Table of Contents
Front Cover Front Matter Introduction Welcome to Season Four! What You’ll Need to Play How to Read This Book The RiM: S4E Team Character Creation D.A.S.H. Design Aspects Statistics Headway D.A.S.H. Example Playing an Episode Structure of Gameplay Making Checks Advantages & Drawbacks Acting in Harmony Damage, Recovery, & Sidelining Using & Restoring Valor Ending an Episode Character Advancement Learning Lessons Experience Points Purchasing Edges Edge List Library of Edges Magic & Spellcasting Magic Is as Magic Does Creating Spells Casting Spells The Canterlot Archives Running an Episode Being the Game Master Collaborative Storytelling Getting Things Started Checks & Difficulty Targets Damage & Sidelining Lessons & Experience Variant Rules Plot Points Equestria Girls Paragon Ponies Wide, Wide World Epic Experience Encyclopedia Equestria Premade Episodes The House of Enchanted Comics Ars Unicornia Mutants and Maresterminds Whinnystrad Miscellaneous Character Sheet A Note for Developers Updates & Resources Single Page Version (for print)
Welcome to Season Four!
Fillies and gentlecolts, Equestrians of all ages: Welcome to the Season Four Edition of Roleplaying is Magic!
If you’re one of the many returning players who have been with us since the beginning of this project, we’d like to begin by saying thank you. Your love and support over the last several years has been essential in turning this from a humble collection of notes and ideas into one of the Brony community’s most popular and longest-running game projects. We couldn’t have done any of this without you.
And if you’re new to Roleplaying is Magic, we’d like to begin by saying welcome! Sit back and relax; we think you’ll enjoy reading this book and playing this game as much as we’ve enjoyed creating them.
You may be wondering, "Just what is Roleplaying is Magic, anyway?" In a nutshell, Roleplaying is Magic (or "RiM" for short) is a fan-created tabletop roleplaying game and storytelling system based on the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon series created by Lauren Faust and owned by Hasbro Inc. With it, up to six players and one Game Master (or "GM") can have adventures in the magical land of Equestria, creating their own stories together and exploring the magic of friendship.
RiM is suitable for a wide variety of gamers, striving for mechanical simplicity to appeal to beginners and immersion-oriented roleplayers, as well as enough depth and complexity to satisfy veteran gamers. It emphasizes positive themes of cooperation, courage, integrity, and self-expression, to provide a meaningful experience in line with the themes and aesthetics of the original cartoon series.
The guiding phrase of Roleplaying is Magic is, "Canon focused, fanon friendly." This means that while we’ve tried to stay as true to the original cartoon series as possible, we’ve also left plenty of wiggle room for game groups to make their experiences unique; to make their Equestria truly their own.
A new edition of RiM has been produced after each season of the original cartoon series, to incorporate revised information presented by the series, as well as improve the design of the game in an effort to make it the best it can be. With this final 'official' version, the Season Four Edition (or "S4E" for short), RiM has never been better. Now even more streamlined and customizable than ever before, S4E blends previous attempts at simplification with robust gameplay mechanics and a focus on positive ethics and morality.
New and returning players alike are encouraged to read through this Introduction chapter to become familiar with the tone and style of the S4E book; however, veteran players (or those who just want to jump right in) can skip ahead to get to the heart of the game’s content.
However you choose to proceed, we hope you enjoy Roleplaying is Magic: Season Four Edition!