The Conversion Bureau: Yellowstone

by Anonsi

Another Bonus Thing!

Yellowstone: The d20 System
By: Anonsi (Who saw this coming? I didn't)

A great many of you are probably wondering, "What is going on here? I thought Anonsi updated Yellowstone!" Well, in a way, I did. BEHOLD!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z6M9sy06392pNgekqioNThoO1aab3tTCRDQ6h90neBs/edit#bookmark=id.mjie4yifzhjb

That, dear friends, leads to a Google Document file of The Conversion Bureau: Yellowstone RPG Setting and Rules. No, your eyes are not attempting to deceive you in some sort of terrible optic coup, this exists. I have made these rules for your enjoyment, and to entertain anyone that has been finding themselves without a good chuckle for sometime. (I'm also trying to be manlier than Krass, which is very hard to do.)

Is this worth the digital paper it's printed on? Probably not, but I did it for fun so I doubt that really matters

Comments

[Zervziel]

Dang. Was hoping for a new chapter.

[Anonsi]

675593
I'm sure you're one of many. But remember, this is the old Yellowstone. Any updates to the actual story will be for YtS, not this.

Sorry to disappoint, but if it makes you feel better, now that I'm no longer working on this, I can focus entirely on episode 6!

[Zervziel]

675605 Actually I was a bit confused for a moment. I knew this was done, I was hoping for a new chapter in YtS and got mixed up temporarily.

[Erik Tiber]

I almost missed this! This is just.... so AWESOME!

[Anonsi]

753134
Glad you like it, but feel free to point out any way it can be improved. Any input from a reader is valuable.

[Anonsi]

932820
THE TYPOS...THEY JUST NEVER END

Thank you for pointing those out. I'll fix them post haste.

[Anonsi]

1451622
1451867
I try my best. I'm just glad someone thinks its funny other than me.

[Anonsi]

1812914
Yeah, at the time of writing I was all, "that doesn't make any sense what are you doing."
Thankfully I got a chance to explain it in the bonus chapter, and even more thankful it makes some amount of sense.

[FinalFan]

1834369 Au contraire! That is baseline suspension -- doing what is necessary to get into a story about a self-consistent world that is different from our own. But, after having done so, if the local equivalent of Mother Teresa goes on a chainsaw killing spree, one tends to balk.

Anyway, the story did give justification later. (Alien impostor!)

[Anonsi]

1838675
Glad you enjoyed it, and thank you for the compliments. And yes, there was some definite shades of Firefly's Captain Reynolds in Hawk.
Though if there is anything of Star Wars in there other than a reference, then I'd like to hear about it. I don't recall planning anything along those lines.

[Banchoking]

I love this so much!

[Metemponychosis]

I really need to stop reading stories with stupid premises.

[Anonsi]

4504075
Thank you for your criticism. I don't recall ever getting such a lengthy dismantling of my work before, but I welcome it wholeheartedly.
I do feel that I need to at least address some of your grievances for us both to get something out of this, so I'll do my best so we both walk away from this without becoming frustrated or something. I guess I'll just work my way down your post. Seems to be the most efficient.

Yes, I did pretty much gloss over the whole potion and pony invasion thing. At that point of writing the story I didn't know how far I wanted to go from the original concept, so things like the potion altering the mind of the drinker, and the colonial imperialism of the ponies are still in there just so people knew what writing universe this all took place in.
Granted, I don't use either of those facets of the universe that much, and in fact I believe I only chose the CB universe as a means to an end in terms of how I was going to get ponies and humans together. I could have expanded on those particular threads, but I wanted to go a completely different direction than all the other CB stories that were out at the time.

The character Hawk is indeed a mary sue in terms of violence. If I was being realistic, he should either be out of the rest of the book or dead. However, I was writing this like an action movie, so I took some liberties with realistic gun shot wounds. I mean, It would be like trying to fault Schwarzenegger in one of his action movies.
As for his characterization, I agree with you that I did write him a bit too blood thirsty, but it doesn't seem too much of a stretch for him, especially given the setting.

And now for the largest point of contention that I myself have often considered too much, even for me: The Big Bag O' Guns. Yeah...it's name should really just be The Gag Bag of Convenience. I will say that I am not a gun fanatic though, as implausible as that may seem. I pretty much just rattled off any gun I actually knew about, and if I needed to know anything more specific, I googled some info about them. As for the amount of guns and gun fighting, the story is an action western. It's got to have at least one big gun fight.
To the point of Twilight knowing the what guns are which despite her own lack of any gun related trivia: It was just easier to tell the reader what kind of gun it was.

The villains. They were definitely supposed to reflect the worst in humanity. They are unsympathetic and outrageously evil for that reason, and for the reason that the reader will be rooting for their eventual down fall. It may have been too much, I'll admit that I am not really a good at determining such things, but I think they were memorable and hated, and that's what counts.
Of course my biggest concern was that their big master plan was so outlandish as to be any sort of threatening. Which it probably is.

The final point of humans being savage is sort of the point in westerns. Twilight fills the role of the cultured city person, come to the wild west town, where being civilized doesn't much help. And it helped that at the time of writing this, Twilight was the sort of pony that didn't know how to shoot rays or beams.
As for the undertones of the evil princess Celestia and he legion of smiling drones...I was just using tropes from other CB stories, and in fact kind of regret it now. I didn't intend to actually go anywhere with it. In fact I actually prefer thinking that Celestia just overreacted the whole situation humans were in. I mean, as far as this story's universe goes.

I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the story, but I am thankful for your critique just the same. If I ever write again (which as it stands now is probably a big nope, but you never know) I'll certainly hope that I can avoid relying too much on convenience and sue-ish protagonists.

Again, thank you.

[Vaalintine]

4506043
I have to largely agree with what he said, though not to the same vigorous extent. The ponies do really feel kinda evil in the story, given that they don't seem to much actually care about how they're affecting people and how it would violate their selfhood. On the other hand Twilight herself is quite likable, even if I don't agree with all her opinions on things.

While most ponies don't seem genuinely malicious, they do seem immoral. The potion as it is in the story seems like they could have done so much more with, if they truly wished to help onstead of satisfy a savior complex so to justify taking over a world. Instead of basically... harming them, I guess you could say, it could just turn them into ponies straight out, leaving them nore prone to qcting and thinking in ponylike ways rather than subtracting from them because something in them is "inherently wicked". Plus that the potion can work on ANYTHING is a horrifying prospect for every other species of equestria, as well as the fact that it is irreversible. It says to me the ponies have just as much of what they proport humans to have, albeit in a fashion other than physically confrontational.

It seems a shame to me that it will all end with the world being conquered by equestria and everybody newfoals serving the diarchy, with more and more humans being forced to ponify because they have no choice with human civilization collapsing. This opposed to life continuing on earth with human society remaining, albeit with the inhabitants changed in species, or the equestrians allowing humans to go back to being human if they leave equestria. It seems like they aimed for a situation where their help comes at a cost they could have chosen to not force on people, when they could have instead averted earth's collapse entirely.

Altogether a very good read, one where even as I upvote the story I simultaneously approve and dissaprove.