4. RPG Item: My Little Pony: Roleplaying is Magic (Season Two Edition) [Average Rating:7.00 Unranked]

Shanya Almafeta
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It's certainly the prettiest of all the RPGs in this batch.

The Gist
The biggest (at 162 pages) and best-illustrated and best-laid out of the five, MLP:RIM probably also has the biggest fanbase, based on googled session reports. Although Roleplaying Is Magic has lots of detail and bar-setting theme support, this does not hide some gaping faults.

Character Creation
Forgive me for being a bit frustrated, I'm trying to review these quickly - and this book is not helping. This book is replete with basic information about roleplaying, sprinkled throughout the book, to help players who have never played a RPG before; it would be helpful if I was using this game to teach new players, and not 't working under a deadline.

Character creation starts with a race: pegasus, unicorn, earth pony, or baby dragon. Each race gets its own page describing its culture, +3 in attribute bonuses spread among the three attributes (ponies get +2 to one and +1 to another, while dragons get +1 to all three), and one special racial ability. None of the abilities quite work like each other; earth ponies get extra experience points, pegasi get special attributes in addition to the base three to describe their ability to fly, unicorns get special rules for weaving aspects into spells, and baby dragons have to choose a draconic heritage and a limited number of draconic special abilities (such as wings or flame breath).

Next comes a pony's guiding element - Kindness, Laughter, Generosity, Honestly, Loyalty, and Magic. This slightly modifies how they use Willpower, but primarily covers how they recover Willpower. (The book credits the World of Darkness as an inspiration, and nowhere is it more notable than here.)

After choosing race, you choose an age category. Equines choose foal (like the CMC and their classmates), filly/colt (like the Mane Six), or mare/stallion; dragons choose hatchling (like Spike) or drake. Each gain their own special talents and a certain number of experience points to spend later in chargen. (Putting dragons in is a curious choice because Spike seems more like a snarky, jokey GMPC than a PC... but as a dragon fan I'll forgive the inclusion of dragons any day of the week.)

After that, equines choose their Special Purpose and Cutie Mark. (Dragons instead have their racial special ability, Dragonheart.) In RIM, these can come in one of six flavors: Goal, Passion, Calling, Conviction, Heritage, or Destiny. For now, all a Special Purpose does is increase the roll of the die by half, although it does come into play later. Mechanics for being a Blank Flank are also listed.

Next come attributes; three primary (Body, Mind, Heart) and four secondary (Energy, Courage, Fortitude, Willpower). You gain three points from your race, and up to three for your age, to spend on your primary attributes.

Secondary attributes are equal to the sum of two or three attributes, and while it's possible to have an attribute of 0, it's not possible to have two 0, so no secondary attribute can be zero. That's important, because secondary attributes are the defenses in this system.

After choosing attributes, you choose up to two Talents. Each talent is tied to an aspect of an attribute, and provides a reroll of the dice in specialized situations. These talents cover the usual attribute descriptions: Strong, Fast, Smart, Creative, Charismatic, and Tireless, among others.

Next comes Jobs. Each pony starts with one Job Point (save Earth Ponies, who get two); each Job Point can buy a new Job at Job Level 1, or increase your Job Level of an existing Job at level 1. (No, there's no Final Fantasy Tactics inspiration in this game.) Jobs are explicitly not tied to any skills, and can be used with any skill that may have been relevant to your skill. Jobs are entirely freeform. Skills are next - and they're entirely freeform, too. Your initial skill points start out equal to your Mind, and can be spent as you see fit.

Although both Jobs and Skills are freeform, a list of canon examples would have been helpful...

Next come the description of each racial ability: The Earth Pony Way, Sky-Bound Soars and Daring Dives, Magic Makes It All Complete, and Know the Hoard.

Flaws come next. Flaws are not mandatory, and flaws offer no recompense; they're just traits you can apply to your pony if you think it suits them. There is a short list of sample flaws, such as Dense, Clumsy, You Are So Random, Low Society, and DO NOT FEAR US (emphasis on the CAPITAL LETTERS).

After all the above, character creation continues with defining your character's style, appearance, and (outwards) personality. Finally, you can choose to spend as much of your initial experience points as you like - or to save them for later. There is no penalty (other than lack of skill) for not spending your experience points right away. These experience points can buy a small number of special abilities (such as The Perfect Pet, Hoof-to-Hoof Combat, or Toast of the Town) or simply to improve general abilities.

Already, I can fit the other four RPGs in the pagecount of this RPG.

Resolution
Resolution can be summed up simply: d20 + relevant Attribute + best relevant Job + relevant Skill. So why does explaining that take from page 74 to page 92?

MLP:FIM is one of the most rules-heavy RPGs I've ever played, and I play GURPS (3rd Edition). There's rules for determining the type of task, and the complexity (target number) of the task. There's rules for being helped out (Harmony bonus); you can spend Willpower to improve a roll; experience points can be used to grant yourself bonuses for a scene; tools come in various qualities and grant bonuses; talents allow rolling dice again or negate automatic failure for rolling a 1; your Special Purpose increases the amount rolled on the die by half the die's result; and we haven't even gone into racial special abilities.

A natural roll of 1 is an automatic failure (unless you have a talent), and a natural roll of 20 is an automatic success (and restores any resources spent on the roll; Willpower, etc.).

And this all is described in maximum verbosity. The prose is so purple it almost blends in with the purple background of the page.

The three kinds of damage (damage, fatigue, and horror) are dealt to three different pools: Fortitude, Energy, and Courage. If any of these pools are emptied, the character is "sidelined".

After about 100 pages of character generation heavily interspersed with chargen advice and setting information, I'll be honest... I'm a bit disappointed to find "d20+bonus, roll high" as the mechanic behind all this wonder. Then again, that familiarity might be part of this RPG's popularity.

Experience Points are earned in the post-session Letter to Celestia. Curiously, experience points are earned by the character, but given out to the group as a whole; for each scene of 'honest' character development that comes about in the letter, the group earns one experience point. The listed rate - 'about' one experience point per major plot point - means that most characters will earn one experience point per session, and earning no experience points in a session is distinctly possible. These points can be used to recover Willpower, to buy advancements, or to buy scene-long bonuses.

Theme Support
Time for a drink from the firehose... the pink pony firehose ... of cupcakes. Okay, scratch that metaphor, but let's just say that this is where this game distinctly shines.

Throughout the book - through chargen, resolution, and the GM's section - there is information on how an episode of MLP plays out. Many sections have headings which are quotes from the show (or at least fan memes), and the book is replete with game design and show trivia callouts. The book includes almost as much information about Equestria as a wiki would, in a format that's far more pleasant to read.

Curiously
This roleplaying game has the gall to call itself "rules light" and to call traditional roleplaying games 'complex'. As against that, I present the following quotes of what this "rules light" roleplaying game looks like:

Quote:
"When a character uses their second wind, they choose the Secondary Attribute which has been diminished to zero, and restore a number of points to it equal to their score in the lower of the two Primary Attributes which determines its maximum score."

"Eleventh, if your character’s Special Purpose applies to the task (or if they are a Blank Flank and have chosen to use their special ability on the task), they gain a bonus to the check result equal to half the bonus granted by the d20 roll, rounded up."

"When a character whose Guiding Element of Harmony is Honesty uses their ‘second wind’ to recover from being sidelined, or spends Willpower to inspire another character to recover from being sidelined, if they are restoring their own (or the other character’s) Courage, they restore an amount equal to the character’s Mind or Heart score, whichever is higher."

"To subsume their instinctual power and restore their conscious will, a character may, once per play session, choose to ‘sacrifice’ a number of Dragonheart Points to restore their Willpower. Each Dragonheart Point sacrificed in this way is lost, and restores one point of Willpower (up to the character’s maximum). However, the instinctual will of a dragon can never be entirely suppressed; a character cannot use this sacrificing of points to reduce their total number of Dragonheart Points below the number of their Heart attribute score."
Just because you don't spend your complexity in the traditional rules-heavy areas - combat, treasure, loot, magical spells - doesn't mean your roleplaying game is not rules-heavy.

Rating: A box of delicious triple-chocolate cupcakes from Sugarcube Corner, rich and sweet and dark and crumbling with moisture on the tongue - but one of them is a chocolate-and-habanero cupcake accidentally thrown into the box.

Link (mlprim.com) [http://mlprim.com/]
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Edited Sun Aug 5, 2012 9:37 am
Posted Fri Aug 3, 2012 1:53 am
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