Broken Gamebooks #1 ½: Realm of Chaos Redux

Way back in the first ever Broken Gamebooks article, nearly five years ago now, the inaugural adventure gamebook under discussion was the sixth GrailQuest book, Realm of Chaos. I have some startling new revelations to share with you, which were provided by commentator Ed Jolley. (Ed has also left some thoroughly interesting notes on some of my other posts, which you would be well-advised to seek out.)

First of all: In the original article, I erroneously described the Iron Maiden puzzle at section 78 as being based on completely random guesswork. Ed pointed out it isn't -- the Iron Maiden has a plaque on it giving its name as Freda, and converting "Freda" into numbers using the classic alphanumeric code of a = 1, b = 2, c = 3 and so on and so forth gives you 34. In my defence, this is not exactly an intuitive puzzle, and whilst alphanumeric codes were a popular tactic in Fighting Fantasy I don't believe there's another example in any of Brennan's books.

Ed also pointed out an error I missed out entirely, which is the meeting with the Nerd in section 42, who asks you to fill out a form before he can give you any information about the curse on Camelot. You have the options of filling in the form, attacking the Nerd or just leaving the Nerd's quarters alone and going back to your map.

Choosing the second option takes you to what appears to be a completely irrelevant section, namely 13, which says you pronounce a mystic word which teleports you to a section not reachable from anywhere else which gives you the option of returning to Glastonbury Village or going up to the Tor. If you choose to fill in the form, you are directed to section 8:

This section is not a dead-end; translating the three lines at the bottom will give you the magic word "Gobbleplunk 13", which is an indicator to turn to that section and so find the hidden way to Glastonbury Tor.

Now, Ed owns a French-language edition of Realm of Chaos. And if you choose to attack the Nerd in that version, you are instead directed to section 222, which is the very last numerical section of the book, and is only in the French-language edition; it is not present in the original English text. Ed describes this new section as follows:

My French is a little rusty these days, but to summarise the additional material: you threaten the Nerd, who kicks you on the tibia for 4 LIFE POINTS' damage. You then fight the Nerd, who has 28 LIFE POINTS and, being a karate expert, hits on 5 and does +2 damage. If you bring his LIFE POINTS below 9 without killing him, he starts rolling around on the floor, repeatedly muttering 'Pliclpoc 13'. The section concludes by suggesting that it might be worth repeating the word and turning to 13. (Decoding the form which is the other way to learn the magic word - or the only one in the English text - also gives 'Plicploc' in the French translation, though in English it's 'Gobbleplunk'.)

Ed also notes one other change in the French version, which fixes an error I did cover in my original post -- in section 16, Honest Albert's combat statistics are not given, but in the French edition a quick note is added to the end of the section saying he has 19 LIFE POINTS.

On the basis of the nature of these changes (and other examples of adventure gamebook translations with things not in the originals), I would say with some degree of confidence that these alterations were not based on any input from J. H. Brennan; rather, the French-language translator noticed the errors and took it upon themselves to add a few simple fixes where possible. (The other errors, even if noted by the translator, were presumably too large to fix without totally re-engineering the book.) But it does add to the general feeling I get that Realm of Chaos got bodged together at some point in the writing process to meet a deadline.