--- In molochsgamebookgarden@yahoogroups.com, "Craig P. Steffen"
<craig@c...> wrote:
> Hmm...
>
> I ran across this group today. It has 150 members listed, but
seems
> to have died out in 2001 or so. I guess the way to perhaps kindle
a
> little bit of activity is to post myself.
>

The group has largely died out, unfortunately. There were some great
members here though, including Herbie Brennan himself (go waaayyy
back to some of the original messages, and you'll find his posts).

> For actual _playing_, I would say the role-playing books I used the
> most were the _Sorcery_ series. Very re-playable, well balanced,
and
> a well written epic quest.

Yep, played through all 4 of the Sorcery books, and they were good
fun (still have them, as a matter of fact).

>
> However, the books that over the years I've enjoyed _reading_ the
most
> has been by far the GrailQuest series by J. H. Brennan (who seems
to
> go by "Herbie" Brennan now as an author). I found them terribly
> interesting and funny in a way that I've seen very few authors
> achieve.
>
> As far as gameplay, unfortunately I think that the series got way
to
> hard as it went along. The first couple of books were reasonably
well
> balanced, and I think that they had a decent chance to be played
> through successfully on the first try. However, starting with
> GrailQuest 4, I think that unfortunately you'd have to play through
> the books several times and know where the "make this choice and
die
> instantly" pages are and know to avoid them. Back when I was
> originally reading the books in jr. high, I played through the
first
> couple all the way through for real, but I never played through the
> 6th one at all. The way the astral plane bit is set up, you'd
have to
> have a huge amount of fore-knowledge to get through to the end at
all,
> and hit some of the things in the correct order.

It's true. His books did have a lot of ways you could get killed.
That said, Section 14 was often one of the funniest areas of each
book, so I didn't really mind getting killed. In fact, I seem to
recall that after the first couple of books, one of the first things
I used to do was flip through to Section 14 to find out what it
would say *this* time.

>
> Having read those books, and had them on my bookshelves for years
> since then, I'm happy to say that my life has come full circle
> recently. I'm proud to say that Friday, August 13, 2004, I hiked
to
> the top of Glastonbury Tor (and visited Stonehenge and other cool
> stuff). My hard drive in my machine at work died around that same
> time, but I deny any causal connection between the two events.
>
> So--Any GrailQuest fans out there who actually played all the way
> through the 6 books (I think volumes 7 and 8 were UK only)? Did
you
> actually make it all the way through without dying once? Once you
> died once with the Luckstone from CoD, did you "keep" it to give
you
> an advantage?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Craig Steffen
>

Honestly, it's been ages since I last looked at the Grailquest
books, but I think I finished them all. I remember that I did cheat
a few times with that series though - sometimes it was just so
completely random whether you died or not, I just took the option
which kept my character alive. Without a doubt, Grailquest was the
most tongue in cheek set of gamebooks I ever read, and I just took
it for granted you weren't really supposed to play them seriously.
On the other hand, I did treat most gamebooks quite seriously
(Fighting Fantasy, Way of the Tiger and Lone Wolf were some of my
favorites of the serious type).

It's a pity that the Gamebook genre seems to have almost completely
died out. There's still some interest in gamebooks (including a few
excellent gamebook sites), but I can't recall the last time I saw an
actual gamebook for sale in a store, except for secondhand
bookstores, where I can find them occasionally.