TSR, $2.00, ISBN 0-935696-92-X
Fantasy, 1982
Oh, a new adventure! You turn to the first entry and…
A scaly, bark-covered hand wraps its long thin fingers around your shoulder. A wispy voice whispers, “Excuse me, friend. I need to tidy up around you.”
Your friend Tree lowers a branch and you climb on eagerly. You are always happy to rest in Tree’s branches and watch your friends scurry about the forest.
What the…? Is this a My Little Pony thing?
Hi! Your name is Jaimie. You live near the woods, and when your mother is away, you sneak out to play with your friends Owl, Fox, and Tree. Do you feel like vomiting yet?
Your friends inform you of a group of socially responsible adventurers – they use dead wood instead of cutting down trees for their fire, aww – heading over to the Pillars of Pentegarn. Oh no, then some goblins show up, apparently headed in that same direction too! You have to go warn the adventurers! Of course, you can choose not to, and then you’re free of this campaign forever. After the first few entries, you’d probably be tempted to.
If you persist onward, you soon learn that the adventurers are led by an old man who claims to be the King Pentegarn. His magic staff has been stolen by the Evil Master (try not to laugh, it’s not nice), so year after year the old man comes all the way here to defeat the Evil Master and regain his magic staff. As he is also apparently dying with his staff, he believes that this will be his final attempt. He then looks into his eyes and, gee, what a coincidence, you decide to help him. No mind control magic here, none at all!
It is by then that Pillars of Pentegarn becomes pretty interesting. The old man and his two party members – a warrior and a thief – all have their respective ideas on how to storm the Evil Master’s place, and even you have a choice of offering your own idea. Of course, you won’t be asked to come up with your own idea, as this is a gamebook for little kids and everyone knows little kids are dumb, you’d just pick that option and the narrative will do its job on its own. While the early entries may be childish to a sickening degree, the routes in this section can be quite dark in comparison. Your companions may die if you pick certain options, for example, while some bad endings clearly spell out that all of you aren’t going to make it.
While this later two-thirds of the campaign aren’t by any means amazing, they aren’t particularly awful either. You don’t have to make many decisions as this whole thing plays out more like a story with occasional pauses when it remembers to ask you what to do, the story itself isn’t too bad. There are dangers, some near-deaths, and you turn out to be some adorable cutesy-but-dangerous type of character here. Fox and Owl aren’t too annoying as well, which is a plus.
Pillars of Pentegarn may still be too childish for some gamebook players, but if you can get past the first few entries without gasping for breath and reaching for your insulin, you may end up thinking that this one is… well, kind of okay. You probably won’t admit it loud in public, but who’s going to blame you for that?
