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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic -'The Frontier Ponies'

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smeagolthevile
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Ok, so, I have had this idea for a game kicking around in my head for a while. It is not really a board game persay, you do use a board to play but its more just to keep things organized and nice, its more of a card game (not like a TCG or like poker. More like something akin to munchkin I would thing.) I know this may not be the right place for it, but I could find nowhere better in my search.

So, maybe you guys can help me. After fleshing this out in my head I started to 'attempt' to write down some rules, this is what I have so far.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
The Frontier Ponies
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Objectives
The first player to complete his town and connect it to the Royal Canterlot Railway wins
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Card Types
-Pony Cards - Pony cards are charachter cards that populate your town. Each card has a different skill or ability as to what they can and can not do, not all pony cards are unique.
--There are three types of pony cards
---Earth Ponies
---Unicorns
---Pegasi
-Building Cards - Building cards represent the structures in your town. They must be constructed over time by your pony cards. Each building gives a seperate bonus and you can not have doubles of a specific building type.
--A food producing building is the only building card required to win the game
-Event Cards - Event cards represent good and bad events that happen in your town. Some are benefit the player's town, some can harm other player's towns. There are a few different types of events.
--Weather events - (hurricanes, snow storm)
--Everfree Forest Creatures - (parasprites, ursas, Manticores, Etc)
--Creatures - (Buffalo, Dragons, Griffons)
--Happenings - (A Trixie Performance, Derpy, Flim and Flam, Wonderbolts show)

-Tradition Cards - Tradition cards are a one time card that is drawn at the start of the game. The tradition card gives benefits and detriments to the player as the game goes on.

-Leader Cards - Leader cards are a special type of card. They are Famous Ponies from the land, they can come from any time or place. These cards are only drawn if you are able to construct a government center building (royal castle, town hall, etc). These cards act like a second tradition, giving another level of benefits overtop.

-Location Cards - Location cards are drawn at the start of the game along with a tradition. Location cards have benefits and detriments like tradition cards and represent where your town is being founded.

-Time Card - The time card is simply a double sided card, one side showing day, the other side showing night, it is used to keep track of the in game time.

_____________________________________
How to Play
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Decide civily which player is going to go first and then turns go clockwise from that person.
The first player is in charge of dealing the first cards, and keeping time.
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The starting player deals a single tradition, a single location, and six regular cards to each of the players.
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Loation, Tradition, and Leader cards are always in effect regardless of turn or day/night cycle.
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Day/Night Cycle
Each turn consists of a Day cycle and a Night cycle.
-Day
--Each player Draws a single card from the deck
--Each player Plays a card from their hand if they choose (Pony, Event, or Building)
--Each player then manages the ponies in their town for the day.
---Any pony (unless noted) that is used during the day must sleep at night
--Place or Remove counters from structures caused by ponies or event cards.
-Night
--Each player Plays a card from their hand if they choose (Pony, Event, or Building)
--Each player then manages the ponies in their town for the night.
---Any pony (unless noted) that is used during the night must sleep at night
--Place or Remove counters from structures caused by ponies or event cards.

Dralius
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I don’t know the MLP audience

I don’t know the MLP audience well but I am guessing that your game might be a little too complex for the age group.

Do you have children of your own to test this on, or friends that have young children?

smeagolthevile
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Joined: 11/24/2012
Ok, now this hit the awkward

Ok, now this hit the awkward part, let me find an easy way to explain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Est3UNs-LIk

Dralius
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There is always the appeal of

There is always the appeal of inside jokes for fans but since im not one the setting has no appeal to me, or better to say im neutral. It neither draws nor repels me.

As for the game there is not enough information to evaluate play. Being a game full of card effects, the combinations of effects need to be looked especially for cards with persistent effects that may build up during play.

Best suggestion; make a quick and dirty prototype and run a solo test. Yep you play all the players. This is just to see if it works at all. Hey it likely will but may need some major revamping before bringing in others to try it. And remember when you solo test try to play like different players, ok different ponies, so that they are not using the same strategy.

dameonunleashed
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As a grown-ass man and a

As a grown-ass man and a Brony, I think this is a great idea. I have no idea whether you can get this past HUB and Hasbro, since Hasbro owns the IP and all merch rights. You would need to pitch it directly to them. We both know Lauren Faust may be perfectly fine with a game by and for bronies (and pegasisters), but Hasbro has yet to market to anyone but their central demo.

Also, I suspect Hasbro wouldn't let you keep Derpyhooves in it, so I don't know whether your target demo would support it without some of the classic online ponies like Doctor Hooves, DJ PON3, or Octavia. You might get Lyra.

If you DO happen to get something like this pitched and produced, you might be able to have a Brony-centric add-in available online, with the requisite events, special characters, etc. Then the fan's fun can be doubled in ten seconds flat.

My first impression is "why is this a competitive game"? If MLP had a game out on the shelves already, I would be rather surprised to find that it had head-to-head competition in it. It kind of goes against most of the message in the show. Have you considered trying it as a full or semi-coop game? What if everyone was working together to get the town completed? Maybe you have a series of scenarios (on cards?) that set the game win conditions for that session. Maybe the players need to help Twilight or Shining Armor to finish their building and turn on the forcefield before the Changelings attack, or the beasts of the everfree forest are running amok, and it's up to the players to help Zecora and Fluttershy before it's too late. None of that excludes a player from being any of these ponies, though.

You could have the players characters have a way of tracking friendship between each other, which would throttle the amount of resources they could share among each other. Various events or other cards could increase that friendship stat (tracked on a card, or tokens, etc). It would definitely push the game more toward the central core ideals of the IP.

Separate from the IP, the game sounds interesting. My suggestion would be to try to design as far as you can with absolutely no MLP material in it. Confirmation bias is a tenacious bastard, and it will be very easy to feel good about the mechanics in your awesome Big Mac card, while ignoring it's effect on the game as a a whole. Just my 2 cents as a fellow designer working on an IP-based idea as well.

Either way you go, I wish you luck. I hope to see a rulebook when you have one to post.

smeagolthevile
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Thanks for the replies, I had

Thanks for the replies, I had sort of forgot I posted here.

First I do not plan on having any EVENT cards that have a constant and persistent effect, it would be a single turn for the majority of them. I am, on my first chance (work has been heck recently) to just write up a PILE of cards, I may even do it at work.

To Dameon,
first /)
Second I am not going to try and get this licensed, it would be something to share with my friends at meetups and events and such so on that I dont think I need to worry about hasbro, worst event is I'd raffle one off or sell it at material cost to people at events.

Lastly I like your idea of a coop but I may have to do that as a seperate project then this one.

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