(Contextual note, though it will be a while before it becomes relevant. The forum I originally posted this on has an auto-censor. The two most common swears are censored to “fudge” and “crumpets”, and I took advantage of this in a few commands. Although I think only “crumpets” was actually used…)
Text adventure time again! In today’s text adventure, you (whoever wants to play) will take on the role of Nopor Puss.
(Clarification: I’d already introduced this character on the forum in question. Nopor Puss is the Master of Pointlessness, and his goal is to do the most pointless thing he can think of at any given moment.)
Your mission is to obtain the Inflatable Amulet of Pomposity. Why? For no reason whatsoever, of course! Naturally, though, being Nopor Puss, you strive to make your quest as pointless as possible. Expect a perfectly straightforward command to be ignored because Nopor Puss doesn’t find it pointless enough.
And now, we begin.
You are in an ancient temple. The Inflatable Amulet of Pomposity is sitting on a pedestal in front of you. What will you do?
>Look for something to climb the pedestal with. Dammit that’s tall.
You see a ladder nearby which is much taller than the pedestal.
>take pedestal
You attempt to take the pedestal, since it’s quite pointless to do so. However, much to your disappointment, it’s not attached to the ground and is actually rather light. You were hoping to pointlessly struggle to move it for hours, but since that won’t be the case, you decide to leave it where it is for now.
>Use ladder to hit the pedestal and knock it down.
You pick up the ladder, but it’s so tall that it throws you off-balance and you trip, dropping the ladder in the process. The ladder is now propped up against the side of the pedestal, and extends a long way up past it.
>find grue
You attempt to search for a grue, reasoning that since they don’t exist in this game, you’ll never find one and so it’s pointless to look. You continue doing this until you think of another pointless action.
>Find another quest.
You spend several hours searching for another quest, but there isn’t one nearly as pointless as this one. You’re quite pleased at what a waste of time that search was.
>Climb the ladder all the way to the top.
Since the ladder goes far past your intended target, it would be quite pointless to climb all the way to the top. So you do. You emerge through a hole at the top of the temple.
>push the button
There is no button to push. This means it’s pointless to attempt to push any buttons, so you do. Much to your delight, this has no effect whatsoever.
>jump off temple
You jump off the temple – quite pointlessly, as there’s a perfectly good set of stairs leading down – and land by the main entrance.
>Take temple.
You attempt to take the temple. It won’t budge an inch, and you spend hours pointlessly attempting this. What a wonderfully pointless idea that was!
>integrate temple
You begin calculating the integral of the temple. You come to the conclusion that the temple is a constant, so integrating it produces (Temple)x + c.
>temple ladder
You decide to build a temple to worship the ridiculously long ladder. You look around for a particularly pointless material to build it with, and decide to build it out of sand on a nearby beach. You build the sand temple in exquisite detail, including a 1:1 scale model of the ridiculously long ladder, only for all your work to be washed away when the tide comes in. How wonderfully pointless that was! Oh, wait, upon further inspection, the sand ladder is still there.
>Observe daylight savings.
You decide to observe daylight savings time for no particular reason. Since there are no clocks in the vicinity, and you aren’t even wearing a watch, you can’t even do anything as a result of this pointless decision. You’re pleased that you thought of it.
>take amulet
You go back to the temple entrance, climb the wall of the temple while pointlessly avoiding the stairs, climb down the ladder, and take the amulet, since it’s quite pointless to just take it without checking for traps. Unfortunately, you find this doesn’t trigger any traps, so you put the amulet back and climb the ladder, jump down to the temple entrance, and go back to the beach. It won’t do to just take the amulet like this, you’ll need to pointlessly set traps for yourself, and then pointlessly trigger them by taking the amulet.
>Reproduce by budding.
You attempt to reproduce by budding. You lack the necessary biology to achieve this, however, making it a pointless endeavor. Perfect!
>Take amulet and throw it in the sea.
You go back, take the amulet and throw it into the sea, since this will make it much harder to retrieve. You then go through a pointlessly convoluted series of events to retrieve it, then put it back where you found it and return to your current position. Once again, you’ve gone through a large amount of trouble to accomplish absolutely nothing. Well done.
>take sea and throw it into amulet
You cup your hands and pick up sea water, then go back to where the amulet is and throw water on it. Somehow, you manage to do this without spilling a drop on the way. You do this repeatedly, eventually flooding the amulet’s chamber with sea water. This will make a nice trap if you enter the chamber through one of the pointlessly watertight doors instead of using the ladder. Surprisingly, although the amulet is inflatable, it apparently doesn’t float. It may be an even more pointless item than you thought. You climb the ladder, jump down to the temple entrance, and return to the beach.
>Electrocute water.
You don’t have anything that can be used to electrify the water with. This makes it very pointless to try anyway, so you do! Unsurprisingly, nothing happens. Just as you planned!
>eat chips in a dramatic manner
You have no chips to eat, dramatically or otherwise. Unsurprisingly, this does little to deter you. You eat the chips you don’t have in a dramatic manner.
>Eat amulet
You go back to the amulet, which is about six feet under water at this point, pick it up, and attempt to eat it. However, this only serves to get a large amount of sea water in your mouth. The water pushes the amulet out of your mouth every time you try to swallow it, so after several pointless attempts to eat it despite that, you put it back and return to where you were. You really like all this pointless backtracking!
>check inventory
You are not carrying anything. You acquired quite a few items on your last pointless adventure, and saw no reason not to leave them behind for this one, so that’s what you did.
(Author’s note: This should have been “no reason to leave them behind”, my mistake.)
>take inventory
You take inventory of the number of grains of sand on the beach, the number of drops of water in the sea, and the number of oxygen molecules in the air.
>Mix them all and see what turns up.
You mix the sand, water, and oxygen molecules and produce… wet sand. With air in it. You can’t think of any way this mixture could possibly help you, so you put it in your inventory.
>go to temple.
You go to the temple in a pointless manner.
>Climb up ladder.
You climb up the wall of the temple, climb down the ladder, then climb up the ladder. My, that was pointless.
>Build second floor on temple.
You begin building a second floor of the temple, which is pointless because it already *has* a second floor. For building materials, you start taking down outer walls of the first floor of the temple, since you have no reason to weaken its structural integrity by doing so. The temple now has an unstable foundation and two second floors.