Spike Of All Trades FAQ #1! Questions Answered! · 3:36pm Nov 24th, 2019
And answers questioned? Nah, we're not doing that shtick today.
Hello everybody! Welcome to the first of what will likely be several Spikefic FAQs.
We're going to start by covering background material, general questions, and things that are not likely to come up directly in the story. Then I'm going to plop down a nice clean divider in the middle, and after that we're going to cover some things 'in advance', as it were: Nothing plot-critical, but mysteries of the world or the system that you might want to ignore for now, so you can discover them along with the characters. Along the way, some stuff will be bolded or font size'd to make it easier for certain things to be found.
Let's start with specific questions from the comments of the last blog!
@Sleepingcobrox asked: Will there be any fight scenes in this fic, and are you OK with the slow pacing you've established?
Yes and yes! More specifically, yes there will be quite a lot of combat eventually (although not so much in this first Arc), and I am extremely happy with the pace. I wanted to do something much more... Not exactly sedate, but measured than other takes on this premise. I like the idea of going deep and luxuriating in what is frankly a very weird life situation, even for Ponyville. It also helps that the slow pace means my writing can stay ahead of the releases, at least to some extent.
@Cauchemar asked: If Spike's ability is a draconic one, is it possible it's from his family line?
Very good question! :3
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I have grown many mouths in my deviousness.
But in all seriousness, probably? Or at the very least Spike (and by extension us) can operate on the assumption that it's derived from his dragon subspecies' nature, if not his specific parents.
@Enderhooves asked: Dungeons can only be put so far without getting repetative. Will you skip large sections of time, or will you avoid off-camera grinds?
A very valid point. There is an eventual plan for Spike to get an ability equivalent to Instanced Dungeons or Naraka and it'd be easy to go overboard. I have a few ideas for how to handle this case-by-case, but to make a long story short? If Spike makes any significant progress during a period that isn't covered directly, it will at least get a montage. That way we avoid him popping up out of thin air with a bunch of new crap to understand.
@Storm Vision asked: TDTTOE?
I certainly try!
Confused? Google it. :P
@AppleTank asked: Are surnames A Thing?
Kind of! Just like in canon, it's pretty variable. The way I handle it is that more established or traditionalist families will either keep a family naming scheme, or carry on a surname informally. This is how you get your Pies, your Belles, your Apples, etc. Other families go for a broader thematic concept: Your Light-Twilight-Sparkle-Shining sort of deal. And sometimes, Rainbow Dash happens and nopony really questions it.
@AppleTank also asked: What is The Games We Play?
Ahhhh, so this... This is an important one. At the start of the very first chapter there is a header, a disclaimer of sorts. I might move it out to the description so people stop getting confused, since the current summary is... deliberately obtuse? Whatever. Suffice to say, there's two credits at the top of C1.
All credit for the concept of The Gamer and ownership of the associated light novels and webtoon belongs to Sung Sang-Young. A debt of inspiration is owed specifically to Ryuugi at Spacebattles for his seminal work 'The Games We Play'.
The short version is that TGWP is a million-word 'The Gamer' fic in which our psuedotitular Gamer is Jaune Arc, from RWBY. More than anything, Spikefic is specifically inspired by and indebted to this story, and not the original Gamer. That comic is good, great even... But TGWP is transcendent. I cannot recommend it strongly enough, and I await the sequel with baited breath.
Yeah, it's a million words long and has a sequel upcoming. Do you see where I get it from now? :V
And now for the big doozie at the end of this section, coming from several people and several sources.
THE TIMELINE
... or at least a loose explanation of it. This is with a special thanks to CarcinoGeneticist, a very good friend of mine. Dude's a treasure, go read his stuff.
Specifically, he asks about where this fic takes place, and what all has happened. There's points in the dialogue that imply we're quite a few years along in Spike and Twilight's time in Ponyville, but Twilight is still a unicorn, the Library still exists (RIP Golden Oak, Golden Oak forever), etc.
TL;DR -- It is roughly 4 years since the Summer Sun Celebration that kickstarted MLP:FIM, give or take a few months. Basically all of Season 1+2 is canon to this fic, except for Dragon Quest. Shining+Cadance's wedding was 2 years ago, and in that time a lot of things have happened.
The longer version:
Spike of All Trades starts sometime in Pony April of (Whatever year Season 1 Episode 1 took place in) plus four-ish. Twilight arrived in Ponyville for the Summer Sun Celebration with Spike in tow, everything went down... And over the course of Season 1's events, about a year passed. The same is true for Season 2: I'm one of those guys who defaults to "show season = in-show year" for the timeline, when in doubt.
Dragon Quest in specific didn't take place in this version of things, because I'm going to be handling dragons very differently from how they work in the show as a whole. So if nothing else, keep this in mind: The only dragon the crew has ever dealt with, Spike aside, was the massive cave-sized sucker with the enormous gold hoard. A very traditional, slightly enigmatic, full-grown adult.
However, this fic takes place several years after Canterlot Wedding, and it's not like the flow of interesting things stopped! But instead of following Seasons 3 and 4 beat for beat, these two years have their own timeline of events. This includes some episodes from those (or even later) seasons happening, as well as new events specific to this fic (such as the opening of the AAAA) and other oddities.
There are some things I can mention in advance without spoiling much, or that the fic itself has already hinted at: At some point Spike tried to attend school but failed to fit in due to his sleep patterns. This led to Twilight homeschooling him intensively for a year or so to catch him up on a variety of subjects. Shining Armor visits every month or so and runs an O+O campaign for Spike, which at some point expanded to include the Crusaders as frequent players. Owlowiscious is currently living out in the forest to raise a brood, with Zecora keeping an eye on him.
Revealing many other details would be spoilers of one type or another, so when in doubt? We're 4 years deep, Season 1 and 2 happened (sans Dragon Quest), and it's 2 years since the Wedding. Discord was last seen as a statue, Twilight's a unicorn, Spike hasn't saved an entire country, said country hasn't sprung back out of the mists yet, etc. Anything more specific will come up in the actual text, as it becomes relevant.
Above this point was everything in the purview of a background document or a normal FAQ. If all you care about is things that help explain the background of the story, things that might never directly come up in the fic itself? You're good!
Below we're going to cover some things that will come up in the future of the fic. These are concepts that aren't exactly spoilers, in terms of the plot? But they're things Spike hasn't already figured out, and their eventual discovery will come up and be a point of interest.
If you don't want to see things in advance? Thanks for joining us! I'll do an interest-check for one of these every 20 chapters, give or take. If you have any new questions, keep an eye out to see if the fic answers them before then... And if not, keep those Qs ready for the next one!
But if you're interested in getting answers about some big questions in advance? Come on down!
First off is a set of quickies we had to pull out from the main FAQ blog post.
@Enderhooves also asked: Will Spike be able to teach abilities to others?
Yes. Sort of. :V
It's going to vary a lot, but at least some of his skills can be taught at least some of the time.
A good rule of thumb is that if it's something Spike could have been taught naturally, he can teach it naturally, even if he acquired it from The Game.
@AppleTank also also asked: Does a clock in Spike's inventory freeze? Does cooked food stop gaining or losing heat? Does it rot? Do living things survive? Could he "store" a lightning bolt or other active phenomena? Can he use it to perpetuate perpetual motion? Does Spike's bonus health from being large disappear when he shrinks, or shrink proportionally to keep the same %?
No, yes, no, can't store them, not that either, not effectively, it shrinks proportionally. In that order.
Alright, now for the one big weird one to close it out. This is a question that still dogs TGWP and the original Gamer to this day, so I'm not surprised it has come up for this fic so early on.
WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH LEVELS?
TL;DR -- For everypony but Spike, Levels are a loose approximation made by Spike's engine in retrospect. Level has very little to do with 'power' in an absolute sense and more to do with life experience, combat experience, and raw stats. It doesn't account for skills, special traits, 'class features', or anything else complicated. It's a baseline, and not an important number. Nothing uses it as a scaling factor, that we know of.
A deer that is far less teal -- Apart from The Gamer and those piggybacking off of their system, people in Equestria don't actually level. There isn't some arbitrary experiential breakpoint where they jump up by 5 stat points all at once. Spike's system just retroactively figures out a Level when he encounters somepony, working off of things like their long-term gains, trained stats, age, etc.
This can create some odd situations, so a deeper dive into the mechanics might be elucidating.
Let's use the slightly contentious example of Twilight Sparkle v. Rarity's aunt Arcane Ammunition. Some folks threw up a fuss when a Night Guard (essentially a militarized background pony :P) showed up rocking a Level notably higher than the show's main character. Let's go over why that's the case, and use it as a more general example of how Spike's 'engine' treats the concept of a Level. We're not going to be covering both characters' entire sheets or anything, but we can make some broad comparisons.
First we've got Twilight Sparkle. She's a young adult unicorn with a few years of weird "saving the world" experience, and the benefits of being the Element of Magic and time spent as Celestia's personal student. At this point in the story she rocks something like triple-digit Intelligence, a decent amount of Luck and Wisdom... and then complete trash for all of her physicals. We're talking about unupgraded flat 10 Strength and Dexterity, and not much more Vitality.
Notably her derived stats would be even more ridiculous than this implies: Her health would be surprisingly high despite her pedestrian Vitality, and her MP is staggeringly high even for a pony with such high INT. See, Twilight has a LOT of skills and they're all synergistic and focused on her single domain: Magic. Since arriving in Ponyville, her Wisdom has been on the uptick as she gets into the nature of Friendship as well, but right now she's still primarily a dorky researcher who moonlights as a WMD.
Now let's look at Arcane Ammo. She's in her 40s or so, and has spent fully half of her life in Equestria's military, plus the last few years as a Night Guard under Luna's auspices. Her worst stat is Strength. Despite being her lowest, hat's easily triple Twilight's (at somewhere around 30), but her best stat is significantly lower than Twilight's Intelligence. She's got a focus on Wisdom and Dexterity with solid Intelligence... But unlike Twilight, her non-focus stats are also reasonably high.
Her derived stats (HP, MP, etc) are notably more reasonable compared to the stats involved, and she has less than half as many Titles and synergistic Skills compared to Twilight. She has a much wider variety of skills from her training and experience, but they're spread out and provide fewer stacked multipliers. Her total value of attributes is even higher than her level implies: But even accounting for all that training, nothing so much as touches the hem of Twilight's Intelligence.
How does this translate functionally? It means if these two unicorns both cast the same spell that neither one had affinity towards, Twilight would crush Arcane every single time. It also means that in a magic-free wilderness survival situation or a bare-hoof fight? Arcane would ruin Twilight's day. They're very different ponies, and one of them is an extreme specialist while the other is a broad-base military veteran.
At the end of the day? Level isn't arbitrary, but it's not even close to a comprehensive indicator. Some key factors that go into it are age, general experience, combat experience, and raw stat totals. Things that don't go into it are... everything else. This means ponies like Twilight or Pinkie would have a deceptively lower Level despite the many amazing things they can accomplish.
Levels give you a guideline, but they're not going to say everything: Twilight could, would, and does regularly trounce things with double her raw Level or more, because her specialization is extreme, her skills amplify one another, and her niche is potent.
And with that, I think we're clear of all the biggest or most-frequently / most-fervently asked questions! Thank you all for reading and enjoying my work, I hope to see you all in future FAQs and chapters, and don't forget: The ride never ends.
Special thanks to several of my non-pony friends for their work in pre-reading Spikefic chapters and helping me hash out plans. As for folks around here, thanks are very emphatically owed to MrNumbers, CarcinoGeneticist, AppleTank, Booster Spice, Geminii, djthomp, Herald of Opera, Storm Vision, Inugami, everyone who asked a question for the FAQ, and all of my other regular commenters, readers, friends, foes, et al. Keep on keeping on, you beautiful bastards.
Pinkie's level is especially deceptive because her Skills have a net effect of "I'm a Toon character in a game that assumes you can't be a Toon character". She's not playing by remotely the same rules as everyone else, and even reality itself can't always figure out what will happen next.
Welp, time to bloat my reading list even further
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I think I'd argue that Pinkie's level isn't deceptive at all; it tells us exactly what's going on in a way no mere integer could. But I get what you're saying, it means something that isn't "a tad more than 3".
What’s with the picture of this fic I thought it was porn before I read the description
But it turns out that it is actually a really really good story that has nothing to do with sex
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I originally commissioned a unique cover for this fic, but the artist returned a pretty terrible piece. We're no longer on speaking terms. In the end I had to go with my backup, a favorite pose of Spike looking intimidating by one of my favorite artists... Who happens to primarily do porn. :V
At the end of the day I personally like the cover, but in a perfect world I'll be able to get a more clarifying option in time for the second big arc, which will be posted as a sequel fic.
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Ok thank you I just wanted to know what was up with it so thank you for answering my question
Such a shame we can't upvote the blogs :<
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There's this
I like how Pinkie Pie’s Level is pi or 2.141...
I disagree with Twi having poor physical stats.
Even when young she ran up the tower steps in the canterlot campus without a sweat. Sometimes I think it was DESIGNED that way so the studious unicorns were forced to go up a few points in str and vit.
Then there was the running of the leaves. She was FOURTH. Sure some of that is attributable to the study she did beforehand, BUT she came in 4th against a town that is mainly earth ponies.
Out of curiosity (and something of an O&O mindset), where's the living/nonliving line for Spike being able to inventory something? Could he inventory a being who had been cooled to the point of technical death, for instance, but who could theoretically be revived once decanted? How about a being who had been petrified, or otherwise magically transmuted into a traditionally nonliving object?
(Also, I'm honestly a little surprised that clocks don't stop in inventory. With all the other indications of time passing being put on hold, I'd assumed a vanilla temporal effect applied. Apparently it's something more like a temporal-grace, timeline-compressing effect?)
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The second answer first: Clocks not stopping is actually an anomaly, as Spike will notice later. That seems to be a specific convenience feature of his engine: In mechanical terms, time isn't passing for the clocks, his engine is just constantly synchronizing those clocks with his menu's Time display.
The Inventory space is, in all other regards, lacking the natural laws of time and many laws of space: Thermodynamics doesn't apply to items in the inventory, heat isn't transferred and energy is conserved, etc. Items are basically put into an infinite discrete space in total stasis and will not change unless specific mechanics would make an exception.
The first answer second: If using Observe would give something a character sheet or stat card, it's a living thing for the Inventory's concerns. This means that unlike Han Jeehan of The Gamer, Spike cannot store golems, sentient spells, or the like.
> A transmuted person (like Twilight's parents during Spike's hatching) is still a person, as is a petrified one or a cryo-slept one.
> A corpse is no longer a person, even if there is a method for resurrection in the setting (which is not me saying that there is, that's just a hypothetical).
> An animate undead, even if mindless, would be living-adjacent enough for the Inventory to reject it.