Playing Tails of Equestria

Sadly the art inside is just stock vectors and show screenshots

On Saturday, I went to the twice-monthly Worcester meet. Patrick had brought along his copy of the newish Tails of Equestria RPG, and four of us (three players and Patrick as GM) created characters and started out on the sample adventure in the book. Apparently character creation was supposed to take about half an hour. This is where anyone who's ever played an RPG does the hollow laughter thing. (But not the hollow voice thing. "Plugh" doesn't work here!)

My character, Ripple, has a special talent for finding water but a "quirk" of short-sightedness. This means that in the wilds, I may well find water by falling into it! I'm a unicorn, and so my Mind attribute is slightly enhanced; the other two are Body and Charm. Earth ponies get a slight Body advantage; pegasi don't get a Charm advantage but of course they can fly. And no, you are absolutely not allowed to play an alicorn character!

Anyway, I won't spoil the adventure's plot in case any of you might play it sometime, but it's fair to say it was far more fun than I was expecting – even if I did roll 1 suspiciously often when trying to achieve some useful task. Admittedly much of the amusement was provided by our earth pony character, whose main trait was a feeling that every problem could be solved by kicking it. We also had a pegasus in the party, so we hoped the balance would work.

As I write this, we're about halfway through the adventure after an hour or so's play, and we're intending to complete it at the next meet in a fortnight. I'm not sure I'd want to play ToE at every meet – there are almost too many gaming meets already – but I think I'd be up for occasional sessions in the future, as Patrick suggested. At any rate, if you can find the set for a reasonable price, and as long as you have a few like-minded friends, I think I'd recommend it. :)