Sweet. 

My only other question is what about characters (players or otherwise) with special abilities either innate to them or developed later on.

Like in the Pokemon manga all the various main characters (I.E. the Pokedex Holders) all had special "abilities" or the like tied to their "titles" / skillsets.

(Yellow in the manga was known as the "Healer" and had the ability to actually heal Pokemon and also read their minds / memories, while Gold was known as the "Hatcher" / "Breeder" and knew how to better hatch Pokemon and had better utilization of the unique abilities of newly hatched Pokemon). 

And other characters throughout the anime had other strange or mystical abilities like Sabrina's psychic abilities, Ash gaining the ability to sense Aura, and other such things.

Will anything like any of these be present?