ are chosen from the stronger/higher tier leaders because they are supposed to be more difficult.

Kaka won the right to be the champion. His team was super hard and blew away the competition. That being said, why wouldn't we pick Frank Underwood to be our champ?

Thanks for the insight Erkenhelm. I was just curious as I try to plan things out for whenever the next PAX I visit is (right now, depending on my job, it's looking like next year's Prime) because I'll likely end up trying to be among the "higher tier" gym leaders (I have a bit of a problem with keeping things simple and easy ) and since I've never looked through one of the apps before I figured I'd ask. I know at least one of my planned characters/teams right now is one I'd probably throw my name into the champion or elite running depending on how things go.

And now Alice has me intrigued about Kaka's team... part of me wants to see if there might be a point where he (or even some of the other Aus leaders) would be down to pit their leader teams against the lone team I ran through Prime with to see how I stack up, just for fun. Assuming I'm able to finally secure a 3DS capture card in the coming weeks as well, I'd even be down to record some of the battles and do a series out of it like I'm already planning to do with the battles I got from Prime. Anything to try and give the PPL more exposure, right? (This would only be after I can, for sure, get my hands on one, and only if the leader would be comfortable with it too once that step's done.)

Since it my character that seems to have caused the question I'd better chime in. I ran across the "Frank Underwood: Pokemon Champion" meme about 12 months ago, right after paxaus 2014 when I'd first encountered the pax Pokemon league. I'd made my decision that I wanted to take part in this and that If accepted I was going to do Frank.

As has been stated, the application process does ask if you want to be considered for elite/champion, as not everyone wants to do those roles (fewer battles overall, and almost none first day to being swamped last day). I expressed my interest in e4/champ because "I wanna be the very best, like no-one ever was" and also the meme being Pokemon champ. However, when I put my initial application up, I was using "frank underwood: the wave making president" as I was a mono water team this year. And I was trying to fit Frank with my battle team. We're I not Champ, you would have seen the wave making president instead.

We asked in the aus15 board who wanted to be elite/champ and then had a round robin playoff. Which actually came down to Guthy and I, his team was hard as nails as well. The best score out of that round robin became our champ. At which point I advised I was altering my title to the originally hoped for Pokemon champion one as per the meme. In terms of how champs and things get decided at other paxen (that's the plural right?) I can't say for sure. This is the method we selected for aus15 and it worked for us.

End of the day, there are freedom boxes on the application to put your ideas forward on the app, and if selected as a leader there is a forum that opens to discuss further and modify your build further.

The meme http://www.dorkly.com/post/59513/the-be ... n-champion