Act 2 Story Notes *spoilers*

I'm still alive, and so is the story!

I'll keep this short so I can get back to writing Act 3, and avoid repeating this little unplanned hiatus. The inspiration or this chapter was mostly drawn from the kind of games me and my little brother played during our roleplaying days. I still vividly remember our dad bringing home the second-edition AD&D starter set, complete with books, maps, and our first basic set of dice (four of which I still have to this day, the others having rolled under various pieces of my friends' furniture at some point). We didn't have any friends who were already into the game at the time, so we had to teach ourselves as we played. We got sick of looking up the rules for every little action we wanted to take (which was especially time-consuming in the second edition ruleset), so we eventually just started to wing it. This led to a pretty erratic, story-driven gameplay style that most gamers wouldn't even recognize as D&D, but I still enjoyed greatly. Hell, I don't think we even filled out the character sheets half the time. That's where the kids' "if it's awesome, it happens" rule comes from. It actually works pretty well if everyone at the table is willing to play along.

I remember one time my friends and I played a quick one-shot out in the woods, using our player's guides as dice-rolling surfaces. I played a nameless assassin armed with twin wrist-mounted mini-crossbows - the type of character I was besotted with at the time, being in the middle of my anime phase. Our DM threw a cyclops at us, and I made a nat 20 on my attack roll, which we all agreed meant I had nailed him right in the eye. It's little moments like that that make me glad we didn't have a player complaining that we should have consulted a damage chart or something, and we could just get on with our fun. Later, we found an old abandoned minecart and track (real ones, in the woods, not in-game), and spent the rest of the afternoon pushing each other around in it, turning the day into the most "Stand By Me"-esque memory of my entire childhood.

Random Story Notes

- I had fun with the CMC's unconventional character classes. I liked the implied backstory of the kids insisting on them, forcing Rarity to improvise a bit. There are splatbooks that let you play as ninjas (medieval European setting be damned), but I figured Rarity simply modified some other classes to satisfy the girls' demands. You could make a cowboy pretty easily out of a ranger, just re-naming hand crossbows as "six-shooters", and maybe using bolas to represent a lasso. A ballerina is a bigger challenge, but you could make a playable one out of the monk class by swapping out the names of the stances and attacks with dance steps. Maybe add in some bard abilities if you're feeling ambitious.

- The toys-as-miniatures part is from my childhood as well. We didn't have a lot of spending money to burn on minis, so we either played all in our heads or used our Ninja Turtles as stand-ins. Battle-Damage Skelator made several appearances, even after sand gummed up his mechanism and left him permanently stuck with two sword-slashes on his chest.

- I started reading through the Order of the Stick archives while writing this, and I have to admit that Applejack's samurai/paladin is partially inspired by the Sapphire Guard. I usually try not to pull ideas from other sources, but the samurai angle ended up being the key to the plot since it brought Applejack and Rarity into direct conflict, without which the story falls flat. I think I went in a different enough direction with the concept to keep it from being a ripoff, though.

- It felt weird writing AJ's frankly racist attempt at a Japanese accent, but it was necessary to get Rarity sufficiently cheesed off at her. I hope Rarity's reaction is enough to take the curse off of it.

-If you read my older story, 'The Big Rush', you'll recognize Crispy the fry cook, one of the many culinary-themed OC's I created to populate the story. I like to imagine that each of them went off to start their own restaurant eventually, like Butter Cream's Magnolia's-style cupcake joint I mentioned in Big Dragon.

-Finally, I'd just like to mention that "plus two tu-tu" is the single stupidest joke I have ever written. Thank you.

Okay, Zecora's up next. Better get out my rhyming dictionary.
See you next time on Ponies Play... Pictionary?

Man, I need to work on that.