Broken Gamebooks: Realm of Chaos

Way, way back in the mists of time of, erm, about three months ago, when I first started this blog, my very first post extolled the virtues of the GrailQuest adventure gamebook series. What I didn’t mention at the time is that some of the later books in the series suffer from serious playability issues and a lack of proofreading… which they (for me) get away with because of the series’ wit and creativity. So, because heaven knows this blog isn’t niche enough as it is, why not try and summarise those issues and see if they can be fixed?

Right, the first such afflicted entry in the series is the sixth book, Realm of Chaos (1986), in which you have to break a curse that has been placed on Camelot. Each part of this article quotes the problematic section, and is followed by my own explanation as to what exactly the trouble is and how/if it can be fixed.

Section 16: Honest Albert

This will not be a fight to the death, Pip, since Albert isn’t a murderer, only a lunatic – and even then only a lunatic because of the Curse. If he brings your LIFE POINTS below 15, he will leave with honour satisfied. If you bring his LIFE POINTS to 15, he will run off screaming abuse.

Fairly straightforward, this one: you fight Honest Albert in this section, or at least you’re meant to but the book accidentally forgets to give you his combat statistics, which should presumably go between the first two sentences.

Section 75: A Range of Wooden Doors, All Alike

The north/south corridor ends north in a block of six securely-bolted cell doors running east/west.

Right, pay attention, because this next bit is significantly more complicated. The section gives you the option of opening any of these doors; you can leave the room without opening any of them if you like. (Or, alternatively, you could never find it at all as it’s in the middle of a rather nasty maze.) Behind cell number 5, at section 126, is a fairly important character by the name of the Wizard Kran. It’s important to meet Kran because the plot won’t make any sense without him, as he gives you most of the important exposition you need and the rest of the book assumes you know everything he tells you. He also informs you that you need the Universal Key to open the chest containing Pendragon’s Mirror Shield, without which you cannot defeat the Great Guardian Wyrm. Fortunately, he happens to have the Universal Key with him and is happy to give it to you.

So, this seems pretty straightforward: the book makes sure you meet Kran by having him give you an item that is needed to progress in the game, hence avoiding the possibility of accidentally missing him and rendering the whole adventure incomprehensible. Or so you’d think. Remember that you get the Universal Key from Kran for now, and we’ll come back to this later.

Section 78: The Iron Maiden

You bend forward to examine the lock, which is numbered 1 to 9. Your experience tells you it must be a simple two-figure combination to release the lock. But which two figures? And in what order?

When (if) you discover the two figures which will open the Iron Maiden, add 100 to them and turn to the section number this indicates.

I suppose this isn’t strictly speaking an error, but it seems rather curious to me. The answer to this puzzle is completely random guesswork – there’s nothing anywhere in the book to indicate what the solution might be, so the only way to solve it is by checking each section between 111 and 199 until you find it. (The answer’s 34, incidentally.)

Section 134: The Poetic Fiend

Once you’ve released the Poetic Fiend from the Iron Maiden, he gives you the following instructions for finding the Mirror Shield:

Climb steps from here and steps again

Turn right, then left, then right again

And enter in the second door

(Be very careful of the floor)

Then solve the puzzle of the purse

Before your situation gets much worse

And your quest shall not be in vain!

The first two lines of these instructions bear absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to what you actually have to do. Not least because it uses ‘left’ and ‘right’ when literally every other reference in the book uses compass points for directions.

Section 188: A Big Hand

This also isn’t really an error, but is an interesting curiosity. In this section you’re grabbed by a giant hand in mid-air (it makes sense in context), and the section is accompanied by an illustration of this. However, the illustration shows the hand in completely different surroundings: namely, a cell door very much like one of the ones seen at section 75. A breakdown in communications between author and illustrator? An illustration originally intended for another part of the book and co-opted for this section? A late change to the text? Who knows, or indeed, cares very much?

Section 216: The Mirror Shield

Half buried beneath a set of old encyclopaedias (Roman Edition) is a wooden case tagged ‘Property of Uther’. Inside, as you throw it open you can see a fearsome adventurer, armed to the teeth and –

No, wait a minute – of course there’s no fearsome adventurer in the case: it’s your own reflection in a highly polished shield. Property of Uther? This must be it – Pendragon’s Mirror Shield!

Yep, as you’ve probably guessed, this is the bit where you find the Mirror Shield. And you don’t need to have the Universal Key at all, in spite of what Kran says. This creates the gamebook’s big problem: it is entirely possible to go through the adventure and never meet Kran, and hence never learn the truth about the curse on Camelot and most of the plot. The rest of the book presumes you have met Kran and know what you need to do, so it doesn’t make sense if you miss him; if you’d needed the Universal Key like he said you did, this would have been avoided.

The actual finding of the shield is very straightforward and simple, merely requiring you to check every room in an area until you find the one with the shield in it; given this and the error that is introduced by not needing the Universal Key, I strongly suspect that author JH Brennan originally intended the shield to be more difficult to get (beyond just needing to find the key), things got simplified at some point and he forgot to go back and rewrite some earlier sections so the book still made sense. The result is a strange example of Sequence Breaking in a book.

So, that’s it for Realm of Chaos, a book that you can accidentally render nonsensical gibberish. (I hope my systematic surmising of all the book’s flaws don’t put you off the series; it’s still great, even in spite of the problems that plagued the later volumes.) I’ll revisit the last two books in the series in due course, as well as various other flawed gamebooks; I can think of a couple of others already, but do let me know if there’s one you’d like me to check out.