History TabletopGame / Ponyfinder

* AllYourPowersCombined: Invoked, to reference [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS3E13MagicalMysteryCure Twilight Sparkle's ascension to alicornhood]]. The Unification sorcerer bloodline allows a pony to develop powers and physical traits from other pony tribes. However, it's Averted in that it only grants the powers of two of the nine major tribes (earth pony, unicorn, pegasus, leatherwing, sun pony, gem pony, sea horse, antean, ghost pony); this explains why Alicorns in the setting are {{Winged Unicorn}}s and not {{Mix And Match Creature}}s of the various pony tribes.

** Most of the deities of the corebook are clearly based on the fan-accepted "gods" of the G4 cast; Sun Queen (Princess Celestia), Moon Princess (Princess Luna), Princess Luminace (alicorn!Twilight Sparkle), the Night Mare (Nightmare Moon), the Unspoken (Discord), and Kara (Queen Chrysalis -- though Queen Chrysalis's insectile appearance is applied to Kara's agent, Temptation, instead).

* CatGirl: Purrsian/Human crossbreeds are a variant, being visually human (though sometimes possessed of cat ears) from the waist up and a bipedal cat from the waist down. Unlike most catgirls and catboys, though, they have wings.
* CharmPerson: Short Legs and their [[HalfHumanHybrid Satyr descendants]] have the ability to do this through the sheer power of their cuteness, via the Shield of Innocence racial trait.

* SnakesAreSinister: Apep, the most dangerous, feared and evil of the gods, takes the form on an immense cobra.

* AfterTheEnd: The expansion book ''From The Ashes'' provides several additional rules as well as a vision of what is, essentially, the Everglow's version of ''Fanfic/FalloutEquestria''. The original rulebook also makes much emphasis in the state of the world once the Empire falls.
* AllYourPowersCombined: Invoked, to reference [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS3E13MagicalMysteryCure Twilight Sparkle's ascension to Alicornhood]]. The Unification sorcerer bloodline allows a pony to develop powers and physical traits from other pony tribes. However, it's Averted in that it only grants the powers of two of the nine major tribes (earth pony, unicorn, pegasus, leatherwing, sun pony, gem pony, sea horse, antean, ghost pony); this explains why Alicorns in the setting are {{Winged Unicorn}}s and not {{Mix And Match Creature}}s of the various pony tribes.
* ArtificialHuman:
** The Clockwork sub-tribe are cursed ponies whose bodies are living clockwork machinery, though they still age, love and die like flesh and blood ponies.
** The Steelhearts are living constructs, metallic pony bodies over a core of magically animated living wood, created in strange magical factories by unknown forces.

* {{Gotterdammerung}}: It is canonical that the Everglow Empire will collapse in upon itself with the death of Queen Iliana, eventually taking with it all ponykind's former power and glory.

* HalfHumanHybrid: "Satyrs" in this setting are the result of a pony, a purrsian or even a ruminant having a child with a human. The result is a being who is human from the waist up and a bipedal non-human from the waist down, with extra traits like wings or horns depending on their precise ancestry.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfRaces: A huge amount, especially when one takes into accounts that the standard D&D/Pathfinder humanoids (humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings, at the least) ''also'' exist in Everglow.
** Ponies, to begin with, are split between numerous tribes and sub tribes. As the subtribes are technically originally normal ponies who underwent some sort of alterations in the past, it's possible to mix just about any sub-tribe with any tribe, allowing for oddities like Clockwork Unicorns, Antean Pegasi and Sun Zebras.
*** Pony Tribes: Earth-bound, Unicorn, and Pegasus are obvious enough. There are also Sea Horses (aquatic ponies), Leatherwings (bat-winged cave-dwelling pegasi), Ghost Ponies (mystic ponies adapted to live in the Ethereal Plane), Zebras (striped, shamanistic ponies) and the lost/extinct tribe of Short Legs (chibi ponies who worshipped Lashtada and were wiped out by gnolls)
*** Pony Subtribes: these are more spiritual/mystical offshoots to the "main" tribes. The current subtribes statted are Chaos Hunters (born with the power and compulsion to fight Chaotic creatures), Clockworks (cursed ponies transformed into beings of living clockwork mechanisms), Doppelgangers (equine shapeshifters), Gem Ponies (crystal-pelted heirs to a lost kingdom), Anteans (giant ponies who reach 14-16 feet in length), Sun Ponies (heat-tolerant desert-dwelling ponies) and Bones (necroticially infused ponies with a connection to the dead).
** Pony Satyrs, a pony/human crossbreed. These come in basic (Earth-bound/Zebra), winged (Pegasus/Leatherwing), Unicorn, Sea Horse and Short Leg variants, and can belong to any of the pony subtribes.

** Sun Cats, a race of arrogant fire-worshipping felines.

*** Purrsian Satyrs, the result of crossbreeding with either humans (winged {{Catgirl}}s) or ponies (winged cat forequarters, pony hindquarters)
** Phoenix Wolves, fiery wolves descended from magically redeemed {{hellhound}}s.

** Luminous Dragons are descendants of a draconic servitor of Luminace, the Pony Goddess of Knowledge, making for smaller and far more sociable dragons.

** Purrsian/Pony hybrids have the forequarters of a purrsian and the hindquarters of a pony.
** Famous historical figure Shifting Wind is a magically transformed hybrid of pegasus and kitsune, leading to a somewhat vulpine-looking pegasus with multiple lashing fox tails.
** Satyrs, as mentioned above, are human with some extra traits from the waist up and a pony, purrsian or ruminant from the waist down.
** It's unclear if certain ruminants are either partially cloven or pony, or if their blood bears mystical impurities that will lead them to evolving into either race. But either way, ruminants with the Cloven Creator or Pony-Touched impurities are visually a blend of deer with either goat or pony, so much so that they can actually pass themselves off as members of the other race to a casual observer.

** Two of the playable races are Sea Horses and Flutterponies, based upon creatures from the G1 era.

** Luminous Dragons, introduced in Princess Luminace's Guide to the Pony Pantheon, are clearly based on the continuity-spanning character of Spike, most blatantly the G4 version, to the point that he is instantly identifiable as a Luminous Librarian Dragon by the game's rules.

* PunyHumans:
** Played straight during the Empire's age, when humans were either wandering tribes or squabbling, pitiful villages beyond the Empire's reach, with the most civilised being those human settlements co-opted into the Empire. Averted with the Empire's collapse, when they expanded to fill the Empire's place.
** Averted with the dwarves, who taught ponies how to use technology, and with the elves, who were the second race to form major kingdoms of their own.
* ResurrectiveImmortality: Earth Ponies get a racial feat that allows them to reincarnate into a new Earth Pony body one week after dying, so long as their body is on the Material Plane when they die, or is brought back to it at some point afterwards.

** ''To TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}''; Steelhearts, as mentioned above, are basically "pony Warforged", whilst the doppelganger sub-tribe is visually styled after Eberron's changelings.

** The expansion book ''From The Ashes'' provides an alternate vision of how Everglow falls and [[AfterTheEnd how the world keeps going after such a bloody prologue]] -- it's pretty clear from the get-go that it's an homage to ''Fanfic/FalloutEquestria''.
* VestigialEmpire: After Queen Iliana's death, the Empire quickly decayed into this, expending itself on numerous futile internal conflicts and power grabs, before utterly collapsing in on itself, to the point that the humans who took its place mostly don't believe it ever existed.

* CrapsaccharineWorld: Everglow may ''look'' shiny and happy, but there's a layer of grimdark beneath the surface. The setting explicitly includes most if not all of the various monsters from Pathfinder, the beloved queen is a WellIntentionedExtremist responsible for the deaths of two pony tribes that we know of, humanoids in the "present" are subtly discriminated against, and the Empire is explicitly power-hungry and doomed to succumb to its own corruption.

* AfterTheEnd: The expansion book ''From The Ashes'' provides several additional rules as well as a vision of what is, essentially, the Everglow's version of ''Fanfic/FalloutEquestria''.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ponyfinder_logo.jpg]]

* [[ArtificialHuman Artificial Ponykind]]:

* EverybodyHatesHades: The ponykind death goddess, Soft Whisper, has been almost forgotten since her primary worshippers, the Tribe of Bones, were wiped out, and continues to exist only because pony souls still need someone to send them on and no other deity has arisen to usurp her role. Despite this, she's a world-weary, gentle yet firm goddess who only wants to make sure that the spirits of the dead go on to their proper place in the afterlife, and who abhors necromancy.

** Pony Tribes: Earth-bound, Unicorn, and Pegasus are obvious enough. There are also Sea Horses (aquatic ponies), Leatherwings (bat-winged cave-dwelling pegasi), Ghost Ponies (mystic ponies adapted to live in the Ethereal Plane), Zebras (striped, shamanistic ponies) and the lost/extinct tribe of Short Legs (chibi ponies who worshipped Lashtada and were wiped out by gnolls)
*** Pony Subtribes: These are more spiritual/mystical offshoots to the above tribes, and it's possible to mix just about any sub-tribe with any tribe, allowing for oddities like Clockwork Unicorns, Antean Pegasi and Sun Zebras. The current subtribes statted are Chaos Hunters (born with the power and compulsion to fight Chaotic creatures), Clockworks (cursed ponies transformed into beings of living clockwork mechanisms), Doppelgangers (equine shapeshifters), Gem Ponies (crystal-pelted heirs to a lost kingdom), Anteans (giant ponies who reach 14-16 feet in length), Sun Ponies (heat-tolerant desert-dwelling ponies) and Bones (necroticially infused ponies with a connection to the dead).

** To TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}; Steelhearts, as mentioned above, are basically "pony Warforged", whilst the doppelganger sub-tribe is visually styled after Eberron's changelings.

* WritingAroundTrademarks: It's a commercial game without Hasbro's authorization, so Everglow isn't ''quite'' Equestria, but the rules are designed to make it easy for fans who so choose to use it ''to'' play ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic.''

''Ponyfinder'' is a fanmade roleplaying game campaign setting created by David Silver, head of the indy RPG company Silver Games LLC and published through the [=DriveThruRPG=] website. As the name implies, it originally used TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}} rules; a version for the 5th edition of TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons was later released hearing the subtitle ''Dawn of the Fifth Age''. (A free conversion document for 4th edition ''D&D'' was also released.)

The author of the game has started a series of crossover fanfics between Ponyfinder and ''Friendship is Magic'', beginning with ''Fanfic/ADangerousSparkle''.

** Most of the deities of the corebook are clearly based on the fan-accepted "gods" of the G4 cast; Sun Queen (Princess Celestia), Moon Princess (Princess Luna), Princess Luminace (alicorn!Twilight Sparkle), the Night Mare (Nightmare Moon), the Unspoken (Discord), and Kara (Queen Chrysalis - though Queen Chrysalis's insectile appearance is applied to Kara's agent, Temptation, instead).

''Ponyfinder'' is a fanmade supplement for TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}} created by David Silver, head of the Silver Games LLC indy RPG company and published through the [=DriveThruRPG=] website. As the name implies, it uses Pathfinder rules (with basic translations for 4e and 5e TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons) to allow fans of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' to roleplay tabletop games that mix Franchise/MyLittlePony and Pathfinder.

* FandomNod:
** The corebook's two gods that aren't {{Captain Ersatz}}es are Blaze (based on the fan-conception of "Nightmare Sun", Celestia's corrupted form) and Sheila the Author (based upon the common fanon of depicting Lauren Faust as a creator-deity in Equestria).
** Luna's bat-winged personal guard, long considered a seperate pegasus race in fandom, become a fully fledged race here, though called "leatherwings" rather than the fandom-common "thestrals". They also have certain elements of Fluttershy's "Flutterbat" form from [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS4E7Bats "Bats!"]]

* PunyHumans: Played straight during the Empire's age, when humans were either wandering tribes or squabbling, pitiful villages beyond the Empire's reach, with the most civilised being those human settlements co-opted into the Empire. Averted with the Empire's collapse, when they expanded to fill the Empire's place.
** Averted with the dwarves, who taught ponies how to use technology and with the elves, who were the second race to form major kingdoms of their own.

** Most of the deities of the corebook are clearly based on the fan-accepted "gods" of the G4 cast; Sun Queen (Princess Celestia), Moon Princess (Princess Luna), Princess Luminace (alicorn!Twilight Sparkle), The Night Mare (Nightmare Moon), the Unspoken (Discord), and Kara (Queen Chrysalis - though Queen Chrysalis's insectile appearance is applied to Kara's agent, Temptation, instead).

*** Doppelgangers, meanwhile, are based more off of Eberron's Changelings than the show's, though the Doppelganger mini-splatbook makes them more like their show counterparts, including noting that Kara devotees turned into doppelgangers resemble the insecto-equines of the show.

* HalfHumanHybrid: Pony Satyrs are the result of a pony having a child with a human.

* HotSkittyOnWailordAction: Intertribal romance is common, explaining the flexibility of the tribe/sub-tribe ruleset. InterspeciesRomance is rare, but not unheard of; Pony Satyrs (human/pony) are statted in the Forgotten Gods of Everglow sourcebook, and the same sourcebook also mentions Hippogriffs (griffon/pony), who get stats of their own in the griffon sourcebook.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: Queen Iliana was one. On the one hand, she did unite the formerly scattered pony tribes and forge them into a mighty Empire. On the other hand, she destroyed the Tribe of Bones for questioning that her intentions were less than noble and who asked she prove her good intentions by being ceremonially cleansed for all the deaths she had ordered before they surrendered to her leadership, and when the Short Leg ponies politely turned down the idea of joining her empire, she stood back and allowed them to be wiped out by an army of gnolls.

** The Tribe of Bones, although now demonized InUniverse as evil necromancers, were in fact a sub-tribe of peaceful shamans who revered the spirits of their ancestors and followed the teachings of Soft Whispers (Madame Tris’do, as they called her), seeking only to ensure that the souls of the dead went peacefully on their way to the afterlife.

* NiceIsNotGood: This is why neither Soft Whispers (Death Goddess) nor Lashtada (Love Goddess) from ''Forgotten Gods of Everglow'' is Good in alignment. Soft Whispers is a gentle deity, but she will also brook no arguments; a soul ''must'' accept that their time is up and move on, lest they become an undead monster. Lashtada, meanwhile, values love over all things and so cares only that it is allowed to bloom; the sourcebook explicitly notes that Lashtada will support a tyrant who at least allows their people to love freely over a kind ruler who nonetheless insists upon enforcing the policy of {{Arranged Marriage}}s, as the concept of "forcing love" in such a way offends her.

* EverybodyHatesHades: The ponykind death goddess, Soft Whisper, has been almost forgotten since her primary worshippers, the Tribe of Bones, were wiped out, and continues to exist only because pony souls still need someone to send them on and no other deity has arisen to usurp her role. Despite this, she's a world-weary, gentle yet firm goddess who only wants to make sure that the spirits of the dead go on to their proper place in the afterlife, and who abhores necromancy.

** The Tribe of Bones are depicted in the corebook as a depraved and power hungry tribe of evil {{necromancer}}s who Queen Iliana destroyed because they attempted to enslave ponykind, which reflects the opinion of "modern ponies". The e-book splats on Forgotten Gods and The Tribe of Bones reveals they were actually a gentle and good-natured tribe of ancestor-worshipping, ghost-quelling shamans who were suspicious of Queen Iliana's bloody methods for forging her empire and requested she come to them for ceremonial cleansing, to prove she was not a powerhungry tyrant, before they would surrender to her leadership. In response, she destroyed the tribe, erected her central kingdom upon the ruins of their lands, and demonized them as evil amongst the other ponies.

The author of the game has started a crossover fanfic between Ponyfinder and ''Friendship is Magic'' on FiMfiction, called ''Fanfic/ADangerousSparkle''.

** The Steelheart race are basically TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'s Warforged in pony shape. Doppelgangers, meanwhile, are based more off of Eberron's Changelings than the show's, though the Doppelganger mini-splatbook makes them more like their show counterparts, including noting that Kara devotees turned into doppelgangers resemble the insecto-equines of the show.

* MixAndMatchCritters:
** Griffons, obviously. It's actually noted in the griffon splatbook that even in families, it's rare that two griffons will look alike, they are that prone to diversity in which avian or feline they resemble. Certain aspects do have certain species associated with them (snow owls and snow leopards for the Snow aspect, vultures and ravens for the Carrion aspect, lions for Pride aspect, sea eagles and otters for the Sea aspect, etc), but even then it's not guaranteed.
** Hippogriffs are ''slightly'' more stable, in that their rear half is always clearly an equine, but their forehalves are just as variable as their griffon parents.
** Purrsians look like cats with wings, so they're a less drastic version of this trope.
* MythologyGag:
** Two of the playable races are Sea Horses and Flutterponies, based upon creatures from the G1 era.
** Though the doppelganger subtribe are portrayed as ordinary ponies with unusual grey and white coloration, a racial feat allows for ponies to have the more insectile appearance associated with G4's changelings.

** The griffon splatbook mentions a "paladin" named [[Literature/{{Discworld}} Lord Rust the Arrogant]], infamous for his inability to change his mind upon deciding a course of action, his complete and utter disregard for the lives of those under his command, and his unfailing ability to pick the plan of attack so bloody and costly that other military leaders considered him an arrogant idiot. As if further proof of the connection is needed, the same article explains how he always led from the front, had an uncanny ability to avoid ranged attacks and spells, and managed to actually win several (costly) important victories by surprising enemy commanders who truly believed nobody ''that stupid'' or reckless with the lives of their soldiers would be given command.

** The Steelheart race are basically TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'s Warforged in pony shape.

** Pony Satyrs, a pony/human crossbreed. These come in basic (Earth-bound/Zebra), winged (Pegasus/Leatherwing), Unicorn and Sea Horse variants, and can belong to any of the pony subtribes.

* HotSkittyOnWailordAction: Intertribal romance is common, explaining the flexibility of the tribe/sub-tribe ruleset. InterspeciesRomance is rare, but not unheard of; Pony Satyrs (human/pony) are statted in the Forgotten Gods of Everglow sourcebook, and the same sourcebook also mentions Hippogriffs (griffon/pony), who will presumably get stats of their own in the griffon sourcebook.

** Pony Satyrs, a pony/human crossbreed.
** Griffons, a race of avian/feline hybrid quadrapeds who are getting their own splatbook which will give them a similar tribal/subtribal split as ponykind.

* ShoutOut: To TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}; Steelhearts, as mentioned above, are basically "pony Warforged", whilst the doppelganger sub-tribe is visually styled after Eberron's changelings.

** The Tribe of Bones are depicted in the corebook as a depraved and power hungry tribe of evil {{necromancer}}s who Queen Iliana destroyed because they attempted to enslave ponykind, which reflects the opinion of "modern ponies". The e-book splats on Forgotten Gods and The Tribe of Bones reveals they were actually a gentle and good-natured tribe of ancestor-worshipping, ghost-quelling shamans who were suspicious of Queen Iliana's bloody methods for forging her empire and requested she come to them for ceremonial cleansing first, to prove she was not a powerhungry tyrant. In response, she destroyed the tribe, erected her central kingdom upon the ruins of their lands, and demonized them as evil amongst the other ponies.

* HotSkittyOnWailordAction: Intertribal romance is common, explaining the flexibility of the tribe/sub-tribe ruleset. Interspecies romance is rare, but not unheard of; Pony Satyrs (human/pony) are statted in the Forgotten Gods of Everglow sourcebook, and the same sourcebook also mentions Hippogriffs (griffon/pony), who will presumably get stats of their own in the griffon sourcebook.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: Queen Iliana was one. On the one hand, she did unite the formerly scattered pony tribes and forge them into a mighty Empire. On the other hand, she destroyed the Tribe of Bones for questioning that her intentions were less than noble and who asked she prove her good intentions by being ceremonially cleansed for all the deaths she had ordered, and when the Short Leg ponies politely

* WellIntentionedExtremist: Queen Iliana was one. On the one hand, she did unite the formerly scattered pony tribes and forge them into a mighty Empire. On the other hand, she destroyed the Tribe of Bones for questioning that her intentions were less than noble and who asked she prove her good intentions by being ceremonially cleansed for all the deaths she had ordered, and when the Short Leg ponies politely declined to join her in unifying ponydom by force, she abandoned them to gnolls and other monsters and allowed them to be destroyed.
* WingedUnicorn: Through the Unification bloodline, a unicorn can acquire the wings of a pegasus or a leatherwing, or vice versa. Queen Iliana is the G4 standard of an alicorn, with Earth-bound, Pegasus and Unicorn powers.
----

The game is set in the Equestria {{expy}} of Everglow, a particularly magic-rich world where, in addition to the standard array of humans, orcs, elves, dwarves, etcetera, a [[LoadsAndLoadsOfRaces vast number of sapient fey animals]] have developed. The ponies of this world, under the reign of Queen Iliana, the first [[WingedUnicorn Alicorn]], have founded the first and mightiest empire of the world. But this empire will not last forever... unless the PCs say otherwise.

* AllYourPowersCombined: Invoked, to reference [[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS3E13MagicalMysteryCure Twilight Sparkle's ascension to Alicornhood. The Unification sorcerer bloodline allows a pony to develop powers and physical traits from other pony tribes. However, it's Averted in that it only grants the powers of two of the nine major tribes (earth pony, unicorn, pegasus, leatherwing, sun pony, gem pony, sea horse, antean, ghost pony); this explains why Alicorns in the setting are {{Winged Unicorn}}s and not {{Mix And Match Creature}}s of the various pony tribes.