Pony: the Friendening

So after that hiatus, and quite a bit of research, I've decided that I'm just going to take what was made and turn it into a world of darkness addon, instead of just based on such. This is nice because if you are familiar with WoD, then you already know how simple, yet elegant it plays, assuming you don't have a bunch of DnD jackasses who don't care about the storytelling experience and just want to kill shit. That being said, if thats how you approach TTRPGs, then you can leave, I don't want you here. There really isn't much to be said about the system that hasn't already been detailed in the previous posts. One thing I'm going to start to do though is work on the character sheet. It's going to be a cannibalized version of the Changling one until I can whip up something better.
Unfortunately some of the game mechanics posts are now obsolete...


keep it real ponies
Chromecrash out!

Pause

Sorry guys, but I've got too much on my plate right now to work on the pony RPG, i might as well be working full time though, so it's not like I'm slacking off, just re-prioritizing. Hopefully once I move out I'll be able to start making some real headway on this project.

on a side note I am going to be working rebuilding my digital archive for another project that I was working on last year (thankfully I have an analog copy of just about everything) if you wanna check that out I'll post a link to it sometime later tonight.

An increase in the amount of combat

the system is going to be a little more combat based then initially predicted. the reason being it is easier to make a game that has a medium amount of combat then it is a light amount.

~102 talents

Thats one of the things we need to work on, thats 17 talents for each elemental progression tree. This grants the player more options, the general idea is that there will be as much variation between each player as possible, without getting to the point where it's almost impossible to keep track of what's going on.

On a completely different subject

I got pokemon Black :D unfortunately I'm at work so I can't play it D:

development hasn't come to a stop

I've just got some more people helping with development, so I'm working on getting a complete copy of the notes. once I've got that I'll post a copy of them. but until then I'm pretty much stuck in limbo.

Title of the first expansion

We're not even done with the initial release, and we already know what we want in the expansion xD also it's name, My Little Friendship: Pony is Magic.

Friendship is Adventure Overview.

You are the Avatars of the God Princess Celestia's will, you have been chosen to adventure around Equestria and solve the issues that princess Celestia can't bother herself with. Whether that is because she sees the conflict as being below her, or she's too busy with other royal duties. These conflicts rarely escalate into violence, if they did the Princess would send a group from her royal guard. Your job is to act as a diplomatic mediator, ensuring that justice, and equality is brought to the citizens of Equestria.

Friendship is Adventure plays out in a d6 dice pool system, where you and your pony companions travel across Equestria and solve disputes, and other conflicts in a nonviolent fashion. Not everypony might agree with a single course of action though, so sometimes there will be some in-group conflict, but being the expert mediators that you are you should be able to work something out.
In Friendship is Adventure the main source of conflict is your own companions, but it is in a way that sparks personal growth within each others character, not one that breeds malicious intent. the game is one about nonviolent conflict resolution and personal growth. The main goal behind this system is that it should, in theory, play out like an episode of the show.


The characters have two basic statistics, their ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma) and the Elements of Harmony (Honesty, Kindness, Loyalty, Generosity, Laughter, and Friendship/Magic.) there have been some changes to this system since this has been posted, so this section is slightly obsolete, but not very, it was mostly changes to the names.
The ability scores have an effect on everything your pony does, unless otherwise specified. While the Elements of Harmony are, in the layponies terms, your class levels. The Elemental Roster (that is the name of the area on your sheet where you assign points to the specific Elements) is organized into trees of progression, there is one tree for each element, and they branch off depending on the skill sets you are taking.

When using a skill, or talent, a pony must roll their dice pool, which is determined by the level of the related element of harmony plus the modifier of the relevant ability. the dice pool is capped, but that is detailed in this post, so you need to be sure not to go over that limit.

for all concerned

I'm working on a player friendly version of my posts, so it's not just some semi intelligible garble of words for some of you ponies. Unfortunately I'm currently at work, so I can't do much in the way of making any detrimental updates, but hey it pays the bills. Oh and the ad sense, well I might make a nickel or dime off of it :P

Character Traits

Each character has a list of traits, these act as personality quarks, that make a pony easier, or more difficult to get along with, generally it's recommended that each pony has at least two traits, but no more then four (anymore then that and there might be too much conflict within the group, and any fewer there might not be enough.) Each trait has an ability associated to it, and another trait that is it's "polar opposite." this is where the base of the inter-pony conflict is to unfold. though it is possible for two ponies that share similar traits to absolutely hate each other, or if they have opposite traits they could be the best of friends. This makes role playing a must, without conflict the PM could decide that you don't get all of the experience that you would have normally been awarded for an adventure.

limiting the dice pool size

I'm thinking there should be a limit to the number of dice that you can throw at once, I know that kinda defeats the purpose of the dice pool system, but I noticed that in shadowrun, the lack of a limit, sorta broke the game, cuz you could throw like 40 dice when you only need two successes, making failure nigh impossible. So I think the max pool size should be determined by the total number of points allocated on your progression trees. So if you have 4 points in honesty, and 8 in friendship your dice pool size is 12.

The number of dice you roll for a skill is determined by the number of points you have allocated into the progression tree plus the modifier of the relevant ability, declared by the skill. so say you're using a skill that is dictated by the friendship element, and is modified by the wisdom ability, and they are 8 and 6 respectively. so pre-pool limit, the number of dice you would throw would be 14 but say we're using the pool size of the character above, it would be cut down to 12, and would remain like that until you get more points for progression.

Gameplay mechanics

players make tests with pools of dice, their goal is to either get most successes (dice that lands on 6) when rolling against another player, or to a set number of successes, determined by the PM, (PM being Pony Master, which is the DM of this setting.)
Part of the conflict in this game is between the players, so characters that have conflicting traits and what not. so in those situations players roll their relevant dice pools against each other.
The PMs roll in the game is just to setup a situation that the players need to resolve, but there also needs to be an internal conflict.

Character sheet

The sheets would have to be different for each race, so each character can have all the information they need about their pony in one place. Including progression tree, and their ability index.

If I could get some input on this setup that would be cool.

So I'm working on the method of progression.

I'm thinking that each tree is based on the Elements of Harmony, so I'm thinking that levels are tracked based on the Elements. so Characters are classified by their race, and their base element (eg. Unicorn Kindness, Pegasus Loyalty) their level is determined by the highest level Element on your ponies elemental roster. So if your a Pegasus with 4 levels in Kindness, but 8 levels in Honesty, your character would be classified as Pegasus Honesty level 8.

Elements of Harmony

So the elements of harmony are linked to 6 elements of nature. they are as follows
Honesty (Earth)
Kindness (Light)
Laughter (Fire)
Generosity (Water)
Loyalty (Air)
Magic/Friendship (Energy)

A tid bit of information

I only post the stuff I feel confident about, so if it seems I go quite some time without making any updates that means I've either hit a brick wall, or am working very diligently on something, or both :P

Character progression

so I'm thinking that everypony should have like 3 base progression paths, that split further on, but you aren't limited to just following your path, you can follow any number of paths of progression that you want, but going down to many paths will dilute your skills and abilities.

Though having one progression path per element of harmony would also be cool, too :/ I'm going to have to work this our some more.

What I've got so far (copied from steam chat)

It's going to use a dice pool (d6)
there are two base types of attributes the characters are built upon, "abilities" and "Elements of Harmony" the abilities are just like they are in a regular game, so cha, wis, dex str, int, con, and they affect how your pony does stuff. While the elements of harmony are what determine the things you can do.
Character progression is in a tree-like progression.
unicorns have magic (obviously) pegasi have elemental domination, but we can't think of anything to give earth ponies to make them not suck, we were talking about making them gain more skill points, and having a wider range of skills to spend them on, but I'm not sure how that would work out :P

and now you are up to date, I'll be spending some time working on the mechanics right now before I go too deep into the skills and character stuff. Stay tuned it :D

SO what this is about is making a Tabletop RPG for Friendship is magic

I'm not going to worry about the aesthetics of this because that will only slow me down. If you want to help my name is ChromeCrash on steam and I'll spend the time I'm not doing something important in the MLP Group Chat.