DM: By this point, several earth ponies in the audience show signs of stress and fatigue... while some of the pegasi look almost too healthy.
Twilight Sparkle: Alright, then. We don't have time to lecture them; we'll just send them home. Pinkie, can you make sure that the whole tomb thing gets around by word of mouth?
Pinkie Pie: I can do that with Streetwise??
DM: That'd actually be more of a Bluff ability – to make the outrageous seem plausible.
Rarity: Odd choice, but I'll make it work. <roll>
DM: That should get the rumor mill turning. In the meantime, the crowd disperses so that you can get to work. Following the logical shape of the terrain, it's not long before you uncover a secret trapdoor, revealing a staircase leading deep into the ground.
Applejack: So lemme get this straight. By engagin' in a friendly contest, we activated somethin' down there with a grudge against earth ponies?
Rainbow Dash: And a love of pegasi! Gotta remember the positives.
As fantasy worlds go, it's fun to imagine that beneath the cutesy veneer of Equestria there's danger and magic and dangerous magic mere miles from any given settlement. And you still have cute stuff not only for juxtaposition but for its own sake. That's honestly one of the things that makes Equestria amazing as a game setting: It easily supports happiness and cute and still has the emotional room for the rest of the roleplaying spectrum.
But maybe let's give other systems and settings some credit. Tell a story about a time you encountered something cute and colorful in a different setting? (Bonus points if it wasn't played for laughs/creepy factor and actually fit in well without being jarring.)
Notice: Guest comic submissions are open! Guidelines here. Deadline: February 20th.
It's some kind of Air-Element based artifact or creature that is stashed or imprisoned within. The elemental factor would explain why earth ponies (who are tied to the earth, diametrically opposed to air) become weaker and pegasi (favorable to air) are gaining strength
Maybe Spud will tie it into the vines, as they were a long buried poison leeching the soil of Ponyville. Then we find out it was Zecora again... OR we'll get some history on the founding of Ponyville, and Granny Smith will have all the info.
Time to hand out the prizes.
The signed copy of A. K. Yearling goes to Digo. Left out in the middle of the desert with no equipment, ouch.
The signed pith helmet goes to both Toric, and Specter. Toric for the staff, and Specter for the heart warming moment.
(Both prizes are completely fake and will not appear in the real world)
Good job.
My grandpa had one, and I made the mistake of asking why they were called pith helmets. His response was because you would pith in them when you really needed to go.
For story time: A long time ago (circa 2003) I was involved in a modern campaign of conspiracy and spy-vs-spy action where usually we'd have to deal with gray aliens, UFO wreckage, and the occasional odd "boogieman". The party at one point managed to find a baby Nessie (well, she was the size of a fully grown cow, not including that long neck). Somewhat intelligent (like a dog or pig) and very friendly, we had her transported to our secret base and built a huge swimming pool for her, with plants and fish imported from her homeland so she'd be comfortable.
Very cute and she was the team mascot for the rest of the campaign. We even let her waddle around the base if she wanted to.
Alright, this requires just a little backstory. This was Mutants and Masterminds and the party had spent the first half of the campaign fighting a nihilistic cult lead by Heralds, who each represented a reason to destroy everything.
There was Wrath, who hates everything. Logic, who doesn't see the point since it'll all wind down eventually. Mercy, who only sees one way to end injustice. Despair, who does what he must. And, last but not least, Joy, who REALLY likes breaking things.
The players took a liking to Joy, who managed to get "I gots an arm!" as a catch phrase after a particularly violent fight with a regenerator.
But the cute and colorful part doesn't concern the cult. It concerns the Christmas special that followed the cult (my group loves holiday specials). See, a race of corporate aliens were plotting to merchandise Earth into submission. And they decided they needed a mascot, so they scanned all the heroes brains for the perfect joyous spokesperson. It was built up to be a robot Santa, but...
"His laughter soon stops,
And he's taken aback,
For instead of Saint Nick,
There's a figure in black.
For joy can't be studied,
Can't be counted in parts,
No, joy is feeling
That lives in your hearts.
And the feeling they got,
As they scanned all your brains,
Was that Joy is quite violent,
And kinda insane.
There's a sickening wrench,
And he screams in alarm,
As Joybot shouts out:
"I GOTS AN ARM!"
GMing in rhyme is tough, but so very very worth it.
Well, there was this one time in a nautical-themed game...
DAMMIT I'VE USED ALL THE STORIES. ALL OF THEM.
Well I've never been afraid to repeat myself when an old story is still appropriate. So there was this one time in a nautical game where our party found a flotilla city in the middle of a celebration. Our DM asked for a prompt on what they might be celebrating. I was going through a wicked TF2 phase at the time, so I blurted out "the festival of silly hats!" It stuck, and that was the entire session. We had shore leave and enjoyed the city-wide party. No intrigue, no murder, just people with wacky hats. By the end I had sewn together multiple hats I had won in the various games, which I then put on my character's head slot for "+3 to hats, -2 to serious business."
There was also the first superhero game I was ever in. That game was way darker in general than our GM anticipated (she had nightmares, no joke), but there were quite a lot of funny bits. Right at the beginning of the game, a guy is robbing a bank. We all rush in to stop him, and the crazy magical hobo comes up with a particular innovative solution. She yells "I turn the roof into a dragon!" As in the roof of the bank. With her chaos magic. Our GM allowed this for some reason. We ended up spending multiple days in game-time chasing the stupid thing to have it not running amok in the city after that. *grumble grumble fuck Magical Hat grumble*.
I've mentioned before that in one larp a few of us decided to play as magical girls. One of us had found a maneki neko with the power to turn people into cats. This proved to be surprisingly plot relevant.
As it turned out our boss was foiled in his quest for ultimate arcane power when this was used on him. This lead to his current plan, get two squads of magical girls to fight each and charge up power crystals for him. I strongly suspect, though, that the reason for this particular bit of background was to get us to fight a cat trailing a rainbow of elemental magic.
ok here is a question for you guys. After todays new episode we have to wait two weeks for the next episode, but the episode is the special 100th episode. The 100th episode is called "slice of life" and is suposed to focus on the ponies of ponyville while the mane six are away... so which background ponies do you think will be the focus of this special episode?
I believe that we will get Lyra, Bonbon, Derpy, Berry punch, Roseluck, and Doctor Whooves
I think it's been confirmed that there will be an instance of Doctor Hooves being Doctor Hooves in the episode (fan rumor being voiced by David Tennant himself, but that's probably just wishful thinking).
In any case, the BBC have already shown that they're aware of Hooves's existence, and they haven't done anything about it so far.
Well there is really only one background pony I can think of: King Sombra.
Ok ok, I kid I kid!
Honestly, as long as Lyra and Derpy are there, I don't think I care who else shows up in this episode. And yet, every time I think about this episode, I can't help but have this pop up in the back of my mind.
Cute, colorful, and not ponies. This'll bring back some good nostalgia.
I was GMing for two players who had differing levels of expertise when it came to role playing (one had an actual clue about how it worked, the other was very close to "fantasy"). But either way, they came to a village that was under some sort of spell, and almost no body was around. There were still some inhabitants (some children crying), and there was no real clue where any of the other villagers were.
It wasn't until the adventurers split up did things happen. The fighter went off to the outskirts to see if anything was amiss or if there was probably something in the distance he could see. He had failed the two checks I presented him, and slipped on a banana and fell down a well.
The rogue on the other hand wanted to go see why the children were crying. One girl's doll was missing, and the rest had no idea where their parents were (after weeks of said parents disappearance). After that was done, she decided to see if she couldn't break into a few houses and steal anything... there wasn't a whole lot to steal. The most prized thing she stole was someone's love letter.
Later, when the fighter was able to heave himself from the well, he went back onto search duty to see I he could find anything out of the ordinary.
1) Giant greyish tower in the distance , check.
2) The village seems to be overrun by animals, check.
3) ... A blue fox is head first into you rations bag eating, che- What!
Suffice to say, the blue fox became his new best friend.
I played in a Pathfinder Society game last week where we were delving into the ruins of a long-lost Dwarven Sky Citadel (they call 'em "Sky Citadels" because they built them with entrances leading to the surface world).
Well, this citadel had been long forgotten (even by the dwarves), and since then it had been overrun by Kobolds. Of course, things started out as you'd expect - we were having to fight our way through a bunch of stupid Kobolds and their stupid traps.
However, after we beat all the Kobolds guarding the entrance to the ruins, we went deeper in and found this infirmary that the Kobolds had basically converted into a barracks. Off in a side room we found a stone statue with an incredibly life-like representation of a woman running for her life while glancing back over her shoulder in horror... And we also found this really weird-looking sack that was covered in goo and teeth marks...
Our party druid made a Handle Animal check on the sack.
Turns out, it was a chew toy for a large, reptilian creature...
-My character took the sack.
It came in handy later on when we found "Stink Eye," the Kobold elder's domesticated Basilisk pet. Come to find out, domesticated Basilisks have the intelligence of a typical sheep dog (and they're just as slobbery). Since we had his favorite "toy," we actually ended up playing fetch with Stink Eye and befriending him by the end of the encounter (which was awesome and cute), though we did still have to make Will saves against his petrification effect (:
Mine was a one-shot of sorts. My husband ran his game and, when we knew if someone couldn't show up in advance, I'd throw together a one-shot for the evening. We had a series of these- everyone had a character and whoever was there was called forth to adventure. This night, we had no advance notice. We were disappointed we couldn't play, so I offered to throw something together if they gave me half an hour. I based the campaign on a kid's movie (which they knew, but didn't know which one).
Their characters were sent to another kingdom to solve the problem (evil sister taking the throne from the queen, etc) before the damage spread to their own. I made them roll spot (for lols) to see if they noticed the local fashion- dyed skin. Large stripes and shapes in various colors decorated their bodies (like a girl with green tinted shoulders or a guy with a red arm and later on, tiny gemstones pressed into the skin). Two of three saw it. The third, the drunk/face of the party, didn't. The other two had fun at his expense.
They latched onto this random thing and ran with it. We went through 4 HOURS of roleplay (continuing with the story but no real encounters because they roleplayed around it)before they took down the BBEG.
4 HOURS.
They said they had a lot of fun and wanted to know what it was based on. I told them. And for some reason, they weren't too pleased they liked Barbie: Mermaidia so much.
AJ: Seriously, though, what are the odds of some weird magical place being right where we decided to set up?
PP: There's a Mirror Pond you could stumble on if you go through a thicket. No riddles, no monsters, just a thicket.
FS: Tartarus is close enough for a Cerebus to escape to here.
TS: Not to mention that the Everfree Forest is a stone's throw away from Ponyville.
AJ: ...Fair enough.
AJ: Geeze...what was Granny thinking to set up here?
Rarity: You mean the farm?
AJ: No, Ponyville. Granny Smith - Applejack's Grandma - founded Ponyville.
TS: But the books say Ponyville was founded hundreds of years ago! How is she still around?
AJ: ...ya know, I hadn't thought about that when I put it in my character sheet...
RD: Granny Smith's pulling a Mayor ascension scheme!
Everyone Else: ...eh?
RD: You know...Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Mayor founded Sunnydale on a hellmouth deliberately so he could set up for a massive ascension to turn into a pure blood demon during a solar eclipse?
AJ: Good gravy! Mah Gran's gonna be some sorta monstrous demon serpent thingy?
DM: ...*scribble*
Everyone Else: If you didn't think of it yourself, you can't use it!
DM: Dammit!
GM:You guys are torturing me. You give me ideas, and than I can't use it?
TS:We're just stopping you from using those ideas against us.
GM:That's the whole point!
I just figure ponies have a VERY long lifespan - they are magical, after all - but usually don't live out the whole thing, probably on account of all the kaiju-sized predators. Granny Smith's survival to be centuries old is a testament to her badassery; never mess with retired adventurers, and never mess with Granny.
And/or, the ascension scheme isn't just for herself. Friendship is magic, after all, and one of the common problems with immortality is outliving all your friends - but what if you could make them immortal too?
Or, y'know, there's a reason she keeps a zebra in the Everfree, Zecora being the current one.
Or she was granted a boon because founding Ponyville was That Important, and she's now living out that boon. (Though that means her fertile years were greatly extended, if she's only Applejack's grandmother and not great-grandmother. Perhaps her boon is finally ending. Though that would need to apply similarly to her siblings and cousins.)
Or, yes, she has an adventurer's longevity but has lived mostly on a farm all these years: one of the safest places around (if it wasn't, it couldn't grow crops).
Or any number of other things they'd have troubles outright saying on the show. (Though it could just be a continuity error. Did they have photography hundreds of years ago?)
Colorful? No, I don't think I have something like that. Cute though? Well let's try this one out.
After completing his task, my spellthief, Azriel, separated from the group to go out on his own with a traveling merchant named Zack. During their travels to a shipyard near the coast, they ran across a little girl. Zack was one of those annoying "people" person that Azriel didn't really like, so naturally he wanted to adopt the girl right there and then. My spellthief wasn't going to have any of this, but being on a time limit and not finding any evidence that her family might be close by (or any hint that she even had any family), he reluctantly gave in. So the girl just tagged along and found herself attached to my spellthief, despite the dark, mysterious, anti-social jerk's wishes. It was like witnessing a little girl grabbing the arm of Batman and refusing to let go, with all the hi-jinx that came with such a scenario.
Considering that the last session had the suicide of one character and a big dump of depression and dark literally poured into the campaign, it was a relief to actually get something that was a little light hearted for once. It was just one silly roleplay session after another until Azriel got back to his homeland and left the girl with Zack as they parted ways. But not before leaving a small pearl (it was a fake with a small symbol carved into it. Never got around to actually giving it any meaning) with the girl so she would have something to remember him by.
After she gave him a heartbreaking hug, he left...only to get another task sending him back to the group he just left and needing to take a boat to actually reach them in the new world. Guess who was on the same boat he was getting on? The reunion was about as sappy as one could get. And yes, my spellthief tried to dodge that as well, though he was happy that the girl was safe and happy at least.
Kinda makes me sad that that was around the time when the campaign started to ignore my character in favor of the pc and her habit of doing random things for the sake of doing random things.
...I guess the shark jumping incident would also fit in the cute and colorful category as well, but I've already brought that story up and I don't feel like being negative today.
Unless there actually are multiple clones of Pegasus, son of Poseidon, the correct plural would be 'pegasus ponies'. Since pony or ponies may be omitted in exclusively equine company my belief is that the correct plural of pegasus is in fact pegasus.
You are ambushed by four humans wearing Guy Fawkes masks!
The man in the rear starts to perform Rick Astley's "Never going to give you up". Your entire party now has a -2 to Will, Fortitude, and AC.
The man in the center drops his pants, turns around, bends over, and spreads his cheeks to show you the terrifying depths of his anus. Your entire party now has a -3 to Will and Fortitude.
The woman on the far right pulls out a cup, lowers her pants, squats, and begins to strain.
The remaining woman lays down with her face beneath the previous woman with her mask partially raised with her open mouth waiting on the standing woman.
The party now has a -4 to Will and Fortitude.
Roll a Will save to avoid committing suicide.
Those who succeed the Will must roll a Fortitude save to avoid vomiting and losing 1d8 HP.
I first got into roleplaying pretty much because of hearing about stories like Old Man Henderson (and maybe this comic? Or maybe the comic came later after my waxing interest? I don't remember...)
So naturally, I jumped on the Roleplaying is Magic forum found my current RP friends and have been having a blast since!
We expanded into other systems and universes (D&D, WH40k, Shadowrun) and in my roleplaying naivete (ponies is my first roleplay, yes?), I tried to carry over the cute, the kind, and the colorful aura of ponies into my characters and actions of those games?
...
As you can imagine... WH40k, in particular... let's just say it was a <i>very, VERY</i> tough uphill battle. It was too bad we never really completed that campaign.
You know how in the WH40k lore things in the Immaterium can be created/given power by worship and belief (eg the gods)? Well... since anything can be created if enough psychic energy is concentrated on it... :D
In my first grim Cyberpunk game, the main enemy was...TI. That is, Texas Instruments. One of the things they were doing was bio-experiments. They made this adorable 'calcu-puppy'. It acted as a calculator, and you could tell it things to calculate, and it would say the answer back. ...Unfortunately it still had some bugs to fix, so when you asked it to calculate pi, it would go, "Pi...pi...pi..." and then explode.
It's okay. I don't think I can get them either. Only story I can think of is Tiny Tina from Borderlands ridding Paladin Torque. It was a cross crisis campaign, so it was well with in the realm of possibilities.
Well, it's probably not entirely what you're looking for, but my Pathfinder group had gotten into a fight in a temple to Gozreh which was ACTUALLY just a front for a Dagon cult.
We'd mostly dealt with the few clerics who were up top in the public part of the temple when a tentacular temple guardian manifested to back them up. We knew that we were in for a fight, but then Elsbeth, our witch, cast a spell that readers of the "Elements of Smarmony" filler strips will remember as the most broken spell in the game. And much to the DM's consternation, it actually WORKED. She used Baleful Polymorph to transform the huge, demonic abomination into a cute little bunny, which our paladin immediately wanted to adopt.
Cuteness that still fits the setting?
Megh the porter slave was purchased in my Dark Heresy game as a way for my feeble Assassin to lug a golf bag of sniper rifles around all the time without suffering encumbrance penalties. She was a meek little girl purchased from Dark Eldar, and I tried not to speculate on why she was mute. (I found out eventually, out-of-character. It was as horrific as I could have expected, and worse; in-character, I was willfully ignorant so I wouldn't get emotional and do anything stupid to get revenge on those responsible - my heretical employers.) She pretty much became the team mascot, with everyone keeping an eye out for her, even the degenerate addict with zero sense of appropriateness.
Horribly depressing? Sure, but it's 40K. Cute? You betcha, we loved the little squirt - our grizzled melee specialist was always giving her piggyback rides when we weren't expecting combat, and he babysat/danced with her when we visited a club so I was free to party a little. At the first opportunity, I relieved her of the title "slave" and made her my squire instead. And in the epilogue, paid for viola lessons, and talked her into combat training with an axe and pistol, and distracted her with an errand so I could have extra padding fitted to the cot she insisted on keeping in my room, and...
So in this one campaign I ran, I ripped off mows from DMFA as the standard generic killer rabbits. (Somewhat linked to the overall plot: they were essentially detritus of what turned out to be an alien invasion.) Cute, sure. Colorful - I pulled the standard palette swap (this was an openly Final Fantasy inspired setting) for tougher versions. By the time the campaign ended I had done every color of the rainbow and then some.
The last campaign I ran was Pathfinder, with world-shattering events. The party had just come off of pushing an immensely powerful chaotic entity, losing an immensely powerful NPC in the process, and triggering a super-volcano under the city (which they managed to postpone, for now).
They run off to gather ingredients for a powerful ritual to help protect the city...come to think of it, they never got back to that plot point...
One of the ingredients was a gold dragon eggshell. Post-hatching was fine, but they had to find one first. They discovered a local gold dragon, the ancient local guardian. She lived inside a nearby dormant volcano (unrelated to the city super-volcano). They make their way inside, to discover her hoard, an island inside the cavern of solid gold. Upon approach, they realized the island was moving. Wyrmlings. Hundreds of gold wyrmlings.
Much hilarity ensued. The wyrmlings were childish, capable of learning, but the classified everything as Mom, Food, and Not-food. Some pranks between party members meant several people got bit. Some of the wyrmlings got attached to party members, while the more sensible members talked with the Ancient Gold Dragon. Several wyrmlings left with the party, with Mom's approval. A couple more stowed away inside someone's armor, which he didn't notice until they camped for the night.
Those wyrmlings became party mascots, and occasionally plot points, as they had to protect them when events got difficult. I look forward to resuming that campaign and noting the growth of the wyrmlings, after 5 years of downtime for the characters.
But maybe let's give other systems and settings some credit. Tell a story about a time you encountered something cute and colorful in a different setting? (Bonus points if it wasn't played for laughs/creepy factor and actually fit in well without being jarring.)