The Silliest Post About Adventure Gamebooks Imaginable

In the third GrailQuest gamebook, Gateway of Doom, one of the new spells Pip is given in their Second Spell Book is Pip's Amazing Legume Spell, which will give an automatic Friendly Reaction from any attacking vegetable. (Ordinarily, a Friendly Reaction requires you to roll three dice for yourself, and one die for your opponent; if the combined total of your three dice is lower than your enemy's single roll, they're friendly and you can proceed as if you'd won. All spells only require a roll of 7 or better on two dice to succeed.)

You may very well think that this is quite a specialised spell which doesn't come into play much.

You may even think that J. H. Brennan included it solely to set up the joke that if you accidentally rescue a Vampire Carrot (which takes quite a bit of effort on your part, incidentally) it turns out such an absurd spell is the only thing that can save your life.

But a notable aspect of the GrailQuest books is that Brennan does sometimes leave things up to the reader's own interpretation; Brennan clearly took a lot of inspiration from tabletop gaming, and some of these instances feel like a solo game where the reader is both player and gamesmaster.

Take a spell introduced in Pip's First Spell Book, Pip's Immunity to Poison. The option to cast this spell will frequently not even be inferred, before or after the poison is taken (one encounter in the second book specifies, upon discovering some food you've just eaten is poisoned, "if you were not protected against poison" before rolling dice to see if you survive) -- with one exception, all the spells can be cast at any time the player likes, and it is up to them to remember that it is an option. Other spells are even more open to interpretation about when they can be used:

On the flipside, there are definitely moments where Brennan goes out of his way to rule out certain solutions he thinks readers might come up with that would go beyond outside-the-box thinking into outright cheating; in the fifth book, Kingdom of Horror, he specifies that a Friendly Reaction cannot be used to force your way past a non-combat encounter with the Poetic Fiend, a recurring character the player already knows perfectly well is completely friendly and will only let you through if you have the equipment required to proceed.

But anyway. There are two other opportunities in Gateway of Doom where the PALS spell may be useful.

If you murder the scruffy old gardener unprovoked, then three of his plants take umbrage against your actions and slither out of their pots to take you on: does the spell work against vegetable matter?

And the Level 3 Wandering Monsters table specifies that Tubarinos are vegetable monsters. If you don't murder the gardener, he can give you some weed killer that you can rub on Excalibur Junior to double any damage you score in your first successful hit against a vegetable monster, so this is clearly to give you the opportunity to use that. The rules for Wandering Monsters specify that they can never give a Friendly Reaction, but does the PALS spell countermand that? In the Vampire Carrot scenario it's clearly meant to give a Friendly Reaction where one would otherwise not be possible, so is the implication yes?

Well, is it?!

I haven't even gotten into the fact that Triffids are on the Level 2 Wandering Monsters table, you know.

* * *

The next three GrailQuest books don't use the spellcasting system at all. In Voyage of Terror, this is because a bucket getting dropped on Merlin's head mid-spell sends you to Ancient Greece instead of Avalon, meaning all your usual equipment and magic are off-limits for the entire book (even Excalibur Junior, the one constant in the other seven books). In Kingdom of Horror, the riots in Avalon following the theft of Excalibur have destroyed all the equipment and magic Merlin had prepared for you, although KoH does also feature an innovative and elaborate new system for Merlin's assistance: at any time when not in battle, you can roll a die to be magically transported to his die-shaped home. Whilst this risks certain death if you roll a 1 (as the 1 spot is on the floor, you will be trapped in the solid basalt of the Welsh Mountains), you can also gain access to his storerooms of equipment and magical items, as well as a bedchamber where you can safely restore LIFE POINTS without risk. It's possible Brennan forewent the spellcasting system to avoid overcomplicating things or unbalancing the game.

Realm of Chaos also doesn't use magic, simply explained with the line "In this adventure you don't have to remember anything about magic because I can't seem to get it to work. That's part of the curse put on Camelot." The spellcasting system finally makes a return in Tomb of Nightmares, where Pip's starting equipment includes PIP'S COMBINED SPELL BOOK (New Edition, revised, enlarged and signed by the Author). Brennan doesn't make a huge attempt to incorporate the spells not specifically meant for use in combat into the game, and one wonders if it may only have been included at all because he couldn't think of a good in-universe reason not to this time. (The Invisibility spell -- "I.N.V.I.S.I.B.I.L.I.T.Y. for short" -- is the only one which can be cast solely when the book gives you the option, and Brennan neglects to give the player a single opportunity to do so outside of the book it's first introduced in!)

Despite the fact that Brennan has the perfect excuse not to include it in the final book, Legion of the Dead (namely that Merlin has joined up with the titular Legion before you even get to Avalon), and he makes even less of an endeavour to use the non-combat spells -- in fact there is only a single direct reference to spells in the whole of the adventure -- the Combined Spell Book is included there, although one could argue that you could use the PALS spell against the Strangler Vine or Crawling Creeper.

In fact, at the end of the rather convoluted rules for conducting combat with the Crawling Creeper, the book says "Is that clear? If not, rewrite it so it makes sense to you." Which works as a sarky comment aimed at the reader, and is entirely in keeping with both Brennan's sense of humour, and his habit of leaving things open to the player's interpretation. But there are some issues in the later GrailQuest books with proofreading and playtesting, and bits of Legion in particular read as if they were written in a bit of a rush -- it seems quite possible that this was a comment aimed at Brennan's editor that got left in by mistake!