My Little RPG

by Flash Notion

Session 2, Part 1: Re-Dux

Author's Note:

This time it's a little different. Seasons 1and 2 are a bit boring in-between the two parters, and I felt it would be a waste of your time to go into detail of every single one. So I came up with a way to skip them, mostly. Hopefully this part is enjoyed as well!

Ponies the RPG

Campaign 2.

Part 1 of 3

Hello! So after a while without any new recordings appearing, I decided to do a bit of poking around. Detective Flash, on the case! I eventually tracked down a phone number, and, well:

Recording starts.

“Hello?”

“Hello? Is this Suri?”

…

“I'm not buying anything.”

“I'm not a telemarketer!”

…

“My name's Flash Notion. I'm a writer.”

“Okay...”

“A few weeks ago I received a package; it was a recording-”

“Let me guess. Me and a couple others playing a game?”

“I think so. Just so we're clear, you're Suri? Friends named Tyra, Sadie, Abby-”

“-Fleur, Bella, Rayanna, and Diane, who is going to get her ass reamed for sending you that recording after I told her to erase it.”

“Don't be too mad! I really enjoyed listening to it. It felt amateurish, but fairly genuine. Do you guys- gals- play those kind of games often?”

(laughter) “Not exactly. I mean, we're pretty settled in now, but back then? Nope. And that first campaign was a trainwreck. We were just experimenting, you know? Before that it was all fairly standard Dungeons and Dragons-type stuff, nothing extraordinary. I was kind of rail-roady as a GM.”

“I see. So- um. You ah, you wouldn't happen to have any... more. Recordings, that is?”

…

“Why did you say you were calling again? Heck, why'd Diane send the recording to you?”

“I dunno why she sent it to me. But I had an idea- I found the recording fun, even a bit funny. I wanted to share it-”

“Oh god, please tell me it isn't plastered on YouTube.”

“No! No, nothing like that. I'm a writer. I transcribed it, and I'd like to publish it.”

…

“Huh?”

(slowly) “I'm a writer. I want to publish a transcript of the recording I received of your gaming session. Because it was funny to me.”

…

…

“Do you really think people would like it?”

“Heck if I know. But I did.”

…

“I guess. I mean, I don't see any harm in that. Just don't tell people how to call me or anything.”

“Wouldn't dream of it. So, do you?”

“Dream of it?”

…

“What?”

“What?”

(snorting)

…

“Sorry. What were you asking?”

“If you had more recordings. Or if Diane has any.”

“Sorry, but the answer's no. I've had a pretty hard-ass rule about no recordings after that first disaster.”

…

“I see...”

…

“Sorry.”

“No, it's fine. It's perfectly understandable. I'll just publish the first bit, that's all good.”

…

…

“Well-”

“Hang on.”

…

“What?”

…

…

“I could start doing the recordings. Make it, like, just a part of our sessions.”

…

“That'd be nice, but there'll be a big missing part-”

“I'll tell you all about what's been happening.”

“Huh?”

“Can you record this conversation?”

…

…

“Flash?”

…

“I am.”

“What?”

…

“I already am. I was recording it. So I could have proof if you gave me permission.”

…

(audible inhale)

…

“I would've deleted it after if you didn't.”

…

“Would you have told me about the recording before you hung up?”

…

“Probably...?”

…

…

“All right. So, you're recording?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I'm going to tell you everything I can remember from our second session.”

“Oh. Er- just a sec.”

…

(shuffling)

(scraping)

(crashing)

“What was that?”

…

“Flash?”

“I'm okay!”

…

“What happened?”

“I was getting a chair. Took a corner too fast.”

…

“Okay. I feel like I'm going to be here a while.”

“Maybe. We're on our fourth campaign in 'Questria.”

“That's the game?”

“Yep.”

“Cool name.”

“Cool game.”

“Can I have some background?”

“Sure. So, there are five main races in the land of 'Questria. Humans, who have a strange charisma boost thing; Angels, who can fly; Elves, who can do magic; Taurus-es, who are super strong; and the gods, who can pretty much do it all. There's also the dragonborne, who live for a long time and their breath can do weird stuff, and some mer-folk, and a couple others. But those are the main ones.”

…

“I kind of meant about you and your friends.”

“Oh. I mean... We're just, eight friends. We grew up together. Now we play RPGs together.”

“I see.”

“Should I keep going about the game?”

“Oh, by all means.”

“So the big idea was that this land of 'Questria was founded only a couple thousand years ago, and before that the place was a mess because the gods were always fighting. Now most of the gods have 'become one with their elements' or whatever, and the evil ones are all imprisoned, so it's just been Celestia the Sun Princess for a thousand years. And now, thanks to our campaign, Princess Luna of the Moon has returned.”

“Sound's cool. But that last part I knew about. It was in the recording.”

“Er- right. Well, a lot's happened since then. We're on our fourth campaign.”

…

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“That fast?”

“We meet a couple times a week.”

…

“I guess we do play it often. We're a bit nerds, okay?”

“I promise not to tell.”

…

(snickering)“Listen, let's just go over campaign number two, for now. Surely there's enough there for a full write-up.”

“Oh, yeah. So much.”

“After our horrible first experience, I ended up rebranding the whole thing; I basically started from scratch. Same characters, but I went way more overboard on the world. The town became Hyborea, based on the home of Apollo in Greek Mythology. The capital, where Celestia and Luna live, is Camelot. There are a few other cities and places, but they haven't been visited quite yet. Just a couple desert settlements in the south with modern-ish names like Dodge and Appleoosa. That one was founded by Applejack's cousins. Oh! And Muspel- that's where the dragonborne are from.

Anyway. I decided to give them something to look forward to, something they couldn't rush as much: a Gala, to be held in Camelot at the end of the in-game year. They all came up with great reasons their characters wanted to go, which gave them each their own stories.

Fluttershy wanted to see the palace gardens and animals, Pinkie was looking forward to the biggest party in the world, Applejack was planning on selling a bunch of her family's baked goods, Rainbow Dash wanted to meet the Wonderbolts, and Rarity was looking to meet the prince so she could seduce him. Oh, and Twilight had cheesed off the princess in the beginning of that round, so she was basically going to be in time out right beside Celestia the whole night. Which doesn't seem like the worst punishment to me.”

“Getting to stand next to a goddess the whole night? I mean, I guess not. She's hot, right?”

…

(stiffly) “The issue of Celestia's attractiveness has never been discussed.”

“What's her charisma like?”

…

“I don't have the papers, can we move on?”

“Okay.”

“Where was I- oh, right. I set each of them up with some quests to fill out the time between then and the Gala, and get their stats up a bit for next time we did a boss battle. It... didn't go well.”

“Are we talking 'accidental character death' bad, or 'destruction of the universe', or something else?”

“Something else. I had Applejack doing a fetch-quest for baking supplies and stuff, and she wanted her Taurus character to have a special skill that would let her punch all the apples out of a tree at once-”

“What?”

…

“Uh, well, in the game, there's this system, where a character can get a special skill that they use their innate magic, or mana, for. And most character species have decent amounts of mana, and it gets better with levels on the ones that do. To get a skill, the player has to make a series of performance checks, and if they do it right, they'll preform the action. After they do it a couple times in a row, they can do an extra roll to memorize the skill, and from then on they'll only have to roll once for success.”

“What kinds of skills?”

“Anything, basically. AJ wanted to punch trees to get their fruit, Twilight does it every time she learns a new spell, Fluttershy can have a staring contest with someone and break their will, and Rainbow Dash can fly so fast her namesake shoots out of her ass and makes an explosion.”

…

“What? Just... what? She farts exploding rainbows?”

(chuckling) “Basically.”

…

“That seems... seriously broken. What if I wanted to fart earthquakes?”

(snort) “You could do it, but you'd need a ridiculously high strength stat to make it dangerous. Most likely, you'd do a bit of area of effect damage if you were standing right next to someone, and nothing else.”

“I see. So... Did Applejack get her skill?”

“Eventually. Her strength was high enough. But it took forever because she kept flubbing the last attempt before she would memorize it. The worst one- Jeez, she just about destroyed the town.”

“I'm... sorry?”

“Yeah, she kept rolling for damage and kept critting it at both ends of the scale. She punched the tree, an apple flew off, and that apple knocked over a building, scaring up a couple stampedes. And the animals ate half the town's food and knocked down a couple more buildings. And then more stuff happened, I don't remember, but there were plagues and a couple Angels were tossed and the whole town went to hell for at least a week. Like, almost literally. She was one roll away from having a portal to hell open under the town. Which sadly seems to be an average day in Hyborea at this point. She eventually got it, though. And just 'cause, I rolled it up for her brother Big Mac, too.”

(chuckling) “Jeezus.”

(more chuckling)

“So what else happened? That can't be it.”

“Nope. I cooked up a couple NPCs to mess with them a bit, mostly as revenge for them ruining that first campaign. Let's see... I had Rainbow practicing her flying tricks, so I came up with Gilda. She was just a bully, who happened to be a childhood friend of Dash and they hadn't seen each other in a while. Gilda was fun, she was from a tribe of Angels that were ultra-violent and really hardcore. Tons of attitude. Then there was Trixie, who I made up for Twilight, so she'd take a break from memorizing spells. I think she was up to thirty- maybe a little less- by the time Trixie got to town. Trixie was an elven stage magician who couldn't do actual magic worth crap, and so adopted a cocky and boasting attitude to cover her insecurities. She was pretty fun, too. Especially with Twilight rolling incompetence so often.”

“Not bad. How'd the players deal?”

“The usual.”

“They cocked it up?”

“They cocked up my plans. It only took maybe two rounds each for Gilda and Trixie to leave. Gilda because Rainbow stood up to her and told her she was a fake friend and to get lost, and Trixie because Twilight humiliated her in front of the whole town.”

“I- wow.”

…

“So They just left? That's it?”

“Yeah.”

“They never came back?”

“No...”

“They should.”

…

“Why?”

“I dunno, I just think they should. Trixie seems like the kind who just went through a Big Bad origin story. She could be an arc-villain.”

“Maybe. I'll think about it.”

…

“So. They went to the Gala?”

“Not for a bit. There were a lot of little adventures in that campaign. Like the dragon-”

“A dragon! Little!”

“Yeah, I decided they needed combat practice. So I had a low-level dragon make a nest nearby, and they had to go after it. Fluttershy got her Stare ability by using intimidation to make it leave. She just... stared it down. Eh? … Get it?”

(dryly) “I get it.”

“Hrmph. Well, after that there were some little things. Bella and Abby had a disagreement, so I made Applejack and Rarity have to work together. I made another NPC, an ally this time. She's a svartelf- that's a dark elf- named Zecora who knows shamanic magic. So far Twilight hasn't done much with that resource, but it's there.”

“Complacent gaming syndrome. I remember in the first recording, you mentioned she played a mage in the previous game...”

“Yeah, Tyra's always played as a mage or a wizard or similar thing.”

“You'll have to really shake things up to get her to change, then.”

“I tried, but I'm trying not to railroad them too much anymore. I sent a plague of bugs, a freak blizzard, some weird sports-tradition thing. They didn't take to any of them.”

“That sucks.”

“I know. Thankfully, they were pretty oblivious to my background rolling. I managed to set up a really big story element without them even caring: The Crusaders.”

“A bunch of murderous knights?”

(chuckling) “No, no. The Crusaders are a club made by Apple Bloom and a couple other girls. Rarity's little sister Sweetie Belle, and this other girl, Scootaloo. They idolized the older player-characters and wanted to be just like them. So they went around having adventures, of sorts. Just much smaller in scale.”

“Cute.”

“Yep. This was around the time I gave Rarity her big quest- making the girls' Gala dresses.”

“That sounds suitably hard.”

“It was.”

…

…

“Suitably-”

“If you're trying for a pun, it's awful.”

…

“What, no! No. No. So what else?”

…

“A bunch of things. Diane figured out she could use her physics-breaking in combination with her meta knowledge to basically predict the future, and almost broke the game. Rainbow got her skill, which I didn't think was something that would be possible, but apparently in that universe it's the subject of some ancient legend or prophecy or something. Apparently her character also did it before, when she was really young, and it affected each of her friends. Somehow. But they didn't find that out until a little later. There was a bit more with Fluttershy's Stare, and the Crusaders got a clubhouse. Rarity got kidnapped by Kanids, Fluttershy almost had a career as a model, we went to Appleoosa, and Celestia visited with her pet phoenix and vindicated Fluttershy's reason to go to the Gala.”

“They got through all of that? There's entire campaigns in some of these situations!”

“I know. Some of them were ideas I had for later campaigns, and I had to use them for small shit because there was so much time left before the Gala. I set it a little too far away, and they were just that capable. It was ridiculous.”

“I hope it doesn't get any worse.”

“It got way worse.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh, yeah. Sadie was cheesed at me because I wasn't giving Spike enough attention. So she made him start acting like a little asshole in-game, and he eventually just ran away. It wouldn't have been so bad, except Twilight was rolling incompetency hard. She rolled so badly that it infected the others; she rolled so badly, I actually ended up changing the probabilities for her being affected, using two d10's and requiring a 90 or higher.”

“How bad did it get?”

“She basically never noticed there was a problem, and then cast a negative probability field over the area that made bad luck happen everywhere, and still didn't see that something was wrong. And then Spike took shelter in a hidden dragon's nest, and then they were chased...”

“Wow.”

“The best part? Er- depending on your definition. She didn't take down the field! It ended up causing Pinkie's brain to short circuit from too much magic going through it- she had her meta knowledge, her future-predicting, and now a bad-luck dome. Pinkie went crazy, started talking to random objects, and lost her physics-breaking powers in exchange for super-strength and super stubbornness.”

“So Twilight gave her friend a magic lobotomy?”

“Not exactly, it wasn't permanent. She just had to take down the field for everything to go back to normal.”

…

…

“Did she?”

“Yeah. It was a lot harder than it should've been, and they almost destroyed the town again. But yeah, they fixed it.”

“Jeez. And this was all just the middle of the campaign. What was the ending like?”

“Heh heh. There were two stages to that. And it all begins with the absolute worst night of their lives...”

…

“Wait, the players or the characters?”

…

“Yes?”

…

“Do you do this often?”

“Do what?”

“Confuse people in conversation.”

“Probably. You're the first to comment on it, though.”

“I see. So... this worst night. That must've been the Gala.”

“Yeah.”

…

“Well don't leave me hanging. What happened?”

Here's as good a time as any for me to cut out. Next time: things go horribly wrong.

…

Er. Wrong-er.

Comments

[raven618]

And the entirety of Season 1 has been wrapped up in three D&D sessions, while the first one took two episodes. I don't want to know how long said sessions would have lasted.

[Flash Notion]

8624075
Slight correction to your thought: 2 campaigns, an unspecified number of sessions. The first session did cover two episodes, but after that I haven't decided yet. What seems like a good number of sessions?

[raven618]

8624484 Never actually played D&D before, just seen a few games on youtube. Don't take anything I say too seriously.

[Flash Notion]

8625879
Ah. Well.
My experience isn't much better, but the average rpg session for my friends and I lasted maybe 3 hours, max, and because we couldn't stop bitching at each other, covered maybe 5 rounds.
Based on the first session, these girls play a lot smoother, and we could assume that 2 episodes per session is the norm. That'd mean that flash's conversation with suri covered 11 or so sessions so far.

[FairyFun]

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