Tails of Equestria: Pet Sitting

A couple of weeks ago now, we played our first game as a family.

Seemed to go really well. The Big 'un got really into it, the Lil 'un, took a little more convincing to interact with the game, but I think she'll come round to this way of playing with a little practice.

In terms of a review of the system, and book, I am very happy.

The game system is simple enough to be easy to understand and play. The rules are clearly written out, and easy to follow. The book has plenty of colour illustrations to make it fun, to give inspiration. Also, the character sheets have a nice large space for you to draw and colour your pony, which was a real draw for all the players round the table, and is a good way to help with the immersion. Glitter is a must.

For the adventure supplied at the back of the book, it gets players right into the lore, and gives plenty of points of reference to the show's mythos. It also has a cliffhanger ending that slots right into the next written adventure that has been published for the game.

If I had one problem with the adventure, it requires the players to fail at the start, to then go on the quest to retrieve the Man six's pets. I don't like this kind of adventure that forces you to fail in order to set up the adventure. This works as an episode of MLP, but as an introduction to a game system, and to RPGs in general, it goes against the grain.


Once the adventure gets into the main quest part though, there's a nice mix of problem solving and a solid intro into how to get things done in the Ponyverse, i.e. by working together, and playing to the 6 elements of harmony.

The game ran through in about 2.5 hours total. It could have been stretched out a bit, and there were some things that I could have made a bigger deal of, but it's not a 2 session game unless you really stretch it out.

The adventure in the book leads directly into the second adventure, "The Curse of the Statuettes". This looks to be a slightly more normal adventure set up, where the players now have to go on and save the Mane Six. I was not looking to buy this straight off, as I had found a pdf version, but I think I might need the GM screen, as I do have one very nosy player, and my CoC Keeper screen isn't quite the right tone.

Unfortunately, this looks like it is not a hugely long adventure either, with maybe 2 sessions max, maybe more if I limit the tiems f sessions to a couple of hours. The third part of this campaign is also out, "The Festival of Lights". I hope it has more to it than the first two parts of the campaign, as I don't feel like I'm up to writing adventures in the Ponyverse yet, especially with the amout of knowledge of the mythos I will have to deal with at the tabel.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Warren

"They Grow up so Fast" Handout

A Year in Gaming 2022