Help me devise a My Little Pony game.

[Herobizkit]

I'm not sure what My Little Ponies *do*, but I would totally go True20 with the concept. Something rules lite, heavy on the story. The Blue Rose setting would be perfect for such a game, given they already have talking animals as PC's.

If you factor in My Little Kitty/Puppy/Bunny and the various "flavours" of Pony, players would have quite a robust character selection palette.

 

[JustKim]

I'd like to playtest. I'm right there with Resa, I got excited about the MLP game even though it was a joke. Generation 1 was my favorite show growing up, and I think the tone of the show influenced me a bit to become interested in RPGs. I think when most people think of My Little Pony they assume it's half an hour of giggling ponies braiding each other's hair, but in Generation 1 at least there was quite a bit of danger. Although I don't remember any combat to speak of, there were a lot of monsters and magic spells used to kidnap or otherwise harry the ponies.

I'm not really familiar with the more recent serieseses. I'm guessing that MLP Tales is the one where the ponies go to school and talk about relationships. Personally, I think this is a little vapid. MLP Generation 1 and Pretty Cure over in Japan are two franchises that proved an action-oriented show can appeal to girls and be wildly successful. While I think it would be too much for an armored pony and a lava monster to go toe to toe in turn based combat, I think that there should be a threat. I would suggest a nondirect combat system, like giving the lava monster a chance to move the pony away from her goal, then giving the pony a chance to push a rock into the lava and plug it up.

I also like the resource gathering idea. These kind of shows always featured macguffins like crystal hearts or sprites that needed to be discovered or saved from evil. Rather than using them to build a barn, which is not very exciting, you could possibly tie them to character progression. Typically when all the macguffins are found something unexpected and beneficial happens to the characters, so I think it would make for a much more organic system of "leveling up" than awarding and keeping track of points.

Another thing I'd like to suggest is a system for increasing others' chance to succeed when one character fails. A staple of the show is of the ponies finding the strength to succeed after one or more of them has suffered something unpleasant.

I wish I had the G1 episodes on DVD so I could offer more than just my fuzzy memory, but as far as playtesting, yes please!

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I'd suggest seeing the MLP movie if you haven't yet. It came out about 1985 and I took my two year old sister (I was 15). I expected to sleep through it but ended up really enjoying it. It had a compelling plot, characters, action, dialogue and so forth. While the game is going to have a lot of kiddie elements you can't ignore the aspects that will make it appeal to adults as well, because these are what will make it a good game.

 

[Bongo Bigguns]

Be sure to make the Disney pixies their mortal enemies.
I hate Tinkerbell and her friends.

 

[mara]

The funniest part about this is that I can remember building what could be described as D&D style dungeons for my MLPs as lairs one time when there was a big pile of dirt in front of our house for a landscaping project. I'd second the stable-building suggestion, with the add-on that they should have an option for a moat.

 

[SPoD]

Don't put Twice-as-Fancy Ponies in...everyone knows they're totally unbalanced.

 

[1 hp]

Playtest? How can you playtest happiness?

I hope you don't give My Little Ponies hit points, because My Little Ponies they should never get hurt.

And I hope you require the players to use actual My Little Ponies in the game.

Here's an adventure idea: My Little Ponies throw a birthday party!

 

[Fate Lawson]

I would suggest taking a look at Fairy's Tale Deluxe by FireFly Games for your mechanical basis.

 

[jmucchiello]

Have you considered using the Toon rules? Seems like a perfect fit.

 

[Orius]

If you recall, back in April there was an announcement for a new Hasbro-WotC united project, a My Little Pony RPG. Well this has turned out to be vaporware, without even the slightest hint of news regarding it for 8 months.

Hmmmm.

Was the announement date April 1st by any chance? Hasbro loves to use MLP pranks as April Fool's jokes.

And no, I don't want to playtest. Just thinking about it makes me want to vomit. I hate cute.