What is a Merpony?

A Merpony is a cross between a mer and a ponygirl/boy.  The merpony has the bit, bridle, and possibly harness of a pony, but has a mertail instead of legs and hooves.  (Some keep their pony tail and/or their hand hooves as well.)

Ponyplay is a part of the adult dominant/submissive world in both RL and SL, but merponyplay is not being created as part of this lifestyle.  We are simply offering a new and very fun world of things for mermaids and mermen to do, based on the activities that have been available for a long time to SL ponies (and other humanimals as well).

What kinds of things?

SL ponies learn and compete in all sorts of races, including steeplechase (aka "steeples"),  barrels, slalom, and pulling carts.  They also play a form of Polo, and perform complex patterns in several different forms of Dressage.  A pony immediately learns very precise avatar control, along with some very practical means of minimizing lag.  Ponies participate in grid-wide competitions between their home farm sims, with some contests used to determine an annual champion.

We've been experimenting with courses that can be used well by mers.  (As these courses are completed, a page of instructions will be added to this site and the boldface name will be a link to it.)

• Slalom is just a row of posts placed a few meters apart that the pony snakes through and back; score is the time with penalty seconds added anytime the pony touches a post. Slalom works fine for a mer when we move the posts a little farther apart to accommodate our long tails. 
• Barrels features three large posts set in a triangle perhaps 6 meters on a side; the pony goes around each one and returns.  Unlike slalom, this done in ALWAYS RUN mode.  No change needed for mers.
• Carts involves pulling a pony cart, with or without a rider giving commands.  We're working on mercarts that look more hydrodynamic and don't have wheels. Carting can be done within the sim, or out on long defined courses (on land these are the Linden Roads).
• Dressage has the pony follow a trainer's orders, given in different ways depending on the specific event, to walk a complex pattern of circles and lines painted on the field.  This also seems to work fine for mers (and is very immersive when done in mouselook).
• Polo:  two ponies (or teams of ponies) try to push a large ball with their bodies towards opposing goals.  No mer experiments to date, but looks like it should work fine.  (Maybe the ball can look like a big bubble!)
  
• Steeplechase requires the pony to follow a course and jump over walls and fences.  For this one, we've adapted  an obstacle course used in puppyplay.  (Mers move horizontally so are more the height of a puppy; jumping through a ring or swimming through a tube works better than the walls.)

And some unique Merpony courses

What can a merpony do that a pony can't?  The big thing is that we ascend/descend while ponies are limited to staying on the ground.  (As everyone knows, ponies don't fly.)  So we are experimenting with some courses that require the mer to navigate through a long tube that curves in all directions; a challenging task involving good av control and an excellent sense of direction.

WE'RE JUST BEGINNING!

Those of us working to get this started have hopes of developing a closer understanding between the mer and pony communities, as well as coming up with a whole new range of fun activities for everyone!  We hope some creators and scripters will see what we're doing and invent some brand new kinds of courses and obstacles to challenge us further.

WHAT NEXT?

If you would like to try out our sample merpony courses, send an inworld IM or Email to me, Trina Varriale.

Come have some fun swimming with us!

Updated 13 December 2018