Goals & Ties

What does your pony want to accomplish?

Now your pony is almost ready to go. Before you jump into your first adventure, though, take a few minutes to think about your pony’s goals and what ties you might have to other ponies in the group. Even if you’ve made your pony on your own, it’s a good idea to take these last steps together. Setting up goals and ties as a group allows you to riff off each other and come up with ideas that are complementary.

Goals

Your pony can have any number of goals, but try to come up with at least three. Goals usually have something to do with why your pony became an adventurer in the first place. It’s not a common calling after all, and certainly not a safe one. These driving forces often translate into one or more goals.
When making your list, try to come up with a mix of short and long-term goals. Short-term goals are things you want to focus on now, and long-term goals are of a size and scope that may require years or even decades of struggle. A good GM will take your goals into account when running the game, and the more info the GM has to work with, the better.
So what makes a good goal? Two things. First, a good goal should help define your pony by making explicit what is important to them. Second, it should provide story hooks that other players and the GM can grab and use in play.
Guidelines for designing more complex and longer-term pony goals can be found in Advanced Roleplaying.

Ties

The classic RPG set-up has the group meeting up in a tavern and embarking on a series of death-defying quests together despite being virtual strangers. That sort of approach can work if you are developing the ponies as the campaign goes on. The group’s cohesion will be stronger, however, if the ponies start with some ties. It doesn’t mean that all the ponies need to know each other before play begins, but they should have some connections. Ponies might have grown up in the same village, served in the same military unit, or even been romantic rivals. Or maybe they are distant cousins, chased by a shared enemy, or in debt to the same underworld figure.
You should try to come up with at least one tie for each other player pony, even if it’s a tenuous one. The group bond will grow over time but it’s a good idea to plant the seed early so it can grow.