With the success of Ponyfinder and its Kicker Starter to create a expansion for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition it seems Hasbro has decided to enter the market with their own official My Little Game and have now allowed a company called River Horse to obtained the license to create an official Friendship is Magic pen and paper RPG.
Now this may be a bit of old news but the developers have given a twenty minute interview about the project: (Interview at the 41m53s mark)
Since then information has been quiet for some time but in the last week there have been some reveals by River Horse.
From River Horse Press release:
You want to see something cool? Check out the full cover of My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria by clicking on the picture above (or here!).
You see? Pretty cool, that's what you will have to be looking out for
later this year when we release the full game! For those of you not in
the know, we at River Horse have been working our hooves to the bone to
bring MLP and traditional roleplay gaming (RPGs) together (MLPRPG or
Milerperpegeh) and its been a blast! I thought I would take this moment
to talk a little about the cover, a hugely important part of any book!
What design choices went into the cover?
We knew pretty early on what we wanted out of the cover, we wanted to
show anyone who looked at it what they would be getting when they opened
the book, that is to say ponies and adventure! Working with the
fantastic Amy Mebberson, we decided that catching an adventuring party
halfway through their travels would give the best impression. So it went
that we created a party, following the classic three person
fighter/wizard/rogue set up that is such a staple in traditional
roleplaying games. My little pony is a fantastic introduction to
roleplaying games partly because of its vibrant world and varied species
which meant we could show the magical unicorns, strong earth ponies and
speedy pegasi in an instant and people would immediately identify with
the archetypal party we made. After that it was a matter of placing them
in an adventure (navigating through the Everfree forest!) and the
rest fell into place.
The team is planning on releasing this at the end of the year right now, but nothing is set in stone for specific dates.
For those of you unfamiliar with Silver Games and Ponyfinder, Ponyfinder is a fanmade supplement for Pathfinder
created by David Silver, head of the Silver Games LLC indy RPG company
and published through the DriveThruRPG website often in PDF Format though it is possible to obtain a copy in paperback.
As the name implies, it
uses Pathfinder rules to mix elements of the new My Little Pony series and Pathfinder setting together. The game is set in the Equestria expy
of Everglow, a magic-rich world where in addition to the
standard array of humans, orcs, elves and dwarves, a vast number of sapient fey animals have developed. The ponies of this world under the reign of Queen Iliana the first Alicorn,
have founded the first and mightiest empire of the world, but there are various elements seeking to undermine the peace.
Unlike many 3rd party settings Ponyfinder was not only popular but also met with a lot of positive praise and though its release there was a slight redesign away from the original art and setting which matched the current My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic to avoid possible copyright issues from Hasbro.
Now 3 years later Silver Games after many requests and providing some very basic 4th and 5th Edition conversion rules in the past have now decided to return to Kickstarter to attempt to gain funding to create a full conversion of Ponyfinder to Dungeons and Dragon 5th Edition:
The story of Everglow has been expanding since we first Kickstarted the
original book three years ago. The campaign and its non-standard races
have brought joy and adventure to gaming tables across the world and we
are proud to have created a series of products that are loved by so
many.
But now we want to bring even more pony goodness to the table! With the
release of 5th edition rules we have had many requests to convert our
products to the new rule set. And we love our fans so that’s exactly
what we are trying to do!
This project is all about converting the core books to fit another
game system and adding fun new content for ponies to enjoy. In this
case, the 5th edition of one of the oldest and most popular roleplaying
games around, Dungeons & Dragons! You'll get the same setting and
stories you love now, converted to 5th edition, polished, and rebuilt
from the ground up with class focuses, spells, and other exciting
options made for Everglow.
We love working with our fans to make them a part of our creation
process so we are giving backers the chance to leave an imprint on our
world! You can be the pony (or griffon, or steelheart, or...) that
invented a new spell, piece of magical equipment, feat, or other similar
gear for stalwart adventures to arm themselves with.
One non-mechanical item that will change from the core book to this
book is the characters. While such ponies would certainly still exist,
several have classes and kits that just don't appear in 5th edition, so a
clean break for this edition of the book, featuring heroes built with
this system in mind, seems the most prudent course to take. We are
excited to rebuild our world and give it all the attention it deserves.
We hope you will join us on our latest adventure in bringing ponies to
Dungeons & Dragons.
The good news is that the Kickstarter has already met its goal of $1000 with the current total at this time of writing a mighty $11,697. The bad news is that many of the early backer rewards have been snapped up but if you are interested and have $20 then now is a good time to get your hands on a copy of the PDF on release.
