After so many years of being a player, transitioning to GMing was a difficult process. Suddenly Apollo had to go from simply knowing the right course of action for himself to take, which could be difficult enough in itself—and find a way to organize intellectual and moral challenges for the other ponies in his group.
Of course there was an infinite number of possible shards they could save—or create, as was more accurately the case. He was doing Celestia’s work, helping to manifest in reality one of the infinite multiverse of creatures and ponies who would live there.
Ultimately, he had to accept that there would be significant discomfort and pain in the world before the story was concluded and its heroes succeeded—for their challenges to be meaningful and the stakes significant, they needed some evil to overcome. But when it was done, they could leave somewhere desirable, or at least better off, somewhere he too would likely reside for at least a few centuries. Their last campaign setting had kept them engaged for twice that long.
But Campfire Tale had spent the downtime growing fascinated with the slice-of-life stories he could experience as a single pony, rather than the sweeping epics he could plan and eventually complete as their storyteller. With the chair empty, Apollo was more than ready to try filling it.
He spent tens of thousands of hours in the expanded campaign room, literally tearing out the stones and rebuilding it as a way of exercising his mind in preparation for the new world he wanted to create. In terms of intellectual exercises, the effort proved profitable.
“Am I interrupting something?” asked a voice from behind him. He spun, and there was Noire in the airlock. The new planning room had to be thematic, part of the universe it was helping to save.
As she stepped through, a gravity suit appeared around her, clinging tight to her body. She was a little older now—they all were—but their relationship was far more than that. After so many years together, there weren’t even human words left for the complex network of physical and intellectual ties that connected them.
“Finally got all the walls on!” she exclaimed, drifting slowly across the room to the holotable. In its magical field, a low-resolution projection of his setting’s star map appeared, its many colonies and stations mere blips of blurred text at this scale. “And the power. Must be close.”
He rose, dismissing his gaming notes with a swiping motion of one hoof. “Big day,” he agreed. “Probably the last time you’ll see me like this for a long while. Change of setting calls for a change of pace.”
She rolled her eyes, rubbing up against him and resting her head briefly under his in the equine equivalent of a hug. Whatever else they had become, the gaming room was too sacred for anything more. The fate of worlds was decided in here. “You say it like it makes a difference. So long as you’re gonna put us up against something epic.”
She reached down to the table, knocking a few of the miniatures with her wing. As each one fell, they expanded, revealing a few gigantic space-miners, populated with thousands of ponies each. They were more like the props used to film old science fiction dramas, rather than pewter models. A new setting called for a few new materials.
“I will,” he promised. “You have no idea. Explosions, starships, mysterious Alicorn princesses, and fierce villains. I called a few old friends to help me make sure the science checks out for low-automation realistic space primitives.”
“Wish it wasn’t next year,” she said wistfully. “We should just do it tomorrow.”
He winced. “Ask Celestia, not the rest of the group. I need the time.”
She shoved him, then stepped back. “And leave you without my company for all that time? Maybe Honeycomb would like all the extra time, but I’ll pass.”
He shrugged. He might be glad of her choice, but it was more fun not to admit it. They’d had plenty of years living in perfect harmony, and that just wasn’t fun. A little conflict, all the right kinds of tension kept in balance—that was what made a satisfying friendship.
“It’s not like the first session has to be the start. As soon as character creation is over you can hop in, spend as much time in the world as you want. With the understanding that nothing big is gonna happen with the plot until our first session.”
Noire hovered over the table, gliding to the other side and sticking her tongue out as soon as she was out of reach. The new gaming room was easily large enough to let her fly however she wanted, with a huge dome of glass overhead filled with the slowly shifting starfield above.
“You’re changing to GM. You don’t know how different my next character will be. Maybe I want magic this time, you don’t know. Maybe I won’t be someone who waits on your timetable and takes what they want, when they want it. You won’t be the GM outside this room, you can’t stop me.”
He kept his expression neutral. “We’ll see if you have the guts. My character won’t be anything special outside of this room, though. No GMPC, it was so lame whenever Campfire’s favorite NPCs saved the day. I’ll be a whoever, living with the consequences of your failures like everypony else.”
And that was one of the most thrilling parts of all. In the ancient days before Equestria, they had sometimes lost in their games, even by design. But they didn’t have to live in the world they’d failed before.
Of course, he could always change shards, and only come into game like Moonstone or Campfire did. But that wasn’t nearly as satisfying as knowing the dice had real consequences.
“Won’t happen,” Noire countered. “It doesn’t matter if our epic levels are left behind in the old setting. We’ll make this an adventure to remember.”
In Equestria, it couldn’t happen any other way.