DM: Go ahead and introduce your character to everyone, Nat.
SFX: (CLANK)
DM: Um...
SFX: (BOOM!)
Natalie: With a great explosion of arcane strength, a blue unicorn with flowing bright blue mane appeared on the stage. Come one! Come all! Come and witness the amazing magic of the Great and Powerful TRIXIE!!! Watch in awe as the Great and Powerful Trixie performs the most spectacular feats of magic ever witnessed by pony eyes!
Spike: Oh, come on. No one's more powerful than Twilight.
Twilight Sparkle: Uh, what're you doing?
Spike: I'm your familiar. I'm not gonna keep quiet after hearing that. You think you're so special just cause your special talent's magic?
SFX: (ZIIIP)
Handing over the reigns to DragonTrainer is kind of like moving out from behind the DM screen for a while. I know the building blocks he's working with back there, but this particular section is just as new to me as it is to any of you. It's thrilling in its own way.
Come on, K, why must you overshadow my comments? Now I have to find something original to say, instead of just posting first, Thanks a lot, man. /sarcasm
That's true. The only thing that I've seen that can rival the excellence of the Discworld/FIM crossover is this comic. My only regret is that the size of avatars means you can't see Death rolling his eyes.
So this is the result of a nine page background sheet. The great and powerful Trixie. Any guesses on what her background sheet said? Well, besides stage performer.
It probably just covered the basics, early childhood, late childhood, teenage years, early adult life, a page or two for the parents, how she got her cutie mark, how she interpreted her cutie mark, 'inhales' how she became a sorcerer, where the hat and cape came from, and maybe a finance report or two on how she affords to travel around. You know, basic stuff.
Once had a dm that set up a campaign where the players were helping the dm create an entire world. Part of our background consisted of our home town, gods, tradition, etc. Kind of required a few pages.
Eh, I've written out three page backgrounds and I wasn't even trying that hard. How much a person ends up writing is an indicator of how much investment they've made in a character.
Not only that, but lengthy backgrounds make it easier for game masters to include elements from those backgrounds. If your character used to be an accountant for instance, it makes sense to include a paper shredder that has become self aware and lusts for the destruction of paper currency.
... Or an old coworker asks for help doing their taxes. The first is probably better for adventurers though. Unless you're some kind of sick freak who's playing an office worker campaign.
This got me thinking about the viability of running a campaign where all the PCs work in an office. Probably about the only way that could work is if you took a Maid RPG approach.
The Great and Powerful Trixie was born in the Year of Exploding Custards, an event that modern scholars have never been able to explain, as the Great and Powerful Trixie did not wish to spoil the surprise too soon. It would wait until she met...
[deleted: a long list of wizard's names and accomplishments, followed by several paragraphs detailing how each briefly taught and was soon surpassed by the Great and Powerful Trixie]
Soon she was touring...
[deleted: a list of locations long enough to cover the back of t-shirts from five different concert tours],
...where she...
[deleted: a series of achievements including victory over a Monster Manual's worth of opponents and the solution of three impossible riddles]
...and brought about an amicable end to the Colt War.
Based on the Charecter of Nat I would guess that it included quite a large amount of purple prose, thus the information it contains could likely be told in far fewer pages.
THIRTY EIGHT PAGES. Not me, another player. The local DMs started telling him FIVE PAGES ONLY DAMMIT after a while. I've done some that ran ten or twelve, but then I realized I was writing a whole story and summarized it down to one or two. My imagination runs away with me like that sometimes. I think thirty-eight was the guy's record, but I'm not sure, and he tended toward at least twelve and usually closer to twenty when he could still get away with it.
probably, not, because both luke and cory enjoy being overpowered, but luke is a bit more into it. i can see him as zecora.
and cory.....
well, who's more broken than gilda?
Judging by what happened in One Piece 3.5, I'm guessing Gilda and... sure, Zecora ( half pony / half tiger / half monkey ) were their original characters, but the GM rejected them and they were forced to play the pregens Snips and Snails.
Alternatively, Snips and Snails -are- overpowered, but for combat. But the Ursa Minor is even more powerful, and Twilight beats it through roleplaying.
That makes sense, super combat characters in a non-combat intense setting tend to suck.
"How did you roll a negative twelve in Diplomacy?"
"I took a few penalties."
that's a fair point. i know of a few spells and abilities to make the DM stop being cryptic and tell you exactly what's going on, but i've never found one to shut them up. hrm...
technically those work, true enough.
however, astounding your DM isn't exactly reliable, and bribing them with food doesn't really allow the game to progress.
i was referring to things like the spell legend lore which, when done properly, forces your DM to tell you outright exactly what something is
i have yet to find a direct counterpart outside of shouting "shut up, i don't care! i run forward and hit it with my sword!" which usually results in pitfalls filled with spikes. or poisoned spears. or ornery, mutated sea bass.
I'm actually in the process of creating a stage magician for a play by post. Just something inspired by the GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE. Anyway he's a human illusionist who goes from town to town performing for an audience. And let me just say, coming up with stage magic using only 4 cantrips and an at will spell, is a right old bitch.
Prestidigitation is quite a wonderful spell. Of course, I'm not sure if it's around in any meaningful capacity in 4e, but you should take a look around and see if it's there.
Actually I'm using Ghost Sound, Light, Prestidigitation, Mage Hand, and the at will Illusory Ambush. And it isn't so much what they can do, it's more what they can't do. Still managed to come up with a few spells using a looser translation of what they can do, using the assumption that as a illusionist, my character is talented with creating simple images that he can hold onto as long as it isn't so complex that it becomes too real, and a lot of negotiating with the dm.
Yep, took a background benefit of thievery just to have that as well. As well as an obscure multiclass rogue feat that only appears in the dungeon magizine and on dndinsider character builder that grants bluff. It's impressive what I'm doing just to have a colorful background. Though in hindsight I should have just skip the rogue cross class and just used a feat to learn bluff.
My advice is, don't focus too hard on actual spells, work on mundane sleight of hand instead. The existence of actual magic can be a boon here, as it lets you add another layer of misdirection.
Thought about using a few slight of hand tricks as well, but maybe your right, it might be easier just to use more slight of hand tricks backed up by a few small illusions. Though with all said and done, this is probably the most interesting character design I did so far. Hell the creative process with my character alone makes this my favorite character design so far.
Prestidigitation allows you to do all sorts of things. Like change the color of a scarf. Mark cards magically, or bring a selected card to the top of the deck. Puffs of smoke, illusionary doves that 'fly off' with the aid of ghost sound for the flapping and a coo or two. The images don't need to last long, just long enough to 'fly off'.
If anyone is wondering, here is what I have came up with so far, using the basic spells I listed as well as an encounter spell Grasping Shadows. Note that this character is only level one, so what he can use and what props he can buy is kind of limited.
The haunted mask: Alain will start with the mask in front of the stage, propped up on a stool. The mask will be there the entire time, no one will see it placed there; it just will simply remain there while the crowd is forming. When it is time to begin, he will cast light on the back of it, so the eyes and mouth will glow. Then he will use mage hand to lift it up, allowing it to float a little. Alain will then dim the light and have it placed on his face.
The face of the changeling: While wearing the mask, Alain produce several images depicted on the mask, such as switching between tragedy and comedy, orcs and elves, fairy tale creatures and dragons, even creating an image of the elements such as fire and electricity. He will rapidly switch between the images that were designated beforehand.
The maiden and flower: For this, Alain will ask for a "volunteer" from the audience, specifically a young maiden wearing a cloak. When she steps up on stage, she will remove the cloak revealing a plain brown dress. He will give her a rose, then place his cape around her, chant a few made up words, then take the cape off. It will reveal that the rose and dress switch colors. Trick is the dress was the color before the magic trick, and it will only look brown because of an illusion. The rose, simple color spell.
The basic birds appearing out of thin air: This one will only require a prestidigitation spell. Alain will simply cast up to three images of birds that will fly away and disappear once they are out of range.
Appear from the shadows: Alain will use the grasping shadows trick to form into the shape of a human. Then while everyone is focused on the shadows, he will find a way to sneak onto the stage and step behind the shadow. The shadows with then run down revealing him.
Dance of the fair folk: Images appearing over the head of the crowd, shifting from shape to shape, appearing as creatures flying, a rose blooming, maidens dancing.
What I came up with so far other than a few card and dice tricks, because what magician can call himself a magician without a card trick. Also this is designed assuming that the average commoner wouldn't understand the complexity of the magic arts, the same way most of us can't understand the notes that make up a musical number.
I WILL GET YOU NOTICED BY TYPING IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE TTHIS IS THE BEST WAY TO GET NOTICED AND THE ONLY WAY THIS WILL GET CARRIED OUT IS IF WE ARE NOTICED AND
--([{LOUD}])--
I could see Luke and Cory showing up later as the flim flam brothers after Trixy leaves. I mean it could make sense in going with the theme since they both have yet to finish their character sheets and they could both show up at the same time.
Arondight, Sorcerers use Charisma to power their magic, while Wizards use Intelligence. That's why Trixie's Charisma is 18 while her Intelligence is 12.
DM:Trixie, you wake up to the sound of pounding on your door.
Trixie: I open the door and say "Who dares disturb the Great and Powerful Trixie?"
DM: Your two "fans" from earlier are frantically pointing at a large star bear headed your direction.
Trixie: An Ursa Major? Hah, I defeated one already, why can't I fight another?
TS: Yeah, I did a bit of research on it. Are you sure you can beat one?
Trixie: But of course. I mean, I made sure that my character could reasonably dissuade a brown bear, and an Ursa Major can't be that much different. That's how I justified putting it in my backstory.
TS:...Did you ever check the size class?
Trixie:...How big is the Ursa Major?
DM: The blue bear in front of you is the size of a house, capable of crushing your cart under one paw.
Trixie:...I run away screaming!
Trixie's stats seem weird for a Sorceror as far as combat goes (unless her spells use a charisma modifier). Charisma maxed fits her as a bluff-abuser and performer. Due to the -1 strength and +2 dexterity modifier, it's safe to assume she chose a Chaos Sorcerer (whose abilites seem to be either harmful or useful, depending on the roll). It would also explain a bit on how she got easy victories against 5/6 of the mane cast then failed completely against the Ursa.
(Note: I suck at 4e knowledge, correct me if I'm wrong)
Unlike a wizard who uses magic either like a science or mathematical equation and have to rely on intelligence, the sorcerer has to rely on strength of will to control his magic and thus uses charisma. However as far as the build goes, your probably right, she is most likely a chaos sorcerer, though storm sorcerer is another possibility if it wasn't for her strength modifier.
Actually, her charisma is the top priority for any of the sorcerer builds. It's the second strongest, the dexterity that changes what build is recommended.
Not necessarily, with the dm talking it can be any voice that you can imagine. For all we know the DM is actually a six year old girl and every NPC is spoken with a little girl's voice.
You know what, forget the six year old, imagine the DM as a forty year old that smoked all of his life and every npc pony speaks with the smoker's voice and coughs every 30 minutes. It be funnier.
Am I the only one here who hears the DM as a cross between Celestia and Cheerilee? I mean, it fits pretty well, and all six players are explicitly female, so it's not even that unbelieveable.
Negative, I imagine the DM with the same voice that I give to every narrator/DM/POV character I'm reading- specifically, my voice, or at least how it sounds in my head.
Statistically speaking, most people should hear it the same, unless they deliberately choose a voice to associate with the words, like Celestia.
I know I keep saying this, but I can't help but imagine Rarity's player to be a grognard with a neckbeard and a black Dethklok t-shirt. The imagery renders me hysterical every time.
sure, seeing how see loves details, she could totally brag about how detailed her bragging is.
i gracefully yell "ah, SHUT UP!" at the guy who wants my hair.
There is no way her saves are that high at level 1. Base Fort, Reflex, and Will saves for a level 1 Sorcerer are 0, 0, and 2 respectively. Add the modifiers of 0, 2, and 0 respectively and her saves should be as follow:
Fort: 0
Reflex: 2
Will: 2
So Trixie's player is the Munchkin jerk who quits when everything doesn't go their way. In other words Trixie's player rage quits after being handed some humble pie?
Ironically think that Ticket Master COULD have functioned as a session, if only because PCs squabbling over a finite number of important items sounds like the stereo typical PC.
Without going over there to look I'm assuming Nat is the role player? And don't tell me to go over there to look, I'm not planning to until I get around to watching a few episodes of one piece. Made the mistake of reading this before I got around to watching friendship is magic. The comic wasn't as good until I watched the show
They're currently just done with episode 8, so if you watch up untill episode 9 of one piece you'll be in the clear. And I do agree that you have to see the episodes first.
Thanks, that helps. Anyway, is Nat a role player? I figure with a nine page background, a balanced stat sheet and an overly dramatic character, she must be. Course I could be wrong.
How I felt about Nat, is that she's that special breed of roleplayer who puts in a lot of detail... and completely misses the point.
How she played Nami was someone quite self absorbed and generally had little interest in working with the other players.
... So yeah. Perfect fit for Trixie.
I think this was her first table top game (okay ponies would be second) so might not understand some of the subtleties. Nat represents a special kind of inexperienced. Someone who understands character, but not context so much.
Incidently, I find Luffy to be the one who seems to be roleplaying the best. He manages to pull off that combination of crazy, idiotic, and brilliant that is an adventurer. Much smarter than the Luffy of One Piece. There's some subtlety to him. Ironic subtlety. Yeah, he's a powergaming bastard. But that's the kind of environment these players operate in. He understands his environment.
I may be overestimating him though.
I enjoy it thoroughly. Partly because it's seems unsettling accurate. You sell the premise quite well Dragon Trainer. Very believable as a campaign setting.
Reading ALL of the comments, I could make about 20 guesses, none of them particularly educated. If I go off of Newbie's comments... nothing. If I go off of yours, I get that you enjoy disrupting combos, private message, and you ironically telling someone they should watch episodes to better enjoy the comic. And another private message, which brings us here.
So my educated guess is, you wanted Newbie to fix something about the guest pages because everyone found something wrong with them, while simultaneously tweaking the guest character interactions to better fit the FiD campaign line, and suggesting plausible updates to come to the cast page, all while wishing to remain anonymous as the one who spearheaded these ideas.
Or you were trying to troll me, or make a joke, neither of which seem to have been very successful.
currently making an Indy screencap comic. Not really using a specific RPG system (i switch from d20 to d10 later), but here it is:
http://critmiss.thecomicseries.com/
I have the first one up already and almost 50 more prepared.
Sorry but no. Hate is, mostly, an irrational feeling so all your reasoning is futile. I know there are worse characters (like Gilda, for example) but, for some reason, Trixie is the character I hate the most. Even more, is the only character I hate.
Perhaps but for someone who has seen The Music Man, it was a pleasant surprise to see and hear. Also, the fact that the mechanical sounds from the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 match perfectly with the beat of the music must have been quite the challenge for the song team.
That said, the Apple Family deserved to get forced out on the street after that fiasco, and here's why.
1. Flim and Flam can out-produce the Apples cider wise, but only if they have apples to do it, and the only apples nearby belong to the Apple family. If they control the raw materials, Flim and Flam have absolutely no way to compete. Until Granny Smith just hands over an entire field, with there being absolutely no reason to believe they could keep up. Its like they were asking to lose.
2. Granted, once the rest of the Mane 6 jumped in to help, Flim and Flam were screwed, and had to produce subpar cider to win- but they DID win. Which means they could have kicked out the Apple family, and begin production on more quality cider using all of the apples they just won. It made no sense to pack up and leave because of one bad batch once they had a solid monopoly.
My letter to the princess would have went something like this.
Dear Princess Celestia,
Today I learned that bad business practices are the foundation of Equestria's economy. I believe we are heading toward financial ruin, and that it is a miracle we haven't collapsed already.
They did kick the Apples out. But the town kicked the Flimflam brothers out for their subpar cider and asked the Apples to come back.
And the Flimflam brothers had nothing to work with, true but they tricked the Apples into providing them with apples for free because they exploited the Apples' pride for their cider.
If the Apples just had said no, Flim and Flam wouldn't have been able to do anything and still keep the cider monopoly. But of course, Flim and Flam had the public on their side and we can't just have the Apples act mean for purely economical reasons. It's still a kids' show, for them it would just seem that the Apples wouldn't want to share with the funny looking, singing ponies.
The town had no authority to kick them out, and they certainly had no reason to abandon Flim Flam Fields, or even worse hand it back over to the Apples.
And I'm sure the kids would have Identified Flim and Flam as the bad guys, and therefore not deserving of sharing once they issued their initial threat to run the Apples out of business. Kids are smart like that.
Technically, the town didn't actually kick them out. They just realized they couldn't get any business.
... But it still makes sense that they would want to own an Apple Farm. Sure the town might hate them, but they're clearly already travelling salesponies.
Blueblood isn't a bad character per se. He's just used to people treating him as the most important pony in the room due to his social standing/upbringing.
And yes, I do feel sorry for him. Both because he just doesn't know any better and people tend to go overboard with revenge fics.
Well that's going to be a bit hard, because as I say a few posts below I respect characters that rub me the wrong way.
I want to say Diamond Tiara, but you just know there's something depressing in her backstory.
It also doesn't help that whenever someone who seems irredeemable shows up, someone writes a fanfiction making them a woobie. But then again, kind of shows how much we crave depth.
This is a kid's cartoon where the entire world is build on sunshine and rainbows. The worst villain on the show would of course be discord, but we don't see him crossing the line of actually harming somepony. You want a villain to hate, you're going to have to lower your villainy standards.
He mindrapes Fluttershy. I'd think that counts as harming somepony. He tricked the other into becoming the opposite of their element by trickery and deceit but when Fluttershy didn't go along, he cut the crap and just forcibly changed her.
Just take a look at all his entries here
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic
Then again, he does it all with so much style and panache that you just glance over it.
That was completely wrong, but I am not entirely sure that what happened to Fluttershy is true mind rape. In order for it to be mind rape, there should be signs of lasting mental or emotional damage even after the incident. Course I'm surprised how few people in fiction ever consider the lasting damage of such an affect. And as I'm saying this I know that everybody going to jump on me for this post.
On a related note, though, people tend to shy away from the psychological realism of actual physical rape as well, or any physical, mental or psychological torment. Whenever someone decides they want to write a rapefic, for instance, the victim always ends up enjoying it at some level, which just isn't supposed to happen.
A similar idea, and I feel that when things like that happen, it lessens the quality of the story and of experiencing it. Disbelief is no longer suspendable.
That's why I like to over-analyze anything and everything, for the sake of argument, and to better develop the story and experience for myself.
Yea, we can discuss this all day but the fact that this is a public site about a comic based around a cartoon, I rather leave it alone. Though I will say that I completely agree with you.
According to word of god, she was possessed, so she can't fully be responsible for her actions. Though probably a villain closest to true evil in the fim universe may be the Windigo. Course even then they might be less evil and more wild animal and force of nature.
I generally don't hate characters purely because they serve an antagonistic role. Well, it's a bit more complex than that really. If a character that's obviously supposed to provoke a strong negative reaction does, I respect that character for succeeding in what it was supposed to do. And with that perspective it's pretty hard to hate a character.
It's another story if there's a premise behind it I find horrible and offensive. And in a situation like that it's more likely that I'll hate the whole story than any of a few specific characters. The not Pony Twilight is a good example of what I'm talking about there.
Any villain with a great song is okay to be a recurring antagonist, as long as it means they get more musical numbers, or chances to be funny. As long as they're entertaining. I loved Discord, but then, I'm already a fan of John De Lancie. Now all they need is Neil Patrick Harris, Weird Al, and Tim Curry to each voice a pony, and the series will officially be the best MLP ever.
You know, the GM, via Spike, has a point. Consider: Trixie is only level one, while Twilight is level six. If they decided to do a PvP, Trixie would get creamed.
Handing over the reigns to DragonTrainer is kind of like moving out from behind the DM screen for a while. I know the building blocks he's working with back there, but this particular section is just as new to me as it is to any of you. It's thrilling in its own way.