• Story/Game: The Purloined Pony

    [Normal] This is a wonderfully, stupendously creative project and if you don't post it I'll cry. -Pre-Reader #2

    In other words, try it out, cause it's awesome. 


    Author: Chris
    Description: When a young foal goes missing, it's up to Carrot Top to step in and save the day. Based on the 1980's/90's Choose Your Own Adventure book series.
    The Purloined Pony Introduction
    The Purloined Pony Table of Contents

    Additional Tags: CYOA, 2nd person, Adventure

    58 comments:

    1. OMG i have been waiting for one of these for ages. excellent work xD

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    2. The pun in the title made me cringe, but that's only because I've read The Purloined Poe. At first, I was kinda scared that Derrida had come back from the dead and written a treatise on Friendship is Magic.

      Zombie cartoon literary theory...::shiver::

      Looks pretty neat, though. Choose Your Own Adventure books were pretty awesome. I'll have to check it out.

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    3. Page 44's links are backwards telling twilight is actually page 45 and the excuse is 46

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    4. That was really cool! I think I got the best ending too, if being congratulated by Celestia is any indication.
      IRL.

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    5. I got congratulated by Celestia as well. HINT: Pinkie Pie is god.

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    6. @Anonymous (8:48):

      Thanks for the catch! Should be fixed now.

      @Thorn:

      Depends on what your definition of 'best' is, I suppose... congrats on your victory, in any case!

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    7. Really fun concept and excellent execution. You took me back to the days of reading the scholastic choose your own adventure stories.

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    8. This is incredible! It's not only a really well-written story and well-balanced Choose Your Own Adventure, it's about the length of a small novel when you add up all the pages. Holy cupcakes. Bravo, Chris!

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    9. I got the Page 70 ending. My story path wasn't particularly exciting, but I bet Pinkie Pie would approve.

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    10. Curse my OCD. . .

      I had to find every single storyline out there.
      And for some reason that took me an hour and a half.

      Ahh, well. At least it was well-written and interesting.

      Time to go buy a greenhouse.

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    11. I spent way too much time as a kid trying to figure out whether there was actually any way of getting to the land of "Ultima" in Inside UFO 54-40.

      I never found a way, other than just by cheating and turning to that page. I was hoping for a hidden message in one of the illustrations or something.

      THIS doesn't include any unreachable pages, does it?

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    12. @ Anonymous:

      The way I see it, you have two choices: you can either assume you didn't miss anything and go on with the rest of your life, or you can click through all 90 pages to make sure that you've seen every one of them.

      Chose wisely.

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    13. Carrot Top got thanked by Celestia, I have read some Choose your own Adventure books and I got the hang of it. Or it's natural that I make good decisions

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    14. This was made of epic and win mixed together into something glorious. CARROT TOP RULED THIS TIME AROUND!

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    15. The link on p.66 is broke.

      Thanks for the amazing story!

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    16. @ Anonymous (10:00):

      Thanks! Should be better now.

      @ everyone:

      Thanks for the positive reviews! This piece was a lot of work to put together, and I'm glad that people seem to be enjoying it!

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    17. very well done indeed, my first run through i got the 'good' Celestia ending then spent 2 1/2 hours reading the rest of the possibilities
      look forward for more choose your own stories

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    18. Have you all noticed that Carrot Top is always used in projects that are exceedingly cool and creative? Remember the 25 panel comic strip?

      I motion that if there are any new projects that push the boundaries of ingenuity and creativity with ponies, then Carrot Top MUST be involved.

      All in favor say AYE. All opposed say NEIGH.

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    19. This is an absolutely spectacular piece of work, and I can't commend you highly enough for it, not only for the sheer length and creativity, but for truly capturing the soul of the classic CYOA books. I had more fun with this today than you could imagine!

      Only one bug found during several readthroughs:
      The link on page 83 to page 84 is currently damaged, and it looks like there's the beginning of an explanatory sentence that gets cut off. You may want to look into that. (I did find what seemed to be the followup pages in the ToC, though the numbers didn't match up.)

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    20. Proof of my OCD (as if you needed more proof):
      I followed every possible series of links in this story.

      THEN I went back to the ToC to make sure I hadn't missed anything. Not gunna spoil it for everypony, but it was worth going back for the look at the ToC. ;)

      PS - My favorite page was easily 56, "Pinkie ex machina". lol

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    21. Before I even open this story, I have to say this is a GENIUS idea. Hats off to you, Chris!

      Now I'm off to play this... :)

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    22. Wow. That was epic. So epic, in fact, that after winning it, I went back to every crossroads and played out every possible sequence. Before I knew it, a few hours had gone by (Turns out I managed to get the best possible ending on my first go, sweet.)

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    23. Dang it, I got caught by the stupid gremlin things. It's the 90's all over again, I could never win at these things without cheating by using my fingers as temporary bookmarks. I still love the whole Chose your own adventure thing, though. Also, I figured Pinkie Pie might be the key to a good ending, but I purposefully chose to not get her help.

      Carrot Top is the go to pony for fanworks. She's cool, but not quite as cool as the main ponies, which both adds to her appeal and makes her feel like she's less likely to be a sue.

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    24. Brilliant. I require MOAR.

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    25. I got it wrong. I got the ending where she did nothing at all. :(

      Also, I love the shoutout to Inside UFO 54-40 - you could say that Trollestia herself wrote it. (You'll know what I mean if you read it.)

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    26. Page 17 for first try.

      Well, that was fun!

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    27. @my post, which is the second one above this one: Yes! Got the correct ending on my third attempt!

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    28. First read. I saved Applebloom. Yay. :D

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    29. Oh and I got page 71 as my ending, to add. ;P

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    30. This is all kinds of neat. And I saved Applebloom on my first go, woo! No Celestia bidness, however.

      Though now I wonder if it's set up like a proper Choose Your Own Adventure book, where an errant choice will lead you to a horrible, horrible death. :)

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    31. The very essence of awesome.
      I definitely would like to see more stories like this one.

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    32. Very very awesome.
      I've already "played" twice.
      Only story problem comes if you go home first and actually SEE the Boggie, Carrot will still act like Boggies are only fairy tales.

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    33. Remember people, Fluttershy knows ALL the critters of the forest. And now I have a new friend in my farm! Just be honest and keep your promises.

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    34. @Lance Banson

      You would post right after I went to bed, wouldn't you? Anyway, the links should be fixed there now. Thanks for catching that!

      @ Anonymous (3:26):

      I don't want to spoil too much, but I will say this: in trying to keep with the spirit of both the CYOA series and MLP, there are lots of ways to fail (or at least, to not succeed). None of these paths, however, are actually fatal, at least not by the time 'The End' rolls along. All of them leave open the possibility that the mane cast will come along and bail you out.

      Still, you can make poor Carrot Top exceedingly miserable if you don't choose wisely.

      @ Pacce:

      I'm double-checking right now, but the only place I remember Carrot Top saying boggies aren't real after seeing one is when she's trying to calm down Fluttershy. She's just saying that so the poor pegasus doesn't panic, of course. If I find anything else, I'll fix it; thanks for bringing that to my attention!

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    35. It was very fun ; I played a lot, failing to save Applebloom sometimes (it's often not a good decision to try and smack those ugly things ! but it's so fun ! Now I want to do a cyoa where mindless violence is the solution to everything ... ) and generally winning !

      Well, now I HAVE to go and make sure I read all the pages. And note where each page go and from which page do you reach it. Argh !

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    36. The first ending i thought to be the good ending turned out to not be, but it was fun to read!

      Definitely something to read for anyone new to fanfics.

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    37. Magnificent! I'm happy and sad now because of the various degrees of ending... Look! I drew a chart to keep track of the decisions! I can't decide which ending is best, 43 or 71. That is all.

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    38. Man, I'm terrible at these. But this is pretty damn amazing.

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    39. 3 tries, failed the first time, got the okay ending, then the best ending. This really feels like it's an official book or something.

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    40. Not reading the other comments to avoid spoilers, but...

      ..I just wanted to mention that this is heart-pounding stuff. It's incredibly exciting.

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    41. Very fun; a worthy waste of a couple hours.

      One problem I found while going through is that, depending on the path you take, Hinterheart or the brownies can pop into the story out of nowhere acting as if you've known them the entire time. This happens going from page 53 to page 73; Hinterheart appears with no prior explanation in several of the options. There is at least one other place where the reverse occurs, but I can't find it at the moment.

      The slight occasional inconsistencies did not, however, reduce the fun of the story. It was great fun going through every possible path.

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    42. This was great fun! It's been too long since I read any fanfics, but when I saw this I was compelled... I'm glad I did. <3

      Also, it's amazing how the bad endings really had an emotional impact on me. Unhappy endings just aren't meant for ponies.

      (Danneltuft, Danneltuft, Danneltuft!)

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    43. GODDAMIT! At least!
      This is cool.

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    44. Holy **** this is amazing.

      Also, great end pg 71 without Pinkie, so yep.

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    45. You're missing page 64; Its showing page 65 instead....

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    46. Holy crud, that was frickin' awesome! Very entertaining, and very fun. I had a blast; this definitely deserves 5 stars from me!

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    47. Yay, I got the best result possible on first try! Awesome story!

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    48. By the way: Without Pinkie Pie. ;)

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    49. First run-through I got my memories erased by admitting I was going to tell Twilight about the council. I then decided to lie about it and got sent to Celestia against my will.

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    50. This is BRILLIANT! EVERYONE should read this!

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