Ideas for my next story. · 10:04am Nov 20th, 2018
I have always liked to plan ahead slightly. It helps me keep up my normal "chapter a week" format. Heck, if I dont hold myself to standards, who will right?
Unfortunately, One can't keep there muse going all the time for the months it takes to write these longer fics. At least, not while keeping them focused. I've recently go involved with some friends of mine who found a Fallout Equestria RPG that was written so poorly I felt compelled to fix the cybernetics Chapter after being asked if I would play with them and realizing that character creation is impossible to finish due to many many problems.
This snowballed, and now our group is rewriting the entire book. That may sound mean of us, but the company that produced it charge 25 bucks for an ebook with NO COVER, the PDF you get is an unencrypted editable document with no compression or finishing done to it at all, the rules are terrabad (self contradictory, missing, and in one case actually racist given the obvious African coding given to Zebras in FiM. No really. Zebras can take a perk to be so sexy to racists the racists treat them as "exotic" instead of "savage" ... -.-), the artwork literally looks like your 5 year old brother drew it (color outside the lines and all) and worst of all, the GM of this group is a freelancer who did work on one of the other books this company has produced (As an editor. The book he worked on is excellent. You can tell that only that one book was proofread, let alone edited.). Without revealing personal details, he has not been compensated for 6 months of work he did for this company.
So we're making our own RPG. With blackjack and hookers! Because we want to play, the company that made this rule set are scumbags, and between us we have the talent, experience, and passion to turn this critical of a RPG into something playable.
I spent the last 4 days doing nothing but editing spells so you could tell what they were supposed to do when you read them, making up new spells to fit holes the system left in terms of setting lore and gameplay... Lot of work.
Oh, no. That hasn't burnt me out on writing for this week. Far from it. It's merely made my muse look elsewhere.
See, Fallout Equestria is a very important story to me, and if you like my stories, it's important to you. Even if you dont like it or haven't read it.
TLDR; back in the times before I wrote here, I was me. A cold, starving, jobless person desperate for income to not die and without any of the friends I have now. I'd attempted suicide before, and the only thing keeping me here was ponies. I'm weird. I love ponies for the world more than the show. I often wished the story was a different genera. Something more actony or at least more mature. I like the idea of cute marchmalow ponies on real serious adventures. It amuses me.
Then I remembered fanfiction existed. So I googled "MLP fanficon". I found Fallout Equestria. It was finished, like a real book. So I read it. I red it and connected with the main character on a very deep level. Pip's personal journey is the search for purpose and a reason to exist while trapped in dark times. That spoke to me on a very deep and personal level. Also the ending where she's basically turned into King Arthur makes me cry every time. Homage is just going to keep staring at the capsule till she ages to death, probably leaving her bones leaning against that shield, watching Pip's stasised body instead of moving on. Dammit, kkat, why?! I get that Pip's virtue is sacrifice but her giving up ANY happiness so the wasteland could get a happy ending is just not okay for Pip. She deserved better. You could have had it where Homage went in with her so at least they could be together 
Fallout Equestria showed me that there were MLP fans who liked things that I would enjoy writing. If I hadn't found that story, I wouldn't have written anything. Ever. I don't normally participate in... Well, society. I'm not that big a fan of doing that. All of my friends are from this site. All of my current income, the way I eat and not die, is via my Patreons (For the newcomers, I'm disabled, tried to find a job anyways, haven't been able to in 8 years, and have yet to get into any sort of program for people who can't work. Though I should hear back from the Feds any day now about my latest attempt to get help.)
Fallout Equestria saved my life. I never got any job I applied too. Without my patreons, I would be dead. Starvation for sure. Possibly frozen to death one winter night. Cuz you know, Alaska. Thank you, guys. I love you all.
So yeah. The RPG needs to be good. FoE Deserves better. Littlepip deserves better. I want to play a game with my friends. For these reasons... My mind has been really leaning towards Fallout. Not just FoE, but Bethesda's canon stuff too.
As a very old fan of the series, 76 is a painful thing. Almost as painful as the RPG I'm rewriting. I want there to be something new and good that's Fallout related in the world. It's a shame that there arn't any writers who could--
Oh right! I'm an author :D
Annnd yeah, my muse has been thinking about a certain magicaly irradiated wasteland more than it has the stars recently. I have an idea for a FoE story. A pretty good one, I think. It may incorporate some elements of that RPG if it ever gets off the ground as a game I play in.
THat's why this week's DTTS chapter may be a bit short. I have plans for DTTS ofcourse, but it turns out that Zebra Shaman magic can be done by anyone with the ability to see spirits, and that Zebra mythology has spirits that deal exclusively with machines. FoE also has cyborgs. The cool old school kind with awesome industrial styled implants.
Wait, can you hear that? It sounds like--
Yes! I hear the Machine-Spirit's voice! It's saying, "Stop waxing poetic about your next story and at least finish this bit where Faust fills Dash in on the universe. You can tell people about your idea for a FoE story starting jsut before the Last Day later on."
I suppose I should. But if you guys are interested, I have a pretty good story idea.
That last bit especially makes me think you're keeping up on Somber's Project Horizons and its sequel. Much credit awarded if you are, it's a long story...
4970708 I've read every side story, actually. Length is not a deterrent for this bug :3 That said, my story would have to ignore a lot of Horison's plot.
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Well, naturally, yes. Horizons has quite a long and winding plot that covers a lot of ground... not all of it even or steady terrain.
Ive seen so many games engines through the game group, tabletop, models, pen and paper, board, card, LARP even. The main thing is for a working game, essentially, is that the rules come first, then the images, then the text. Best comparisons Ive seen to date, are DnD/Pathfinder Pen and paper thats evolved over many years and have a fair coherency in teh maths, but for known maths, Pokemon console takes teh cake. At its simplest its, every time you gain a level, add 1 to abilities. Your XP is the cube of your level, due to integral calculus. Combat ratios are the probability you will survive an encounter or group of encounters. Las Vegas addiction value on the slot machines is 0.75. Total number of monster encounters in an area should be related in some way to known predator, prey function, values, scaled to play area etc?
But like pinball, when everyone is using the same small range of variation in engine mechanics, all you get is a lot of identical clones like RPGMaker games ,(largest Ive played to date is 2.3 Gig and its not even 3/4 complete), or the biggest companies spend more time litigating against each other due to similar behaviour and the lawyers end up with the players money and the code has to be so different the engine can no loger be in the good quality region but has by definition got to be junk.
Been trying to follow this sort of thing up for years, sort of like GURPS, Generalised, but Meta generalised, with translation and transformation matricies so that you could take an 6 ability DnD monster and at least algorithm wise map it to most other vairations, like 4 ability etc relatively simply. Hopefully. Eventually.
Ah, its been 20 years plus so far, the computers will be dreaming it first. Should be, Ive been looking at that for nearly 40 years.
Well what are you waiting for? Go do something awesome!
4970714 I could totaly have a FoE story with a semi-sane MC who literally saw and interacted with spirits relating to mechanical things, who happened to be cybernetic. I mean, come on. I gotta. It's a Meep Law.
4970710 TBH, I dont like Horizons that much. But it's still an okay way to spend a few minutes when a new chapter is done out :3
4970711 Yeah this thing is basically a Dark Heresy clone. And the fact that my group who PLAYS DH can't even tell if we made characters right speaks volumes >.>
Well its easy to ignore everyone else.. Ignoring yourself is MUCH Much harder
4970719
Im useless at generating characters, theyre either cabbages or hseets of maths and article links that show that he cant be overpowered with a total planetary time stop because this is how its done.
Worst case one was wanting to have somewhere to stay, and something to do as a behind the background Equestrian resident, one of the millions we never see country wide over the canon, so I thought why not start with a family members garden shed, put wheels on it, living quarters, cargo area, workshop, then given this was right at the start, how to work out time. Came out to 8 hours sleep and home, 8 hours random jobs round town, and 8 hours turning gems into melt fibre onto a grooved drum thats taken off as a similar array to a weaving loom a thousand threads wide, then stacking a thousand of those together to form a foot square, then three of those to form a foot cube. With a billion points of optical interaction. Repeat for a thousand cubes over 5 years, line the floor, walls and roof of the shed.
So, Im stuck here with a Class 1 Sentient artifact absolutely definitly designed to be more capable that I ever could be, that looks like a mobile garden shed, and due to virtualised external energy control by design, and a whole bunch of discoveries over the decades, could go toe to toe with Discord at least.
A simple example. It at the least understands the idea behind LSpace, 4th wall, and Pinkie.
But, that makes for a truely atrocious story. And has for the last few decades.
Would you like to hear how theoretically, with what we currently understand, Pinkie could grow a 4 inch geode that hatches into a polymorphic liquid crystal entity thats can be a million times smarter than Starswirl? Well, all the smarts, depends on how the Wisdom thing is handled.
Stories and games teach whats possible, whats not possible, and why something is not possible when it obviously is because if you argue about it you get publically heresied.
A FoE RPG?
A Meep written FoE story?
You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.
Also I have been hearing that 76 is a rather not mess, the only people who have been enjoying the game are ones playing with friends, but for friends with different schedule and in different time zones (looking at you Meep) relying on that just doesn't work that well.
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It has micro-transactions. It's NOT singleplayer, or CO-OP. It's an MMO. It has NO NPCs. It lacks the storyline we've come to expect with a Fallout Title. it's a big pile of dissapointment that's already done visible damage to the brand. Just because some people like it dosnt mean it's a good game :/
Seeing a Fallout Equestria story from you would be awesome! Would you like some OCs for the story? You are welcomed to use my changeling hive.
I think I may have run across that RPG before.. I was also not very impressed..
When it's done could I have a copy?
one thing i would like to see in a fallout equestria fic is further explanation and world building of some small elements that were mentioned in the original.
Two things i hate to see in Fo;E fics is first, Ais of any level, and second, equestrians using Balefire bombs. i mean come on, it was established that these thing don't exist in the original.
just give me some zebra war machines and spark craters, ok?
4970846 I don't see why not :3
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No problem there :3
What what? I mean, I get the balefire. It's very clearly established that Balefire is a Zebra weapon and anyone who could use it wold need to be either a necromancer, or have learned the spell from a Zebra who knew it still (Presumably a zebra from Zebrica woudl have a small chance of knowing how to make them, since Zebrica was hit much less than Equestrian, and with Celestia Prime, not Balefire.) So I'm with you there...
But no AI? Do you not remember how Pip is almost killed by robots in the weapons factory early on? Not all of them were Robobrains. There's also Watcher's little flying robots (Their name escapes me) which are able to navigate the Wasteland autonomously. What about all the pop-up turrets? What about Twilight's talking robot Owl in her ministry Hub in Canterlot? That thing could hold a conversation with you and was able to folow instructions better than Alexa or Siri.
It's pretty clear to me that Ponies actually did develop at least a functional equivalent to AI. Personally I like to think they used magic to make a spirit live within the machine and obey instructions. Because, you know, magic is being blended into Fallout here. That said, inspit of the flavoring, it's still AI.
... Or did you mean like, AI as in Skynet type massive superintelegent machines? Because if that's what you meant, then... Also no... Ish? Crusader Mainframes are a thing in the original FoE. That said, there are only three of them and they are all accounted for so you can't really do anything with them. Also they are not super intelligent, see Stable 29's Crusader deciding to slowly kill the population so it kept pace with the slow decay of their Water Talisman instead of just telling someone in the Vault "BTDubs, fix the water. KTHX, bai!"
Still, Ponies did clearly have access to intelligent machines capable of following simple instructions (poorly) and preform basic tasks. That said, I'm certain their operation is more magic than Tech, because in FoE, Technology is Magic.
those are simple programs that use spells to identify things, like how E.F.S finds friendlies form aggressors. The only machines capable of thought where the Crusader Maneframes.
4970924 XD I think we're in disagreement due to how we define our terms. I am using AI in the technical programming sence. Namly:
"A branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers."
Any program capable of making any decision at all is an example of AI. The little digital chip in your thermostat which simply reads a temperature sensor and if that sensor reports a temperature other than 65F, will either turn on the AC or the heat to bring the temperature back to what you want it to be is in fact a form of AI. The code that lets the Mars rovers navigate across the Martian surface by letting them understand what rocks are via an array of sensors and know to go around those rocks is AI.
A machine capable of independent thought which includes the ability to think of answers to problems that are not programmed is also AI, but that's not a requirement for a program to be said to be AI. AI has existed since 1943 when two guys modeled the behavior of a neuron in code, creating a program capable of making a decision.
Heck! I can and have coded AIs myself using a language that's been basically dead since the 90s. Check this out.
This is from a program I made to helpme create character backstories. This section of the code tells the computer to see what it decided the character's sexual prefrenes are, and then if they are not asexual decide if they are single, married, divorced, or engaged. Then after it has decided, it is to go to a specific subroutine to make the appropriate changes to the character sheet it is building based on what it decided.
This is an example of AI. The computer is told to do a task, is presented with options it can choose between, and selects one. Most mainstream definitions of AI wouldn't call this AI, but I dont see why they get to decide what AI is when they are not the ones who code programs :P
I find that when most people say AI what they mean (by the definitions I have come to use due to who I hang out with) is AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence, which is a machine that is basically a human in a box. I will absolutely agree that FoE's ponies do not have anything approaching AGI outside of the Crusader Mainframes, but their robots and other technology are examples of AI any time the machine has to make decisions of any kind, weather it can come up with new ways to solve a problem or if it relies exclusively on per-programed options.
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See, Planetside got away with no npcs by being an mmofps wargame with constantly shifting frontlines and hundreds of players on a side so there's always someone to engage.
76 is too sparse for that, and a Fallout game needs monsters and raiders and feral ghouls to feel right...if there are NO npcs, they're gonna have to add 'em quick if they don't want it to fall apart.
Shame. I was gonna pick it up when I got around to it. I'll wait and see if they fix it; may wind up being one of those free download mmos on xbox live before a year goes by if they don't get their shit together.
*clears throat*
BEP WANT.
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yes, i just don't like they always add Artificial General Intelligences.
intelligent pipbucks
4971077 I know what you're talking about. THat made no sence for the setting at all...
I do plan something LIKE an AGI, but:
1. It's a robot shell built for a particular spirit so the spirit can do things.
2. So, it's abscissa a possessed object.
3. The character who sets all this up is an inventor with the ability to interact with spirits thanks to hanging out with some Zebras and some... well, mild insanity.
I think that all checks out.
This sounds interesting. Especially if it actually has a happier ending (not THAT kind. There's only room for one mind in this gutter)!
4971338Oh it would have a happy ending :3
Ikr? I was nearly in tears about the end of that glorious piece of fanfiction! Also, this rpg, are you making it an actual computer/board game?
Also also, lets hear the Fallout fanfic idea!
4971524 Oh god no! I am not able to code anything more than CLI stuff. It's a PnP ruleset that I'm fixing.
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So its a board game? Maybe?
4971531 Do you know what a Pen and Paper Roleplaying Game is? Because it's that.
In case you don't know, imagine a set of rules which allows a group of people to tell a story together via the use of statistics, dice, and a "referee" to help simulate events within the narrative you make together.
These existed before videogames were a thing. YOu abscialy sit down at a table or something with friends, paper, a pencil, some dice, and do the math a video game would do yourself while imagining the visuals. It's soert of like reading a book that way. I know the idea of doing math for fun sounds like the worst thing ever, but for RPGs that math is by necessity simple and exists so there are fair rules and no one can go "Well I win because I have a god proof axe!"
Unlike videogames and books, PnP RPGs are awesome in that they are totally unlimited in terms of player freedom. You can truly be anything and do anything appropriate to the game world, assuming your characters skill is up to the task and lady luck smiles on you.
I don't even fuckin know what my first fanfic on here was. as far as I'm aware, I've just kind of always been here, despite that being demonstrably not the case.
Fallout Equestria is good though, I like it because I'm a sad person who likes sad things that have that little glimmer of love and hope, enhancing that glimmer in brightness and purity far beyond any saccharine story's shtick.
And yay, tabletop RPGs. That thing I can't get into because of reasons. Sucks to suck, I guess.
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HAH! NEEEERRRRRRRD!!!!!
Jk! Jk! I already know what pen and paper rpgs are. I have actually taken an interest in DnD recently.
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The reason I can't get into any table rpgs is because I'm:
Forever Alone....
And I have a potat for a comp. So there is that too........