Idle Thought's Choose Your Own Adventure Thread

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Idle Thoughts recently started a Choose Your Own Adventure thread here. However, given the nature of the thing, you can only post on it to make a contribution to the story. With Idle Thought’s permission, I’d like to offer this thread to anyone interested in contributing to the story, but feeling the need to comment on the action, ask questions, etc. (If part of the challenge of building the story is doing WITHOUT a forum like this, then on Idle Thought’s request, moderators can feel free to close this thread.)

Post away! :smiley:

2

Heh. Yeah, I have to admit, it is hard to communicate in that thread with how it’s set up. Simply because any added and extra posts would mess it up.
Don’t know what DMark was thinking with his (her?) post. :stuck_out_tongue: They didn’t even put two or more choices at the end of their post, for one, and also didn’t even follow the directions. Maybe he missed it. :stuck_out_tongue: Oh well. No harm done.

3

Great thread, Idle Thoughts! I hope to contribute to it before too long (as soon as I get a flash of literary inspiration).

A suggestion to everyone: Before posting, make absolutely sure you preview and check for recent replies. Simulposts could be disasterous in that thread.

As the thread grows, I imagine the posts will get hard to keep track of, and we may accidentally sabotage a referred-to post or link to a future reply that’s already been linked to. Furthermore (and I think this is may be a bigger threat), there could be paths of the story that never get linked to. For these reasons I propose that we periodically update this thread with important post numbers. Something like this:

These are current after post #10 but before post #11
Here are the future posts that have been referred to already:
11 (from 7)
12 (from 1)
13 (from 10)
14 (from 3)
15 (from 9)
16 (from 7)
18 (from 1)
21 (from 4 & 8)
22 (from 10)
24 (from 8)
25 (from 3)

And here are the existing posts that will eventually need to be linked to:
3
5
6
7
9
Although I’m starting thinking that these lists may not be such a good idea. They might encourage people to be lazy and forgo checking the latests posts. Opinions?

4

Maybe if we begged a mod they could insert a “Please go to post #30” at the end of DMark’s post.

Acceptable since you weren’t always given a choice, especially towards the beginning and the end.

5

Idle Thoughts – is the cabin you mention in post 7 (the one with the shed in back) supposed to be the same house as the Parker House, or a different place?

6

:Sniff: No kidding! I was just about to do a post for #11, but right before I hit submit I checked the thread and Idle Thoughts had beat me to it. Drat! For fun, since I wrote it anyways and don’t want it to go to waste, here’s what I was going to put…(maybe some ideas in it anyways?)

Jim decided to get the rag on top of the rake; he still considered himself too-law abiding to brazenly open people’s windows, even if the windows in question were attached to an old, decrepit house that was apparently abandoned. Cleaning someone’s windows, on the other hand – well, that was a good thing, right? Who wouldn’t want their windows to be cleaned? Maybe he could even get a Boy Scouts merit badge out of it.

Tip-toeing, Jim moved over to the rake. (If I’m doing a good thing, wondered Jim, how come I’m tip-toeing?) A wind blew up, and the rake moved. Wait…there hadn’t been any wind at all – but the rake had definately moved. What was going on here?

Jim approached the rake carefully, expecting something to jump out at him. He waited a moment, but nothing happened. The rag on top of the rake wasn’t a rag at all, but, surprisingly, a nicely embroidered cloth. Carefully Jim pulled it off, again expecting something to happen. But no, it was just a rake underneath…but what a rake! Jim would never have thought a rake could be beautiful, but then he’d never seen this rake before. The handle was painted red with some black designs on it, and it looked like it had been polished. The teeth of the rake were not caked with leaves, like his dad’s was, but were made of a sturdy, shiny metal with tiny engravings on it. This was no ordinary rake.

Jim had a sudden hunch. Witches normally ride brooms, but who said they couldn’t use other cleaning tools occassionally?

He was about to jump onto it and see if it would fly, when suddenly he saw some words written on the rake that filled him with dread: PRUCILLA PARKER.

This was Prucilla’s rake! Who knew what kind of evil it could cause? Maybe he should destroy the thing…

If you think Jim should try riding the rake anyways, go to post 17 of this topic.

If you think he should break the rake in half, go to post 20 of this topic.

7

Another question: would it be against the spirit of the enterprise to write posts before hand and submit them here, to be copied and pasted once the proper post number on the real thread comes up?

8

Ahem…yes, I screwed it up…I thought I was able to read directions, but obviously I can’t. And I am a he…and I can read a map, just not directions.

Sorry.

Perhaps a nice Mod will delete my entry in that thread and we will all pretend it didn’t happen?

9

Aw, man, and here I was hoping to develop this “nice man” who sometimes pays young boys to take rides with him…

10

Yeah, well…someday I will learn how to read directions from the “nice man”, or at least the OP.

I have already asked the Mods to delete my entry and sorry for mucking it up…

11

I think it’s fine except for instructions. All it needs is for a “go to post 30” put at the end. Those CYOA didn’t always have choices.

Plus this “Gibt es hier eine Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung?” is probably be what’ll get Mr Myglipik who, from my last post, seems to be in cahoots with Prucilla.

12

Plus it’s linked to in post 5.

13

We’re really starting to fill in lines. You can go from 1 to 12 to 3 to 4 to 8

I wonder how long of a thread we should shoot for. 50? 100?

14

Fine with me.

(I feel like Jim now and am really getting neck deep in doo doo.)

So, uh…if that is all it will take, I guess I only need a Mod to waste his time and go in and fix my entry.

Dear Mod:

Could you add, “go to post 30” at the end of my thread?

Hope this is the fix.

My guess is, I will now have to pay full price next time my subscription is up…damn.

15

I’ve been incredibly tempted to go in there and write some sort of cliffhanger, ending with “Go to post #16,329 if you want him to live” or something like that. Thankfully, this thread gives me the chance to get that off my chest without being a tremendous asshole. :smiley:

Well…without being a tremendous asshole in this one particular instance.

16

It’s a different place…but reading the thread today, I see that Fern Forest not only (as I hoped with all of this story) fit it in but ALSO ADDED THE CHOICE I had thought and planned for the other one (namely exploring the shed)! Pure genius there, Fern Forest! :slight_smile:

Not really. You could do this if you wish. :slight_smile: It’d be hard to me cause you don’t really know where the story is going to go, but to try to “connect” it to parts already written is fine. Think and write ahead of time on that all you want. :slight_smile: Or even other ideas and other areas/adventures that “Jim” could get into. Really, the possiblities are endless and the thread can go on for a long time as long as nobody gets bored with it.
DMark, it’s fine. I was able to tie it in anyway. It’s just, really, a dead end. But the story’s not ruined. :slight_smile:
Thanks, Mbossa for that handy dandy guide!

shrug :slight_smile: All I know is, this is fun. I also know that we’ll need some space to write more “free” parts to it…which is why I’ve been starting to make my “Go to post x” farther. Right now we’re getting a lot of posts in a row that are “referenced” from other ones…so it’s hard to expand the story that way (well, seems to me). But it’s still working out great. :slight_smile:

Heh. I almost made that a rule Smeghead, not to “go to” an exaggerated number. But then I thought that people wouldn’t just naturally. I think that doing that and saying to go to a high number is fine…but wow, 16,000? :stuck_out_tongue: I think that’s a bit too much. Feel free to say to go to number 116 or even 200 if you want. The thread may not get that far if people grow bored with writing it, but as long as at least one other person always is helping me do it, I’ll always continue. :slight_smile:

has to get off the comp now, but will be back later with a new part

17

No problem at all. This is really fun.

Word of caution. I really set up 24 to point one choice back at 19.
Cool, everything fits into two bits so far.



1
|----------------------------|
12                           18
|--------------------|       |------|
3                    6       5      26
|--------|----|      =       |
4       14   25              2
|\       /\                  |
8-\     7  44                30
|  \    |\
24 21   |16
|       |/\-----|
19      | 17    28
| \     | /\
|  \    |/  42
40  6   11
    =   / \
       33 37

9
|----------|
10         15
|          |
|----|     |------|
13   22    23     50
|
|----|
27   29

I think we need another generic loser ending.

18

Give me a few minutes, and I’ll be only too happy to oblige, but the next post (#20) hasn’t been mentioned yet according to your diagram, so someone can link to it later.

19

Sorry for the double post, but I had some thoughts while writing my lame generic loser ending. Firstly, not to blow my own trumpet but I think the story will be more coherent and easier to follow if we put at the start of each post the number of the post that has led to it, as I have done. Secondly, most of the story seems to be in the past tense, but these adventures generally sound better in the present tense (and in the first person, but it’s a little late for that now :)), since the reader is meant to choose the story - it’s not a foregone conclusion what happens. So I’m switching to the present from now on.

Anyway, whoever writes post #44 will have to link to #20 as one of the options, with a reasonable explanation :).

Also, post #2 still needs to be altered to add: “Go to post 30 of this topic.” Perhaps DMark could e-mail a friendly mod?

20

I did. Twice.
Perhaps it is not a big priority for them, or they don’t want to start editing posts for games or whatever, but I tried - and again, humble apologies for the screw up.