Raid on Nightmare Castle

Dungeons & Dragons: Endless Quest #14

by Catherine McGuire, Jeff Easley (Cover Artist), Jim Holloway (Illustrator)

The reader decides the outcome of a raid on Nightmare Castle to rescue a captive ruler.

Genres: Fantasy, Gamebooks, Choose Your Own Adventure, Dungeons and Dragons, Fiction, Role Playing Games, Gaming

157 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 1, 1983

Reviews

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Positioning the property for this audience has inherent problems: you're obligated to create The Kid protagonist for the reader to identify with, then have to explain why The Kid is having the adventure and why The Kid is making decisions, and finally have to convey menace without resorting to the abrupt, violent ends suggested by the medium and by game material that thinks nothing of putting four anthropophagic trolls in a living room and letting things play out.

I was surprised, after an exhaustive reading, to see the number of successful endings and how they don't all funnel to boilerplate. There's an early branch where you either rescue your compatriots and have them along, or if you go it alone, and both paths get you there in a few different ways.

The author does lean on the crutch of strangely convenient magic items/abilities only trotted out at specific times, and is shy on exactly what a 'cleric' is.

Also, WTF is a "Balagump"?

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Choose Your Own Adventures, Amazing Stories, Endless Quests, whateva. Bring it on. Bring back this lit craze someone. I'm down. Except try not to churn these things out so fast that major editing challenges like remembering who is speaking become too hard for you. (Ahem, I'm looking at you, Catherine McGuire..) Am I the only one who reads every single plotline in these things?

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This “endless quest” book, a choose-your-own-adventure style book released by TSR and using Dungeons and Dragons as a basic setting, is reasonably good but suffers from the same problems as that series in general. Specifically, it suffers from a “forced narrative” that offers relatively few actual choices and different outcomes and from a narrator that is presumed to be a teenage human boy, allowing the target audience to “identify” with him, but not to fantasize about becoming something else. Thus, the real strengths of D&D in the first place are negated by the narrative.

This story makes up for that a bit by putting the character into an elf village, so that elf society becomes more important than human in the story. The narrator is also a first-level cleric with a powerful divinatory magic item, which is interesting. The quest is to rescue an elven hero who has been captured by an evil warlord in league with orcs whose castle is guarded by a dragon. The first major decision point is whether to attempt this alone or to bring along a friend and his father – an aged and wounded elven magic user. Once you get to the castle, there are some good dungeon-exploration pathways, but up to that point, you have few choices, just a few opportunities to be really stupid and die. Most of the “choices,” however, are just distractions, and you wind up on the same page you would have whichever way you go, apart from that one major decision.

In general, the “Endless Quest” series never quite lived up to its potential, and for really good solo adventures, I recommend the “Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks” instead. This one is good enough for a few readings, but doesn’t go beyond that.

[Toni Serrano Martínez · Rating 3 out of 5]

De joven, he releído mil veces cada libro de esta colección y, sin embargo, este libro apenas lo cogí un par de veces. Sus personajes no son muy atractivos, las criaturas que muestran son las más básicas y conocidas de fantasía que tampoco aportan nada nuevo y el título no hace justicia con la historia, pues es una de las historias más infantiles de la colección, y mucho le falta para ocasionar "pesadillas" al lector. La ambientación no está mal, pero como castillo terrorífico le va muy a la zaga a otras magnificas entregas de la colección, como "Retorno a Brookmere", "Las columnas de Pentegarn", "La guarida del cadáver errante" o la magnífica "La torre de las tinieblas".
El más prescindible de la colección (aunque yo me haría con él por completarla, la verdad)

[Ruth York · Rating 3 out of 5]

Throwback to my childhood. I needed a "choose your own adventure" book for a challenge. My brother came through, finding this old one in his things. I used to go through these, over and over when I was younger. Now that I am older, this one was still fun, but I see issues raised by others. For the most part, the main characters were almost always preteen or teen males, attempting to rescue the maiden in distress. However, if you don't mind putting up with that, it's still fun. More modern editions of these types of books would be a lot of fun. (Hint hint to any authors out there...)

[Jason Prodoehl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I used to enjoy these books as a young teenager. As an adult, ok, maybe not as engaging. Still, it was enjoyable to reminisce in reading something I used to enjoy, and activating my imagination.

[Helen (they or he) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Surprising lack of choices for a book that can only be read by choosing your own paths. At least the side characters were a bit interesting.

[Corina Deiters · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me back to childhood in a multiple ending adventure!

[Taddow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't read this series of books since I was a kid and I think they are entertaining for children but not so much for adults. The storyline was pretty simple, and included talking animal companions, naïve enemies, and a big bad warrior who is so scary and tough that a child has no problem subduing him with a staff.

[DavidO · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mediocre for a choose your own adventure book