The gamebook
doctor is in again, and he’s diagnosing the penultimate book in the GrailQuest series, Tomb of Nightmares. Whilst the series generally existed to be a bit
of a laugh, Tomb is a bit more
puzzle-orientated (though still very funny)… because the entire gamebook is
basically one big maze (that has a really evil tendency to randomly teleport
you back to the same section over and over again, which the book ends up
amusingly lampshading). Not only does the adventure feature a large number of
monster encounters and precious few opportunities for healing, it also features
an extra ‘secret doors’ mechanic, which works like this:
To search for a secret door in any section,
throw one die. Score 4, 5 or 6 and you are entitled to check the secret door
table which starts on page 186. Score less than 4 and you have missed any
secret door that might be there.
(Curiously,
a few earlier sections offer you the choice to check for secret doors in the
text as well as using the secret doors table, which seems a bit odd.) Anyway,
it’s a tricky book, and I was forced to map it by using a spreadsheet for this
article.
In section 137, it is stated that when you fight
Grott the Hoddle, none of your magic will work and all damage scored will have
a -3 modifier unless you learn a Death Ode from the Poetic Fiend. Unfortunately
this isn’t mentioned at all when you do meet Grott, meaning whether or not you
meet the Fiend and get the opportunity to learn an Ode is irrelevant.
In section 204, where you finally meet up with the
Hoddle, it informs you that he has access to every spell you know.
Unfortunately (and this is a problem that afflicts one or two enemies in the
earlier volumes), it gives you no indication of how he uses them, requiring the reader to interpret the book for
themselves – does he use them in rotation? Are you meant to use them randomly?
Loads of the spells aren’t actually intended for combat situations, so what do
you do with those?
A slightly
odd thing is that section 177 asks
you to roll two dice to discover how many Demons are in the pit you’re standing
by… even though you never have to fight or make contact with the Demons at all
and how many of them there are never matters one jot.
Now, going
back to the maze aspect… I often thought that some sort of proofreading error
was affecting the maze/secret doors system in this book and it might actually
be unwinnable, so I aimed to work out the book’s exact solution for this
article. Going backwards from the final paragraph:
224-209-222-204…
hang on.
There is, as
far as I can tell, no way whatsoever to reach section 204 in this book. Except you have to in order to reach the final
encounter. It’s definitely not in the secret doors table, and I’ve gone over
the rest of the book with a fine-toothed comb and I can’t see any way into it
from there either. Apart from this encoded message at section 221:
WZTK WT TBY
TY LSNIFJQ WTTI YJWHJX F QQFB JMY SN5R (69V5 49SPL1354. R514 213KW1R4S 16T5R
453049N7)
Now, this
message appears as part of an illustration… which is probably why it’s garbled
and apparently not wholly translatable. But it seems this is the message that’s
meant to lead to section 204. (I
have to admit I can’t work out what the code is myself and had to see what the
internet had to say about this; part of it comes out as ‘the wall a secret door
leading to two or four’, which should presumably read ‘two-oh-four’.) I think that
covers everything; the actual secret doors and maze geography all seem to be
sound.
Oh, and
there’s one other thing to note: this book has possibly the best plot of any
adventure game I have ever played, ever.
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