Hello, everyone. I am new to the idea of speedrunning, and while I enjoy watching speed runs, and playing games quickly, I'm still trying to figure out what games I might want to spend the time to learn to run quickly.

I love pokemon games, and have recently gone through yellow, crystal, and pearl using the speedrun guides to play through them quickly. I enjoy the routing ideas, and all of the glitchless runs, but I am struggling a bit with the idea of RNG manipulation.

I guess in my mind, manipulating your seed feels like a glitch. I do not think it is a glitch, but I feel like I would rather run the games where I just start the game, and take what I get, and not have to rely on specific stats and natures.

I am curious if anyone else considers this a viable category, or does everyone just like doing RNG manipulation? The route would be slower obviously, and revolve around safety strategies and figuring out what extra EXP/items you need to make up for stat shortcomings of your starter.

The problem with this kind of category, of course, is that you can randomly get a really good starter, at which point, it will be just the same as if you manipulate the seed, so what's the point in having a separate category?

Let me know what you guys think, and I'll check back as I'm trying to go through black.