TSR, $2.50, ISBN 0-88038-254-6
Fantasy, 1985
Don’t adjust the channel, as yes, The Soulforge is still part of the Super Endless Quest series. Only, TSR has happily decided to rename the series to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Gamebooks, maybe because they want to seize the title of the longest gamebook series ever from the Choose Your Own Adventure people. Still, this series will always be called Super Endless Quest here, because nobody wants to look at a long-ass title that breaks the nice layout of any website menu.
Oh, and if you’ve been following the Dragonlance series—or you are one of the five odd ducks that preferred playing the Dragonlance campaigns instead of reading the novels—and you still aren’t tired of how the whole place revolves around the Majere brothers and the spawns of their crotches for time immemorial, you’re going to love this one, because you are playing a 20-year old Raistlin Majere as he undergoes the test at the Towers of High Sorcery to become the sexiest hunchback-plagued-babe that swallowed everything else about that setting. Well, it’s either him or that horrid kender, but let’s not talk about that horrid kender here.
The Soulforge came out long before Margaret Weis wrote the canon novel of what happened to Raistlin during the test, though, so what happens to you here is like what happened in Vegas: no one talks about it after the trip.
This one quickly betrays the fact that it is targeting young kids, by having Caramon finally asking you to tell him why he is traveling with you after the two of you have made a large chunk of the journey. Sure, adults believe that kids are dumb and hence they need to have a long-ass exposition thrown in for the sake of these kids, but this only makes your twin brother look dumb… wait, it’s Caramon. Okay, it’s believable that he’d trot after you for weeks before thinking to ask why he’s following you. Never mind, let’s move on.
One nice thing about this campaign is that the Vancian magic system of this tabletop RPG series is incorporated pretty smoothly and seamlessly into it. Sure, this system isn’t anything that a gamebook player hasn’t encountered before, but it is done in a more elegant manner than the usual “you have 10 spells, and once you have used a spell, it’s gone forever” system found in other gamebook lines. Here, the limitations of spellcasting, typically done to prevent mages from breaking the campaign with overpowered spells, make sense because the rationale for their existence is presented as a natural, believable part of the way spellcasting works in this setting.
Also, the campaign is well-structured and even suspenseful at places. This seems like a natural evolution of this line, as the series moves progressively further from its Endless Quest roots to embrace die-rolling, stat-tracking, skill-choosing elements typical of more advanced gamebooks.
One downside is that the campaign, while well put together, has grade-school narrative, as if Terry Phillips believed that the players are ten-year old kids from the short bus. The end result is something that isn’t very fun to read, due to the lumbering, halting manner of the narrative.
Making things more frustrating, though, is how so many things here are dependent on die rolls. You can’t even tell a lie without having to roll a die and see if you would succeed. One reason why rolls work in a tabletop gaming session is because everyone at the table just wants to have fun and don’t want to put on a show like coming up with actual conversations to “live out” a campaign. Heaven knows, it’s hard enough to find a gaming time that can fit everyone’s routine, and it’s not like you’re paid millions of bucks to put on a show like you’re Critical Role or something.
In a gamebook, however, having to constantly roll dice to even see if you could burp successfully is anti-fun. It robs you of agency, and renders all your decision making worthless when everything you’ve done up to that point can be negated by a bad roll of the die. It feels like Terry Phillips just wants to avoid coming up with too many storytelling elements in this campaign, so he’s going to make you roll a die even if all you wanted to do is to pick your nose for a second without being jumped upon by monsters.
Hence, The Soulforge seems to be suffering from an identity crisis. On one hand, there is a pretty well done campaign here worthy of a superior entry in any other gamebook line. On the other hand, it doesn’t let you have much agency as you’d like, instead relying too often on die rolls to make your decisions for you. You are Raistlin Freaking Majere—you shouldn’t be a slave to randomness to this degree!
In other words, this is a gamebook that seems determined to get you to cheat instead of playing it straight, in order to minimize frustration. That’s just counter-intuitive design.
