The following is for comprehension only, and not part of the story. If you wanna figure stuff out as you go, just skip to chapter one.
Due to me being bored, I have actually decided to do something that could be loosely described as bettering myself. As you may or may not know, this is going to be a pokemon fanfic. What follows is a list of rules and changes that will be incorporated into this fic.
This takes place entirely during the first two generations (Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal). I may (very) occasionally make references to later generations, but I feel that they will be easy to pick out.
The four move limit is obviously abolished.
People start their 'pokemon journey' when they're 15, rather than freaking 10. I wouldn't trust a 10 year old with a steak knife, much less responsibility of a creature that can flash freeze a person. However, most kids receive their pokemon much beforehand, giving them time to know each other and become friends. Ethan (the main character) in this story is 16 and has had his Cyndaquil ever since he can remember.
The gym challenge is different. Rather than having a series of increasingly stronger gyms you have to fight, it's more like going to study under different teachers. All the gym leaders have pokemon that are roughly the same strength, they're just there to teach about different styles (elements). You gain a badge by studying under the gym leader and successfully learning their particular style/technique, usually proved by some sort of test. The idea is that after getting badges from all the gyms, you will be a well-balanced trainer, and hopefully by extension a well-balanced person, which is what is desired in a Champion. Beating the gym leader is not part of this, though you can try and beat him right away to get the badge, it is rare for this to be tried, and even rarer for it to happen. I did this to prevent the whole becoming Champion in a week kinda thing, which really really doesn't make sense. Also, it requires all 16 badges to be allowed to challenge the Elite 4, not just 8.
I see the gym leaders as supposed to be very strong, leaders of their town/whatever. They are also part of the Pokemon League, which the governmental body. The Champion is the executive head, and the Elite Four are the Judicial heads. The gym leaders are regional representatives given limited judicial power. They also act as a pseudo military/police force should the need arise, since there isn't a public force, though private interests might train/hire some of their own. There is no real legislative branch, anyone can promote an idea, which is reviewed by the gym leader, who can pass it on or veto it, then the Elite Four, which each have to approve it, and then the Champion (yes, I realize that this would probably result in an inordinate amount of paperwork, but since we're dealing with a fairly small area which already runs fairly smoothly, we'll pretend that the load is not unbearable). Most everything else is run by private businesses (schools, manufacturing, research, food, construction, etc…), which are kept from attempting to oppress the populace by the fact that Lance can show up and decimate your city with any one of his pokemon. I may delve a little more into the politics of the League in the actual story, but this should be enough and more to understand the position I'm writing the story from (and I'm not that great at politics/economics/governmental stuff anyway, so I'm really just making this up as I go). I realize this is somewhat of a stretch to take in, as people never work that well together, but I figure if you're reading a pokemon fanfic to begin with realism is not your primary concern =P
For a level of scale, the gyms would anywhere between levels 30-50 (with obvious exceptions such as Blue and Clair), the elite four would be 50-60, and the champion would be 60-70. Red has the same party you see when you fight him in GSC, which is why he's such a big deal, but he didn't want to be champion and let Lance take his place. The Legendarys (Mew, Moltres, Zapdos, Articuno, Celebi, Lugia, Ho-oh, Raioku, Entei, and Suicune) are all presumed to be at level 100 with max stats and know every move they are capable of learning. The only exception to this is Mewtwo, who starts the story at level 70 (still max stats) but only his level up moves learned.
Most of the information that I didn't make up I got through playing the games and bulbapedia, just in case you were curious.
Also, I'm assuming that you've already played the games and know the backstory, so I'm not really going to do much in the way of character introduction/avoiding spoilers. There'll be enough suspense even without it I imagine. Also, I will only be introducing a very few OCs to the story, no more than three, but probably only two. They will be described in slightly more detail.
As for geography, I'm not very good with distances and whatnot, so I'm just kinda guessing how long it'd take to travel from city to city by foot.
Last thing is the relative intelligence of pokemon. I view most pokemon as having intelligence roughly equivalent to crows or monkeys. They are capable of simple problem solving and can communicate, but don't have a formal language or abstract thinking skills. Pokemon that know the move psychic however, are at human level intelligence or above, and can speak, though they still have to actually know English and be biologically capable (unless they're using telepathy), otherwise they just speak whatever pokemon language there is or something like that.
That's about it I guess. I'm notorious about getting halfway into a story and then becoming distracted and taking years to finish, so I apologize in advance if updates aren't exactly regular.