Tails of Equestria: The Storytelling Game · 6:56pm Apr 21st, 2017
So... something came in the mail today... Figured I'd share my thoughts. Spoiler alert: I WILL BE GOING OVER THE SYSTEM ITSELF, AS WELL AS THE PRESENTATION IN THE BOOK!
I want to make this clear: I collect game systems. Physical and digital. At this moment, I have 10 core rulebooks on my shelf, two of which are pony, and seven Pathfinder books aside, two of which are also pony. Then there are the 21 PDFs in my "Solely core rulebook" folder on my computer, and fifteen folders devoted to specific systems in another folder. And I think I might have... two, three, four? Something like that linked in my Google Drive.
So... yeah. I collect systems, and I can judge them. Let's talk about Tails of Equestria.
First of all, you can generally tell how complicated a system is by looking at the character sheet in the back. And in ToE, it's one page, nothing on the back, and one third of that is devoted to space where you can draw your pony and cutie mark. Beyond that, there's a box for asthetics--pony name, player name, pony type, level, and EoH--a box for stamina, three for stats, two for traits (positive or negative), and a nice little circle to stick your tokens of friendship. Which are basically fate points. Very rules simple.
This is not a bad thing! Rules light means creative freedom and you don't get bogged down in grappling rules or whatever. And to be fair, the target audience is 1d4+4 years old, to whom it's fairly accessible, and it's still complex enough that 1d12+12 and 1d20+20 year olds can get complicated in their character design.
An interesting quirk of the system is the lack of skill points. The only quantitative factors are Stamina, maximum and current, and your current Friendship Token count. You don't roll 1dx+y, because there is no y. You just roll 1dx, and maybe 1dy if you have a talent that could also apply, and choose the higher roll. Your Body, Mind, and Charm aren't 3, 7, or even 92; they're 1d4, 1d6, or 1d8. Same goes for your talents--you've got flying 1d6 automatically if you're a pegasus, and if you decided that was your cutie mark it's flying 1d8.
Because of this, target numbers are linear--completely. There's no "Five is easy, Ten is medium, fifteen is hard;" the difficulty goes from 2 to 3 to 4, all the way up to 12 in the difficulty list (with 13-20 being creatively listed as "Has anyone ever done this?"). Crit fails exist, with comedic effects, and crit successes will either cause awesome or, if the target number is outside your current die's capability, let you roll the next die up (up to a d20). Of course, every pony that helps can bring the target number down by one, and any success means the group succeeds; friendship is magic and all that.
Leveling is also interesting--every time you complete an adventure, you can pick a stat and level its die, automatically level the die of any talent you used, and either get a new 1d4 talent or upgrade any talent you didn't level. Yes, that's every adventure. Which apparently happens once a session. To be fair, there's a warning that beyond level 10, the GM will probably want to craft epic adventures, but... honestly, I think there might be a need to house-rule some caps to this leveling system, at least in regards to talents.
Friendship tokens are, like I said, basically Fate points. You can use them to reroll, or reroll with a bigger die, or declare automatic success, and each costs more then the last. You can also bribe the GM with them to shape the plot--you actually remembered to bring that rope that you needed, or whatever. And you can share tokens, because friendship--if you only have one but your buddies cough up the other two, you can pull off that instant success. Tokens are earned two ways: via leveling, in which case you get a token for every other character that levels with you (i.e each other player), or via roleplay, either by being friendly or by falling to one of your quirks.
Ah, yes, quirks. The negative traits. Be it allergies or arrogance, if the GM says "That's going to affect how hard this roll is for you specifically," it's a quirk. But if you fail, the GM gives you a friendship token as compensation. It's a minor part of the system, as it stands, and perhaps it could have been better integrated; still, rules light does mean quite a bit of flexibility.
Speaking of rules light, combat--or as it's called here, scuffling--is very, very rules light. Maximum Stamina is equal to the max number of your mind and body die combined, so a 1d6 body and 1d4 mind pony has 10 stamina. Whenever you feel a need to beat some baddies, you and your foe pick one talent or stat apiece, roll the appropriate die, and whoever has a higher roll deducts that number from the loser's current Stamina (with some adjustment for equipment). There's also rules for ganging up on others--in a four-on-one, if the one beats the other four he can spread the damage out as he likes, but if one of the four beats the one then only the highest of the four deals damage.
I rather like this combat system, to be honest. While the natural assumption is that our battlers will use their body and/or physical attacks to assault each other, it's vague enough that a player could choose to use a stranger talent--such as creative flair, keen knowledge, or (gasp) the stat for CHARM!--as their form of assault. Thus, you could use it to have a brawl, like you'd expect, ooooor you could have a pair of politicians politely sniping at each other or, if you're really crazy, you could even pull out a full on goof-off. Just so long as you can explain how it applies, I think a good GM will let anything fly.
Now, so far, I've been focusing on the flexibility of the system. And it is FLEXIBLE. However, it is also... compressed. The Elements of Harmony are described, but have no in-game benefit; there's a chapter that's all of two pages long, devoted solely to the aesthetics of your pony (Name, colors, appearance), and while there are descriptions of the basic pony tribes there's not much lore behind Equestria as a setting. In fact, from some of the text it's clear that the writers expect the buyers to be fans of the show--it's accessible even if you haven't seen it, but there a few slips like "Remember when Queen Chrysalis attacked Canterlot?"
The rules are slightly loose in some cases, the presentation is slightly less dense then I'm used to, and there's an (admittedly fair) assumption that the reader is a fan of the show. On the other hand, the system is quick to pick up, easy to mod and customize, and welcoming to both player and GM. All in all, it's a good core rulebook--complete with a fantastic GM advice section and a fairly decent opening adventure.
And it's filled with clips from the show, so saying "I remember where THAT came from!" is a fun nostalgia trip.
Reminds me of ironclaw.
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Heard of it, never read it.
...You know, I want this book now. I love comparing TRPG Systems and figuring what can work for what where and with whom, and this system sounds delightfully relaxing for a nice cartoon-based game!
4504595 I was thinking the same thin. Sounds like fun though.
My book is coming in the mail in a few weeks. I plan on hosting a game online if I can't find one.
... That's an unsurprisngly simplistic system that can be surprisngly easily adapted to anything else outside of ponies on a real short notice, with the potential to yield some very interesting results over the course of a session. Huh. Well, I've been kinda wary on that one but I might just pick it up.
... Collecting tabletop RPG corebooks? Huh. Would be neat to see you review some other things in your collection(A Hic Svnt Dracones review as an add-on to Hic Svnt Equus Pinnis would be especially welcome and on topic), but you probably won't really be able to 'cause Real Life and stuff.
Seems like a simple enough system. The quirk system rankles a bit, but other than that, it doesn't sound like a bad attempt for an affiliated product like this.
That said, I've probably got you beat for number of systems I own.
Aside from those I've actually bought (which would be Chuubo's, Soth, Fiasco, Microscope, Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Fellowship, Golden Sky Stories, and Esoterrorists), I also have a whole bookmark folder full of free systems, as well as my 49-entry library on Drivethru RPG. Oh, and if we're talking pony-based RPGs, I'd recommend Pony Tales: Aspiration of Harmony. (Though I bet you were aware of that already. 
)
no cconvenient photo of the cover or link to the product? i am a bigger fan of you masterweaver than i am of the show or products.
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Mostly from the die stats and flat difficulty. Also gives you an 'epic' option with the stats, they go 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12, 1d12+1d4, 1d12+1d6, etc. And of course everyone's doing FATE points nowadays.
Am I old-fashioned for preferring games with like, dice-rolling and combat and experience points and skill charts? Everything nowadays seems to be "storytelling", and I just can't deal with that. :(
4505048 Both must getting old. Just wanna play a game to relieve stress, not an RPG that ends up stressing me more. Just a good old shoot em up type game.
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You know, some of us find calculatin 1d8+4 damage deduct armor rating to be rather annoying. It can work with a good GM and players, but getting caught up in the numbers is only fun if the numbers are what you went to the game for in the first place.
Don't worry, in a few months, we'll have a "new and improved" system that's so complicated you'll need twelve charts to keep track of it all
I'll never understand why people like having overly-complicated RPG systems to tell them what they can and cannot do
K.I.S.S.
The simplicity sounds like it will be great for fast online play. Trying to get a local group together seems more difficult for me than finding some folks online.
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Primary issue I see with online play is "No PDFs" and even then, the list of talents and quirks is pretty low. 16 talents, 17 quirks (not counting the horserules in my next blog). And thirty three items in the equipment chapter, but a lot of those are "kits" and the rest either armor or items. No weapons, interestingly enough--probably not good for a Friendship-based game, but since they're an RPG staple...