DM: Sugarcube Corner is the bakery where Pinkie works. And lives. And hides, should the occasion call for it.
Pinkie Pie: Twilight? In? NOW?
Twilight Sparkle: Alright, alright! I go inside.
DM: You find the rest of the party sitting in the dark of the unlit store.
Rainbow Dash: Pfft. Rainbow Dash, hiding in the dark? Whatever.
Rarity: I think we’re just here for emotional support, not really hiding.
Fluttershy: Um… what’s wrong with hiding?
DM: Well, there’s a reason you’re all in here and not facing what’s out there…
Twilight Sparkle: I’m confused. WHAT are we hiding from in the first place?
Pinkie Pie: An evil enchantress!
Twilight Sparkle: What?
Pinkie Pie: Who does evil dances!
Twilight Sparkle: That… does the opposite of answering my question.
As a DM, if your players haven't left off in any particular location since the last session, you might have to tell them where they are and what they're doing when the session begins. Unfortunately, the players can take issue with what you tell them their characters are doing.
Nah, she's just in thrall to Applebloom, the one that takes the E out of Equestria to put into Evil, then drops a D at the end of it to create her Quest Triad.
Can someone remind me which "rail" metaphor you are supposed to use. Guard rail or Train Rail?
Cause From one you can jump into a river from. The other you have to wait until a bend in the track and then push the throttle to max, causing the train the flip.
... And then whoever is still alive gets to crawl out and find something fun to do while they search for signs of life.
It reminds me of what happened in my Ponyfinder game: one of the characters befriended her opposite alignment twin and they became TSBFF (Twin Sisters Best Friends Forever, of course).
Interestingly, my Pathfinder character (LG) is dating someone strongly suspected to be CG.
It helps that he considers her to be an ambassador with diplomatic immunity and used to a different set of laws and social mores than he is. For her part, the only times she's rocked the boat have been when she's had good reason (bad guy can be summarily executed instead of made a prisoner of war if him _being_alive_ is sustaining the army of undead we're about to be mowed down by).
No, it was Chaotic Good to Lawful Evil (technically, the first is Lawful Androgynous Good with an alternate personality of Chaotic Boyish Good when masked, and the evil double is Chaotic Androgynous Evil with an alternate personality of Lawful Girly Evil when masked...I commend my brother for being able to play all 4 personalities fairly well). As the monk of a 30th level party, she was nigh-invulnerable and couldn't actually hit herself. As the evil double was from the Mirror Plane (see 3.5's Manual of the Planes), if the good one left the plane before the evil one killed her, the evil one would cease to be. So the evil one wizened up and convinced the good one to let her coup de grace her so the evil one could live. Their monk powers would let them resurrect 24 hours after dying, so this was not too bad. The good one agreed under the conditions that the evil one would wait for her resurrection, guide her out of the plane, and become her sister. So it worked out that way. The evil twin (now named Sprite Chaser as opposed to the original Speed Chaser, with masked identities as Pony Z and Pony X respectively) is now coping with living in a world with an overabundance of high level good characters. And practically all evil characters being Sealed in a Can. And she does have affection for her sister due to being saved by her. So it all makes sense in context, and Sprite is desperately trying to find ways to both live up to her alignment and not get Celestia or anypony else to attack her for it.
Yeah, I don't want to have to explain that one to my nieces. If it ever does come up when they're older, I'll probably direct them to the Rainbow Dash Presents version.
I'm pretty sure it was either the third or the fourth. I know the first was Bubbles and the second was Somewhere Only We Know, and I know that the third and fourth were Cupcakes and Spiderses, but I don't remember which one was which.
Yeah, the Rainbow Dash Presents version was pretty amusing and did a good job of mostly diffusion my dread.
Seriously, how did Cupcakes become so well-known? All of the reviews I've read of it basically went to the effect of "This is a peace of **** and you shouldn't read it." Talk of a corrected-grammar version suggests it's not even well-written.
Great question. Best I can offer: It so completely deviates from the way the show works it's become iconic. I have read the MST'd version and the kindest description I can give for it is "trollfic."
I don't know what you're all talking about. I thought is was a great story. Good counterbalance to the candy-coated show. If someone's on the fence about how girly the show is, stories like Cupcakes can relate an alternate viewpoint to allow for a smoother transition into fandom, which then later means the subject can enjoy all of the "girly" stuff with impunity.
At least, that's what happened to me.
Also, if one looks past the subject matter, it really is quite a good story: engaging, well written (or at least, the grammared-up version is), intriguing. The alt endings and sequels are mostly pretty good, too, so if you just can't stand the way the story goes, there are a number of happy endings to pick from instead.
Mt problem with the fic (aside from the initial nausea) was the fact that there is no explanation AT ALL for the events of the fic. I don't mind ponies killing each other gruesomely so long as I can see a reason for them doing so. If it had been an OC, I'd have had fewer problems because I'd assume that was how he/she was.
But Pinkie had no reason, no precedent (especially since it was BEFORE Party of One) to do such horrible things. There's no discussion of the events that might have caused her to snap. No evidence in-show of even cartoony violent behavior. Nothing. The fact that there have to be fan-based endings to explain the fic's events proves my point.
Is the fic nauseating? Yes. But is that the only reason why it's bad? No.
You're not supposed to know why, though. That's half of its appeal- Going into detail, saying why this has happened, pointing back to past events that might have triggered it, all that does is soften the blow- not the purpose of this story. That's what makes it so scary and horrifying, that you don't and can't understand why its happening. Maybe its something dark in her past, or maybe she was always like this, but its all speculation.
Besides, it's not like one day she was regular Pinkie Pie, and the next she was killing Rainbow Dash. When the story started she had already killed an unknown number of other ponies. Moreover, since when has Pinkie Pie needed a reason to do anything?
Since the beginning of the series. She plays to laughter, even when she fails completely. She might not be trying to be funny and those around her might not be amused, but the attempt is still visible to the audience.
Pinkie Pie has never come across as a terribly sane character.
This fic is an extreme example of what tvtropes calls "Alternate Character Interpretation". Instead of interpreting Pinkie Pie as a fun/silly person with a few less-sane aspects, it interprets her as a batcrap-insane pony with a fun/silly facade.
It then pushes that interpretation as far as it will go, and runs with it.
This type of story - whether grisly or played for comedy or played for drama - tends to resonate with at least a few readers, because it both _breaks_ certain assumptions or conventions of character interpretation, while still keeping _enough_ points in common to be disturbingly plausible (or, for lighter fics, "thought-provoking").
I'm not saying Cupcakes is a classic for the ages. It just happened to hit on a combination of content, release timing, and whim of the crowd that made it insanely popular, to the extent where it's not only a meme itself, but parodies of it and references to it are also their own meme.
Arguably the popularity of FiM itself is a result of similar content-plus-luck.
Pinkie Pie's not the Joker. Just because she doesn't need a reason to do something doesn't mean she'll do it, especially when there are several very powerful reasons NOT to do something - namrely, that off the top of my head she has never once in canon deliberately hurt her friends. Even her Party of One and Return of Harmony states could best be described as "sullen." Her entire existence revolves around making her friends (read: everyone in Ponyville) happy.
Bronymous, I think you may be reading way too much into something that wasn't intended to be anything but a shock fic, a genre I truly detest. That's fine, I read too much into things all the time, but I really don't see the point. From what I can tell (I refuse to actually read it barring extreme circumstances) it really does have no point except to repulse, and its only real connection to MLP is in name - and it uses that connection as part of its repulsion.
Bizarrely, however, I find the idea of alt endings of it intriguing, particularly the idea of a "happy" ending...
I wrote an alt ending where Pinkie's 'Butchery' was required because of a bloodcurse Nightmare Moon stuck on the pony race that was tied into Celestia's life. So long as she lives, ponies require blood and flesh or else they go nuts and start war, murdering each other, etc. Pinkie's mind snapped and now she just has to, well, make the most of what is required of her. Never went beyond a very basic 'here's why' type of thing though.
In Secret of My Excess, we saw that a fully stocked bakery is a terrible place to defend yourself! All you can do is throw cakes at them, and that just makes the enemy bigger and stronger!
There's a problem there. As cool as the A-Team is, they have a problem with this little thing called accuracy. They never managed to actually hit anyone. Ever.
I remember a time when a member of our party had a 20 minute argument over what his character was doing in one of these kind of things. I can appreciate the depth of character involvement, but really, it prevented the pizza from getting made. And what's an unruly group of players without pizza to placate them? Madness, that's what!
My players actually are really good at keeping track where they left off. Two of them take notes - one detailed enough that I got to him to remind me what the in-game date is at the beginning of the session.
However, its taboo to tell my players what their characters are doing. In this case, they'd all be Rainbow Dash in panel 3. :o
However, if this were like my campaign, Applebloom is totally my little NPC to push the party in the right plot direction.
My DM usually asks us "so, who remembers what happened last time?" I was tired of often being completely stumped about this so I've taken to writing a short description of what we are about to do every time the game ends for the night.
It's enough to jog our collective memories and help us piece the events of the previous session.
Even when it's something like "Next: Fight!!!" Or "Next:loot!"
A DM I used to play with would provide an xp bonus for players sending out an email to the group that was an in character journal entry about the session's events.
Had a blast writing those with my kobold bard, twisting all the facts to make him the hero.
Personally, I can't wait to see the in game explanations for the Poison Joke effects, and what mechanic they'll use for it...especially FLuttershy's. XD
Fluttershy's player will be required to convince her pro-footballer brother to come to the game and be the in-character mouthpiece for everything she wants to say.
I'm thinking that Fluttershy's character will be so embarrassed by her new voice that she won't be allowed to say anything without first rolling to see if she can will herself to open her mouth. And if she's successful, she'll still have to talk in as deep a voice as she can manage.
Assuming the game takes place within the last decade or two, she could always use a handheld voice-changing widget. I don't own one, but I've considered getting one on several occasions.
Most recently to build a Royal Canterlot Voice system...
Alternate bizzarro-universe version: That's her player's natural voice and accent. He's just been careful to give Fluttershy a higher, more timid voice. And has a RL personality similar to Fluttershy's.
It'd certainly explain why staring down the DM worked so well (even nice guys can be scary if they're also big).
Whenever my party leaves off in no particular place, the next session starts with: "LAST TIME! ON! <INSERT CAMPAIGN NAME OR REASONABLE PSEUDONYMN OF CAMPAIGN NAME HERE>!" followed by a Brief recap, and the party meeting in the same Inn they all met in in the first place around the breakfast table, if it's reasonably possible to do so. if it's not, they meet in another inn in the town or city closest to them.
Whenever I have a party start up in Medias Res, I have to quickly explain the scenario before they start asking too many questions that I already plan on answering.
A good example was this one time where a party had just completed a quest. The next session I had them start off in a tavern, and before I could explain that they'd skipped a week IC while traveling through the surrounding countryside - they began a full-on GM interrogation. It went something along the lines of:
"Why are we here again?"
"What am I doing?"
"Where's everybody else?"
"What do they serve here?"
"I want to gamble!"
"Ooh! Is that a dwarf?"
"Why are we here again?"
I had a group of six at the time, and it was pretty chaotic. In the future, I think I need to explain everything to the party BEFORE I place them back in the world... That would probably work best.
Well... that 5th one isn't technically a question, but I know what you mean.
When I ran a Shadowrun campaign, I had one mission start In Medias Res where they were all in the middle of a run and they somehow knew everything that was about to happen like it was Deja Vu.
Turns out they were in a Lone Star simulator running the same scenario several times.
When the player interrogations came, I just responded with "I don't know, I'm not there." I dunno why, but somehow that worked. >_>
Eventually they broke out of the Lonestar lab and retraced their steps backwards through the prior night's events. Almost played out like the movie Momento.
I also started up the intro to one Star Wars Campaign in Medias Res, where the players were trying to break into a compound and highjack a ship. They start out on the side of a building while an NPC is setting a demo charge. He counts the timer down, the wall blows out, and then they rush in.
-And when they tried to interrogate me that time, I just said something along the lines of - "There's no time! Keep moving!"
I remember one module (the ones the RPGA distributes, I think) starting with the party in town hall looking for employment. I was rather vocal about the idea of a level 10 barbarian with a violence addiction looking at a job board.
Hey, I'm kinda new to this Roleplaying thing, but I can't find any local groups, so I was wondering: Does anyone have a Pony Tales RP group that meets online, and if so, would they be willing to accept a new (VERY) player?
Well, if you go onto the forums there are a few threads for those games.
(Forums here for pony tales http://ponytales.forumotion.com/ )
I have a game in the works with a possible 6th pony needed, but it's still in development. I wouldn't mind a newbie since I'm relatively new myself.
If you're referring to how to counsel me on talking to peeps, just FYI, I'm a girl.
If you're not referring to that, please disregard this 4;30 am comment.
If you're referring to how to counsel me on talking to peeps, just FYI, I'm a girl.
If you're not referring to that, please disregard this 4;30 am comment.
How well forced starts like this work depends both on the players and on the type of campaign you are running.
In a fantasy sandbox game you are often limited to no more than giving the players a set of rumours to decide which they want to follow. It's best to do this at the end of a session, with the next one starting "you disembark from the ship that brought you to the port of Westcrown."
OTOH, in a tramp starship campaign it's almost the norm to start an adventure with: "Three months pass. After offloading your cargo on Chakona, you check your finances and they are so tight that you can't even afford fuel much less your loan payment... as you consider this a pair of Rakshani approach you...."
RAILS. THEY ARE FOR JUMPING OFF.
This hinges on how he decides to do Applebloom....
*Looks left and right quickly* Place your bets ladies and gentlemen!
Cause From one you can jump into a river from. The other you have to wait until a bend in the track and then push the throttle to max, causing the train the flip.
... And then whoever is still alive gets to crawl out and find something fun to do while they search for signs of life.
It reminds me of what happened in my Ponyfinder game: one of the characters befriended her opposite alignment twin and they became TSBFF (Twin Sisters Best Friends Forever, of course).
-Cause that would probably work. Sort of.
It helps that he considers her to be an ambassador with diplomatic immunity and used to a different set of laws and social mores than he is. For her part, the only times she's rocked the boat have been when she's had good reason (bad guy can be summarily executed instead of made a prisoner of war if him _being_alive_ is sustaining the army of undead we're about to be mowed down by).
I swear I didn't go in your shed.
Seriously, how did Cupcakes become so well-known? All of the reviews I've read of it basically went to the effect of "This is a peace of **** and you shouldn't read it." Talk of a corrected-grammar version suggests it's not even well-written.
Still some good came out of it. The scene with Pinkie and Mrs. Cakes is awesome. She's immune indeed. :)
At least, that's what happened to me.
Also, if one looks past the subject matter, it really is quite a good story: engaging, well written (or at least, the grammared-up version is), intriguing. The alt endings and sequels are mostly pretty good, too, so if you just can't stand the way the story goes, there are a number of happy endings to pick from instead.
But Pinkie had no reason, no precedent (especially since it was BEFORE Party of One) to do such horrible things. There's no discussion of the events that might have caused her to snap. No evidence in-show of even cartoony violent behavior. Nothing. The fact that there have to be fan-based endings to explain the fic's events proves my point.
Is the fic nauseating? Yes. But is that the only reason why it's bad? No.
Besides, it's not like one day she was regular Pinkie Pie, and the next she was killing Rainbow Dash. When the story started she had already killed an unknown number of other ponies. Moreover, since when has Pinkie Pie needed a reason to do anything?
This fic is an extreme example of what tvtropes calls "Alternate Character Interpretation". Instead of interpreting Pinkie Pie as a fun/silly person with a few less-sane aspects, it interprets her as a batcrap-insane pony with a fun/silly facade.
It then pushes that interpretation as far as it will go, and runs with it.
This type of story - whether grisly or played for comedy or played for drama - tends to resonate with at least a few readers, because it both _breaks_ certain assumptions or conventions of character interpretation, while still keeping _enough_ points in common to be disturbingly plausible (or, for lighter fics, "thought-provoking").
I'm not saying Cupcakes is a classic for the ages. It just happened to hit on a combination of content, release timing, and whim of the crowd that made it insanely popular, to the extent where it's not only a meme itself, but parodies of it and references to it are also their own meme.
Arguably the popularity of FiM itself is a result of similar content-plus-luck.
Bronymous, I think you may be reading way too much into something that wasn't intended to be anything but a shock fic, a genre I truly detest. That's fine, I read too much into things all the time, but I really don't see the point. From what I can tell (I refuse to actually read it barring extreme circumstances) it really does have no point except to repulse, and its only real connection to MLP is in name - and it uses that connection as part of its repulsion.
Bizarrely, however, I find the idea of alt endings of it intriguing, particularly the idea of a "happy" ending...
Pinkie Pie co-wrote this session with the DM. Which means...
Which means the party is now in a world created by Pinkie Pie.
Fun Realms ahoy!
Where the party can never end...
One unicorn...
Must stand to reason.
"The clouds rain CHOCOLATE."
"Uh..."
"And they're made of CANDY!"
"Hey, wait..."
rolling up a character with random flaw and trait, got Rainbow Hair and Stubborn.
you can now blend in.
I noticed a guy with pastel rainbow hair entering the subway station on my route home a few months back.
He made the same transfer I did further down the line, so I approached him and asked about it.
It was indeed deliberately Princess Celestia's colour scheme. I was amused.
(Possibly younger than Digo, though; this guy was an undergrad.)
However, its taboo to tell my players what their characters are doing. In this case, they'd all be Rainbow Dash in panel 3. :o
However, if this were like my campaign, Applebloom is totally my little NPC to push the party in the right plot direction.
It's enough to jog our collective memories and help us piece the events of the previous session.
Even when it's something like "Next: Fight!!!" Or "Next:loot!"
Had a blast writing those with my kobold bard, twisting all the facts to make him the hero.
I used to be designated campaign log person, but Bryan took over after I started letting it slide. He's usually the one tracking the date nowadays.
We've done the "previously:" thing a few times too, per Destrustor's anecdote.
Most recently to build a Royal Canterlot Voice system...
It'd certainly explain why staring down the DM worked so well (even nice guys can be scary if they're also big).
A good example was this one time where a party had just completed a quest. The next session I had them start off in a tavern, and before I could explain that they'd skipped a week IC while traveling through the surrounding countryside - they began a full-on GM interrogation. It went something along the lines of:
"Why are we here again?"
"What am I doing?"
"Where's everybody else?"
"What do they serve here?"
"I want to gamble!"
"Ooh! Is that a dwarf?"
"Why are we here again?"
I had a group of six at the time, and it was pretty chaotic. In the future, I think I need to explain everything to the party BEFORE I place them back in the world... That would probably work best.
When I ran a Shadowrun campaign, I had one mission start In Medias Res where they were all in the middle of a run and they somehow knew everything that was about to happen like it was Deja Vu.
Turns out they were in a Lone Star simulator running the same scenario several times.
When the player interrogations came, I just responded with "I don't know, I'm not there." I dunno why, but somehow that worked. >_>
Eventually they broke out of the Lonestar lab and retraced their steps backwards through the prior night's events. Almost played out like the movie Momento.
I also started up the intro to one Star Wars Campaign in Medias Res, where the players were trying to break into a compound and highjack a ship. They start out on the side of a building while an NPC is setting a demo charge. He counts the timer down, the wall blows out, and then they rush in.
-And when they tried to interrogate me that time, I just said something along the lines of - "There's no time! Keep moving!"
That time, things didn't work out too badly.
(Forums here for pony tales http://ponytales.forumotion.com/ )
I have a game in the works with a possible 6th pony needed, but it's still in development. I wouldn't mind a newbie since I'm relatively new myself.
The Sparkle knows...
Forgive the 'readers'. They sometimes get a little odd.
They're the WORST.
I'm on to you, LoganAura...
Pies. Send us pies, please.
If you're not referring to that, please disregard this 4;30 am comment.
If you're not referring to that, please disregard this 4;30 am comment.
In a fantasy sandbox game you are often limited to no more than giving the players a set of rumours to decide which they want to follow. It's best to do this at the end of a session, with the next one starting "you disembark from the ship that brought you to the port of Westcrown."
OTOH, in a tramp starship campaign it's almost the norm to start an adventure with: "Three months pass. After offloading your cargo on Chakona, you check your finances and they are so tight that you can't even afford fuel much less your loan payment... as you consider this a pair of Rakshani approach you...."