My Little Pony: Roleplaying is Magic

Hi there.

Tall Tail here.

If you’ll bear with me for this final bit, I’d like to take a moment to personally give thanks and credit, as well as make an appeal to the community, and I’ll even get a little poetic and sappy at the end.

First, my most sincere thanks to everyone on the MLP:RiM team. When this began, it was just a lone brony with an idea for a game system—but each of you brought something special to the project and truly brought it to life. From Know-It-All, my longtime design and development partner who helped set me straight on a few of the wild ideas which (thankfully) never made it into the final system, to Artsy Heartsy, whose surprise design of the Season One Edition book blew me away and who continues to impress with his wicked awesome designs and dedication, to Pixel and Sketchbook, whose artistic genius and creative insight have produced the quality of work I could never have imagined we’d have. Each of you have really poured your heart into this project since Day One, and it is because of you that it is as good as it is.

Also, thanks for putting up with the silly names. You’re my team and I love every one of you.

Second, I’d like to thank Equestria Daily for giving us our first bit of publicity with the Nightly Roundup, and Equestria Gaming, among others, for helping to keep that publicity alive. In addition, I treasure every single email from a player, GM, or just an interested brony, that brings words of encouragement, or praise, or sometimes just a brohoof. I can’t thank the community enough for the support you’ve given us from our rough first document up to now; every conversation, every inquiry, every game group who kept in touch.

This is for each and every one of you, and on behalf of all of us, I truly hope you enjoy it.

Third, I’d like to put out a call to the brony community’s vast congregation of gamers, GM’s, and fanfiction writers. We tried to design MLP:RiM to be very easy to create pre-made Episodes for; you don’t even need to set the numerical difficulty of tasks or create stats for NPC’s, just construct the Episode scene-by-scene with its various elements, much like writing a story or fanfic! One of the biggest questions we’ve gotten during development is whether or not there will be pre-made Episodes for game groups to take advantage of. While we’ve been immersed in creating the system and this rulebook, there hasn’t been time to make any of these pre-made Episodes. My call is for you, the talented and dedicated writers in our great fandom, to try your hoof at creating a pre-made Episode or two.

I firmly believe that this community can create much better content than we ever could ourselves.

Finally, thank you to Lauren Faust and the entire crew over at Studio B for creating something truly magical, and thank you to Hasbro for letting it fly free. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has changed my life profoundly for the better, teaching me things I knew but had forgotten somewhere along the way; and I know from personal experience as well as from observing the brony community that I am far from the only one. I may be Tall Tail, but there are thousands of uplifting and amazing pony-tales to be told from this community. From charitable work to creative endeavors to even just bringing the spark of hope to a heart in need, something truly incredible has happened, and is still happening, here.

My favorite author, Robert A. Heinlein, wrote an essay in 1952 for Edward R. Murrow’s radio program “This I Believe,” in which he espoused with conviction the decency, the morality, and the fundamental goodness of humanity. It’s been a hard world to live in and keep faith in the goodness of humanity, but this show, and this community, has rejuvenated that faith. It is because of all of you that I wake up hopeful in the morning, approach the day with enthusiasm, and go to bed dreaming of a better tomorrow. It is because of all of you that I have re-learned how to approach hardship with tolerance, counter hate with love, and defeat adversity with friendship. It is because of all of you that I have hope again.

To quote the final words from Heinlein’s essay:

…"And finally, I believe in my whole race. Yellow, white, black, red, brown—in the honesty, courage, intelligence, durability… and goodness… of the overwhelming majority of my brothers and sisters everywhere on this planet. I am proud to be a human being. I believe that we have come this far by the skin of our teeth, that we always make it just by the skin of our teeth—but that we will always make it… survive… endure. I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversized brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes, will endure—will endure longer than his home planet, will spread out to the other planets, to the stars and beyond, carrying with him his honesty, his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage—and his noble essential decency.

This I believe with all my heart."

~ Robert A. Heinlein, 1952

You’re all my very best friends.

~ Tall Tail