Ι am a fan of both/doing both, and I dont think this is going to work as most people think. If anything this is going to be a one off release. Even DnD requires tons of supplements to flesh out an edition and make it interesting and on going. Barebones releases are not going to help much, and by its target audience, its not going to generate THAT much attention in order to warrant more expansions etc. IMHO at most its going to be a novelty that interest will wane soonish.

 

I'm not a fan of MLP, but I thought the same thing about the Tales of Equestria ttrpg. There are a fair number of books now and more releasing regularly. I don't disagree that it may be a one-off product, but I'm a-ok with that. The market for 80s nostalgia is big, and that'll help. It'll never be D&D, Pathfinder, Star Wars, etc., but I can see it selling pretty well.

 

If the book is easy to use with fundamentally compelling gameplay you won't strictly need a hell of a lot of extra material. D&D's flaws are not inherent to making an RPG. If the TF rulebook has decent rules for how to concoct some enemy transformers with a solid number of example robots to use immediately you can get quite a lot of life out of just one book. "Barebones releases"? We don't even know what the rules are about! We have no idea what kind of game they're really making.

 

Agreed.

My point is that a single core rulebook cant by definition have enough variety to keep you going for a long-time. Yes we dont know what its about, but certainly they are not going to invent the replacement to the wheel. Given that a corebook will be about 300 pages (generous estimation) half of them are explaining the rules, one third lore/universe presentation, I cant see it as having enough stuff to keep it going for a long time with adds-ons/ companion releases.

I dont say it will be bad, I just fear it will be a novelty for sometime and then shelved. Which might as well been their target and its not a bad thing.