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Personal: By Popular Demand
14 years ago
. . . Okay. When people start outlining character ideas to me, I know I’ve been given a mandate! So I plan to run a Pony Tales game for some local friends, including 
baroncoon, 
smudge, and 
dustykat.
Aside from the show itself, and comments from the staff, principal inspirations for tone and storytelling will be Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius, Hayao Miyazaki's animated movies, and Lois McMaster Bujold’s witty sense of narrative as exemplified in her Vorkosigan novels. The basic approach will be light adventure, situational and character-driven comedy, and relatively short, episodic plotlines.
It will be centered on the Valley of Heart’s Delight, a moderately long and moderately narrow river valley cradled by rugged hills and bounded at the end by the sea. The river is large and navigable, and has over the millennia deposited fertile soil across the valley floor. It is an ideal sheltered land for orchards and other crops; vinyards and ranches climb the facing slopes. Yes, the Apple clan is represented among the valley’s farmers.
The valley’s sole (medium-size) city, Gallopston, is at the mouth of the river; it is a good river port and a mediocre seaport. (Thanks to McClaw for the name.) The valley’s only rail corridor, recently expanded to two lines, follows the river through the hills to the head of the valley, steers wider of it to avoid floodwaters, runs through the city, and continues along the coast, skirting the hills to run back into Equestria.
The economy revolves mostly around agriculture, husbandry, and a little fishing, although there are some processing industries connected to all three. The valley exports some of the resulting raw and processed foodstuffs, textiles, and other products, but must import most raw materials and industrial goods other than what the modest local cottage industries can produce. There are wineries, breweries, cider mills, and distilleries; most are of at least decent quality, but best-known and most celebrated are some of the wineries and cider mills.
Towns and villages dot the valley, connected by a handful of Roman-style highways and a network of surprisingly good macadam roads. Canals stretch out from some small creeks as well as the main river. Not far from the head of the valley, a rocky promontory among the straggling foothills forces the river to bend around it. Atop the promontory is . . . a castle. It’s not very big, and it’s rather timeworn, but it’s still occupied by the lord of the march, the borders of which run along the ridge-tops a hill or two into the ranges surrounding the valley.
The current marquess—also as yet unnamed—is an earth stallion in late middle age. He’s fairly competent at running his fief, but he’s, um, rather eccentric, being fascinated with gadgets and artifacts of all sorts, both ancient and modern. (Christian IV of Denmark, a contemporary of Gustavus Adolphus, is a loose model for this mild obsession.) The march’s inhabitants regard him with a sort of affectionate exasperation, and accept his vagaries the way farmers in the real world deal with the weather: it does what it does, and there ain’t much to do about it. His wife is long-suffering, but genuinely seems to love him. His progeny are mostly grown and find any excuse to be anywhere else.
What distinguishes a march from a county is that it is on a country’s border, while the latter is in a country’s interior. Beyond one range of hills is more of Equestria—but beyond the other are wild lands. Here there be dragons. And griffons. And Celestia alone knows what else.
Ideas for content are welcome! This includes places, characters, names, and cutie marks.
baroncoon, 
smudge, and 
dustykat.Aside from the show itself, and comments from the staff, principal inspirations for tone and storytelling will be Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius, Hayao Miyazaki's animated movies, and Lois McMaster Bujold’s witty sense of narrative as exemplified in her Vorkosigan novels. The basic approach will be light adventure, situational and character-driven comedy, and relatively short, episodic plotlines.
It will be centered on the Valley of Heart’s Delight, a moderately long and moderately narrow river valley cradled by rugged hills and bounded at the end by the sea. The river is large and navigable, and has over the millennia deposited fertile soil across the valley floor. It is an ideal sheltered land for orchards and other crops; vinyards and ranches climb the facing slopes. Yes, the Apple clan is represented among the valley’s farmers.
The valley’s sole (medium-size) city, Gallopston, is at the mouth of the river; it is a good river port and a mediocre seaport. (Thanks to McClaw for the name.) The valley’s only rail corridor, recently expanded to two lines, follows the river through the hills to the head of the valley, steers wider of it to avoid floodwaters, runs through the city, and continues along the coast, skirting the hills to run back into Equestria.
The economy revolves mostly around agriculture, husbandry, and a little fishing, although there are some processing industries connected to all three. The valley exports some of the resulting raw and processed foodstuffs, textiles, and other products, but must import most raw materials and industrial goods other than what the modest local cottage industries can produce. There are wineries, breweries, cider mills, and distilleries; most are of at least decent quality, but best-known and most celebrated are some of the wineries and cider mills.
Towns and villages dot the valley, connected by a handful of Roman-style highways and a network of surprisingly good macadam roads. Canals stretch out from some small creeks as well as the main river. Not far from the head of the valley, a rocky promontory among the straggling foothills forces the river to bend around it. Atop the promontory is . . . a castle. It’s not very big, and it’s rather timeworn, but it’s still occupied by the lord of the march, the borders of which run along the ridge-tops a hill or two into the ranges surrounding the valley.
The current marquess—also as yet unnamed—is an earth stallion in late middle age. He’s fairly competent at running his fief, but he’s, um, rather eccentric, being fascinated with gadgets and artifacts of all sorts, both ancient and modern. (Christian IV of Denmark, a contemporary of Gustavus Adolphus, is a loose model for this mild obsession.) The march’s inhabitants regard him with a sort of affectionate exasperation, and accept his vagaries the way farmers in the real world deal with the weather: it does what it does, and there ain’t much to do about it. His wife is long-suffering, but genuinely seems to love him. His progeny are mostly grown and find any excuse to be anywhere else.
What distinguishes a march from a county is that it is on a country’s border, while the latter is in a country’s interior. Beyond one range of hills is more of Equestria—but beyond the other are wild lands. Here there be dragons. And griffons. And Celestia alone knows what else.
Ideas for content are welcome! This includes places, characters, names, and cutie marks.
(Now I just need to find an outlet for all the other thoughts I have. Ponies keep trotting through my subconscious, stirring up all kinds of old, dusty ideas and bringing new ones to the surface...)