My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook review—This game has no business being so polished.

The My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook is fantastic. It’s one of the best I have seen and read in a long time. There are some typos, and some things that I wish were different with the formatting, but overall I adore this game.

Before I dive into this review there are a few things I need to make clear. This one is long, and that’s because I went over each section of the book with a fine-toothed comb. If you’re familiar with the G.I. Joe Roleplaying Game, this game uses the same systems because it was made using the Essence20 system by Renegade Game Studios. There are 17 chapters in this book and while the flow of the chapters feels similar to the other games that Renegade put out, this book is so different. You can feel the love oozing from this book. From the color pallet to the character sheet.

I’m not a huge My Little Pony fan. I didn’t watch the shows, and I barely knew the characters. But it didn’t matter. I ran this game for a group of kids ages 9-12 and adults who are all 23+ years old. We all had fun.

Game Mechanics

The My Little Pony Roleplaying Game uses the Essence20 system. It uses; d20, d12, d8, d6, d4, and a d2 to play. A d2 is normally a coin flip. Your character is made up of the following things:

• Origin: Your Origin describes what kind of pony you are.
• Influences and Hang-Ups: Your talents and what you’re good at vs. What you’re not so good at. Influences have roleplay benefits, mechanical benefits, and bonuses that are added to your character sheet. Hang-Ups are a negative you must take when you take your Influence. They have roleplay and gameplay effects.
• Role: Essence and Skills: Think of these as your ability scores. They measure how strong, fast, smart, and charming your character is.

As you play, you’ll have to make Skill Tests. To do these you’ll always need a d20, you’ll use the d20 in combination with a Skill Die. The Game Master will set a target for you to hit or surpass and boom, you’ve done your Skill Test. Sometimes you’ll have an Edge and sometimes you’ll have a Snag. Edge means you roll a second d20 and take the higher of the two rolls. A Snag means that you roll a second d20 and take the lower of the two rolls.

Friendship Points are another important mechanic. In other Essence20 games, these are Story Points. You can spend your Friendship Points to upgrade your Skill Die or improve your defenses. The game has optional Advanced Rules that make it fall in line with other Essence20 games, and I do enjoy using them and encourage experienced players to do the same.

Character Creation

The character creation process for this game is so fun. It’s more fun than I thought it would be. Everything is so thematically appropriate and all of the options feel like they’re perfectly in sync with the game world.

You might want to consider what your Cutie Mark will look like as you go through character creation. A Cutie Mark is a showcase of a pony’s nature and talents or even their personality. You’ll also get to choose a Cutie Mark Perk. You can also choose to make a filly or colt. They don’t have a Cutie Mark yet and are much younger than normal. As you play you can age these characters up and have them hit the portions of character creation they don’t get to participate in. They don’t get to choose a Cutie Mark Perk, can only pick one Influence instead of 3, and don’t normally begin the game with a Role.

Before doing anything else, we have to first assign our Essence Points. Essence Points go into the Essence Scores. Essence Scores are Strength, Speed, Smarts, and Social. Your Essence Scores tell you what your character is best at and they’re used for calculating your defenses and skills. You get 12 to start and can spread them out however you want. For this character, I put 3 into everything because you can increase them during character creation. This part of the process is always quick and I appreciate that because it makes it easier to get to the better parts of character creation.

Now it’s time to select your Origin. Origins in this game tell you the type of pony you’re making. Origins gives you your starting Health, Movement rate, and Cutie Mark Perk (more on that later.) The Origins in the Core Rulebook are as follows:

• Earth Pony: Better are basics, start with more Health, and are fast when on the ground. They start with a General Perk too.
• Pegasus: You have wings!
• Unicorn: You have Telekinesis and have a strong connection to magic.

This character will be a Pegasus because frankly, they’re the coolest. Renegade includes a couple of roleplay paragraphs for them that I like. The artwork on these pages is awesome and makes it easy to envision my pony. The Pegasus Origin is all about speed and that’s fitting because they have wings. You only start with 2 Health though so it’s a very good thing this game isn’t combat-heavy. You can also choose your Movement: This is so damn cool and all of my players had a lot of fun with this. You get 3 choices. I went for 15ft ground and 45 ft aerial.

This is where your Cutie Mark Perk comes in. For the Pegasus, I get to choose a Skill, Specialization, or abstract area that I am especially talented in. The design of the Cutie Mark is up to each player. For mine, I’m going with a cloud ring on fire. When you take an action that your Cutie Mark covers it will give you an Edge. You’re also free to use the Advanced Rule–Abstract Cutie Marks: This rule allows you to choose something more specific for your Cutie Mark to cover like cheering up animals or being good with moths. I will continue using the basic rules for this example and pick Balance as my Skill Specialization.

The next thing to do is pick your Influence. Think of Influences as things that happened in your character’s past or present. They make your character into what they are and what they might become. You can choose up to 3. When you do you must take the Hang-Ups. You only get Hang-Ups on your second or third Influence. If you have seen my other Essence20 reviews, you know that I like to take the Hang-Up for everything. To test this, some of my players took only 2 Hang-Ups, and some took all three Hang-Ups. It won’t break the game to take all 3.

Influences are made up of Hang-Ups: A negative impact on your character. Normally, these come up in roleplay but they do also carry mechanical negative effects. Background Bonds: These are your character’s personality traits. Influence Skills: Shows the most useful skill for taking actions related to your character’s Influence. The Influences in the Core Rulebook go as follows:

• Adventurer
• Animal Whisperer
• Artisan
• Bookworm
• Buckballer
• Business Savvy
• Chatty
• Crowd Pleaser
• Futurist
• Heavy Hitter
• Intense
• Mentor
• Mountebank
• Nimble
• Party Maestro
• Powerhouse
• Precise
• Shrewd
• Sporty
• Spring into Action
• Stylish
• Tricky
• Vigilant
• Wheel Obsession

The Influence options are crazy! You get enough to cover just about any character you could ever want to make. Each page is also riddled with fantastic artwork. I love the lack of space on each page. For this character, I will choose 3 Influences and will only take 2 Hang-Ups. This is where I start running into the same issue I have had with each one of the Essence20 games that I have tried so far.

The character sheets are too cramped for the amount of information they give you to write down. For the most part, you can kind of squeeze in what you want, but if you want to have multiple Hang-Ups, you’re going to have issues fitting everything in.

But there is a lot of good to find on this character sheet too. Putting aside the obvious, you can clock the My Little Pony theming on the sheet from a mile away. The layout is fantastic and makes the flow of character creation easier to follow. My only complaint about this character sheet is that it often feels a little cramped.

There is a fun portion of the sheet that allows you to customize your pony. You can draw it and the cutie mark. There is space for a male and female pony. My players had so much fun with these. They spent about 45 minutes coloring on their physical character sheets.

Here’s the thing with the My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, the character creation is functionally the same as every other Essence20 game I have reviewed so far. The biggest difference here is that the character creation is the best theme that I have seen so far. There is no need to walk through character creation further, but I did want to talk about Roles.

In this game, your Role is like your character’s career. You’ll be picking how they service Equestria and your friends. You can choose from the following Roles:

• Generosity
• Honesty
• Kindness
• Laughter
• Loyalty
• Magic

When you choose a Role, you have to act in the spirit of the Role you choose. These Roles are called the Elements of Harmony. To make sure I got this right, I went and watched a few episodes of the TV show. Renegade nailed this whole aspect of the game. Seeing the players act out their Role is one of the best parts of this whole game. It brings everything together into a nice package. Roles provide other benefits as well, and this is where the main leveling component of the game comes into play. As you level up, you’ll unlock new skills and abilities that help flesh out your character’s Element of Harmony.

The character creation in this game is super fun, simple, and thematically superb. You can tell that the people designing this knew what they were doing. Your options are plentiful, but there is still room for expansion. However, they were much more careful about now throwing the expansions in your face in this book.

Magic

Magic is a big part of the TV show, so I’m not surprised it’s included here. What surprised me is how fluid magic feels. There are four circles of magic: Aid, Beam, Enchantment, and Utility. You have three tiers of magic to conquer: Elementary, Superior, and Virtuoso.

There are rules for everything in this section. Mastering magic, dispelling magic, specializing in magic, magic knowledge, and so much more. I love that Renegade made this section as thorough as it needed to be to capture the same feelings that magic gives in the TV show.

Equipment

The equipment section is extremely elementary, and for some reason, I expected that. There are a few cool things in this section, such as the Advanced Rule for commanding pets. You’ll also find the Advanced Rules for Houses and Homes.

Pets are cool enough, though none of my players ever wanted to use one. You can command them to do things like crawling through a hole to retrieve an item. Animals have a skill list that you can take advantage of as well. The rules are good if your group is into that sort of thing.

Houses and Homes is a very basic set of rules that add a little flavor to your game. Yes, you can upgrade rooms, and decide what the house looks like. I suspect this rule would work for a campaign. I have no idea why it’s classified as an Advanced Rule, though.

The rest of this section is just alright. You get some rules for weapons, an Advanced Rule for Kits, and some other charts for other types of gear. But if you’re expecting something expansive here, this is not the book for that and my group found that to be slightly disappointing. However, my younger players didn’t seem to mind at all and were not put off by the small equipment section.

Final Thoughts

The My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook gives you the complete experience. Everything is thematic, beautiful, and ties together nicely. The character sheet, while still having issues, is one of my favorites. I especially like the character creation, and how specific aspects of the game have changed to accommodate the setting.

For example, combat in this game is not like you would expect. While yes, you can swing swords and there are attack spells, the majority of your encounters will be social. It lines up with the show nicely because combat is few and far between. My groups had fun with both sets of encounters, especially because the core rulebook provides a nice set of encounters to choose from and lays the groundwork for you to build your own encounters in a way that is simple yet satisfying.

The game master section is nice, and while not being as fleshed out as I would like it to be it does provide enough guidance to get new game masters started on the right track. The starter adventure is simple, yet well-written and enjoyable. Finally, the rules for exploration are well thought out. The whole section is easy to follow and provides rules for just about everything you could want or need to do when exploring.

Overall, this is a fantastic book that provides everything you need to immerse yourself in the world of My Little Pony.

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