Straight Outta Loot Box

by Prane

Rating: everyone
Tags: Princess Celestia, Slice of Life, Princess Luna, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Comedy
Length: 4956

Young Celestia and Luna get a new board game in which they create their own universe. It gets intense.

Young Celestia and Luna get a brand new board game in which they create their own universe. Will Celestia have fun? Will Luna be allowed to play her custom content? And, most importantly, will they get their (parents') money worth out of the base set, or will they succumb to buying endless expansions, mini-packs and randomized boosters to get the full experience?

Inspired by the recent uproar in the gaming community regarding loot boxes and shady business practices. May contain microtransactions.

Published 2017-11-21 22:10:05 UTC
Last updated 2017-11-21 22:10:05 UTC

Providing Young Alicorns With a Sense of Pride and Accomplishment

“We’re gonna create Equestria, we’re gonna create Equestria!” Celestia and Luna chanted.

The King, a cosmic stallion bearing the looks of a bored husband—if infinitely more regal still—put the keys into the interdimensional pocket of his blazing, star-woven coat, and let the two fillies storm the castle. With a dwindling grasp of magic holding a colorful box, they darted upstairs discarding pieces of clothing as they went, hastily and without a care in the world.

They were a handful! The King wanted to smile seeing their joy, but in truth a worrisome frown hadn’t left his forehead since they left the toy store.

“I’m still not sure this is the right gift for our daughters,” he grumbled.

“Don’t be such a spoilsport, dear,” his wife, the Queen, replied. “Sooner or later they will have to learn how to create life and maintain civilizations, so what better way of getting to know the basics than through a world building board game?” She squeezed herself between him and the door, bringing in otherworldly groceries: milk from the Milky Way, void broccoli from the Nether Rim, and some black holed cheese. “Besides, it’s not like they’re five centuries anymore. They’re more responsible than you think.”

“I know, I know.” He followed the radiant mare to the kitchen. “It’s just this is one of those collectible board games. They’re selling it for a full price, but still have you buy expansions. I don’t know about you, but to me it feels like they aren’t selling a full product at all!”

“I don’t know, I think some of those expansions are worth their price,” the Queen said, shrugging. “The novelty is bound to wear off after a few decades, so it’s good they keep coming up with additional pieces and whatnots for you to play with. Some of the boxes felt pretty heavy,” she added, taking out the toy store pamphlet out of her bag.

The King sat at the table and uncorked a flask of warp soda. It fizzled pleasantly.

“And some were not as impressive,” he said. “Those are some shady business practices, I tell you. I bet they’ll introduce smaller packs at some point, not fifty pieces but five or something like that. I’ve been playing a lot of those trading card games when I was their age, you know. I spent a lot of money buying boosters to gather the best deck possible, and for what? To savor a meaningless victory in some backwater galactic championship in the Andromeda?”

“There, there, my champion.” She pecked him on the cheek. “At least you’ve had your fun. Isn’t that what games are supposed to be?”

“Not if the amount of fun you can have is defined by how much of your parents’ money you spend,” he replied, adamantly thinking of himself as a responsible adult. He tried not to think of the fun he really did have, how many glorious battles with his peers he’d won, and focused his pragmatic approach instead. “I just don’t know if our budget is ready for such a hobby for our girls. Those things tend to get pricey.”

Suddenly, a loud explosion-like sound resounded across the house, giving the kitchen glassware a shiver.

“What on Ascendancy was that?” the King asked, and was met with a benign eye-roll of his wife.

“The Big Bang,” the Queen replied. “Haven’t you read the pamphlet I gave you? It means our girls have just created their first universe. The game has begun.”

The King sighed in resignation, praying in his thoughts for the salvation of his wallet.

“Well, at least they’re not charging you a monthly fee for playing it,” he admitted. “That would be stealing.”

* * *

“Let’s play already, let’s play already!” Luna chirped, jumping happily around the rapidly expanding board which, however, scaled to fit the table in their room.

“Calm down, please. I’m trying to read the rules here!”

Celestia was the big sister—of course she was going to read the rules first and lead the game. She cleared her throat.

“It says here what follows: after the Big Bang phase, the players choose their field of influence. The field of influence determines what kind of special actions they can perform throughout the game, what will be the source of their power, their affinities, and the chances of obtaining specific characters related to their chosen field.” The filly’s muzzle gave an unsure wince. “Sounds complicated, but that’s okay. We’ll only have to worry about those things later in the game.”

“But how do we start playing?” Luna asked as she rummaged through the box. “Do we build the world or what? Look, they even have little tokens of stars. Can I start placing the stars on the board? Pretty please!”

Celestia raised her hoof. “Not just yet. We still have to decide who will take care of what. In the base game, there are two field of influence. One is called the Sun, and the other is called the Moon.” Her eyes moved fast as she burned through the next paragraph. “Interesting. It says here that there are expansion packs available in a store near us! Other fields include, but are not limited to those available with following expansion packs: Sovereign Stars, Everfree Nature, Oceans Divided, Landmasses United, Cranky Creatures, Spirits Unchained, Inevitable Rise of the Leviathans… whoa, that’s a lot of expansion packs. I wonder if we can convince mom and dad to buy us some of these?”

“Dad hardly agreed for this one, so it’s probably a no-no. Besides, why would anyone need all these? There are landmasses and creatures already in the starter set, look!”

“Stop touching the pieces, Luna! We’re not supposed to create a dry land until the third turn!” Celestia said. “So, the Sun or the Moon? Which one do you want to play as?”

“Can I change it later?”

“I don’t think so, but give me a moment.” She leafed through the guidebook again. “Nope. There’s only a temporary control in the rules and that’s only when one of the players is absent or otherwise unable to play.”

Luna put her chin on the edge of the table, cupping her head as she pondered. “Alright. I wanna be… the Sun!” she exclaimed, to which Celestia winced briefly, but long enough for Luna to notice and decipher its meaning. “Oh, I know that look, don’t be sad. Come on, sister! Whatever it is you wish to say, say it!”

“It’s just that I wanted to play Sun,” Celestia admitted. “I know how to play the Sun, I read all the guides,” she said, to which Luna nodded with a small dose of empathy. “So, what do you say?”

Luna gave it some thought, but then burst out in giggles.

“Nope! I called it first,” she replied, sticking out her tongue.

Ever since they first learned about the board game and read about what the respective fields of influence meant, Luna had been giving her signals that she was interested in becoming the Sun. But her reasons were childish, in Celestia’s private opinion—Luna just wanted to place star tokens on the board and lay down constellations and planets, which was one of the first actions the Sun player had to do.

Playing as the Sun, however, was much more complex than her sister could realize, as it was the Sun that was beginning the turn, and the Moon that was ending it. That meant the Sun had the initiative, and although the game was described as a cooperative experience and not a competitive one, Celestia knew her sister a little too well.

“I mean, I guess you could be the Sun.” She gave a casual shrug. “I’ll be taking the Moon then and I will have full control over the Dreamworld. Plus”—she reached out into the box which seemed to have hundreds and hundreds glass and marble tokens to be utilized, and fished out a tall black piece—“I get to control the Nightmare.” She waved the piece before Luna’s eyes, trying to make the bait as enticing as possible. “Ooh, look how scary it is! I’ll be getting bonus points for every scared pony during nighttime, while you won’t be getting any points for any non-scared pony during daytime, as this will be their natural state.”

Luna’s stare spoke volumes before she even did. “I want to score bonus points! Give me that, I will control the Nightmare!”

“More like the Nightmare will control you!” Celestia chuckled, raising the piece a bit outside of her sister’s reach.

“Give me that! You can have the Sun if you want, I couldn’t care less!” Luna shouted back, but calmed down quickly “Uh, I mean, is it okay if I still could place the stars on the board? House rules style?”

There were times Celestia couldn’t believe how easy to manipulate her sister was.

She put a hoof to her forehead in a dramatic gesture. “Oh, oh my, whatever shall I do, you really want to play the Moon, don’t you?” she asked, to which Luna nodded like a quantum puppy. “Well, if that’s so important to you...” She withheld the judgment, relishing in the hopeful gaze of her younger sibling. “Okay. You can play as the Moon and place the constellations as you wish.”

“Huzzah!” Luna raised the Nightmare in a well-earned victory. “How do we proceed, sister?”

“We have to mark our chosen fields of influence, so that when someone comes asking, it will be clear which of us is taking care of what, okay?”

“Those terms are agreeable. How do you propose we do that? More tokens? A badge?”

“Yes, there are badges all right, but I was thinking of something more elegant, actually… oh, I got it!” Celestia replied, coming up with the most ingenious idea she had since the idea of convincing their mom to buy them a new board game. She took two identical alicorn pieces from the box and placed them between herself and Luna. “According to the rules, we need something to represent our presence and involvement in the world. These two pieces look practically alike, but if we customize them a little…”

“Dibs on blue!” Luna exclaimed, darting for a crystalline marker and back. “There’s a lot of space on their flanks. How about there?”

Celestia nodded. “Great idea! These will make for some cute marks!”

“Oh! Do you think we could customize other ponies as well?”

“You’re reading my mind, sister.”

* * *

Centuries passed, and the game went on, for better and worse.

The magical world of Equestria flourished under the keen eye of its two rulers-creators. Celestia, having chosen the domain of the Sun, was taking care of all the daylight matters which occurred during the day phase of the turn. Ponies were getting their cutie marks, societies underwent evolutions, and new expansions were added, unveiling new allies and enemies alike. It involved a lot of strategic planning, balancing resources, and solving diplomatic quest cards she kept drawing from the pile of challenges.

Luna, who was given the domain of the Moon as her sphere of influence, had a chance to play her pieces more aggressively. Soldiers protected the borders from randomly generated wandering monsters, while she herself enjoyed the challenge the Dreamworld layer of the game presented to her. She was winning the dice rolls more often than she was losing them thanks to her cunning approach to the rules, magic nexuses shining on the board, well-placed wizards, and the Nightmare piece she was readily utilizing whenever opportunity arose.

“You can’t solve all your problems with the Nightmare’s power, Luna!” Celestia exclaimed after she had to, according to the rules, remove some of her pieces due to the Nightmare’s backfire. A dice roll, snake eyes, and the ponies were falling like flies. “You’re ruining the game, again! Just like you did when you attached the stars to the animals instead of fixing them to the firmament as I have clear instructed you.”

“Get off my ursas, okay? They are meant to become a powerhouse in the late game.”

“We have no use for space bears,” Celestia decreed. “They’ve been causing nothing but trouble anyway… but I suppose a created must always share in the traits of its creator.”

“There is no need to be ambiguous,” Luna said impassively. “Whatever it is you wish to say, sister, say it.”

“Oh, don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. The Discord fiasco last century?” She rolled her eyes. “That could have ended only so well.”

“We’ve been over this, Celestia. We can’t afford every expansion they release, and we don’t want to ask our parents every time a new one hits the stores, so we had to settle for certain sacrifices,” Luna said, trying to remain calm. “We agreed to look into alternative ways of enriching the world, so when Discord said he could add some of his Crazy Chaos pieces to our board, of course I welcomed him.”

“Crazy Chaos wasn’t even a real expansion!” Celestia snapped back with the righteous anger stirring inside her. “Just pieces of plastic, glue and confetti put together.”

“At least he was actually playing the game instead of trying to run it. He was having fun, I was having fun, and you threw him out.”

Celestia waved her hoof dismissively. “That’s only because he was making the rules for his main piece on the go. He was constantly moving around our cities and villages. And let us not forget how he spilled glitter all over Saddle Arabia. It took me eons to sift the desert through!”

“Yet there is no denying that he cast a breath of novelty onto the board—without expenditures.”

Celestia shook her head. “No, no. Allow me to reiterate so you could have a clearer picture,” she slowly said. “First, none of Discord’s pieces have been playtested or otherwise endorsed by the creators of the game. Therefore, there was no place for them on this board. Second—”

“Not too fond of custom content, are we?”

“Second,” Celestia said sternly, “it’s not about not spending, it’s about spending only on things you really need.”

“Or on things you really like.”

An indescribable chuckle left Celestia’s lips. “Naturally, but the first condition remains sine qua non.”

“But one can still buy things they like even if they’re not entirely necessary, can’t they?”

“One certainly shouldn’t,” she quipped.

“But one can.”

“After exhausting every other option, perhaps.”

Luna watched her sister carefully. “Is it personal? I have a feeling I should take it personally,” she said. “Am I causing you trouble? Speak up, sister, or roll the dice. The pawns do not enjoy their rulers looking away.”

Celestia sighed heavily. It had come to this at last, just as she expected.

“The thing is, we would have a reasonable chance to collect all the important expansions if you weren’t spending all our pocket money on mini-packs. Like the last millennium’s limited edition of Steampunk Skies. I wanted us to buy that—because airships, naturally—but thanks to you we ended with ten mini-packs worth of Nightdwellers cosmetics which you threw onto your pegasi. I mean, ponies with bat wings? Seriously? They look like something Discord would make as a joke.”

“You will not speak another word against them,” Luna whispered.

The older alicorn flinched at the coldness in her sister’s voice. “I—uh, I simply wish we would be more efficient with our savings as the game develops.”

“Then why are you opposing the idea of custom content?” Luna wasn’t letting go, and Celestia half-wondered if she hadn’t crossed a line with her last comment. “My ursas and thestrals, Discord’s frog-oranges and cotton candy sheep, those are and were ideas worth exploring in my opinion. So what it’s unofficial? By coming up with such modifications, the longevity of the game is prolonged with minimum to no bits. Free of charge! You know, I was actually thinking about making my own custom set, but if you have a problem with having fun all of a sudden…”

Celestia shot her muzzle to the galaxy-spotted ceiling of their room.

“I see no fun in ruining the consistency of the setting I have so cautiously brought together.”

Luna winced, giving her sister time to reconsider her words, but Celestia’s ire was final.

“Once again, it would seem, it’s all about you, sister. Your pieces, your setting, your Equestria,” Luna said bitterly and moved her bluish piece to the top of what was their castle zone, deep in the mystical forest straight from Everfree Nature. “You know what, when we got the game I thought we would be having so much fun together. The two of us, creating a world where there’s place for all our wildest dreams. Great castles, wondrous monsters, simple but brave ponies trying to make their way in the universe we’ve created for them. Our own personal playground including those space bears you’re obviously so distressed about.”

Celestia stared at the board for a couple of long seconds. Then, with a carefully executed motion, she moved her own, brilliantly white piece next to Luna’s.

“Careful, sister,” she hissed, her eyes narrowing. “As of the recent turn, I have complete control over the Elements. That’s top tier magic artifact set to which you have no response.”

“See? You’re just proving my point. When every turn is about fulfilling your desires, what you are planning to do to make Equestria greater, it’s not fun anymore. Not to those left out of the decision process, at least,” Luna said. “Whatever. Since you’re mostly indulging yourself with your espionage charts and trade routes income sheets, I’m not going to stand in your way. In fact, I don’t want to have anything to do with your board anymore.”

Celestia, not knowing yet she was making a terrible decision, glared at her.

“Very well, just be gone off my table. I’m trying to control the planet’s economy here.”

“Fine!” Emotions flooding her, Luna raised to all fours. With a swift sweep, she took the figurines related to her domain off the board. “I’ll make my own kingdom, and I won’t even need your planet! Or your landmasses, or your ponies. And I won’t need you!” She wondered where was she going to put all the dark pieces she had been controlling since the beginning of time, seemingly. “I’m taking the moon’s surface, though. I’m gonna have fun on my own terms.”

Celestia laughed mockingly. “If moving your pieces around some grey, barren rock with no atmosphere encapsulates your definition of fun,” she said. “Oh, and while you’re there, see if you can find our Mysteries of the Crystal Empire. Seriously, we’ve had a nice place for it north of Canterlot but then you put it somewhere no one knows where.”

“It’s somewhere in the room… I think,” Luna said defensively, but being under the bombardment of Celestia’s malice caused tears to appear in her eyes. “You… you are a mean pony.”

“Mark my words, Luna. You’ll be asking me to get you back into the game yet. Sooner or later, you’ll realize how difficult it is to run a complex system on your own, and you’ll come back to seek my counsel. And if not for that, you’ll come begging for some extra pieces to play with.”

“Not even in a thousand years.”

“We shall see about that.” Celestia grabbed the Nightmare piece off the table and threw it at Luna’s hooves. “For now, consider yourself banished.”

* * *

A thousand years passed sooner than expected, but time had little meaning to those engaged in gaming, and even less so to beings like Celestia and Luna to whom time was more of a hobby. A hobby, the enjoyment of which—just like board games—didn’t come just from following the strict rules and replaying the turn sequence with every new dawn. True joy came from sharing both time and the board game with another, the truth Celestia was beginning to discover with each passing decade.

She didn’t realize it at first, as limited funds for the expansions were no longer an issue. Ridiculously overpriced pre-owned airships from Steampunk Skies sailed across Equestria, the map had grown with Landmasses United and Oceans Divided which added new continents and civilizations, and Sovereign Stars were shining beacons marking the inky sky. Only hunting the randomized, tricky to obtain content from mini-packs remained as a way to improve her setting. The setting she created and catered for for the last millennium.

The setting in which she was the sole player. No amount of new tiles, tokens or challenge cards were going to fill that void... but they were a partial consolation.

Hoping for the best, Celestia ripped the booster pack open. The last one this year, she promised herself. Various tokens and figurines fell to her hoof while the packaging joined the growing pile in the wastepaper bin. She assessed the value of the new ponies and winced. Those were not the pieces she had expected, or wanted in the first place.

“More common drops, huh?” she heard the soothing voice behind her. It was Luna. She sat at the table with some magazine. “I thought you didn’t like mini-packs.”

“I don’t,” Celestia admitted. “But it’s the only way of progressing these days. They stopped making full expansions, you know, saying their production costs outweigh profit. I’m only short one or two and they are all sold out for the moment, but once that’s done the only incentive to play I have is completing the collection.” She crossed her arms. “It’s not fair, Luna. I am a collector at heart, but the odds of getting some of those royal-rare upgrades are astronomically small.”

“Yeah, I read the math someone did. Not too encouraging,” Luna said, but there was something else left unspoken. She returned to her read. “How about restarting the game? Or playing something else?”

Celestia pondered. Inevitable Rise of the Leviathans was still on the shelf, though, and she was looking for an opportunity to release its contents into her perfect setting. At the same time, she didn’t feel like going back to the first turn, the Big Bang phase and all that. She had put her heart and soul into supporting the game and its creators, but she was having hard time accepting their business model.

“Quitting doesn’t feel right, I love this game. Playing from the scratch will just get me to the point I’m in now, only in a couple thousand years, so it’s hardly a difference.”

Luna nodded and murmured something, deep in lecture, seemingly disinterested.

Or so Celestia thought, because she noticed that Luna’s eyes weren’t focused on the magazine. Still hidden behind the cover, she was looking above it, to the fields of green and blue that constituted Equestria. Did she actually care for what was going on the board? They never talked about the how the game was progressing after Celestia banished her, but Celestia could swear she caught Luna stealing a glance at the table.

She decided to take her chances. No more brooding.

“If I’m being honest,” she slowly began, “it’s not the same without you.”

Now Luna’s eyes escaped to the article, trying to pretend that she had been reading all along. She waited, then folded the magazine and turned to her sister.

“Whatever it is you wish to say, say it.”

Celestia didn’t need another invitation.

“I want you to come back to Equestria. I’ve been ruling alone for quite some time and I don’t even know if my strategic decisions are correct because there’s no one to challenge them. I could use someone else, someone I can trust to play along,” she blurted out, centuries of regret finally finding the surface. She drew an arc over the board. “I’ve collected everything there is to have multiple options, well, not everything, but most of it, and I think you’ll enjoy all the expansions that I bought while you were gone.” She heaved a sigh. “It took me long enough to realize it, but by playing on my own I’ve been doing it wrong.”

As a no-nonsense pony, Luna crossed her forelegs. “I have conditions.”

“I’m listening.”

“First, I want you to upgrade the ursas and other celestial beings to mythic level. They are important, they fizzle with star power, and they look cool, so they deserve a highlight,” she said. “Second, you are not allowed to make fun of my thestrals ever again. They are to be treated equally, like unicorns, pegasi and earth ponies.”

Celestia moved a couple of spare counters around so that the number on the ursa’s power scale improved. The figurine itself roared cutely, apparently content with the change.

“Upgrading ursas, done,” she said and quickly repeated the process for other celestials. “As for thestrals, I unfortunately had some misses on my rolls, so there may already be some tension present. But”—she exclaimed as Luna was opening her mouth—“we can use the trait card to make them cute and cuddly. No one will be able to resist their feral charm.”

“Sounds agreeable to me,” Luna said. “And now, for the third…”

Without finishing her thought, the younger alicorn went to the corner of the room and started rummaging across the cupboard. Celestia waited patiently, but eventually raised a suspecting eyebrow. Was her sister trying to come up with that third demand just now? What was that all about?

She returned with some kind of a package behind her back.

“Don’t look!” Luna said, to which Celestia obediently nestled her face in her hooves. “Just a moment… there! You can open your eyes now.”

Before her was an open box the size of a solid expansion pack. It wasn’t official, that Celestia could tell, but she spotted a few familiar pieces—and a lot of new, customized ones.

“I was worrying that we may never play this,” Luna said with an unsure smile on her face. “Let me give you a tour. As you can see, I found the Mysteries of the Crystal Empire so we can put it back where it was and come up with some silly reason why was it gone for a millennium.”

“You... you’ve made your own custom set?”

“Indeed I have! Here are my thestrals and celestial creatures, here is the dark side of the moon—don’t get me wrong, but that flat disc you’ve put over the planet looks terrible from afar,” she said. “I… I also took your advice about spending my money wisely. I managed to save some to buy that set you’ve been hunting for so long.”

Celestia couldn’t hide her awe. “Guardians of Harmony! How did you get that? I thought they were sold out!”

“I may have mailed someone with envelopes that weren’t white. You don’t want to know,” Luna murmured. “But hey, look here. Here’s some of our old things that I made to fit the game, complete with stat cards and tokens. Forgive the cardboard cutouts, I’m planning on improving that. Here’s Tirek, seaponies, a few hippogriffs, oh, a hydra! I made it five or something centuries years ago, but it’s good. And this little guy is called Tantabus, but more on him later,” she concluded. “Those customs haven’t been playtested enough, but it would be great if you considered adding them to the game. O-of course I’ll understand if you say they don’t fit your setting—”

“It’s perfect,” Celestia simply said. “Just the thing we need to revitalize the game. How did you name this set, I wonder?”

The cover of the box was missing, but Luna was still holding something behind her back.

“It’s, uh, not important,” she said defensively, but the other alicorn was insistent in holding out her hoof. Luna rolled her eyes. “Oh, alright! But promise you won’t laugh at me.”

Celestia reached out for the cover. “Fret not, sister, why would I laugh at the title? Certainly it can’t be too…”

The cover said: Celestia’s Lost Fun.

Celestia raised muzzle questioningly. Luna nodded.

Wordlessly, for no words were required, in a brief moment lasting an eternity, they shared in their regret and misdeeds of the past. Celestia tried to say something, but Luna shushed her and smiled through tears which mirrored those in the other mare’s eyes. The older apologized without uttering a word, and her sister accepted that with gladness. Silently, the younger asked with hope in her shining eyes about the better tomorrow, and Celestia promised her that, and more.

With their sisterly bond reformed after one thousand years of separation, the two ended up falling into each other’s caring embrace.

Luna was first to open her eyes in that blissful moment. A glowing point on the board caught her attention.

“That’s a lot of destiny tokens for one pawn,” she noticed. “Anything special in her?”

Celestia shrugged. “Eh, not really. I picked this one at random, gave her some stronger magic, plus a token dragon. I had no real reason, just sort of went with it.”

“So my sister can have fun.” Luna grabbed a black, armored alicorn figurine out of the box. “Hey, wanna give her impossible challenges and see what happens?”

“You are reading my mind,” Celestia admitted with a beaming smile. She took the dice and focused on the board where a tiny, purple pony was running in circles. “Let’s see what you’re made of, Twilight.”

Author's Note

Hello there! Thank you for reading my story. I am no longer writing pony fiction, but if you want to support my current creative endeavor, check out my content on Twitch! :raritywink: