Season 1 Episode 1: Pilot

I dont think its the staff of discord turning everything dark. It's just the party.

Commander Shepard wrote:In this alternate world I have presented, Celestia is cruel and wicked. She can fly, but has heavily weighted guards carry her everywhere on an immense armored platform. Celestia has suppressed most scientific research and study, which is why the only great scholars in the last few thousand years all came from thousands of years ago. She recognizes that Twilight could one day be strong enough to defeat her, and is a bearer of the element of magic. She can't bring herself to outright kill a foal, so instead she keeps her reading books constantly. Then, when Twilights day comes and Celestia needs her to defeat Nightmare Moon, Celestia kills two birds with one stone and sends Twilight on a fool errand to make some friends. When she completes the elements of harmony, saving Celestia, Celestia takes all the elements away so she cant use them, and banishes her to Ponyville to ' learn about the magic of friendship ', further impeding Twilights studies and maximizing the amount of time Celestia has before she needs to have Twilight assassinated. Celestia, who formerly bore all six elements, could have taught her about friendship at any time, but kept Twilight so busy she couldnt even buy a present for her somewhat friends in the pilot episode.



However, in my campaign notes, I made sure to include the Jim Raynor effect. This is stolen from Starcraft 2, where whichever choice you make automatically ends up being the right one. So when the party sided with Celestia over LCB, it turns out Celestia is a benevolent tea drinking saint and LCB is an insane life stealing villain. I have also unlocked LCB as a boss who can no longer use god mode magic against you unopposed.

I think this is going to be the number 1 issue between DMs and Players when playing Pony Tales- Where something like DnD or Star Wars d20 or what have you has very clear cut canon, when it comes to My Little Pony, everyone's headcanon is different, and if the Campaign Canon isn't set down at the beginning, then everyone goes in assuming either what they think is true, or what the show claims is true. I myself am a fan of Celestia=Tyrant, but when given the details about this game, the words "Show Canon" were brought up, and as far as the show is concerned you do have to take her at face value. Given that my own HC is completely invalid in this game, it really only made sense that FP- as well as the rest of us- would have sided with her. And it's not like we have to retcon your canon with this decision- maybe she is a cruel, wicked tyrant, but that doesn't mean we want to overthrow her for some unknown who wants to split Equestria into its founding nations again.

And as for the Staff- I don't think anyone needs to worry about that but me, at least for right now.

Commander Shepard wrote:I dont think its the staff of discord turning everything dark. It's just the party.

Oh for sure that is the real issue, something in the party brings out my darker self... Just the "in-character" reason for her bloodlust and stuff, I'm blaming that on the staff.

Calling it now, I would like to do my solo tomorrow night, anytime after 6.

I gotta say I can't do my solo on wednesday night. I've got killer ALL DAY class both a morning and an evening class on the same day. So I don't think I'd be in any shape to do it then. Just wanted to every everyone know.

Let's see. The party was conflicted on whether to complete the puzzle dungeon they put off for two sessions, or to ignite a populist revolution among the lower class. In the end the whole party was shuffled into an airship commanded by the great captain Hex Grass, who was supposed to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKZhCDbKNCs the female version of zek. As they went flying, Flashpoint stayed on deck and let his steely gaze penetrate the sky. Midway through their voyage, he spotted an evil griffin Airship. Admiral Baron von Bismuth aboard the griffin airship ordered the attack. Sub Commander Titanium and the Elite Griffin Metallic Squadron launched between the ships as both crews prepared for a gun battle. The players got a new in game talent option, Take Aim. Some of the pegasus in the group launched off into the air between the ships to prevent reinforcements, and even asked crew pegasus to join them. The deck battle was hard and fast. The deck players got cannon shots off while wiping out the Elite Griffin Metallic Squadron. But Titanium unleashed sick counter attacks. The party got two cannon shots off, and the ships crew got a third. Meanwhile in the air, Team Pegasus easily cleaned up the reinforcements, who weren't nearly as tough as the initial boarding party. Flashpoint returned to their own ship while Storm Cloud pressed ahead and landed on the griffin deck. There he engaged the airship captain Captain Adamantium while Admiral von Bismuth took the helm. Back on the friendly deck, Titanium wiped the party, but the griffins noticed they had three smoking holes in their ship, including their treasure room, which was now leaking gold. ( This battle was set so that four shots would kill the griffin ship. At this point with three shots, the ship on fire, and the party mostly down, I chose to have the Griffins retreat. RECURRING VILLIANS )

The party revived themselves in the Zebra city of Whoazambique, where they met with a local guide. He took them to the Medicine Man, who throws great feasts for those foolish enough to enter the Templum Anguis, in hope that they will return alive. Noone ever has. As they talked to the Medicine Man, he claimed not to speak their language. Theorycraft noticed that his shadow was darker than everyone else, and didn't match his body. Thusfar the Medicine Man only spoke Zebra Latin, which shows a remarkable similarity to actual Latin.
The party gathered mundane supplies for their journey, but before they left the Medicine Man warned them in English not to let their torches go out. They approached the temple and were greeted by the security system, where they immediately failed the first puzzle. The question was Are you a living being yes/no. The first answer was No comprende. Notice there is a no in there. The temple began to charge it's magical defenses. They wisely left and let it reset. After solving the security riddle of " Speak friend and enter " ( Saying friend in latin ), they were let inside. After employing the dnd strategy of ten foot pole, they slowly worked their way into the first room. The ten foot pole strategy would continue throughout. The solved the room 1 riddles with the answers purple, Princess Luna, and poison joke. They almost killed themselves in the second room, where they were presented with the classic water glass riddle revived by Die Hard with a Vengeance. Which Samuel L Jackson solved because he eats bacon. Smart. They solved the puzzle with 15 seconds remaining.
The final puzzle they took as way more complicated than it was. The solution was that the mirror they were given shows the only door out of the place. By showing the mirror the door and walking into the mirror, they would appear in the correct room. After almost breaking the mirror, the party reunited on the flipside and made their way into the Eye chamber. Five Eye's of True Sight were set on five pillars in a room surrounded by smoke. Bravely throwing the torch at the smoke, it disappears, putting the party in darkness. The glowing eye's stop glowing, and a single red Eye is seen flowing around the room. This turns out to be the Great Snake, one of the first snakes in the world, from whom dragons were made. After a lengthy rhyme scheme, he offers them his eye freely if they would kill his ancient enemy, the mysterious Medicine Man. Because, without his eye, he cannot stop the Man's illusions. Zeela learned that if she pulled out her own eye and put the Eye of True Sight in, she might gain great power. Flashpoint yanked her eye out and ate it. Zeela learned that the artifact now gave her a defensive combat talent. The party left the dungeon prepared to hunt down the Medicine Man.
When they found him, Zeela noticed the Man was actually Cael, as she could see through his illusion magic. Cael fleed and led the party on a chase through the town, where they insisted on engaging in a boss battle. Black Fire used immovable on Cael's trusty Machete, yanking it out of his hooves. Black Fire would then teleport onto Cael's back and ride him. Eventually Cael escaped and fled onto a Griffin airship taking off. Flashpoint attempted to recover the Machete but their artifact powers collided. Black Fire instead took up the Machete Bloody Mess, which instantly kills any opponents he would instead knock unconcious. He later learned it gave him a once per combat talent as well. As a PH/DM note, I am proud that for the first time the party passed multiple skillchecks together and used all their magic points.

Engraged, the party attempts to follow the fleeing Cael. Storm Cloud grabs Theorycraft, but together they slam into another airship. Flashpoint alone dashs to the Griffin's deck and engages Flashpoint in hushed conversation. At the end, Cael agree's to join the party as an NPC ( Cael is meta, he uses twitchy tail and break the fourth wall, so he knows he is an npc. ) He then engages in ' pleasant conversation ' with the party, many of whom express murderous feelings toward him. He eventually engages Zeela in conversation and points out that her oath the Chupy, his name for the Snake God, didn't make a binding oath with her, and she publicly Pinkie Pie Promise's to become his apprentice and to stay loyal to him, in exchange for his teaching great magics and taking her on as a Scriv, which is his current job as relic hunter. He also promises not to kill her, put refuses to swear not to kill the rest of the party. Thus, Darth Zeela was born. Cael was seen moving through the airship, making tea and talking to the other party members, where he tempts them to make binding pacts with him.

So for this week, it sounds like the party has decided to take Friends in High Places as the boon.

The party all makes it back to Greendale eventually. There are still some stories to resolve so there might be retcon but:

Theorycraft immediately began meeting with the peaceful resistance members of the town, the Underground Underground. What he is really trying to do is find some contacts inside the rumored ' actual resistance '. The bartending buffalo hasn't been seen for days...

Flashpoint keep chasing after his neigh-bor, but in a series of comedic events is always distracted or pulled away just before meeting her.

Vespin Marble hasn't been heard from for the most part. He seems to be staying full time at the Candlebright manor.

Zeela has been helping the library team restock the shelves with easily available books. Classes for foals have begun anew as a result. She has also been seen wandering the streets, drinking tea and cider while reciting bad poetry. The townfolk are extremely worried about the red gem where her eye used to be...

Storm Cloud roams the skys, keeping them clear, searching for his arch nemesis the Black Racer.

Black Fire arrived in town late after a mysterious mission deep inside Zebrica. He worked on fixing up the library, but it was cut short by the tragic death of Star Shine, apparently from old age. Cael insists he had nothing to do with it.

Cael has become head librarian, keeping Black Fire on as junior assistant, and Zeela joined as the new scriv. Over the last day, he seems to be concentrating solely on getting the library back to basic functionality. He did not come to Star Shine's funeral, though the rest of the party did.

The party meets at the library the day after Star Shine's death. Flashpoint has recieved a mysterious dinner invitation to the Grain mansion outside town.

I like your choice of what Zeela has been doing... It's totally how she's trying to cope with the regret of her actions at the end of the last session. And her knowledge of what really happened to Star Shine...

Also I take this time to remind everyone I sadly will be late to the rest of the sessions while I have my friday night class, I only hope it doesn't last as long as last weeks went.

And now we learn a very important lesson: Always run your your backstory past the GM. It doesn't matter if you think, "Oh, this'll never get implemented, it's not that important." Everything is important. And even if it isn't he will make it important!
I should have played the mountain man...

That train of logic was partly why I wanted to make Cloudy Sky's character sheet... Finding a game to put him in was only a plus.

Summary of this weeks session to follow. Many mysteries were revealed, and the party discovered the true price of cael's aid: He can reveal their secrets at will with his meta 4th wall abilities.

The revolution is heating up, and legislation is going down. Who can say what will happen next.

Endgame begins: Next week is part one of (what im planning to be ) a three episode finale. Season 2 signups will start the week after we finish.

What does that mean, "season 2 signups".

Do we have to compete to keep our spots? Because that's kinda lame.

Players who want to carry over have priority

I'm inwardly debating if I should join up the sesion two point of this game... Mostly just because no matter what I'm likely to be late to each session.

In the increasingly more likely event that FP doesn't survive this campaign, I'll be ready to roll with my backup. That should be fun.

Bronymous wrote:In the increasingly more likely event that FP doesn't survive this campaign, I'll be ready to roll with my backup. That should be fun.

FP doesn't seem any more likely to die than the rest of us... I hope...

-And I'll B a bit bummed out if any of you guys drop, what after all the conversations we went through last week. Do what you gotta do though.

XandZero2 wrote:FP doesn't seem any more likely to die than the rest of us

Well in the increasingly more likely case we ALL die, then. And even if he doesn't, I might have him pull out and swap in my backup anyway.

Im done. Everyone wants to argue with me over everything, large or small. This party is literally horrible, to each other, to themselves, and to me. See ya.

Commander Shepard wrote:Im done. Everyone wants to argue with me over everything, large or small. This party is literally horrible, to each other, to themselves, and to me. See ya.

But... but...
I'd like to think I speak for all of us when I say, I'm sorry. I know we complained, we argued, and we nitpicked, but we honestly enjoyed the game. If you're honestly, completely done with us, then I understand. But I beg you, please don't throw this game away. For your sake and for ours. We enjoyed it, and I think you did too.

AlicornPriest wrote:

Commander Shepard wrote:Im done. Everyone wants to argue with me over everything, large or small. This party is literally horrible, to each other, to themselves, and to me. See ya.

But... but...
I'd like to think I speak for all of us when I say, I'm sorry. I know we complained, we argued, and we nitpicked, but we honestly enjoyed the game. If you're honestly, completely done with us, then I understand. But I beg you, please don't throw this game away. For your sake and for ours. We enjoyed it, and I think you did too.

CS,

I didn't know our disagreements had gotten to be such an issue, but you dropped our call mid-game and didn't say anything to us before you did. That's just not right man. Even if you had issues with us, why didn't you at least say something? Maybe we could have talked all this out?

In all honesty, we have disagreed, a lot, but I thought we were still having fun overall.

You did some really cool stuff at times (I loved Cael and the solo sessions), and other times there were things I did disagree with. We were starting to work as a team at the end though. As Theorycraft, I spent an entire week meeting with every player in the group and getting to know them (in 3-hour one-on-one RP sessions), becoming friends with them. We were starting to work together and trust each other.

Also, I don't appreciate how you try to make us out to be the bad guys even now. It wasn't all our fault. You were constantly trolling us and working against us. I liked your game, but it felt like we could never do good in your eyes. It felt like you were always working against us, and I'll admit, that is one way a GM can run a game, but it's not the only way. I don't think it's the best way either.

RPGs are a group experience, and isn't the goal of an RPG for everyone to work together to make a fun and memorable experience? I think a GM should work with the players, not against them.

Whatever the case, I'd like to continue your campaign, like I said, I was having fun, and it's a shame you apparently weren't having fun too. I still hope that maybe you'll change your mind eventually and reboot this campaign. I'd be ready and willing to rejoin at any time.

And once again, could we just talk this out? If there's an issue, I'd like to just discuss it as a group. Maybe we can come to some kind of agreement and keep moving forward? Part of friendship is working past our problems together, and I thought of all of us as friends (that will likely never meet each other in real life, but still!).

You may not want to hear this from a guy who left session three, but you did seem to try and make things hard for the group. Not only with the Zodiac Killings, but when we planned the heist- you advised us about that- and shot it down almost immediately with the oath stones, giving the Minotaur and 4 goats a turn three Pincer Manuver build that would have killed the party if it hadn't been Fire Gianted to unconciousness before that... You seemed to be trying to make a "Brutally Hard" game rather than an "entertaining" one, and that's why I kinda left the game.

LoganAura wrote:You may not want to hear this from a guy who left session three, but you did seem to try and make things hard for the group. Not only with the Zodiac Killings, but when we planned the heist- you advised us about that- and shot it down almost immediately with the oath stones, giving the Minotaur and 4 goats a turn three Pincer Manuver build that would have killed the party if it hadn't been Fire Gianted to unconciousness before that... You seemed to be trying to make a "Brutally Hard" game rather than an "entertaining" one, and that's why I kinda left the game.

Guys, let me put it to you this way: CS left because we complained too much. You will not win him back or make him feel any better by complaining more. That's just... duh. I want to make him feel better so that we can have a reasonable postmortem discussion on what happened. Tempers flew from both sides, and right now we need to focus on apologizing and restoring friendships. Otherwise, things will end badly for everyone, and that wouldn't be good at all.

I agree... Dude, you were wanting to have your boss monster have it be immune to ALL (save ends) effects AND all Combat Interrupts... That was a totally brutal move. (The moves I took, the ONLY attacks I had were combat interrupts... That'd been a total dick move to do to me if you still went with that.) Where you trying to go for "I Wanta Be The Guy" level boss fights? And you didn't need to go back and undo them all. Just rebuild it differently, like having a good deal of high resit or something to ongoing damage and nothing would've been wrong about having a boss be immune to just Stun or able to pay HP to forgo a saving throw, or something...

Next I've gotta say that I hate that you KEEP saying we're always at eachother's throats, cause I deeply dissagree, we weren't the best of going along with eachother, but we're mostly new to teamwork, old habbits die hard and stuff... But we were slowly getting along as friends in-character, (OOC I thought we were alright friends and allies with eachother) and my character had given the trust to I think to two or three fellow party members. Sure Zeela was still a derp while running off ahead, but I'd agrue that's more a problem because you then ask. "anyone else following?" And not suggesting to have somebody try to like STOP Zeela... To my character she thought everyone was going in and wanted to be with the group... And both in character and out I really wanted to see where things were going. I was having a LOT of fun, and was something to really look forward for after my friday class.

I am deeply sorry for all of the hassles I have made and were apart of. I'll never deny that, but at the same time, you had issues too. I get you were trying to do the "Evil GM" thing... But you were playing that a bit to hard, not even wanting to be fair with us. I'd bet every "evil" act you saw us do was more just a poorly thought out idea that had nothing but good intent behind it. (Like with Zeela agreeing to Cael... She felt at the time it'd be worse for EVERYPONY if she declined that offer then to take it.)

I'm sorry for the complaints rased in this post... But they're issues that I feel are better talked about then avoided... Yeah, I do want you back to be our GM dude. But there WAS a reason for all the complaints. Don't forget that. And I'm trying to be fair, but I only call it as I see it. Like with how I couldn't hope to see LCB as "good" once she talked about her "Unicorn's are so great that they MUST rule and all races will just go and kiss their hooves"

I wish there was something I could say or do to help bring you back. But I know I don't have any shot at pulling that off being a total derp that I am. I'm way to much the type to go speaking my mind no matter of the fact if I should or not... Nor will knowing the how much it WILL hurt my case or what I want even has any way of stopping me. So I'm sorry that you had to ragequit the very fun Campaign we where doing. Personally I more feared you had internet troubles when that happened. You did just drop the call right out the blue when it seemed like you were fine with what was going on with the fight.

Going evil gm was the only thing that worked towards getting the party to stop acting like every man is an island.
Solo boss monsters need to have status and interrupt immunity. I left mid session after explaining the boss had immunity, simply to stop the party from stunlock. After agreeing to allow the party to use status and interrupt, the very next action was for xel to interrupt the boss. Solo bosses who can be stunlocked are useless. Why did I leave mid session? Because even when the boss's only defensive ability " Illusive Split " didn't reach the party standards and the whine began about how it was overpowered. Yes, the splitting of the boss is whats overpowered. Not:
Letting the party use items after the complaints
Letting the party swap talents pre combat after complaints
Letting the party use status and interrupts after complaints

When I began this campaign, it was in episodic format with a few divergent endings. I have continually modified the way the campaign has been lain out from your comments on what you'd like, costing me more time that I in fact gladly put in to streamlining to people's tastes. But even then all I do is eat hay as you guys throw complaints about the most ridiculous things at me, like the definition of piracy. On top of that, you constantly assume I'm trying to make you out to be the bad guys when I simply hold you responsible for your actions. You want to ' leave on a life raft big enough for the passengers '. Cool, the crew is left behind. You phrased it that way. Going to go to the desert on someone else's quest, agree to a deal to obtain an artifact, (1) dont use the artifact and break the deal, (2) use the artifact in a poorly thought out pinkie promise that the party broke, (3) not return the artifact to the questgiver who paid for the trip and pointed out where it was. Thats three time, over one object, where you guys continually rationalize that you are in the right and that I am an evil GM simply because I want to hold you to a higher standard of actual social rules rather than just pretending you are the heros. If you want to be heros, act like it.

I try to make interesting boss fights. One's where you feel your characters are in danger, because they are. The risk leads to your characters survival being more valuable. Both boss fights I attempted ended up with people whining. Logan doesn't even play and he is still here whining about the first boss for no apparent reason.

This system Dan has created is a great framework for an open ended light rules gameplay. Pony Tales is one of the better tabletops I've worked with. In this case however, working with this party has turned the taste in my mouth to ash after the continual rain of nonstop inter party bickering.

I'm sorry about bringing something up like that. Stupid of me when I haven't played in the game for weeks. I should've dropped it long ago and I am seriously stupid for mentioning it again.