Spike of All Trades

by Ariamaki


Chapter 60: ...and Ponka

To access Party Options, first form a party with others using the command "Invite NAME". Note that some features are only available if members are within certain level ranges.

"Invite Twilight Sparkle."

Spike had no idea what to expect, but what he got was even better than his best theory: Twilight jumped, fully leapt into the air with all four hooves. She landed on her hooftips and danced around briefly, looking at something he couldn't see... Which meant she had her own menu, in this context.

"Spike! Oh my stars it's... I know we'd already confirmed everything but seeing the menu with my own eyes is so different. Alright, let me just..."

She dipped her head down and tapped with her horn (still nervously dancing on her hooves) and became almost palpably disappointed when the menu... presumably vanished. He guessed as much because at the same time, a new box appeared in front of him.

Your party invitation was accepted! Please make a name for your party.

"...Team Purple Pink and Green."

Is the name 'Team Purple Pink and Green' acceptable?

"Yes."

He noticed Twilight was going to interrupt, but his engine beat her to the punch and intercepted her interruption: A new screen popped up for him, and given the angle of her glance he could tell she was looking at the same thing. Pinkie stood off to one side for the moment, just softly smiling and watching. He didn't want to make her wait too long, so he flicked through the new screen quickly.

A nice cutting-edge heads-up-display showed Twilight's level and name, as well as her HP and MP bars (no numbers, just the fullness) and then his info-box above that. Spike's precise HP and MP values were shown, probably because it was his own information... And he also had a crown next to his name. At the very bottom were buttons for Options, Eject, and Promote: Presumably he was the party leader, with the ability to pass off leadership to another or kick out offending members at will.

Options could wait: They had a guest, after all.
"Invite Pinkie Pie!"

"Ooooh, bluebox! Lemme just... doink!"

Pinkie practically whipped the button with her mane, and he was unsurprised at this point to see that it worked. This time he only got the invitation-accepted notice, and no follow-up question. Pinkie started looking through her menus... While Spike stared above her head. His eyes had been caught by a sudden change in the text there, and where he expected to see another joke?

Pinkie Pie
LV 19

Nineteen? And no title... Were these the 'real' stats for Pinkie Pie, and everything before had been confused or the engine messing with him? Or was the engine just coping like most ponies and struggling to keep up with her? She certainly had HP and MP bars just like his and Twilight's. For once he refrained from using Observe: This was something he could take his time figuring out.

"Neat! So what all do we have goin' on here?"

He flicked through the various options, extrapolating from the information there.
"Alright, so there's a setting for Experience Division: By default it's set to Fair Share, where each member of the party gets as much XP as the work they put in. Half the work, half the spoils. But it has other options too, and they're all locked to only work if everypony is within a 10-level range of each other, so I can't turn them on."

"Would you be able to make a party with just me and Pinkie so we could test them?"

"...Ah. Um. Two problems there: First off, I haven't figured out any meaningful way to get levelling experience apart from quests, and the other thing is... That still wouldn't work."

It only took a moment for Twilight to realize what he meant, and she immediately seemed to regret asking. Pinkie on the other hoof was still grinning like usual, flipping her hoof up and down across whatever menus and buttons she could access.
"Yeah I thought as much! I've never really been one for getting better at stuff the usual way, so I bet my level isn't a ton better than a normal pony's, much less up there with Twilight Sparkle... This Pie has plenty of her own tricks though!"

"Don't we know it, Pinkie! Alright, so that's not an option. I assume the other settings were the usual fare for games with multiplayer partying?"

Spike nodded and rattled off the options on his fingers.
"Equal distribution, final blow only, leader distributes. And from that middle one, I'm going to guess that combat experience is sort of the 'default' for whatever reason... Which would explain why the ponies of the Guard I've seen are so high, and why Rainbow Dash is above average too."

"Well in most engine-driven games and a lot of tabletop campaigns, combat is a core driver of the mechanical interactions. I'm not surprised the system kept that intact... Even if you don't have the luxury of a GM giving you fodder to fight."

He shrugged and gestured up above his head. It brought a smile to his face when Twilight gasped: It had been a hunch that she could see his title and level, but he was glad to have it proven out.
"It looks like it gives me Story Arc quests to compensate: If a military pony had a power like this, I doubt it would hoof them 50,000 experience in the average day."

"Oooh Spikey, look at this one!"

Pinkie pointed into thin air, and he held back a sigh... and another smile.
"Pinkie, I know we can both see our own menus, but I can't really see yours."

"Oh, right. What if I just..."

You have received an offer to share skill information. Would you like to view the skill?

"...Yeah you're going to have to show me how you did that."

He hit confirm and then read... Something that simultaneously explained a lot and yet very little.


[The Ponka Nature] (Passive) Lv Yes EXP: No
Some ponies defy explanation. As such, this description shall not overstay its welcome.

Demands the partial or total obfuscation of personal statistics, even from the user.
Allows for the limited use of Chaotic effects and methods, with unknown limits.
Grants a personal form of clairsentience with unique tells and related conditions.
Partially replicates the effect of the [Broken] status with none of its drawbacks.
This ability enhances and scales extremely strongly with LUK and no other attributes.


"It's basically the only thing I can see on my chara-sheet-thingy, except for my blue and red bars. The numbers on those are pretty big: I don't think they're the right size? But that kinda makes sense because... Well, exactly because it doesn't!"

"I've seen you on a three-day kitchen binge leading up to the holiday rush: The fact that you have unnatural amounts of health and magic is as natural as anything else about this situation."

"Ponka-point! Which is not a thing I'm trying to make a thing, it just felt like it was relevant to the discussion at hoof. Skill name jokes, that sorta dealie."

After a little searching, Spike found the menu option Pinkie had used. Apparently contextual options were added to existing menus now that they were in a party. He'd have to keep an eye out for that, and other contexts, in the future... While he was shuffling through all of his options, Pinkie was sharing her only visible skill information with Twilight. Twilight, naturally, was taking notes.

"And Spike, you said you've seen most of my character sheet through using Observe already?"

"Yeah, although I couldn't read the skill descriptions then. They all seemed self-explanatory, to be honest. Don't really need an entire infobox for something like [Tremendous Mana Control] or [Splendid Mana Capacity], and your spells seem to have their own list that I couldn't see."

"So apart from giving us the ability to see these statistics, and the experience sharing... What else is there?"

He looked over his sheet and tried to think. If he were a non-Gamer given access to this, what would he do... first...
"Twilight, can you make a visual reproduction of your sheet real quick? Actually, just the part with the attributes."

"Sure?"

She produced a floating visual image with her magic, the dancing magenta lights showing Spike exactly what he had hoped to see.
"Hah. Hahahha... Oh BOY, this is going to go places!"

"...Uhhh?"

"Twilight, look: You don't have any points to spend... But you have the buttons to spend them."

It took a moment for the implications to sink in, but once they did his (unword) was dancing around on her hind legs, clapping her forehooves together in excitement.
"Spike~! This is such a huge... Oh, does it only work if I actually acquire the level in your party or would it have some level of retroactive function? We need to do testing! I should find a way for us to acquire some Experience as soon as possible, and-"

"Calm, Twilight. Breathing, remember the oxygen. It's your friend."

"Right. Pheeww. Alright. I just... We were just talking about how lopsided my statistical allocation was yesterday, so the idea of being able to correct for that..."

"Why correct for it?"

She blinked at him, while Pinkie picked up on the idea immediately.
"Spike's got a point! For somepony who's just finding themselves it might make sense to cover up those bad spots and get a good solid round-a-base: I told Spike as much already the other day! but you're already an established brainiac and magical wonderpony! If anything, you should be excited about leaning in harder. Play your cards right and you'll never waste a point on Strength again!"

"And that's assuming you can't directly train your stats, which... I think you might be able to? I mean, anypony can, that's what exercise and studying are for. But I know the rate I was getting stat points yesterday was way faster than natural growth and practice. That might carry over through the party too! That way you could have your char-op cake and eat it too."

Unfortunately they didn't have an immediately suitable way to test that: He'd gotten Intelligence and Wisdom points for making leaps of logic and moments of comprehension, but Twilight was already far too advanced in both to have any luck. As for Luck itself, it was... predictably inconsistent. That left the physical stats, which would be too hard to try and level up safely and effectively on such short notice.

Still, they had the idea firm in their minds for later testing, and could turn from that to look at other aspects of the Party system. Promotion and ejection worked as expected: Anypony could leave the party whenever they wanted, but the current leader could also remove them at-will. Spike did notice that even when he passed off leadership, he still had the ability to disband "Twilight and Pinkie's Party Party", as Pinkie had called it. Apparently being the one whose power allowed the parties to exist in the first place gave him administrative privilege.

So members of a Party could gain experience and (assumedly) train stats like the Gamer, spend stats like the Gamer, and view their own character sheets and skill descriptions. They got less precise information than he did, with the notable exception of Pinkie's bizarre passive. Twilight didn't suddenly gain the ability to precisely quantify her MP costs, which was a shame... A shame that also made sense: His magic only worked the way it does because he’s The Gamer. It didn’t do anything to the world around him or the ponies in it without acting through him.

With all of that handled, it only left Options... And there was only one major point of interest there.

"Voice Chat."

He'd already gotten an ability related to his Party's voice chat system yesterday: Susurration, which allowed party members in a fairly long range to communicate 'subvocally', whatever that meant. Looking the word up provided the definition 'Words occurring in speech order inside the mind without audible articulation'... So some kind of silent communication, like telepathy? But getting a skill for silent communication over range probably meant the system already provided a non-silent method.

Spike flicked the toggle to enable the voice chat... And then realized a rather obvious problem.
"Uh, I guess there isn't much point in trying to test voice chat when we're already in earshot, huh?"

Twilight looked at him with a dry expression, eyes pointed down her muzzle.
"While that would normally be true, aren't you supposed to have perfect recall now?"

"Actually I think it's just eidetic memory at this point, I sometimes still have to look things up to-"

He got the actual gist of her joke when she vanished in a crackle-puff of pink energy, leaving him and Pinkie to stare into the empty space for a moment... Until Twilight spoke again, loud and clear as if she had never left.
"I'm practically outside Ponyville town limits at this point: Can you hear me clearly?"

"Crystal! Wow. This is super neat actually: It's sharper than when you were in the room yourself, somehow? It's like helping the DJ with a party mix, it's so different using headphones compared to hearing it over the speakers!"

Spike looked through the voice menu as Pinkie continued to talk, while he fiddled with some of the sliders: Output volume, receiving volume, etc.
"Yeah, she's not wrong: I don't get as many chances to use them myself, but it's definitely more like you're speaking over my shoulder than talking to me from a distance... Much less, what, a mile or two?"

"One point four and a bit lost to rounding, yes. Your replies are likewise very precise and vocally clear... Although I wonder if we could subvert that. Spike, didn't you mention having subtitles available?"

With the bases established, they went on to perform an entire battery of tests. Spike's subtitles did work with the voice chat, but neither of the other members in the party had the option to use them. Another benefit of being the actual Gamer, he supposed. They also tested the language barrier by having Twilight quote a few passages from a science text: His subtitles didn't even show him what she was saying properly, only rendering it as (Spoken Germane) in the subtitle. However, as long as she spoke even barely loud enough for Voice Chat to transmit it? That was displayed just fine.

Pinkie lip-synching words without speaking, on the other hoof, didn't get subtitled. Even when she was clearly intending to speak but not producing sound, he didn't get a hint of it. As soon as her voice raised up even a little, then it worked. That segued cleanly into testing out Susurration, which did have subtitles, but...

Alright, so everypony can hear me? Or, I guess, 'hear' me?

Yuppers! You're a lot more pleasant than the normal voices I get in here.

Hah, good one Pinkie. I say-think because the idea that you're not joking is enough to unsettle me quite a bit.

Oh Twilight, you know I'm just trying to make you laugh!

Of course... But that still doesn't mean you're joking.

Pinkie didn't respond to that, and Spike didn't bother trying to get clarification: Sometimes it's best to just let sleeping dogs lie. Susurration conversations were weird, happening almost entirely in your own head... With the added wrinkle that Spike's subtitles worked on this not-speech. True to the skill description it had a range limit of a hundred yards, which went up as it levelled. Also true to the description, they could use other party members as a relay: If Spike went to the furthest end of the Library and Pinkie stood by the front door, then he could talk to Twilight from outside his max range, as long as Pinkie was close enough in the middle.

Pinkie apparently didn't hear what they were discussing when she did this: Conversations using the Voice Chat and Susurration both had options for privacy within the party, and being the middlemare wasn't enough to override that. Spike confirmed that when he switched positions with her, and then Twilight made her own testing efforts. Eventually the three of them had exhausted the features worth noting (at least, the ones that were able to be tested in this environment) in the Party system. With that done, they regrouped back at the central Library table to discuss the next step.