Post by captaintrek on Jul 13, 2011 17:43:02 GMT
Greetings everypony! I've been reading about the various MLP:FiM roleplaying forums on Equestria Daily for at least a fortnight now and thought it was high time that I actually joined one of them. It's been quite some time since the last iteration of my forum RPG system "Spacefarers" fizzled out and I've really missed participating in FRPGs. For those wondering, you can find out all you could ever want to know about Spacefarers here:
forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?220962-Spacefarers-(a-sci-fi-RPG)&daysprune=-1
Anyway, with that said, here is my first attempt at a pony character, a "recon pegasus" named Snowflake. It's funny actually, I came up with the basic idea for this character a while back and had honestly thought I would need to change her name once I joined this forum, and yet no one seems to have made an application (successful or otherwise) for a "Snowflake" as yet. There's a "Snow Cloud" and also a "Snowskates" (who was rejected), but no "Snowflake"... Curious... Anyway, here she is...
- General -
Name: Snowflake
Nickname/Alias: Whilst there is no one nickname everypony refers to Snowflake by, she will answer to both "Snow" and "Flake" and is also sometimes known as "the recon pony"
Race: Pegasus
Gender: Female
Age: Young adult: Similar to the ages of the "Mane Six"
- Physical -
Pelt colour: Albinistic white
Mane/Tail Colour and Style: Pale blond (Snowflake has a slightly less severe form of albinism that leaves her a little bit of melanin to play around with). Snowflake prefers her mane and tail to be easily manageable, requiring only the minimum of time to attend to, and so keeps her mane relatively short and done up with a (usually red) bow and doesn't style her tail at all, merely keeping it neatly brushed.
Cutie Mark: A winged spyglass
Other scars/markings: Wears zero, one, two or all four of her bracelets (see the image below) depending on her mood at the start of the day.
Physique: Physically, Snowflake is lacking in musculature and, therefore, strength, but is lean and healthy, possessing surprising endurance.
Flying ability: If pegasi like Rainbow Dash and the Wonderbolts are like jet fighters, Snowflake is more like a helicopter, somewhat lacking in raw speed but in possession of superb low speed flight control, well-able to safely navigate the sorts of tight spaces and cluttered terrain that a pegasus like Rainbow Dash might well crash into.
Gear:
"Magnifying glasses": Upon first seeing these seemingly ordinary spectacles sitting on Snowflake's table on in her saddlebag, many a pony could be forgiven for assuming they were reading glasses, especially as albinism is (even in Equestria) well known for its links to weakness of sight. Upon closer inspection, however, one will notice a small lever running down the side of one of the frames, able to be moved to a given position while the user is wearing them with a flick of the hoof, which causes the magically enchanted lenses to provide any one of a dozen different magnification levels, resulting in what effectively amount to a pair of cleverly disguised adjustable binoculars. Note that a small panel can be slid into place to disguise the lever if one wishes to further the illusion of these glasses being real spectacles (though Snowflake rarely makes use of this feature, as she is a scout, not a spy)
- Social -
Current residence: Ponyville
Job: Perimeter patrol and part-time search and rescue.
Mother: Summer Skies, a pegasus and one of only two weather ponies in her village. Has to work doubly hard to ensure that the village doesn't have its crops wiped out by bad weather.
Father: Golden Oat, a farmer Earth-pony who, paradoxically, specialises in growing beetroot. Resides in a small village near one of the borders between Equestria and a neighbouring country.
Closest friends: Snowflake moved to Ponyville only recently, seeking the new experiences she so prizes. As such, she has yet to solidify full-fledged friendship with any pony, but has a near-immediate healthy respect for the ponies that appear to value their freedom the most.
Courting/Courted By: None as yet. Snowflake does sometimes wonder about romance though. It would, after all, be the ultimate in new experiences...
- Personality -
Likes: Freedom and liberty, flying (a simple pleasure for a pegasus, to be sure), taking in every fascinating thing that is going on below her during her flights, gathering endless tidbits of information (no matter how useless they may be!), new experiences (Note that this extends a bit beyond just trying anything once, with Snowflake making every effort to get everything she can out of everything she does, wanting less to drink from the cup of life as to chug from it, occasionally to her detriment), verbose weather (heavy rain, hail, thunderstorms, etc.), music (Snowflake favours no one particular genre, but, generally, the faster the tempo the better!) and the occasional adrenaline rush.
Dislikes: When hers or another pony's freedom is trodden on, destructive and unenlightening activity (especially pointless bickering. It's not an "experience" when two or more ponies are standing around aggressively repeating their already-known positions on a subject!), inactivity, times when an atmosphere of boredom surrounds her, the purposeful wasting of time, ignorance (especially of the wilful kind) and ponies who won't try new things.
Motivation: As previously implied under "likes" and "dislikes", there are three things that primarily Snowflake: An unshakable love of freedom and the joy of expressing that freedom (especially through flight), a powerful zest for life that drives her to get as much as she can out of every day that leaves her little time to be worried or fearful and finally a love of new experiences, which makes her eager to try new things and unafraid to get "stuck in" when even odd or unpleasant situations arise.
Strengths: Professionally, Snowflake is a scout, and absolutely shines when she's flittering over the landscape, magnifying glasses in place, looking for the unusual or the untoward in the plains, forests and mountain ranges below.
In addition, Snowflake is a spirited, strong-willed pony who never allows fear to get in the way of what she wants (or what those around her require of her). She is also possessed of an above-average intelligence, well-able to grasp at least the basics of many new concepts with relative ease. This makes her experience-seeking nature less intolerable than some would think, as she requires only the minimum of instruction to start producing adequate results. Outside of her penchant for reconnaissance, she tends to apply her intelligence broadly, preferring to read a dozen pamphlets on a dozen different subjects to gain a basic understanding of each one than read through a thick book on a single topic. She never misses a trick, either, which is handy in her line of work.
Weaknesses: Snowflake has been described by her peers as "hot blooded", and for good reason. Her powerful love-affair with being alive can occasionally allow her heart to rule her head, snap-decisions often being made before the more analytical part of her psyche has properly analysed the possibilities
Additionally, having been raised on the fringes of Equestrian society, there are still many niceties and social graces that elude Snowflake. Whilst she is a kindly enough pony at heart and would never knowingly be cruel to those around her (especially if doing so would impinge on their precious freedoms!), she tends to speak plainly and boldly, with little in the way of diplomatic tact and almost no knowledge of "the finer things". She is, however, more than willing to learn...
Fears: One could say that Snowflake "fears" having her freedom stripped from her, but in actuality something like imprisonment would not terrify Snowflake so much as merely enrage her*. No, her real greatest fear is one that she keeps heavily repressed... A secret, largely irrational white-hot terror that somepony might one day clip her wings, leaving her unable to fly...
(*Think how Captain Christopher Pike reacted to being imprisoned by the Talosians in the Star Trek episodes 'the Cage' and 'the Menagerie': "There's a way out of any cage, and I'll find it!")
Overall Persona:
Snowflake was born (and, for most of her childhood, raised) in a small rural village right by the border between Equestria and a neighbouring country, the daughter of a pair of kindly, unobtuse farming ponies who had hoped that she would continue in the family business. Almost from day one, however, it was clear that Snowflake was less interested in beetroot and more interested in the guard ponies who manned the small border fort that protected the village, especially the trackers. She also became enamoured with the stories told by the villages' wizened old cartographer and used to spend hours pouring over his maps and reading (or, in many cases, more skimming through) the small treasure trove of books the old cartographer had collected over the years.
Try as they might, Snowflake's parents never quite could get their little filly focused on the farm, their cause (in their minds) becoming completely hopeless the day Snowflake earnt her cutie mark by tracking down a group of lost travellers and guiding them back to the village (after her keen eyes caught sight through the trees of their campfire burning all but smokelessly in the distance where the adult pegasi in the village had been oblivious), using nothing more than one of the cartographers old maps and a battered pair of binoculars, lost and long-forgotten by one of the guard ponies manning the border outpost.
Following this incident, the albino pegasus grew steadily more curious and adventurous, flying ever greater distances from her village and beginning to receive instruction in the arts of tracking and scouting from the guard ponies of the border outpost, it growing clearer and clearer that life in the village would not continue to suit a pony as hungry for new experiences as Snowflake was for very much longer. "She's too lively for us, that little firebrand!" her parents would joke behind her back.
So, as soon as she was old enough, the young mare set off from her village, the moment when she turned her head to look at her home village receding into the distance for the final time at the same time the most liberating and heart-wrenching moment of her life. Even if she hadn't lived up to their expectations, her parents had always been good to her, and Snowflake felt a deep sorrow in her heart upon leaving them... But Snowflake pressed on, knowing that this was simply something that she had to do. Besides, she'd come back and visit them someday...
Her parents had been terribly concerned that there would be little work out there for a "recon pony", but the truth, Snowflake quickly discovered, was quite different, as her talents were always in demand for a variety of purposes. No matter where she went, an eye-in-the-sky as keen and steadfast as hers was almost always welcome. This, coupled with the wilderness survival skills she'd learnt from her time back in the village, living surrounded by forests and other untamed regions almost the moment the farmlands around the village ended, kept the pegasus' head above water as she flittered from town-to-town, generally earning a few bits and usually blowing most of them on adventures about town, often trying her hoof at whatever was considered to be the local speciality before moving on, never quite at home anywhere... Never truly tied down...
This, eventually, brought her to Ponyville, a town whose reputation was starting to precede it, what with it now being home to the bearers of the Elements of Harmony and all that... Snowflake quietly hopes that she'll soon get a chance to meet them, but for the moment she's kept herself busy getting herself set up with some nice, if rather small and threadbare accommodations and a job monitoring Ponyville's borders for oncoming threats, where her talents in scouting and reconnaissance will undoubtedly prove useful, with Ponyville having recently established regular perimeter patrols in light of a number of disastrous or near-disastrous events that took the town completely by surprise (mostly notably an attack by a rampaging Ursa Minor, that would surely have caused large amounts of destruction and many casualties if not for the quick-thinking of the town's resident magical prodigy Twilight Sparkle). She has also taken up a part-time search and rescue position, though, as yet, no ponies have gotten lost in the short time Snowflake has been in Ponyville.
In the near future, Snowflake hopes to earn a bit of cash, have a lot of new experiences, meet a few new friends in the hopes of establishing a permanent contact or two within the town (a habit of hers almost since the very beginning of her travels), and probably (barring some highly notable event taking place that gives her cause to stay) be off again within a couple of months...
Accent:
It's worth noting that Snowflake possess a thick accent leftover from her childhood in her home village. This accent is best described as Canadian. More specifically, have a look at this video here. The Canadian accent the fellow speaking in this video has is the sort of accent that I mean...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0Hi4q_vlN0
_________________________
Whew! That was long! Well, there it is! I hope it's OK...
By the way, I also took the liberty of coming up with some Savage Worlds of MLP:FiM stats for Snowflake:
First of all, if you aren't familiar with the Tabletop RPG Savage Worlds or the MLP:FiM module created by Giftkrieg23 on DeviantART, you may want to check it out. Alternatively, feel free to ignore everything below this line entirely if you aren't interested in this sort of thing:
Savage Worlds "test drive" rules:
www.peginc.com/Downloads/SWEX/TD06.pdf
Giftkrieg's FiM module for Savage Worlds:
fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/144/6/b/savage_worlds_of_mlp__fim_rpg_by_giftkrieg23-d3cshas.pdf
Giftkrieg's DeviantART account:
giftkrieg23.deviantart.com/
Savage Worlds statistics for Snowflake:
Note: The following is based on starting out Snowflake at the start of the "seasoned" rank with 20 experience points (and thus the ability to purchase four advances on top of those gained from her hindrances)
Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d8, Spirit d8, Strength d4, Vigour d6
Skills: Courage d8, Dodge d8, Notice d8, Nature d6, Racing d4, Intuition d6, Prowl d6, Knowledge (reconnaissance) d8
Charisma: 0
Pace: 8, Evade: 6, Toughness: 5, Willpower: 6
Hindrances: Curious, Heroic ("scion of freedom")
Edges: Outlander, Elementary Thinking
forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?220962-Spacefarers-(a-sci-fi-RPG)&daysprune=-1
Anyway, with that said, here is my first attempt at a pony character, a "recon pegasus" named Snowflake. It's funny actually, I came up with the basic idea for this character a while back and had honestly thought I would need to change her name once I joined this forum, and yet no one seems to have made an application (successful or otherwise) for a "Snowflake" as yet. There's a "Snow Cloud" and also a "Snowskates" (who was rejected), but no "Snowflake"... Curious... Anyway, here she is...
- General -
Name: Snowflake
Nickname/Alias: Whilst there is no one nickname everypony refers to Snowflake by, she will answer to both "Snow" and "Flake" and is also sometimes known as "the recon pony"
Race: Pegasus
Gender: Female
Age: Young adult: Similar to the ages of the "Mane Six"
- Physical -
Pelt colour: Albinistic white
Mane/Tail Colour and Style: Pale blond (Snowflake has a slightly less severe form of albinism that leaves her a little bit of melanin to play around with). Snowflake prefers her mane and tail to be easily manageable, requiring only the minimum of time to attend to, and so keeps her mane relatively short and done up with a (usually red) bow and doesn't style her tail at all, merely keeping it neatly brushed.
Cutie Mark: A winged spyglass
Other scars/markings: Wears zero, one, two or all four of her bracelets (see the image below) depending on her mood at the start of the day.
Physique: Physically, Snowflake is lacking in musculature and, therefore, strength, but is lean and healthy, possessing surprising endurance.
Flying ability: If pegasi like Rainbow Dash and the Wonderbolts are like jet fighters, Snowflake is more like a helicopter, somewhat lacking in raw speed but in possession of superb low speed flight control, well-able to safely navigate the sorts of tight spaces and cluttered terrain that a pegasus like Rainbow Dash might well crash into.
Gear:
"Magnifying glasses": Upon first seeing these seemingly ordinary spectacles sitting on Snowflake's table on in her saddlebag, many a pony could be forgiven for assuming they were reading glasses, especially as albinism is (even in Equestria) well known for its links to weakness of sight. Upon closer inspection, however, one will notice a small lever running down the side of one of the frames, able to be moved to a given position while the user is wearing them with a flick of the hoof, which causes the magically enchanted lenses to provide any one of a dozen different magnification levels, resulting in what effectively amount to a pair of cleverly disguised adjustable binoculars. Note that a small panel can be slid into place to disguise the lever if one wishes to further the illusion of these glasses being real spectacles (though Snowflake rarely makes use of this feature, as she is a scout, not a spy)
- Social -
Current residence: Ponyville
Job: Perimeter patrol and part-time search and rescue.
Mother: Summer Skies, a pegasus and one of only two weather ponies in her village. Has to work doubly hard to ensure that the village doesn't have its crops wiped out by bad weather.
Father: Golden Oat, a farmer Earth-pony who, paradoxically, specialises in growing beetroot. Resides in a small village near one of the borders between Equestria and a neighbouring country.
Closest friends: Snowflake moved to Ponyville only recently, seeking the new experiences she so prizes. As such, she has yet to solidify full-fledged friendship with any pony, but has a near-immediate healthy respect for the ponies that appear to value their freedom the most.
Courting/Courted By: None as yet. Snowflake does sometimes wonder about romance though. It would, after all, be the ultimate in new experiences...
- Personality -
Likes: Freedom and liberty, flying (a simple pleasure for a pegasus, to be sure), taking in every fascinating thing that is going on below her during her flights, gathering endless tidbits of information (no matter how useless they may be!), new experiences (Note that this extends a bit beyond just trying anything once, with Snowflake making every effort to get everything she can out of everything she does, wanting less to drink from the cup of life as to chug from it, occasionally to her detriment), verbose weather (heavy rain, hail, thunderstorms, etc.), music (Snowflake favours no one particular genre, but, generally, the faster the tempo the better!) and the occasional adrenaline rush.
Dislikes: When hers or another pony's freedom is trodden on, destructive and unenlightening activity (especially pointless bickering. It's not an "experience" when two or more ponies are standing around aggressively repeating their already-known positions on a subject!), inactivity, times when an atmosphere of boredom surrounds her, the purposeful wasting of time, ignorance (especially of the wilful kind) and ponies who won't try new things.
Motivation: As previously implied under "likes" and "dislikes", there are three things that primarily Snowflake: An unshakable love of freedom and the joy of expressing that freedom (especially through flight), a powerful zest for life that drives her to get as much as she can out of every day that leaves her little time to be worried or fearful and finally a love of new experiences, which makes her eager to try new things and unafraid to get "stuck in" when even odd or unpleasant situations arise.
Strengths: Professionally, Snowflake is a scout, and absolutely shines when she's flittering over the landscape, magnifying glasses in place, looking for the unusual or the untoward in the plains, forests and mountain ranges below.
In addition, Snowflake is a spirited, strong-willed pony who never allows fear to get in the way of what she wants (or what those around her require of her). She is also possessed of an above-average intelligence, well-able to grasp at least the basics of many new concepts with relative ease. This makes her experience-seeking nature less intolerable than some would think, as she requires only the minimum of instruction to start producing adequate results. Outside of her penchant for reconnaissance, she tends to apply her intelligence broadly, preferring to read a dozen pamphlets on a dozen different subjects to gain a basic understanding of each one than read through a thick book on a single topic. She never misses a trick, either, which is handy in her line of work.
Weaknesses: Snowflake has been described by her peers as "hot blooded", and for good reason. Her powerful love-affair with being alive can occasionally allow her heart to rule her head, snap-decisions often being made before the more analytical part of her psyche has properly analysed the possibilities
Additionally, having been raised on the fringes of Equestrian society, there are still many niceties and social graces that elude Snowflake. Whilst she is a kindly enough pony at heart and would never knowingly be cruel to those around her (especially if doing so would impinge on their precious freedoms!), she tends to speak plainly and boldly, with little in the way of diplomatic tact and almost no knowledge of "the finer things". She is, however, more than willing to learn...
Fears: One could say that Snowflake "fears" having her freedom stripped from her, but in actuality something like imprisonment would not terrify Snowflake so much as merely enrage her*. No, her real greatest fear is one that she keeps heavily repressed... A secret, largely irrational white-hot terror that somepony might one day clip her wings, leaving her unable to fly...
(*Think how Captain Christopher Pike reacted to being imprisoned by the Talosians in the Star Trek episodes 'the Cage' and 'the Menagerie': "There's a way out of any cage, and I'll find it!")
Overall Persona:
Snowflake was born (and, for most of her childhood, raised) in a small rural village right by the border between Equestria and a neighbouring country, the daughter of a pair of kindly, unobtuse farming ponies who had hoped that she would continue in the family business. Almost from day one, however, it was clear that Snowflake was less interested in beetroot and more interested in the guard ponies who manned the small border fort that protected the village, especially the trackers. She also became enamoured with the stories told by the villages' wizened old cartographer and used to spend hours pouring over his maps and reading (or, in many cases, more skimming through) the small treasure trove of books the old cartographer had collected over the years.
Try as they might, Snowflake's parents never quite could get their little filly focused on the farm, their cause (in their minds) becoming completely hopeless the day Snowflake earnt her cutie mark by tracking down a group of lost travellers and guiding them back to the village (after her keen eyes caught sight through the trees of their campfire burning all but smokelessly in the distance where the adult pegasi in the village had been oblivious), using nothing more than one of the cartographers old maps and a battered pair of binoculars, lost and long-forgotten by one of the guard ponies manning the border outpost.
Following this incident, the albino pegasus grew steadily more curious and adventurous, flying ever greater distances from her village and beginning to receive instruction in the arts of tracking and scouting from the guard ponies of the border outpost, it growing clearer and clearer that life in the village would not continue to suit a pony as hungry for new experiences as Snowflake was for very much longer. "She's too lively for us, that little firebrand!" her parents would joke behind her back.
So, as soon as she was old enough, the young mare set off from her village, the moment when she turned her head to look at her home village receding into the distance for the final time at the same time the most liberating and heart-wrenching moment of her life. Even if she hadn't lived up to their expectations, her parents had always been good to her, and Snowflake felt a deep sorrow in her heart upon leaving them... But Snowflake pressed on, knowing that this was simply something that she had to do. Besides, she'd come back and visit them someday...
Her parents had been terribly concerned that there would be little work out there for a "recon pony", but the truth, Snowflake quickly discovered, was quite different, as her talents were always in demand for a variety of purposes. No matter where she went, an eye-in-the-sky as keen and steadfast as hers was almost always welcome. This, coupled with the wilderness survival skills she'd learnt from her time back in the village, living surrounded by forests and other untamed regions almost the moment the farmlands around the village ended, kept the pegasus' head above water as she flittered from town-to-town, generally earning a few bits and usually blowing most of them on adventures about town, often trying her hoof at whatever was considered to be the local speciality before moving on, never quite at home anywhere... Never truly tied down...
This, eventually, brought her to Ponyville, a town whose reputation was starting to precede it, what with it now being home to the bearers of the Elements of Harmony and all that... Snowflake quietly hopes that she'll soon get a chance to meet them, but for the moment she's kept herself busy getting herself set up with some nice, if rather small and threadbare accommodations and a job monitoring Ponyville's borders for oncoming threats, where her talents in scouting and reconnaissance will undoubtedly prove useful, with Ponyville having recently established regular perimeter patrols in light of a number of disastrous or near-disastrous events that took the town completely by surprise (mostly notably an attack by a rampaging Ursa Minor, that would surely have caused large amounts of destruction and many casualties if not for the quick-thinking of the town's resident magical prodigy Twilight Sparkle). She has also taken up a part-time search and rescue position, though, as yet, no ponies have gotten lost in the short time Snowflake has been in Ponyville.
In the near future, Snowflake hopes to earn a bit of cash, have a lot of new experiences, meet a few new friends in the hopes of establishing a permanent contact or two within the town (a habit of hers almost since the very beginning of her travels), and probably (barring some highly notable event taking place that gives her cause to stay) be off again within a couple of months...
Accent:
It's worth noting that Snowflake possess a thick accent leftover from her childhood in her home village. This accent is best described as Canadian. More specifically, have a look at this video here. The Canadian accent the fellow speaking in this video has is the sort of accent that I mean...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0Hi4q_vlN0
_________________________
Whew! That was long! Well, there it is! I hope it's OK...
By the way, I also took the liberty of coming up with some Savage Worlds of MLP:FiM stats for Snowflake:
First of all, if you aren't familiar with the Tabletop RPG Savage Worlds or the MLP:FiM module created by Giftkrieg23 on DeviantART, you may want to check it out. Alternatively, feel free to ignore everything below this line entirely if you aren't interested in this sort of thing:
Savage Worlds "test drive" rules:
www.peginc.com/Downloads/SWEX/TD06.pdf
Giftkrieg's FiM module for Savage Worlds:
fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/144/6/b/savage_worlds_of_mlp__fim_rpg_by_giftkrieg23-d3cshas.pdf
Giftkrieg's DeviantART account:
giftkrieg23.deviantart.com/
Savage Worlds statistics for Snowflake:
Note: The following is based on starting out Snowflake at the start of the "seasoned" rank with 20 experience points (and thus the ability to purchase four advances on top of those gained from her hindrances)
Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d8, Spirit d8, Strength d4, Vigour d6
Skills: Courage d8, Dodge d8, Notice d8, Nature d6, Racing d4, Intuition d6, Prowl d6, Knowledge (reconnaissance) d8
Charisma: 0
Pace: 8, Evade: 6, Toughness: 5, Willpower: 6
Hindrances: Curious, Heroic ("scion of freedom")
Edges: Outlander, Elementary Thinking