
Originally Posted by
CLAVDIVS
Don't Hate Your Friends
It really does seem like Don't Rest Your Head can be adapted to anything, doesn't it? It very clearly steers the game in a particular direction, though, in this case focusing on the occasional deep emotional dysfunction that seems a defining characteristic of the pony race. Or as Twilight put it in episode 1, "All the ponies in this town are CRAZY!"
And so saith the pot unto the kettle, "Thou art black."
Discipline becomes Harmony: The ability to not only work together with your fellow pony to achieve a shared goal, but working harmoniously with the world around you as an individual to achieve personal goals rather than struggling against it.
Exhaustion becomes Crazy, and your Exhaustion talent is your special talent. Let's face it, ponies don't exactly have rational and emotionally balanced perspectives on their talents; they can't, really, they're too central to their identity. As a result, ponies go a little wacky when using their talents, but it's accepted as normal; just about everypony is carrying around a point or two of Crazy most of the time to let them make minor uses of their talent. As Crazy increases, so does obsession with one's talent, and any other dynfunctions start getting exaggerated as well; you also throw yourself harder and harder into anything you do, especially your special talent (since even minor uses are getting more and more powerful), but get correspondingly closer to burning out completely. When Crazy hits six, you crack, going completely off the deep end into obsessive madness or a dark pit of Cutie Mark Failure Insanity. You're just plain useless until you calm the buck down again.
In Applebuck Season, Applejack kept making ill-considered major uses of her talent (pacing herself with more minor uses might've been safer in the long run) and Crazy kept dominating every time she tried to help her friends (while this looks more like Exhaustion at first blush, that's because physical labor is a big part of her special talent; her small-e exhaustion is because her Crazy was manifesting as working herself to death). In Lesson Zero, the initial buildup of Crazy was more due to Twilight's academic obsession, but that's tied to her talent of magic because she approaches it academically. As her Crazy climbed towards six dice, she was increasingly willing to use powerful magic and using decreasingly sound judgment with it.
Madness becomes Discord. Your Discord talent isn't something supernatural; rather, it's something mean. Maybe it's something you're good at doing, but hate yourself for it. Maybe it's some dark impulse you try to keep in check, but know that giving into it would make things so much easier. When Discord dominates, you check off a fight or flight response, but its effect is primarily social: You turn aggressive and confrontational, or withdrawn and depressed. Cutie mark failure can feed into this as well, as an inability to employ one's special talent may drive a pony to call upon Discord for the dice they need, or to bolster a pool already swollen from Crazy dice in an attempt to utterly dominate a conflict. As Harmony dice turn into Discord dice, you become estranged from your friends and the emotional safety net they provide starts to fray. A character whose Harmony has been entirely replaced by Discord becomes an NPC, as they lose nearly all ability to cooperate and utterly alienate their loves ones... or they think they do. Unlike DRYH, redemption is still possible, even if they're blind to it. Turning back on Discord and returning to Harmony (and PC-dom) requires buying off a Discord die with Hope coins, but most characters can't do so on their own (no longer being PCs, they can't earn Hope coins); instead, the PCs can choose to spend the coins on their behalf. Doing so could be as dramatic as a blast from the Elements of Harmony, or as simple as telling a long-lost friend that you still care about them.
Rainbow Dash is good in a fight, and maybe a little too eager to start one, but she doesn't really want to hurt anyone... even though sometimes it would just be so much easier to knock some sense into somepony's skull. Rarity bears the Element of Generosity, true, but a tendency towards vanity and greed is always there under the surface, tempting her. Her generous behavior is more conscious choice than inherent nature; it's the pony she wants to be, so she strives for it. Perhaps even more admirable than a pony who is just naturally good, don't you think? Gilda the griffon is, simply put, a bully; she gets her way with force and threats of force, threats she's clearly able to deliver on. She'd already gained two Discord dice by the beginning of Griffon the Brush-Off; over the course of the episode, Discord dominated her rolls three more times: She checks off two fight responses dealing with Pinkie, and her remaining flight response at the party, losing her last Harmony die and the last shred of her friendship with Rainbow Dash. (EDIT: Or perhaps it was three fight responses, and her departure at the end was just a natural consequence of her tantrum.) Princess Luna's talent for fanfare and drama can inspire and thrill the public, but can also enable her to browbeat them into following her will. A thousand years ago, it became a vicious cycle where she she felt the need to resort to bluster and intimidation to get her way as such methods continued to turn the populace against her, culminating in her transformation into Nightmare Moon when her last Harmony die was replaced with Discord.
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