Forums » News & Updates » Read Thread

                                       END MASTER'S PROMPT CONTEST 4

    

Deadline: 11:59 PM (EST) April 1st, 2025

Reward: It you think you’re getting anything at this point, you haven’t been paying attention!

Alright you fuckers, it’s time for this yearly exercise in futility of pushing folks to be contributing members of the site. I’ve seen it said by faggots on more degenerate writing websites that using abusive language doesn’t motivate people, but I say it’s not really about the motivation, it’s about sending a message. Besides if I don’t verbally abuse you lot, then I won’t have any fun and that’s the important thing.

As usual there were plenty of prompts that people completely flaked on in the past so you’ll see a lot of those again (Perhaps even one YOU flaked on). I’ve also added some that an entry did get submitted for, but the person took it down because it sucked too badly to stay up for long. So the prompts in those cases are getting another chance of being done right (hopefully). There’s also some brand new ones, so there’s tons of variety for everyone.

Also as usual you have generous deadline. More than enough time to slack off and not do shit for a couple months, or you could surprise everyone and actually write during that time. Of course all that writing might cut into your praying, drinking, whoring or trolling the faggots time, but as we say around here your decisions have consequences!

(See it’s not ALL insults. I didn’t say for example “All that writing might cut into your gay furry jack off sessions.” I actually think enough of you lot to believe that you’re not complete degenerates, you're just lazy bastards.)

Also since I never expect more than half of you lot to come through anyway at this point, the main thing I’m looking for is quality. Turn anything in half assed, and I’m just throwing it out and throwing you in the fucking SHAME pit. (Or deeper in it)

But that’s enough motivation, if you’re joining the contest pick a prompt from the list below. When you’re done writing your story, be sure to link it this thread. Also unless specifically mentioned, all these prompts can be any setting.

That’s about it for now, unless I think of something else to change as needed.

Good luck and who knows maybe I’ll be surprised with competence for a change.

The Prompts

1) A story involving a dangerous hunting competition.
2) A story involving inheriting something valuable from a dead relative. Mystery Contestant
3) A story involving dinosaurs.
4) A story about an underwater adventure. Soy_No_More
5) A story set in a lunatic asylum. CavusRex (Songbird Vagabond)
6) A story where the protagonist has a dangerous addiction or obsession. LamarisDiamondEye
7) A story about returning to your childhood home and stumbling across a terrible secret. TrueParanormal
8) A story written in the epistolary style (Told through journal entries or letters). MadHattersDaughter
9) A story heavily driven by a love/hate relationship with the antagonist. fresh_out_the_oven (Pulling Yummyfood up one level out of the SHAME pit)
10) A story that starts with receiving a letter or call from someone you thought was dead. Kezmark
11) A story about naval warfare. Fabrikant
12) A story involving trying to survive some sort of disaster while also protecting/saving at least one loved one. Darius_Conwright
13) A story about a pacifist protagonist.
14) A story involving a major festival within the fairy world. Wildblue
15) A story involving playing as a bigoted superhero. Vail
16) A story involving court intrigue while attempting to seduce one (or more!) of your relatives. Suranna
17) A story about becoming a famous musician. Petros
18) A story where you are the survivor of a failed dungeon expedition. goodnight_a
19) A story about a siege. This can be from the attackers or defenders (or both) point of view.
20) A story set on a planet with a harsh environment. (Ice world, barren desert, toxic air, etc) Fluxion
21) A story where you travel back in time to set wrong what once went right. Orange
22) A story involving a literally retarded protagonist. Prithvish96
23) A story where you’re the last of your kind (Doesn’t need to be human). Cat2002116
24) A story about being a cartographer hired to map out an unexplored area.
25) A story about being a collector of very rare exotic things and/or unique things (Of any kind).
26) A story about being the leader of a post apocalyptic gang. DBNB
27) A story involving a space station. Anthraxus
28) A story involving an underground society. benholman44 (500 point bet)
29) A story about a homemaker protagonist while their significant other leaves for battle for extended periods of time (Soldier, raider, merc, etc). LeoScales7 (140 point bet)
30) A story about founding a new religion.
31) A story involving a war between two galactic super powers fighting over planet Earth (Humans are the “primitives” caught in the middle) poison_mara
32) A story involving a retired villain (Not looking for redemption, just trying to enjoy retirement or at least semi-retirement) mazdark
33) A story about being a traveling merchant. hetero_malk
34) A story about an abominable horror has come to a small town and that horror is YOU. Siyu
35) A story about rebuilding after a war. PerforatedPenguin (500 point bet)
36) A story about a race to acquire a valuable resource.
37) A story involving an established myth/legend (Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Arthurian, etc) and do whatever you want with it. MiltonManThing
38) A story involving tales from the Bible and do whatever you want with it. (Do not simply use the Book of Mormon for this fanfic)
39) A story about redemption of past misdeeds. (As if it needs to be said, you can’t redeem a pedo) MrAce321 (Hoping for CYS Discord entry if he wins)
40) A story set during a nuclear winter on Earth. WizzyCat
41) A story about joining a cult.
42) A story involving a summoning spell gone wrong. Sherbet
43) A story set during a holiday (Any of them) TypewriterCat
44) A story set in a strange isolated motel. ItzSugar
45) A story with a based centaur protagonist.
46) A story involving a cooking contest. (Not specifically cats or dogs) Mizal (Pulling Derp one level from the SHAME Pit)
47) A story involving being an assassin. Clayfinger
48) A story involving sports of some kind. (Real or fictional and in any capacity: Player, coach, ref, mascot, cheerleader, etc) RKrallonor (300 point bet)
49) A story involving an uncharted planet (Colonizing it, exploring it, crashing into it, etc) Papa_John95
50) A story about having cancer and trying to check off a bucket list before you die. Also make this into a game with a scoring system. (It’s cancer, just have fun with it!)

Prompt 48. I'm in for 300 points, so excited!

First one locked in.

Can I bet 500 on getting myself out of the SHAME with a valid contest entry?

Yeah I'll add it in.

Here's to a new year! I'll take Prompt 37 please.

Locked 1

Me think 22 best. Me write small words daily.

Locked 2

I appreciate that the affinity was so strong you joined the site for this.

He's not new, he's just added a 96 to his old name which is still in the first level of the SHAME pit.

Forgot Password thing not work. Made new one.

I'm in.

I'll take number 23.

Locked 3

I'm taking 17

Locked 4

Give me 46.

Question: If I can impress you enough with a good and actually complete story, would it be enough to get Derp, Chef, and Canary freed from the 9th level of SHAME? Their presence there is a bad look for the party.

(Or Derp if I can only pick one, as the one most likely to actually write something again.)

#FreeAlienandEbonToo

No.

Lol

What the hell, you can't just lead an underground railroad to take everyone out of the 9th level of SHAME.

I will however allow ONE, though Derp is a lazy good for nothing MORMON that doesn't deserve saving. However, it's your choice.

Chef is the actual best writer of the bunch, but it's always "whoops I'm working 12 hour shifts now, damn now they're sending me across the country and then ping ponging me between day and night shifts with no adjustment period for lols". So I am not hopeful of him ever producing anything on a deadline again.

Canary is just lazy and doesn't even start a story after taking a good prompt so he gets nothing. But Derp actually starts reasonably based stories and gets into them, just has trouble finishing them.

Ebon sucks

I don’t see 20 taken. I can work with a desert. Maybe with occasional raging storms on the sea as well. Maybe just extreme weather. Or perhaps two suns. Lots of possibilities here.

20 sounds awesome! It could be something reminiscent of Dune(in a good way), and I know in your hands, it will be an interesting story to read for sure! Maybe do all 4(desert, storms, extreme weather, AND, 2 suns).

Lol you are too kind. I’m starting to like the idea of two suns that maybe have a yearly cataclysmic type heat wave—or maybe even every couple of decades, like cicadas. And fact is, that would allow me to do all of those ideas: two suns make it mostly desert, and occasionally mess with the sea due to tidal effects.

But either way, that would just be one world building element. What really matters to me are the characters and whatever horrors they have to face. Because even on planets with harsh environments, there would likely be a few decent areas simply due to geometry. On a planet that is mostly desert for example, there might be colder poles, or a planet tidally locked near a blazing sun, there may be a more temperate area where the night half of the planet meets the day.

So, I’ll have some brutal weather, but I’m more interested in a protagonist facing a brutal antagonist.

If you want some inspiration on the sun conjuction idea, check out the Three Body Problem.

Oh man, I don’t think I can handle that much chaos. ;)

But perhaps what I'll have is some orbital resonance stuff going on, where one very large sun is in the center of the solar system, with the planet and second sun orbiting it, or maybe with the other sun having a more elliptical orbit so there could be seasonal things going on. Could be some spectacular auroras with that set up, some weird tidal things, and massive heat waves. Also maybe some religious things when the two suns are lined up. Could be neat stuff. Thanks for the hint there.

Btw you have the role that lets you cheat on contest edits now, enjoy.

How do you get that role?

It's entirely whim based, but having a lot of breakable games with scripting can help.

But sure you can have it too.

I'll keep working at it then, and try and make a lot of games! I haven't really tried out the scripting yet, but it sounds really fun to explore.

I went ahead and added it to you, you can do edits without unpublishing now. And your forum posts can't be locked. Use responsibly.

That’s really nice of you! Thanks, I’ll use it responsibly, thanks for letting me have it.

Oooh, there's a way to do edits without needing to unpublish?

Sure, you've got two large stories, go for it. As an old IS comrade I'm sure End would give you the nod.

Seems like everyone who entered the Gaybellion got an unofficial extra couple days to fix some stuff anyway.

Well, if this is just the place to ask, I might as well.  Can I get that too?

Well it would've made more sense after you released your big RPG, but ugh fine. The bar is now closed though, people can stop asking.

Somebody had to be last.  Thank you.  It can only help the epic in the long run, right?

Well the plan was to give some people who turned something in for this contest the cheat code, but I guess some got it early.

Now I am even more compelled to complete.

Well, missed the line where Mizal was handing out christmas gifts.

Oh thanks! Maybe I'll use this to fix the script error that ruined a page in my recent story.

I'll lock 27

Locked

Give me 28. Fuck the Shame Pit.

Locked

I'll take 16.

This one should be easy even for you.

Locked.

I'm actually going to double commit and pledge to write a story just for myself based on at least one of the other prompts. I didn't do shit in 2024, really need to double down this year.

Also, I'd like to pitch the idea of a Flake Tax becoming standardized to contests.

The formula would be to simply subtract the number of completed entries from total entrants, and the remainder would be the amount the flakes were penalized. So if we get 50 entrants and only 20 qualifying entries, all the failures lose 30 points and receive a permanent brand of personal, lowercase shame on their xp page.

I would be willing to handle this so that End doesn't have trouble himself with the tedium of docking points from what will no doubt be MANY people.

Sounds fine to me.

I would like to help with this devilish plan and it gives me an excuse to dock points on even more people

Fuck it put me down for a number 5 with a side of curly fries and a diet coke.

Why hello there.

Hey there mizal. Been a while I suppose

Number 18, please.

Locked

I confess, this time it's not a specific prompt that got me, but instead it's that luxurious deadline and peer pressure.
Suppose I'll take prompt number nine.

 

Locked

I will take 43.

Locked

I'd love to participate. 34 please.

Locked

This is a very cool prompt.  I hope to read what you make.

I was tempted to take 29 again to try and redeem myself, but Crimson already wrote a similar enough story to what I had in mind that I don't think there's any point.

Give me 14 please, I will do my best to channel my wholesome inner child self again and finally make the game I joined to make five years ago.

Locked

This is really going to be a bad habit of mine, I'll pick 12

 

Locked

I'll take 21: A story where you travel back in time to set wrong what once went right.

Locked

Mystery Contestant has taken prompt 2.

Good luck, Thara.

42 for me.

Locked. That was the other one I had been heavily considering. Looking forward to what you do with it Sherb.

 

He is an admin, your locks they do nothing.

It's the form of the thing.  Everyone gets a lock when they enter, right?  And the comment still stands, even if the lock itself is meaningless.

 

8

MHD is the prettiest, most talentful person I've ever known. All hail her perfectness.

Put me down for 35 and... 500 points.

Hope you do better with that one than I did, it's a good prompt.

I had vague ideas for it already, which is why I took it in that previous contest (and eventually relinquished it to you). I too hope I do well.

22 entrants already, if my count is correct. Really solid.

A random number generator told me to pick prompt 47.

Oh lol, a story about being an assassin... like Agent 47. I see what you did there. :D

Locked. Looking forward to your entry; I really enjoyed Ignis and Aero.

Thanks. I'm going to try and step out of my comfort zone for this one. Hopefully, it will still be entertaining. :]

Me too! I really enjoyed the brotherhood between Ignis and Aero, I hope you're still able to capture the emotions amidst all the action, I am admittedly really excited to see what you do with the assassins as a reader, and as a fellow contestant, worried.

Thanks. Personally, I think I'd consider it a victory if I put up something I can be proud of. If we all do that, then I'm sure this contest is going to be one hell of an experience. I'll be sure to keep an eye out for your entry as well. :]

Amusingly I didn't even realize it until you just pointed out the connection.

I originally had it as a secret agent, but I changed it.

I guess a secret agent could just be a government sanctioned assassin. I like this assassin prompt better though. It feels a bit more versatile.

Locked. If you win? Lol. Have you seen your competition?

Of course Sherb or MHD are the most likely to win, but that's not to say that at least 70% of the other entrants can't write a better storygame than specifically you. You're talking a lot of smack for someone who only recently learned how to type a whole forum post without any misspellings.

I think it would've been a better idea to set your goal at top five or top ten; still by no means any guarantee that Mizal would go for the idea, but a higher chance you'd achieve it if she did. To each their own, though. Best of luck in your endeavors.

"Same with you and 90% of the people here."

Ace I seem to remember Fresh taking 2nd place in the second prompt contest and also taking fourth in the Summer Synergy contest. 

Shh let him just be completely unaware of what he's saying. He'll find out he's wrong soon enough

Not to mention she's been kicking ass in the Thunderdome as well.

Ace's post is weirdly dismissive of so many great writers on this site. Sherb, Darius, and MHD are heavyweights, but not the only serious contenders, I could see this contest going a multiple of ways. To say that they're the only ones you have to worry about is a little rude, considering all of us are coming into this wanting to give it our all and ready to do a great job.

If anything this contest has some serious competition, with many great writers on this site throwing their hat in the ring. As a reader, I'm excited to see what everyone has written, this contest will bring many fantastic stories to the site, but as a contestant, I'm quite nervous. This will be a spectacular contest, and no Ace, 90% of the people here are not going to turn in "a blob of meh". I genuinely don't know why you think that, but prepare for disappointment I guess.

Aw, I can just sit back and have people defend me rather than doing anything myself. This is great

Honestly it's mainly the guy that's saying it and what he's saying that's an issue.

I like people complimenting me even though I haven't written anything of note in the past year or won a contest lol. 

But in general, people turn in pretty good stuff in Endmaster's contests and seem to slack off more when Corgi or someone else organizes them, perhaps because they want to terrorize Endmaster by making him read several 100k words stories. 

Mainly cause Corgi's contest wasn't an officially sanctioned one, so for a lot of people it wasn't that big of a deal.

I assume that for this one the winner will at least get a Contest Winner trophy if they haven't yet.

Also Sherb's had a pretty decent turnout. Granted we were being heavily bribed...

Not to mention everybody likes Sherb

dude, your "It's a boy!" story is genuinely nightmare fuel. I wanted to review it, but I think the path where the wolf does unspeakable things to the hunter was pretty scarring, especially when you juxtapose how nice he acts when not in the wolf skin. That's just unsettling. That, among other great stories, gets you compliments for life.

Don't glaze the twink

In some contests basically anyone really can place in the top third or so by just putting the work in and starting early, like Ace said. There's no predicting it of course but there tends to be a lot of last minute bailouts and half finished games meant to be taken down immediately.

But this is one of End's prompt contest, everyone is all fired up for the new year and End specifically said he doesn't want to see a bunch of rushed shit. So I think what we do get will be better than average across the board.

You misunderstand my point. Pretty much every writer can turn in something better than me. In general, for every contest, at least 80% of people turn in nothing or a last minute story. My comment wasn't dismissive because it has nothing to do with writing ability. I'm scared of Darius and Sherb because they've consistently pushed out massive projects, and MHD because her story's are so good and artistic and great that they punch high above their weight class. You think I would've neglected to mention Mizal if I was talking about writing ability? Shit I respect her in that respect likely more than any of the other three.

I am excited too, I hope everyone submits great stories. My point was that can be anyone, yes, you too! And this is likely the hardest contest to win that we'll see for a while. I was making a joke about winning it because I want back into the discord and don't think much less would work for that.

If you win (Lol), the best I can do is ask Mizal, she's the one that lets people in.

Entrants so far:

RKrallonor

MiltonManThing

Prithvish96

Cat2002116

Petros

Mizal

Fluxion

Anthraxus

benholman44

Suranna

CavusRex (Songbird Vagabond)

goodnight_a

fresh_out_the_oven

TypewriterCat

Siyu

Wildblue

Darius_Conwright

Orange

Sherbet

MadHattersDaughter

PerforatedPenguin

Clayfinger

MrAce321

Completely Anonymous Mystery Contestant

Kezmark

LeoScales7

DBNB

hetero_malk

poison_mara

ItzSugar

WizzyCat

Papa_John95

Fabrikant

True Paranormal

mazdark

Soy_No_More

Vail

LamarisDiamondEye

 

38 PROMPTS TAKEN
12 PROMPTS REMAIN

Finally someone that's not End made the list. He must be so proud.

10) A story that starts with receiving a letter or call from someone you thought was dead.

Locked

Goddamn, just rediscovered the site yesterday after so many years and found points taken away by the CYS IRS lmao

 

Remembered how much I missed these stories. Sign me up for Prompt 29. If I complete a story, I'd love to get my lost points back and maybe a bit more.

Yeah, birthday welfare was removed across the board. But welcome back and good luck!

Ok.  Perhaps I should try being productive this year.  I recognized several of these that were mine and had me in the shame pit in the past.  For penance, I will take 26.

 

26) A story about being the leader of a post apocalyptic gang.

Locked

Yeah, looking at a couple of them I felt a vague since of shame. I'd had pretty good ideas for them too, I always do.

I want travelling merchant! 

Locked!

Forgot I was going to post this.

That's really cool!

Thank you! :D

Hello, 31 IS for me

Locked

IS PENIS??

Can I take 44?

Yes, you can! LOCKED.

Well 30 entrants so far. A respectable amount really if every one of them turns something in of substance.

40.

Locked.

38?

Verily.

No. Though nice try on Yummy's part.

Oh yeah, Yummy is deep in shame

Even though someone might be buried in shame, if they unofficially wrote a qualifying storygame on a give prompt, would that perhaps help them lessen their depth?  They shouldn't get to lock up a prompt but if they showed they did the work, you know.

 

Well if Yummy wants to get out of the 9th level of SHAME he can do what Suranna did and risk getting banned. The problem with this, is Yummy's not really enough on my radar to get any potential joy out of actually banning him or even "keeping him around" to torment regularly (Like Suranna), so I might just ignore the offer.

Of course the other option is he doesn't get out for this contest, but someone like Mizal can pull him out of the SHAME pit for the future as part of their "bet" (And yes, Mizal can change Derp to Yummy if she wants because as far as I'm concerned they're both equally flakey)

I mean the majority of people in the triple shame layer and below are either retards, people banned for being too retarded, mostly inactive these days, Mizal, Sent, or Malk. You gotta keep the completely useless and rotted corpses somewhere and the VIPs just have the job of making sure they're still dead by poking them every once in a while.

So just curious here: what exactly HAPPENS in Detroit? You guys aren't banned or prohibited from entering future contests, so what's the penalty?

Realistically, nothing.

Symbolically, they're in DETROIT which is punishment enough.

Casting my official bid to drag Yummy one level up out of the Pit myself

Alright.

And Derp is also only getting dragged out one level as well.

Always wanted to write one of these! I'll take prompt 49.

Locked

I'll have 11, please.

Locked! I'm very excited for this, I knew you'd join! You got this bro.

Thank you!

What changed your mind?

(Of course I should rather be revising Rainbow-1, but with a real Los Angeles fire going on at the moment its less fun.)

That's a good prompt that's gone through a few contests without any success, hope you're finally the one.

I will write something. It will have naval warfare. That's all I can promise. ;)

I'll take 7

Locked.
Man, this new year is bringing everyone back

I'll take 32!

Lock

I'll take the underwater adventure.

Prompt #4, locked! good luck.

1 month down, 2 more to go.

Late ask, but could I swipe prompt #15?

Not late at all, you can enter the contest pretty much at any time. And you still got a little under 2 months left, so you're in! Good luck and have fun!

Locked.(the locked means that once you say that you intend to enter a contest, you're bound to that. In the past people have waffled over joining a contest to the point where now if you say you'll join, you're in and your post gets locked so you can't suddenly change your mind. This helps with accountability.)

Sounds good! I didn't know about the lock-in, so thanks for the clarification. I guess I have to get busy writing then! :)

Awesome!

Just to clarify though, this is at the end of the day for fun. Obviously we don't want people to waffle around and say they may or may not enter, but if you can't make it that's ok. You can always try again next contest. Just make sure you have a good idea of whether you can make it given real life commitments because CYOA(choose your own adventure) stories are challenging to write.

They are a separate beast compared to regular novels because of the branching. Don't submit anything linear, that won't go well. Make sure you have an idea of how you're going to write it and execute the project, this beast has tripped up even experienced writers causing them to fail a contest.

Also, the site won't let you submit a story until 2 days after creation, so make sure you pre make one, so in the even that you procrastinate, you at least have a blank canvas to work from. This was made as an anti-spam measure.

Another thing. In the writing workshop corner, there's an entire discussion thread devoted to the writing of this contest. It's called "Prompt Contest 4 Writing Thread". Post there, share your progress, see how other people are approaching branching. I made a survey basically asking people what category they'll submit in, please respond to that too.

You got this!

Okay, great! This site seems to tackle spam and low-quality content really well, so that all sounds good. I've made one fully complete CYOA in the past, as well as many half-baked ones, and they're definitely a unique kind of challenge. Making them linear is a waste of potential, in my opinion. I'll take inspiration from stories on this site and the stuff I used to read, like Goosebumps, but hopefully with a bit more detail and personality.

I'll go check out the workshop corner and get back to you once I've planned out the story a little. Thanks for the tips!

I have high hopes on your story lol, do great! This superhero story has the potential to be awesome! We have some pretty cool Question fan-fics on this site, as well as a couple original superhero stories but we could always use more superhero stories. You sound like you know what you're doing and are experienced with CYOA so that's really good!

Check out Prometheus Academy by Steve and The Exploits of Fail Man for some inspiration. They're awesome!

Good luck. RK covered most of the base rules, but to be fully clear, to avoid disqualification your submitted product must fulfill the selected prompt, be a minimum of 2000 words long and include some degree of branching. As stated the only penalty for failing the first time is SHAME and need to redeem yourself at some point in the future. Heavy consequences, like being unable to enter a future competition without mod approval, come with multiple, back to back failures in competition.

I really like superhero stories, so I'm glad someone jumped on this prompt. I look forward to seeing what you produce.

I admire your courage. Get to it and keep at it! We'll be glad to read what you submit for the contest :)

Thanks! I'll try to be as active as possible in the forums to see what other people are cooking up. :)

Also, number 15 sounds pretty interesting! By any chance, are you a fan of the Boys? that's a really good example to look at for the bigoted superhero.

Absolutely! I love The Boys, although I felt like it was a dragging a bit by season 4. Homelander and a couple guys from The Watchmen were the first ideas that sprang to mind, but I'm probably going to take it in a more comedic direction. Is there anything that's strictly off-limits for this prompt (judging by the choice of words in the original post, I'm assuming we're a little lenient)?

Yeah me too lol. The Boys was dragging in season 4.

Ooh watchmen has examples of a bigoted superhero characters(Rorschach) done in interesting ways. And a comedic direction would be really cool too, can't wait to read it!

To answer your question, there's nothing off limits to the prompt as long as it fits the major theme.

I can't hate season 4 of The Boys though. The plot line is crazy and I predicted Sister Sage to be a disaster right from the start (writing geniuses is hard enough; how do you write the "smartest person alive"?), but I loved the cast. I'm still a huge Supernatural fan.

Yes, Rorschach is a great example! I was also just recommending Scrubs to a friend, and I didn't realize until now how much I enjoy stubborn dickhead/asshole characters. This should be fun to write. And thank goodness it's a challenge, because otherwise my procrastination might catch up with me.

I want prompt number 6

Locked

Brave first action. Best of luck.

I liked your username better before I realized my device cuts off the last part of it.

Thanks.