One Page Adventures: Hills & Wizard's Tower
2022 / Roleplaying game adventures / 2+ players
***
There was some suitably magical and fairy taleish inspiration (when omitting the violence) in these formerly unconnected spreads to beef up the journey and destination of a Tails of Equestria mini adventure. The random magical ice door dictated the next leg, which needed a more detailed source.
2017 / Roleplaying game mini-adventure / 2+ players
**
Unlike the other mini adventures, which are self-contained encounters that can be slotted into any compatible setting without fuss, this one acts as the opening scenes to an unfinished story that demands you make up your own continuation. Or you could just leave the kid upset and his mentor's fate unknown, if you're playing this wrong.
Fortunately, a wizard's tower isn't a difficult springboard for coming up with your own scenarios or taking your pick from various generic modules across RPG history and ponying them up. I went hard with the latter.
***
A measly but cheap expansion adding extra origami critters and options to round out what's already an unplayably complex family game at present, but I can enjoy disassociative solo playing until she's older. It's a shame the starfish are so rubbish though. The salt packet design was a fun gimmick for the few seconds it lasted.
****
Basing my budget card game selections on which brands AliExpress pirates are flogging for even cheaper has had mixed success (my daughter recently wanted to play 100 rounds of the princess game over a weekend and likes to impress nobles in Splendor, but the exploding fireworks game is "boring"), but this is my favourite so far – a relaxing cut-throat game on the high seas that's always over too quickly. The combination of collectable points and effects is a bit more convoluted than the princess game, but it might inspire some origami activities.
2023 / Solo/cooperative card game expansions / 1-2 players
This dystopian Bertha reboot was the first game in the series for a long while where I was satisfied enough by the base game experience that I could have saved the extras until later, but they were so tempting sitting there that I only lasted a couple of days. Here's how they plug in and play.
The adorable Babybots (and the humour of shuffling their parents together in the deck to 'make' them) admittedly overshadows the functionality of this little expansion, but it's a nice extra challenge that overcompensates for your trouble, if anything. The greater challenge would be going back to playing without Babybots now.
The Gigantobots *****
I didn't expect the Babybots to be overshadowed so soon, but getting to pile related robots inside a giant robot to fight a smoke-spewing bad robot makes for the most dramatic Oniverse scenes since Nautilion, even if it's mainly a riff on Onirim's The Mirrors.
At this point, there's no doubt that Cyberion is my second favourite in the series (at least), and the first real challenger to Onirim with three expansions and the combined gigantogame still to go.
The Microbots **
A pesky challenge that cancels itself out with rewards is an Oniverse tradition, but the tokens are a bit too fiddly to bother with every time, and the nanobots are more creepy than cute. Is it wearing lipstick?
The Multibots ****
Hooray, the semi-wild robots are here! And they've brought even harder challenges, hooray! Randomising all the machine decks for variety is a nice touch that helps make this a keeper.
The Devious Cog ***
The gamers who hate Aerion for the luck factor will just love this one as robot powers fire off randomly and bugger up their plans. I wouldn't want the hassle every time, but it's bit of mischievous fun and a reminder not to take your cute dream robots game too seriously.
Next Stop: Urbion again >
2023 / Solo/cooperative card game / 1-2 players
*****
After my disappointment with the samey Stellarion, the Oniverse is back on peak form in its pen-Ultimion new release. It's still partly the same old shit under the rusted industrial-fantastical coating, but there are so many moving parts and decisions to make every turn that I could tell it was a favourite even before getting around to the expansions, along with my favourite cast of minions since the thematically-opposite Sylvion.
The main downside is that the penfurcated baddie tokens need to be held together with an elastic band when joining the rest of the horde on the bookcase. And how some games are literally unplayable from the start and need to be reshuffled, which I hadn't noticed being a problem in others.
***
Resold
A more enjoyable take on a paperback sci-fi dungeoneering than the episodic Starship Traveller, the lack of rhyme, reason or direction to the encounters felt appropriately disorienting for the alien environment. It also means I have no clue how far I got before finally being disintegrated by a riddle, but since I'm still none the wiser about that space grid and tank table at the back of the book, probably less progress than I thought. The only reason I played this at all was that I found it in the library booksale for 25p, so I can't really complain.
My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria – Run Away Danger
DIY roleplaying game adventure
The longest meandering adventure in our relatively short roleplaying history, this epic Dantean trek through the multiverse spanned most of the school summer holiday, like the 90s Spider Man cartoon in cardboard standees, and about as coherent.
The young Game Master didn't waste any time on gradual escalation, plotting or other boring storytelling conventions, instead launching us straight into boss rush mode using all the biggest figures from the box to devastate the players (including herselves) and their supply of emergency tokens. After that onslaught, things got more cerebrally bleak as we travelled to the future and found it naught but a black void ("because it hasn't happened yet"), but still filled with more monsters down its multiple-choice paths that ate one of us.
I passed on the advice from the rulebook that GMs should be fans of the players who actually want them to enjoy themselves, and she reined it in to be about 20% less nihilistic after that.
One Page Adventures: Coast, Pirate Ship, Underwater & Church
2022 / Roleplaying game adventures / 2+ players
****
Four pages of starting notes plus my own extensive improv to fit our theme, actually, but who's counting? There were enough ideas across these spreads to inspire a kid-friendly adventure above and below sea level while leaving out the nastier stuff. I thought I'd plotted a wide enough sandbox, but more improvisation was required when the player pursued an unexpectedly self-destructive path. She's keeping me on my toes.
My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria – Tabletop Weekly Playthrough
2017 / Roleplaying game adventure / 2+ players
***
I dipped into this YouTube series last year to get an idea of how to start a roleplaying game in the first place, and used the example of the Bubblegum character to help my then-four-year-old understand the process of creating her own unique character. She liked it and decided she would just do that one.
More recently, we ran out of official adventures for the game and I decided we would just do this one. It got a bit creepy in the middle (I didn't have to play that haunted mansion backing music, to be fair), and more fighty at the end than we can be bothered with (I haven't really tracked stamina since 2024), but the writer's probably correct that it feels more like the show than the published adventures do. Their playthrough would have been a whole episode shorter if their team had decided to run straight upstairs like ours did.
My Little Pony: Tails of Equestria – Castle Karaoke
DIY roleplaying adventure
The name and prompt came from kids' RPG No Thank You, Evil!, but I made up the rest, Taylored to her tastes and fun for me to plot out. It ended up being a whodunnit in a similar vein to a previous pony case that she wanted to play again, but can't, since she remembers the culprit. She seemed to dig it, since she immediately followed up with her customary "I can do that" improv remix.
Adventures on a Single Page: The Heist (Adapted)
2020 / Roleplaying game adventure / 2+ players
***
A bit lightweight on its own, this became one section of a larger story after more thematic meddling than usual to fit it into My Little Pony (changing the stolen painting to Rarity's gem; making the thieves' guild a dragon embassy because we have abundant dragon standees we've never used; losing the feral cats; challenging prejudices by making it all the doings of a troubled foal, after all). The framework was still standing after that adaptation inferno, even if we didn't trigger the creative alarm system in the end, or I just forgot.
We've probably run out of compatible modules from this set now, so I'll have to find flexible inspiration elsewhere to spare us from more of my own creations.
Adventures on a Single Page: Magus Moreau's Island (Adapted)
2020 / Roleplaying game adventure / 2+ players
****
A nice little conversion of vintage sci-fi horror to junior RPG scenario that adapted smoothly to the My Little Pony setting with its pre-existing chimeras and Discord lore. A Fisher Price pirate ship and Catan board representing the island enhanced the thematic hodge-podge further.
