Been pony RPing since 2012. The first system I used was Roleplaying is Magic. Tails of Equestria is Roleplaying Magic 5e if I’m not mistaken. I played 2e and pretty sure 3e, but I never got to try 4e. Each iteration was more complicated, and that was good. The magic system let you just make your own spells up, but had no way to balance things. And although you could take damage and be injured, there was no guide on how to deal damage or how much was sensible. As such my unicorn character ended up solving several situations with a single fireball spell. I ended up turning a lot of situations into a breeze. And that took options away from other players. I felt like a jerk but I never went against the rules and I did nothing wrong. And that is why balance is so important. I want to play my best without feeling guilty for it.

Systems should be fun first and foremost. Definitely tried my share of complicated and simple. DnD 5e is not a good system to ponify, because as I found out in my games, we often got dropped to 0hp in most encounters. And then we got back up again next turn. You can’t have a fun RP experience where battles are just a series of ponies collapsing down and then up again. And it’s so focused on combat and exploration.

My GMs began making their own homebrewed improved versions of Tails of Equestria, one notable one was one that took elements from Shadowrun since it was a space themed game. That was a lot of fun and still simple.
Then we thought “Why not use actual shadowrun rules?” and that was really bad. Fantasy creatures with magic and tech was such a perfect fit for ponies! So what went wrong? Very simple, the level up mechanics were very bad. I had loads of karma (xp points) that I repeatedly tried to use to level up my skills, but you have to roll to succeed at leveling up and spend ingame time on it. That single rule (And a really bad run of luck allowing a player character to die because we all failed our first aid rolls) made it truly unfun. It added rolls to so many things that should never be made to need rolls. It was complicated for the sake of complicated.

Finally, we moved to a no longer supported system called Iron Kingdoms, with our GM for that ponifying every single class (There are over 100 if I recall, so yes my GM for that is a god.) and creating a fantastic world for it. This was a steampunk experience that was so damn good that this 5yr old world is still being played in to this day.

We also tried Dragonquest (I very much disliked this one) and GURPS. GURPS is the most complicated system and with so damn many choices! But unlike some of the other complicated ones like Shadowrun and Dragonquest, GURPS has actually been super damn fun. Because it already feels like it’s set up for a pony game with very little work from the GM. It already has all your fantasy needs, with room for higher tech to be included like we see in the MLP show. Making the mane 6 in it accurately would be fully possible with no homebrew needed. The only thing that needed setting up was the race templates, creating them from scratch rather than just renaming the elves to deer like in the other systems. We could create a template up for every possible race in MLP and it would have the abilites and powers already balanced. DM me if you want the race templates I use. I’m sure my GM will be happy to share them. Or send me your own if you’ve played pony GURPS.

So to summerise:
Tails of Equestria is not the best system for pony RP, and being simple does not mean being fun. I really hope you all give other systems a go and don’t be afraid to experiment. Children can and do understand more complicated systems already. And pony is a fantastic world that deserves a little complexity. I’d love to know what others have used to play pony games, and which systems worked best for you. Even if it was a system you made yourself, I am interested! A friend of mine is making a system up that is meant to be an amalgamation of the best bits of the systems we’ve tried, to create a really good pony focused game. Homebrewed systems are going to be the eventual best option I think. And Tails of Equestria was just that when it began, a very simple homebrewed custom system. I just wish it had been brave enough to not stick so closely to the simplicity of it’s origins.

@Background Human
I dunno, the new Renegade system is tagged as being for players of 14+ years of age. Like, how can they possibly make a game about pretending to be a small talking horsey number crunchy? I’m very curious about it and hope it comes out sooner rather than later.

@Background Pony #2EB1
It’s a My Little Pony game. I’m not sure how crunchy it can be. You’re not modeling critical hits to the northwest scrotum, that’s for sure.

I’m currently playing an entire Tales of Equestria-campaign with a bunch of friends. If you can live with the rules system being very light on mechanics and mainly targeted at kids, it can be a lot of fun.