Okay, I understand where you're coming from. And admittedly, most of my desire is to explore the modern setting and the consequences of our actions, with meeting the canon characters being secondary to that.

But I find it interesting that you mention ponies, because there is an episode of MLP that does exactly what I'm suggesting: Slice of Life. In that episode, we see background characters, and even some new characters we've never seen before, living their own lives and acting out their own plot. The mane six are there, but in the background. Just because they're there doesn't mean they dominate the story. I'm not suggesting featuring the canon characters heavily, but to go back to the pony example, it would be like focusing on a group of OCs in Ponyville. They have their own lives and their own problems which they solve on their own, but the canon characters are still there. And maybe every once in a while Twilight Sparkle visits your coffee pony's coffee shop for a drink, or Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash visit your joke shop pony's shop for supplies, but even then they play a supporting role at most, and a background role more often than not.