PREMISE
This game takes place over a thousand years after the Elements of Harmony were lost in the ruinous catastrophe which ended the Golden Age of Pony civilization (the beginning of which was portrayed in MLP:FiM, more or less; the show is a related but alternate universe). In the long centuries since the catastrophe, ponies have survived and, indeed, prospered, although the world remains rather less safe and civilized than it once was. There is no central government; Canterlot is a distant memory. Still, ponies being basically nice, friendly and cooperative creatures, the world is not a bleak post-apocalyptic wasteland, in spite of the adversity its modern inhabitants sometimes face.
The game begins in a region of Equus (the planet on which Equestria proper is located) called the Dusts. This area is marginally suitable for agriculture and is inhabited by a variety of sentient beings, mostly ponies. It gets its name from the persistent dust blown in from the dry sea to the west of the inhabited region. Life in the Dusts is hard compared to life in old Equestria, but nopony is starving and the towns are relatively safe. The ease and plenty of the golden age is far removed from living memory anyway. A renaissance might be on the horizon!
CHARACTERS
The player characters can be any of the canonical pony types (or other types of creature if coordinated with the GM.) Their temperament should be adventurous, or if not adventurous, at least susceptible to peer pressure where adventuring is concerned so that the party will be able to face the challenges presented by the story actively. Ponies should be designed with an Element of Harmony in mind but do not need to epitomize their element. (That is, it should be obvious what the pony’s element is, but he or she does not need to be as honest as Applejack or as magical as Twilight Sparkle.)
THE REST OF THIS DOCUMENT
Be sure to memorize the airship schedule on page-- wait, no, just kidding. Don’t panic. This document is sort of a brief encyclopedia of stuff your characters might know. You can get by without reading it. It is in any case not necessary to know all this stuff. (Your character almost certainly doesn’t know it all either, e.g. it contains a much higher quality of census and demographic information than actually exists in the game world.) You can look things up when you hear about them. Still, if you look at it now, it will help you to add depth to your character and integrate him or her with the setting better. I will try to use normal forms of narrative exposition to explain most of these things as they come up in the game, or just try to show them to you through the eyes of your characters.