Twilight had been bored for the past few weeks, nothing exiting, interesting, or otherwise downright hilarious had happened in Ponyville. So today, she decided, she would spice things up a bit by hosting the best sleep over ever. Now, knowing her friends well, she did realise that this title could be a little farfetched, but, being the optimistic type, she intended to at least have a good, memorable time with her five best friends she had gained during her time spent in Ponyville. Her initial idea was to have a fantastic night camping out in a big tent, enjoying the wild, cooking delicious marshmallows around a cosy campfire whilst sharing stories of all genres. That was her initial idea, but then came the rain. Twilight however, would not be defeated so easily; she invited her friends around for a sleepover, an inside sleepover (which would be much to Rarity’s delight at least.) Surely the six ponies could find something to do inside the tree-house library; sure, Rainbow Dash wouldn’t exactly enjoy reading the informative books Twilight had lying around, and Applejack would rather do something more practical, Pinkie Pie will be bored out of her mind if they don’t throw a party, and if they did, Rarity would be in tears at the disorder and mess that would be sure to follow, Fluttershy would want to be with her animal friends and Spike wouldn’t be best pleased at the idea of a sleepover in the library anyway. ‘Oh well,’ she thought to herself, ‘at least everypony will get some sort of memory from this, it’ll be fine, they’ll find plenty of interesting and exciting things to do...’
“Oh come on Twilight, there must be somethin’ we can do in this here library to make this time pass by a lil’ quicker,” Applejack asked, she wasn’t exactly happy with the situation after being promised that they would be camping outside in the wild, in the great outdoors.
“Yeah, a library, really fun...” Rainbow Dash commented sarcastically, “If we were all eggheads,” she added, taking a short, shallow stab at Twilight, who seemed rather immune to such insults after discovering that Rainbow loved to read children’s books and stories like Daring Do and such.
“Now now RD, I’m sure that there are more than just old books in here, I don’t think even Twilight would be able to survive on just reading,” Applejack defended, treading lightly (metaphorically of course.)
Twilight’s face reddened slightly with embarrassment; sure, there were lots of fun things she did other than reading, like studying and such. Reading and studying are different, right? She thought hard for a moment, surely there’s got to be something... anything that they could do?
Her trail of intense pondering was broken by Rarity, who turned out to be as much as a jewel with her eyes than her eyes were jewels for finding- well... jewels, “there are some old board games in here,” she suggested from the other side of the room, a satin white hoof held out to an open cabinet filled with dusty, battered boxes of games, due to such dust, Rarity refrained from moving any closer to them, in fact, she was as far away from the games as she could possibly be without letting the door slam shut, her head held away from them in disgust.
“We’re going to play board games? Are you serious?” A certain blue Pegasus questioned.
“That sounds so... boring!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed.
After a few minutes of everypony sitting around doing absolutely nothing, the six friends realised that there surely wasn’t anything else to do, each of the ponies slowly agreeing with the sentiment that this was the only possible thing to do to avoid total boredom.
Twilight moved over to the pile, picking the top box, she suggested, “Chess?”
“No.” Dash replied blatantly, she remembered the time when Fluttershy won the last tournament they played together, it was first of five, and Fluttershy won all five.
“There can only be two players, and, umm, there are six of us here...” Fluttershy added, a slight tone of distaste in her voice suggested that she also did not wish to play a board game, however she was just going along with the idea because they were her friends... and there was definitely nothing better to do with their time, (which is very hard to imply with just the tone of your voice, may I add.)
“Well, how about... Scrabble then?” Twilight asked hopefully- she was good at Scrabble.
Rarity shook her head in mutual disagreement with the group, ”ugh, please, Twilight! I doubt Rainbow Dash or Applejack would have the aptitude to...”
“Hey!” Rainbow Dash protested, “I am quite good with words! It would be Pinkie Pie making up random words like ‘pickle-barrel’ and ‘cumquat’,” she added, quoting the words of the finest pink party pony in all of Ponyville (like there’s more than one...)
“You do know they are real words- right?” Twilight pointed out.
“Whatever,” Dash replied.
“So what- ah may not be the literate...ist of ponies, but I sure are intelligent enough to play some simple game of Scrabble,” Applejack stated.
Rarity was quick to hold her head in her hooves. Twilight then began reeling off a list of games as she took them from the cupboard, the six friends passing each game off as some ‘lame’, ‘boring’, ‘god-awful’, ‘pointless’ or otherwise disliked pastime in which nopony at the sleepover would ever be seen dead playing (they didn’t actually say that one, just strongly conveyed through body language and such.) This was, until the remaining few boxes were called, “Monopoly? Dungeons Are Magic? Rummikub? Frustration? Dominoes? Chec...”
“Hold on a second,” Dash demanded, stopping the constant stream of game titles being called out as their respective boxes were discarded across the room, “What was that last one?” She asked.
“Checkers?” Twilight replied, questioning the Pegasus- was checkers some sort of amazing game to Dash? It was almost identical to chess (for the likes of Twilight, who had won every game she had ever played.)
“No, before that.”
“Dominoes?”
“Back one.”
“Frustration?”
“Nope, back a couple more.”
“Ugh,” Twilight moaned, “Dungeo...”
“Yes! That one sounds cool!” Rainbow cried.
“E-Questria: Dungeons Are Magic’,” Twilight quoted from the lid of the box, “’A game for two to sixteen players...’ ‘Dive into the immersive multiplayer experience with all your friends’,” she continued.
“Ooh, I like doing things with my friends!” Pinkie hollered cheerfully, “Is it fun?” she asked, grabbing Rarity and Applejack and smiling joyously in what appeared to be an over expressive tone of voice, but then again- it is Pinkie Pie.
Rainbow Dash sighed, “dungeons- and magic? How can it not be fun?” she stated zealously, “it sounds so awesome!” she squealed.
Twilight Sparkle dusted off the game’s box with her hoof, “I haven’t played this game in years- Spike used to love it back when he was younger,” she explained.
After delving through the various booklets in the box, Rarity posed herself against the idea of this game, “I personally don’t like it,” She stated, “it all seems a bit... barbaric to say the least.”
“More like fun!” Pinkie Pie corrected with a screech from a position over Rarity’s shoulder, giggling to herself as she bounced around the room like her usual self.
Rainbow Dash snatched the hoofful of booklets from Rarity, scanning through the sections of text which were in larger fonts until she had a good enough understanding of the games rules and regulations, she quickly decided to take control of the game at hoof, “right, so this game is a role playing ga...”
“We already know that RD.” Applejack stated.
“Oh, umm, what’s a role playing game?” Fluttershy asked.
“A role playing game is where everypony acts like they are a character, sometimes from history, or from famous novels,” Twilight explained confidently, perhaps even quoting... a dictionary?
“...Right, so, this is a role playing game...” Dash paused to see if anypony else wanted to interrupt before she moved on, “And everypony acts like a character they made up in a... fantasy world?”
“A made up world where there is much more magic than our own, many more dragons and dangerous creatures and the setting is usually set around the middle ages,” Twilight explained once more.
“Oh, and one of us has to be some sort of quest master...”
“And what does that involve?” Rarity mumbled, displeased that they were actually going to participate in such a game.
“I was just getting on to that,” Rainbow Dash replied, (she was rather annoyed if you ask me, she can’t go one sentence without getting some inane or completely obvious question or explanation thrown at her,) “the quest master controls the game and tells the story as well as...” she quoted, “rolling all the necessary roles for the dice during combat and miscellaneous checks,” Dash looked over at Twilight, “I bet you’d be good at that sort of thing Twilight.” (She strongly implied that Twilight should more than definitely be the quest master.)
Twilight was pleased at this decision, “Okay, I guess somepony has got to keep all of you in line, I’m pretty sure I was not very good at the whole role-playing side of things anyway- back when I played it with Spike, although I do love reading...”
“We guessed.” Dash rudely interrupted.
After a long session of Rainbow Dash repeatedly explaining and re-explaining the rules (then having Twilight give a much better explanation so that everypony else could understand,) the ponies finally began to play the game, including Rarity, who was already getting into the idea of role-play; seeing as the game involved some costume making and modelling- although she forced herself to hide her enthusiasm.