Broken Gamebooks #16: Knights of Doom

One of the last entries in the original Fighting Fantasy series, Knights of Doom can change hands for upwards for £60 these days (original RRP £3.99) - its author, Jonathan Green, has been one of the highest-profile components of the 21st century revival, but inexplicably neither Wizard nor Scholastic have reprinted this one yet.

And I'm only going to use my copy to tell you all about a silly proofreading error. Tragic, isn't it?

At the start of Knights, as well as rolling up all your statistics as usual, you also have to choose four Special Skills from a list of eight. So far, so good.

In order to win the book, you must find Aelfgar, a magical Elven spear, which is the only weapon capable of dispatching the evil sorcerer and villain of the piece, Belgaroth. Again, so far, so good.

To find Aelfgar, you need to find three clues with numbers hidden within them that will tell you where to look. Still so far, still so good.

One of those clues is in the illustration at section 214, but it is written in code. In order to decode the message, you need to have earlier found another message written in the same code with an accompanying translation at section 30.

In order to get to that section, you need to fail a stat check at section 291. This is not, as anyone who has carefully followed this series will know, a totally unprecedented situation - perhaps the most famous other example in Fighting Fantasy is in Black Vein Prophecy, where you also need to fail a check in order to get an item required to win the game. It makes sure that cheaters won't be able to win, sure, but it is always a bit odd when it crops up.

Now, in my copy of the book, section 291 allows you to deduct an extra point from the check roll if you have the Tracking special skill, making it more likely the stat check will be successful. So which special skill you randomly chose at the beginning of the book can make an already trickier situation slightly harder.

However, other places on the internet have it that if you have the Ride skill, then you automatically succeed in making the roll - thereby making it impossible for you ever to find out how to decode the clue you need. This isn't the case in my copy, so either those other places on the internet are mistaken, or the game-breaking version of section 291 was only in the first printings, someone realised the mistake and fixed it in later editions (which would be the one I have). Given the scarcity of the book, it is entirely possible that such a change could have been made without anyone ever noticing.

The stat check, incidentally, requires you to roll equal to or less than your SKILL on two dice. Your SKILL is calculated by rolling one die and adding 6 to the total - so if your SKILL is 12, then it's also impossible (which is also a problem which affects other instances such as Black Vein Prophecy)!

So, if you have a copy of Knights of Doom, do let me know what it says in your printing's version of 291. Was there only ever a small chance you can render the game unplayable because of a roll of the dice? Or was there an earlier version where one of your choices could make it impossible right from the start?