Rarity: What about Rarity? Has she heard any replies?
DM: Well, it takes longer to get a response, since you're using your other identity… But eventually, you get a message that says Dainty Dove has a high chance of attending.
Rainbow Dash: Great. More face time for the fashionista.
DM: However… Another message from Princess Celestia arrives. It reads:
Twilight Sparkle: "Dearest, most faithful, etcetra," I assume.
Princess Celestia: I've learned more about your Gala decision. Their main argument is, since my sister's return was so brief and so local, it's been hard to verify the facts of what happened that night and your involvement at that time. Now, it's pretty clear that this is some kind of ploy. Somepony really doesn't want you at the Gala. But short of the testimony of both Princesses and a demonstration of the Elements' power (which I'd rather not risk for the sake of some Gala tickets), there's not much I can do to overcome their ignorance. If you're truly set on attending the Gala, however, there is something YOU can do. If each of your friends, individually, performs of a feat of great and obvious significance, that will give me the edge to push through the approval process. There are still a couple of months before the Gala, and plenty of grand public events leading up to it. If this is your path, I wish you the best of luck. Signed, Princess Celestia.
Applejack: Huh. I guess I get where you're goin' with this. Bit of a slapdash solution, but I'm interested.
Fluttershy: We… ALL have to perform some kind of… high-profile public achievement? Ohhhh dear...
Pah, the challenge is not getting caught! When you crash a party, you gotta plan it out. Know your exit strategy, who to woo, and the lyrics to at least three rock-n-roll songs to contrast against their classical music selection. ;)
Toric When you're the Sister of the Captian of the Guard it is much easier to crash the party sucessfully, especially if you arrange things with him in advance.
Except that the Captain of the Guard is a Paladin, who would probably be more likely to enforce the law and evict them but be lenient with the resulting punishment.
My point is that it's difficult for someone like Rarity to benefit from her group's presence when that presence is a disruptive party crash. Let's face it, this group has chosen diplomacy, but not really the sort to talk their way into this exclusive high-profile event without arousing suspicion. Besides, they're just famous enough to be recognized, particularly if they've been kept off the invitation list deliberately.
A social mage is clearly the Mighty Diplomancer, able to talk any monster or villain into complacence. It's what social tanks want to be when they grow up.
A social rogue is basically the guy who convinces you that punching yourself in the face is the best thing to do.
And the social cleric is the one who cleans up afterward.
For a moment, I thought RD's comment was "More face time for the *fetishista*," which seriously changes the mental image I had. Reminds me of a picture of Fluttershy in a dominatrix outfit I stumbled across one time on the net...
Ah yes, the bizarre disconnect of what the Mane Six have done versus how famous they are. This is a fairly good explanation for it, especially with ulterior motives at work.
Not sure offhand how common this trope is in more Western entertainment, but anyone here who watches anime or reads manga might be familiar with the character archetype of the thief or con artist who doesn't seem to care about anything other than money...until later in the storyline, when you find out he's using his questionably-gotten gains to support a small, helpless village, or raising the ransom, or bail, for a kidnapped or unjustly imprisoned grandfather, or something similarly selfless and noble.
I've been playing a character whose backstory involved disaster befalling her home village. She could very easily have gone down that exact character path, except for one (or two) things: first, the disaster that befell her village came in the form of a flying undead monster who pretty much just picked off townspeople one by one until there was just a meager handful left. The town's not really short on money or supplies, just people. Also, my character's a bard.
So whenever the party has ANY downtime in a town, I spend it on fame-building performances in community centers, figuring that if I can make myself a household name, my hometown can get spillover fame and attract new settlers.
Wait a moment, there was a monster eating people in your village and instead of finding a way to kill it or rescue the people you were trying to find a way to bring more innocents for it to eat?
My introduction to the party involved us hunting down and capturing the monster, and then hunting down the mad mage who'd created it and bringing him to justice. So that had been dealt with.
For fame... except for playing as Trixie, I don't think fame was something any of my characters has set for a primary objective. Unless impressing a girl counts?
Like me, most of my characters consider fame a negative thing to have; anonymity is more useful, as it limits foes' expectations. Only a handful have had to worry about employers, and they happened to have employers with a borderline-omniscient spy network and a vested interest in keeping an eye on them.
The closest deliberate action I have is presenting a witch's head to the village that housed her and declaring her crimes; otherwise, fame was an unfortunate consequence of choices like signing on to work for a Rogue Trader. Bastard made a movie about us and signed us up for every endorsement deal he could.
I've never done anything for fame, so no stories about that. However, my cleric has become famous around my game store for being the one character where crap happens and yet he keeps surviving despite reality saying he shouldn't with his sanity intact. It shot up to 11 when my cleric got a dragon, normally known for not having any ounce of kindness or remorse, to feel pity for him after he told it everything that has happened to him (to the point where it just gave him a present just so he would go away and stop making it feel sad).
I wonder if it says something about me, that the only time my characters have any fame is when I finally get one to live past two sessions in a normal game. Ya know, in spite of everything that has happened.
Middle school math competitions were essentially tough standardized tests graded on curves. I repeatedly got top 5 in state on them, mainly cause I thought it might look good later?
Slay a giant at a poor villager. Get poor villager's thanks. Save a king from a large rat. Entire kingdom hails you as a hero.
That's the difference in profile saving. Also a reason to stage a danger and "save" said high profile target.
If you can't raise an army of blighted zombies to attack an important figure just so your group can rush in and "save" him with your anti-zombie equipment then I don't want to be right!
Fluttershy could save some noble's pet and win tickets for herself and her guests. The GM may be keeping that as a backup in case everything else falls through.
Twilight-Ursa major ( They don't have to know that it's actually an Ursa minor)
Rainbow Dash- Join the Wonderbolts ( Because they perform at the gala)
Fluttershy-She should have a freebie because giant dragon and all that
Applejack- Save Appleloosa perhaps?
Pinkie Pie- save a town from parasprite
Rarity- She can just go as Danity Dove.
Spike- Twilights +1?
Derpy- Because why not?
I wouldn't attempt the Discord thing yet. He seems more like another Nightmare night end boss for the group.
From the plot I re-read through, I could make only a few guess'.
Twilight is the sister of the captain of the guard, maybe she would want to see what he does for a living?
Rainbow is a barbarian, so it would make sense for her to try to barge in for some random reason ("impress" the wonderbolts, and make a show of it).
Fluttershy... give her a note stating that Celestia's pet is sick again? It would at least give her access to part of the castle.
Applejack could go as a chef, cause unlike random ponies no one has heard about, staff is a little easier to get in.
Pinkie... uh... I really don't know. Dainty Dove's assistant?
Rarity... I mean Dainty Dove, could just go.
A demonstration of the Elements' power, you say? Sounds like the perfect time for a certain Spirit of Chaos to make an appearance...
Heh, that just gave a picture of the Mane 6 being best buds with Discord and asking him to come and spread chaos in the kingdom for a bit, so that they can publicly "defeat" him and show their heroism. Probably not where the GM (or Spud) plan on going, but boy if that doesn't sound like something a roleplayer would come up with.
The problem with that is most players don't consider the possibility of this backfiring harshly on them. Or at the very least, becoming a lot more than they originally thought.
I can just see it now: Discord is all on board with Twilight's idea of a mock battle but comes up with a better idea: He'll just take the power of the Elements out of them and then have them regain said powers in front of everyone right before the battle! That way, no one will ever question that they were the right ones to have said power in the first place! Before anyone could object, he takes their power away and gives them a cryptic clue on where to find them before going off to prepare for the "battle".
At least, it's something I would do if I was a GM and my players were trying to do that in my game.
The Nightmare Moon bit aside, wouldn't Twilight's position as Celestia's personal student, be enough to warrant her(and perhaps Spike) a ticket to the gala?
Celestia could just ignore them if she felt like it anyway.
She's the god-empress. If she want personnal friends to attend, who will stop her? No one that want to keep their job.
Celly used the "official" channels at first, and they shot her down with a fair reason. She can use her authority if she want (but she doesnt want to right now).
Shy looks to be the type of PC that this would not work on.
Am I the only one who has PC that when a DM tries something like this, they don't go along with it?
For half of my PC's, if they did not want to go to a party, and the DM makes it harder to go. They would be relived. Makes it harder for the rest of the party to blame they for not showing up.