“Stealing Thunder” with the My Little Pony RPG!
My Little Pony, My Little Pony, ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhhhh… Yeah, it’s been pretty hard to keep the G4 theme song out of my head ever since agreeing to be in this game. 🦄
I confess… for a long while, I was a big fan of watching the updated My Little Pony cartoon.
Yes, I called myself the B—Y word, but wow did some parts of the fandom just ruin the heck out of that.
It was one of those modern cartoons written for a younger audience, but still with an eye towards teaching good lessons to an audience whose brains were quickly maturing. We all had shows like that, trying to put good messaging into our brains, even if hidden behind off-off-off-Broadway CATS-likes or improbable roller coasters in outer space.
I watched a lot of it in the background, something to have on while working and cleaning. Occasionally paying more attention here and there, and honestly, really loving the music. They did a good job with the songs, even in the Equestria Girls stuff, which was just… odd. Fun, but odd.
Wednesdays, July 19 & 26, 5:30pm ET, twitch.tv/ChaoticWholesomePresents
Anyway… if you haven’t figured it out yet, the actual point–sometimes I have them–of this article is to give a heads up about a My Little Pony actual play that I’m in next week! Renegade Game Studios put out a My Little Pony TTRPG and we’re gonna give it a go!
I’ve said, and I maintain that while I am a nerd, picking up new TTRPG systems isn’t always easy for me. I love the role-playing aspect, I love giving a character personality and finding good ways to have them mix with other characters.
But… when it comes to “…select a skill from the 83 possible skills on page 342, while remembering to take appropriate flaws from the table in Appendix B, and assign points from your pool according to your attributes as detailed in Chapter 15…” my eyes start to glaze over. 😵💫
Requests for new TTRPGs, please: have a quick start guide, have pre-generated characters, and have filled out character sheets for those characters. Even if I can’t figure out everything, I can work from a default ready-made character fairly easily.
For what you might expect to be a more simple system given its origins, the My Little Pony RPG walks that fine line between being easy to learn while also having some complexities up its sleeve. So it’s going to be a game where I will be somewhat prepared to play, but I won’t have any qualms relying on the Game Master to explain whether my character can or can’t do something, and how it works.
Which, I have to say, is why I really like playing with certain groups. My entire recent-years TTRPG experience has been enthusiastically diving in while not knowing all the rules. While also being supported by fellow players and the person running the game to give me room to learn, time to look things up, and generally feel comfortable at the table versus giving up and walking away and feeling like my synapses just ain’t firing.
I’ve played with everyone in this game, save one person. And I have experience of the Game Master from our D&D horror game Godplane. So I at least feel comfortable at the table, even if I don’t know all the rules.
Honestly, I’m not sure anyone can know all the rules for every TTRPG, but if there were ever an all-TTRPG version of Jeopardy!, I’d love to see some folks flex their knowledge.
Keep an eye out on social media for our character art, Pan connected us with an artist who has done some amazing work turning our descriptions and references into pony profiles, and I can’t wait for you to meet our ponies. I confess I’m still working on a voice and personality for my character, but I may have come up with 3 separate character concepts while holding back to see what others chose so I could pick one that helps to round out the group. 😅
So… yeah, even if I’m not completely prepared for the game, I am enthusiastic and looking forward to having some fun sessions with this crew. I believe this might be the first actual play of the My Little Pony RPG which is kinda cool.
Not that we’re out to set any kind of standard, but even as much as I play and enjoy D&D, it’s great to see different systems get actual plays. I hope you’ll pop by to watch this one–or watch it on YouTube afterwards, I don’t control your schedule! 💖
