Episode Notes

#Pratchat92 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 92, “Sand of the Scrounge Wizard”, discussing the 1996 computer game Discworld II: Missing, Presumed…!?, with guest Kat Clay.

Iconographic Evidence

Listener Michael recommended this review of Discworld II by YouTuber MitchManix.

We’ll add a few choice screenshots here! Watch this space.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title – inspired by a gag made by Kat – is a riff on the title of the first Leisure Suit Larry game, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, from 1987. Inspired by their earlier text-based game Softporn Adventure, Leisure Suit Larry is a series of “adult” graphic adventure games from Sierra Entertainment. The Larry games are very 1980s style sex comedies, mostly starring Larry Laffer – a middle-aged, balding virgin whose big quest is to usually to seduce a woman. (Though to be fair, it does turn into sort of a love story by the end of the original trilogy.) There are ten games in the series, the most recent from 2020, though only the first six were designed by the series’ original creator, Al Lowe. The original has also been remade and re-released several times.
  • We mention the animated Discworld adaptations a couple of times, by which we mean the two from Cosgrove Hall. These were Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music, originally broadcast in 1997 and 1998 – so after the release of Discworld 2. Of note: an interview with Terry about these adaptations from the time, for MelodyMaker magazine, has been doing the rounds on social media. He was very happy with them! This was also around the time Hollywood was trying to make a version of Mort, and he was less enthusiastic about that. But it seems that when it came to adaptations, he most loved the plays – he said he loved the thought of people rehearsing lines from his books!
  • Death’s Domain (1999) was the fourth official “Discworld Mapp” to be published, following The Streets of Ankh-Morpork (1993), The Discworld Mapp (1995), and A Tourist Guide to Lancre (1998). All of the maps were devised by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs; Steven Player illustrated the first two, while the Lancre map and Death’s Domain were illustrated by Paul Kidby. The last two maps reportedly didn’t sell as well as the ones of the Disc itself and its most famous city, and are no longer in print.
  • The “Paul Kidby pictures” Kat mentions are probably from The Pratchett Portfolio, a short collection of Kidby sketches and illustrations of Discworld characters, accompanied by brief notes from Terry. It was published as a large format but slim softcover in 1996. Another option might be the follow-up, The Art of Discworld, from 2004, which was a larger hardcover volume containing many more images, and sporting his original version of “The Mona Ogg” on the cover. For more on Kidby’s artwork, see #Pratchat88, “They’re All Good Dragons, Bront”, about Kidby’s much more recent book Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.
  • The Scarlet Stiletto Awards are an annual competition for short crime fiction written by Australian women, launched by Sisters in Crime in 1991. At the 2018 awards, Kat’s story “Lady Loveday Investigates” (available on her website) won three awards: the Kerry Greenwood Malice Domestic Award, the Sun Bookshop Third Prize, and the Athenaeum Library Body in the Library runner-up prize.
  • “Dark academia” is an aesthetic and niche storytelling genre which emerged over the last decade, though its often traced back to The Secret History, Donna Tartt’s 1992 novel about murder and turmoil amongst students at university in New England. It mixes an idealised, old-fashioned version of higher education with goth-adjacent themes of finding beauty in darkness. Common touchstones include libraries, books, gothic architecture, tweed, pencil skirts and other 1930s fashion. If you thought Rupert Giles was the sexiest character in Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, then dark academia might be for you! The aesthetic is not without its critics, who point out that it romanticises a Eurocentric and elitist idea of education.
  • When Kat mentions a rubber chicken, she is almost certainly thinking of the infamous “rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle” that appears in the 1990 LucasArts adventure game, The Secret of Monkey Island. (See the list of adventure games below for more.) Sadly no rubber chickens appear in any of the three Discworld adventure games.
  • Discworld II was released shortly after the publication of Hogfather, but given when it was written and developed, it’s likely the team had only limited access to notes about any books after Maskerade. This might explain why some of the portrayals don’t quite match the books, especially when it comes to Hex (written as HEX in the game) and Ponder Stibbons.
  • Liz’s comment about “going up and down stairs for 15,000 years” is a reference to the length of time Rincewind spent navigating some locations – most notably Unseen University – in the first Discworld game.
  • For more about Abiotic Factor, The Bard’s Tale, The Outer Worlds 2 and Disco Elysium, see the list of “other videogames” below.
  • Monty Python’s Life of Brian was the third feature film from Eric Idle’s comedy troupe, Monty Python. Set around 33 CE, it tells the story of Brian Cohen (Graham Chapman), a man born in the stable next door to Jesus Christ. As an adult living in Roman-occupied Judea, Brian falls in love with the revolutionary Judith Iscariot (Sue Jones-Davies) and has a series of misadventures, including being mistaken for the Messiah. At the film’s end, he is captured and crucified by the Romans, but the people he thought would help him instead celebrate his sacrifice. As he despairs, a victim on the cross next door (Eric Idle) leads the crucified in the song “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” to cheer them all up. It has remained a popular song ever since.
  • While the game only briefly explains why Windle is having a deathday party, the manual explains that wizards can see Death and know when they will die. Like most of the manual, this is essentially done via a remix of text and jokes from the novels, reproduced below. (The footnote is one about Rincewind failing to have achieved even the first of the eight levels of wizardry.)

There exists a special relationship between all wizards and Death, as they can not only see him but also know the exact time of their death. Amazingly, some part of this bleeds off onto Rincewind, despite the readily apparent fact that Rincewind is not really a wizard*. Rincewind can see Death, but does not accurately know the time of his own death. He suspects, however, that it will be a fraction of a second after almost everything he does. Death and Rincewind have always had an interesting relationship: Death has often offered to reap Rincewind’s soul as he was passing by, just to save time, and Rincewind has very politely run away.

Discword II: Missing, Presumed…!? manual, page 4-5
  • Don Bluth is an American animator. He worked with Disney in the 1950s and 1970s before creative differences on The Fox and the Hound led to him founding his own animation studio, Don Bluth Productions. Their best-known films include The Secret of NIMH (1982) – a book adaptation with some similarities to The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents – The Land Before Time (1988), All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), Anastasia (1997), Titan A.E. (2000), and An American Tail (see below).
  • An American Tail (1986) is the story of a young Russian-Jewish mouse, Fievel Mousekewitz, and his adventures in New York when he is separated from his family while emigrating to America in 1885. It was a co-production between Amblin Entertainment and Bluth’s Sullivan Bluth Studios. Don Bluth directed and co-produced the film, which stars a mix of famous and little-known actors. It was a hit, followed by three sequels (albeit two direct-to-video) and a television series.
  • Dragon’s Lair (1983) was the first of several LaserDisc arcade games animated by Don Bluth’s company. The machines played scenes from a LaserDisc, with the outcome of each scene determined by what we would call a “quick time event” today – a precisely timed joystick movement or button press. In Dragon’s Lair the player controlled the knight Dirk the Daring, who must overcome various obstacles to rescue the Princess Daphne from the dragon Singe. It was a hit at the time for looking much better than other games – and for the daringly revealing outfit worn by Daphne – but by the time the sequel was released years later, it was seen as out-dated. A live-action movie adaptation of Dragon’s Lair has been in the works since around 2020.
  • King’s Quest is a series of graphic adventure games from Sierra, created by Roberta Williams, beginning in 1984 with King’s Quest, later renamed King’s Quest I: Quest for the Crown. The series follows the royal family of the fairytale Kingdom of Daventry, beginning with Graham, a knight who becomes King by the end of the first game. Graphic adventures of the time hadn’t earned the nickname of “point and click”, and the first four in the series still used typed text commands to interact with items, characters and scenery. They were popular though, and King’s Quest was followed by multiple sequels alongside other series like Quest for Glory (originally Hero’s Quest), Space Quest and even Police Quest. The change in art style Kat mentions is probably the switch from high-resolution but still traditionally pixel-ish art in King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (1992), to the smoother cel-animation style of King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (1994) – though they predate Discworld and Discworld II by a few years, so they don’t look quite as good as Discworld II. Both of these games’ protagonists were women. For more on the specific King’s Quest games Kat mentioned, see the list of games below.
  • The 7th Guest was released in 1993 (three years before Discworld II), and was one of a number of games – including Myst and various other early 3D and “talkie” adventures – that helped drive the switch from floppy disks to CD-ROMs in the 1990s. The main attraction for The 7th Guest was the full-motion video and sound, rather than its puzzles. (For more on this generation of games, see the list below.)
  • The silver cord is a term used for a few different concepts related to ideas of a soul or higher self, all linked to the idea of “astral projection” – being able to project one’s consciousness outside of the physical body. The Western, Christian-influenced version of this goes back to at least the 1920s, but it borrows largely from other traditions, including Ancient Egyptian ideas of the soul, and Hindu spiritual practices. It gets a bit more complicated than Ben describes: the silver cord is said to connect the physical body not to the soul itself, but to the “subtle body” – a sort of intermediate presence, which is partly physical, and partly spiritual. The soul uses the subtle body to travel outside of the physical one. The name “silver cord” is usually consider to be a Biblical allusion, specifically to Ecclesiastes 12:6-7, which refers to “the silver cord” being severed, along with the “golden bowl” being broken and various other things being destroyed before the spirit returns to God. The meaning of the verse is unclear, though many scholars think it is a metaphor for the human body, with “silver cord” referring to the spinal cord.
  • There’s no definitive origin for the cinema term Dutch angle, but the technique is also known as a “Dutch tilt”, alongside other names. Its usage goes back to the early twentieth century, when it was often used in Germany – leading to the theory that “Dutch” should more properly be “Deutsch”. In English language cinema it was popularised by Alfred Hitchcock, among others, but has been used by many filmmakers since to heighten tension or to portray madness, disorientation, or things being otherwise “out of joint”. This is thought to align (more or less) with other uses of the term “Dutch” in British English, dating back to the trade rivalry between the two countries.
  • OSR (Old School Renaissance, or Old School Revival) roleplaying is difficult to precisely describe as not everyone agrees on what it means. This is partly because it emerged in many online forums at once, in large part as a response to the release of the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons in the year 2000. At its core, it’s a philosophy or style of play that seeks to emulate what people liked about editions of D&D and similar games from the 70s and 80s. But not everyone agrees on what those elements are – indeed, some would argue that the Renaissance and the Revival are two distinct movements, and even those may be further broken down into different traditions. As a result, there are many “OSR” games which work quite differently, as well as “NSR” (New School Revival) games that seek to marry the good of the old with more recent game design philosophies. But a few things commonly cited as being important to OSR roleplaying include:
    • Player skill over character skill – the character’s capabilities are less important than the player’s skill at devising plausible solutions for the obstacles in their way.
    • High danger, or lethality – in many OSR games player characters are much more likely to die or suffer serious losses or injury than in other kinds of roleplaying games. This is both because of the rules (it may be very easy to roll enough damage to kill a character outright, for example), and because the expected setup is that dungeons and similar adventuring environments are full of deadly hazards, traps and creatures.
    • Rulings over rules – OSR games usually have simpler rules which don’t try to account for everything players might try to do. Instead, the “referee” is expected to make up rulings on the fly for how to resolve situations.
    • Compatibility – though specific rules might vary considerably, many OSR and NSR games are designed to be compatible with older and newer published adventures, without requiring a great deal of translation or conversion.
  • The manual gives the official names of the dialogue icons as “Greeting” (the smile), “Question” (the question mark), “Sarcasm” (the Jack-in-the-Box), “Muse” (the candle in the thought balloon) and one Ben forgot to mention: “Goodbye”.
  • A branching narrative is a story in which decisions made by the audience (usually a single player or reader) result in a different version of the story, often including different endings. While this is now common in videogames, it was invented in print media first. The most famous versions are the Choose Your Own Adventure books, created by Edward Packer in the US in the 1970s, and the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks created by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson in the UK in the early 1980s. Not all videogames have branching narratives – many require them to experience the events of the game in a fixed order (a “linear narrative”), or at best all the same events but in slightly different orders.
  • Discworld versions of the wandering shop appear most prominently in The Light Fantastic (see #Pratchat44, “Cosmic Turtle Soup”) and Soul Music (see #Pratchat19, “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got Rocks In”).
  • As far as Ben can tell, no, Terry Pratchett does not appear in the final crowd scene in Discworld II. As mentioned, he does appear in a similar scene in the first game – and is part of an Easter egg that can get Rincewind to say a very cheeky line of dialogue.

More notes coming soon!

Videogames

As in our episode about the previous game, we mention plenty of videogames in this episode. We’ve split these into two lists below.

Adventure games

We mentioned these text and graphic adventure games, in order of release:

  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Infocom 1984) – a text-based adventure game which broadly follows the plot of the Hitchhiker’s story, but with many new and changed details to provide puzzles the player won’t know how to solve. The player takes on the role of Arthur Dent. It was co-written by Douglas Adams himself, and is infamously difficult – though there are harder text adventures!
  • King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella (Sierra Entertainment 1988) – this game casts the player as Princess Rosella, who must help a fairy in order to save the life of her father King Graham, the protagonist of the first two games. (For more on the series as a whole, see the errata and notes section above.)
  • King’s Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! (Sierra Entertainment 1990) – King Graham returns to a starring role when an evil wizard, seeking revenge for Graham’s sons actions in King’s Quest III, takes the rest of his family captive. This was the first King’s Quest game without text-based commands.
  • The Secret of Monkey Island (LucasArts 1990) – a comedy adventure game created primarily by Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman. The story follows Guybrush Threepwood, a young man who comes to Melêe Island to seek his fortune and become “a mighty pirate”. Along the way he falls in love with the island’s governor, Elaine Marley, and earns the wrath of the evil ghost pirate LeChuck. It is still one of the most popular adventure games of all time. Remastered as the “Special Edition” with more modern cartoony art in 2009.
  • Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (LucasArts 1991) – the sequel to The Secret of Monkey Island is set some years later, when an older Guybrush is finding it harder to live off the glory of his exploits from the first game. He goes searching for a fabled treasure, but is followed by LeChuck, now a zombie. Monkey Island 2 has some notably harder puzzles than its predecessor, and like the first Discworld game, involved a lot of going back and forth between locations to solve puzzles. It does have something in common with Discworld II, though: a great musical number involving skeletons! It was popular, but its unconventional ending left fans a bit confused, and the third and fourth games were made without the original creative team. This one was also remastered as a “Special Edition” in 2010, and its ending was revisited in Ron Gilbert’s surprise sequel, Return to Monkey Island, in 2022.
  • Gobliiins (Coktel Vision 1991) – the first in a series of French fantasy adventure games in which the player controls a variable number of goblins; the number of “i”s in the title of the game indicates how many goblins you will control.
  • King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (Sierra Entertainment 1992) – this game picks up at the end of King’s Quest V, when the newly rescued Prince Alexander meets and falls in love with Princess Cassima. He goes on a quest to find her in the Land of Green Isles, travelling between several islands each themed after a different kind of mythology. Notably for its open world design, and for having many optional puzzles which, if completed, provided a more satisfying ending.
  • Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (LucasArts 1992) – the first Indiana Jones game to feature an original story. While primarily an adventure game, the player can choose one of three modes early on: the Team Path has the player control both Indy and his new partner, Sophia Hapgood; the Wits Path has Indy solve more difficult puzzles alone; and the Fists Path focuses on fighting, which is present but optional in the other two modes.
  • The 7th Guest (Trilobyte 1993) – more an interactive movie than an adventure game, this was one of the first CD-only games. It made extensive use of full-motion video in a horror story set in a haunted mansion.
  • Myst (Cyan 1993) – a hugely influential 3D puzzle game, another of the early CD-only games. It was was one of the best-selling games for about a decade. The player finds a book titled Myst, which magically transports them to a mysterious island of the same name.
  • King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (Sierra Entertainment 1994) – the first King’s Quest game with multiple player characters. Just before Princess Rosella’s wedding, an evil witch transforms her into a troll, and transports her and Queen Valanice – in her first starring role – to a far away kingdom. The game takes place across six chapters (not unlike the acts of Discworld II), with the player alternating between the protagonists, who are split up until late in the game. They must find a way to break the curse and get back home.
  • The Dig (LucasArts 1995) – based on a plot by Steven Spielberg about a group of astronauts exploring an alien world, this science fiction adventure game was also notoriously difficult.
  • Toonstruck (Burst Studios 1996) – a hugely expensive game blending full motion video with cel animation, and an all-star cast. Christopher Lloyd plays Drew Blanc, a frustrated animator drawn into the cartoon world of his saccharine children’s show, with his weirder, less child-friendly creation as a sidekick.
  • Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail (7th Level 1996) – though Ben remembers this as not being much of adventure game, that’s how it was sold. The mini-games were definitely the highlight when he tried playing it back in the day, though!
  • The Curse of Monkey Island (LucasArts 1997) – the third Monkey Island game more or less ignores the ending of the second one, and features Guybrush escaping from LeChuck – now a fiery demon – only to accidentally curse Elaine and turn her into a golden statue, and she is stolen by pirates. This game features cel-style animation similar to Discworld 2.
  • Grim Fandango (LucasArts 1998) – LucasArts’ first 3D animated adventure game, written and directed by Tim Schafer. The player controls Manuel “Manny” Calavera, a junior travel agent to the newly deceased in an Aztec-inspired, 1950s retro afterlife. While trying to avoid getting fired from his job, Manny unwittingly discovers corruption and conspiracy in the Department of Death.
  • Escape from Monkey Island (LucasArts 2000) – the first Monkey Island game in 3D sees Guybrush Threepwood and Elaine Marley, now married, return home to find Elaine has been declared dead. Guybrush works to restore her position as governor, this time opposed by Australian property developer Ozzie Mandrill (a parody of Rupert Murdoch) and the surprise return of LeChuck. This sequel leaned heavily on concepts from and references to the earlier games, and wasn’t super well-received. (Not everyone was convinced the 3D models were an improvement on the previous art styles, either.)
  • Bye Sweet Carole (Little Sewing Machine 2025) – a horror adventure game in cel-animation style, in which the player tries to unravel the mystery of her missing friend Carole in early twentieth century England.
  • The Drifter (Powerhoof 2025) – an Australian game about a drifter who returns to the city for a funeral, only to be caught up in a supernatural mystery.

Other videogames

These games are from other genres, though as with all classification of art, the line isn’t always clear! Some of these certainly have adventure-like elements, but in general the focus isn’t on solving puzzles to progress through a story.

  • Abiotic Factor (Deep Field Games 2025) – a dark comedy horror survival game, set in an underground bunker in outback Australia belonging to Gate, a super-science organisation similar to
  • The Bard’s Tale (Interplay 1985) – a classic roleplaying game that plays with the standard tropes of Dungeons & Dragons style adventure. Followed by a long string of sequels and remakes.
  • The Outer Worlds 2 (Obsidian 2025) – a satirical action roleplaying game on capitalism and consumerism, set in a retro-futuristic alternate history where monopolies were never reigned in, and a star system colonised by humans is thus run by a handful of megacorporations.
  • Disco Elysium (ZA/UM 2019) – an award-winning roleplaying game set in which the player is an amnesiac alcoholic cop investigating a murder in the weird Eastern Europe-inspired dystopia of Revachol.
  • Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive 2025) – a turn-based action roleplaying game in which the player controls the members of Expedition 33. They are the latest to try and reach “the Paintress” – a mysterious figure on a distant island who every year paints a decreasing number which causes everyone that age or older to evaporate. Ben likes to describe it as “sad beautiful French Final Fantasy”.
  • Elden Ring (FromSoftware 2022) – an action roleplaying game set in an open world of warring demigods, inspired in part by Norse mythology, and with a story by George R R Martin. It’s part of a sub-genre of “souls-like” games that stem from FromSoftware’s earlier game Dark Souls. Souls-like games generally have challenging combat that relies on player skill and timing, frequent character death, and other aspects that give them a reputation for being very difficult. Kat wrote a blog about finishing Elden Ring in August 2025: “I was wrong about Elden Ring. Here’s why…”

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

#Pratchat91 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 91, “We Can Reference It For You Wholesale”, discussing the various editions of Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs’ The Discworld Companion, but especially 2021’s The Ultimate Discworld Companion.

Iconographic Evidence

The Discworld Companion(s)
The four editions of Companion in Ben’s library: the 1997 Discworld Companion (Updated!), Turtle Recall, The Ultimate Discworld Companion, and out of its slipcase, the Dunmanifestin “Expanded Edition” of The Ultimate Discworld Companion. The cover art is by, in order, Josh Kirby, Marc Simonetti, Paul Kidby, and Paul Kidby.

Stephen Briggs was kind enough to offer to answer any questions folks had, so we asked if he’d share an image of the original index cards. And he did! See the tweets below. He also mentioned that the cards are seen in the 2017 biographical documentary, Terry Pratchett: Back in Black.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title references both the Ankh-Morpork national anthem, “We Can Rule It For You Wholesale” (see #Pratchat53, “A (Very) Few Words by Hner Ner Hner”, for more on the anthem), and also Philip K Dick’s short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” – adapted for the screen (twice!) as Total Recall. (See #Pratchat56, “do { Podcast(); } while (unreadPratchetts > 0);”, for more on Philip K Dick.)
  • You can find the Annotated Pratchett File (affectionately known as the APF), the FAQ, the Pratchett Quote File and many more newsgroup-era fan resources at the L-Space Web.
  • Like other newsgroups at the time, alt.tv.red-dwarf had not just one FAQ, but a whole set of documents covering different topics. You can find them scattered about the web, but none of them seem to have been updated after the year 2000, so they’re all very out of date.
  • The Terry Pratchett and Discworld Wiki is also hosted by the L-Space web, and is often referred to as “the L-Space wiki” as shorthand (and to differentiate it from the Discworld wiki at Fandom.com). You can find it at wiki.lspace.org – and please join up and help improve it if you want! There are only a few active members at the moment (and a whole lot of spambots out there…)
  • Wikipedia articles don’t all lead to “Psychology” – they lead to “Philosophy”! This phenomenon, known as “Getting to Philosophy”, is that successively clicking on the first wiki-link of a Wikipedia article leads most of the time to the article on Philosophy. This has been well-demonstrated by analysis of Wikipedia data, and Wikipedia itself has an article about it (though not in the main encyclopaedia space).
  • Ben is correct about both things he thought were mentioned in the books:
    • The Glingleglingleglingle Fairy appears to Ridcully in the bath near the end of Hogfather.
    • The idea that Anoia might do stuck zips is, indeed, in Wintersmith; she mentions it when introducing herself to Tiffany in Chapter 7.
  • Ben’s information about editions of the Companion is secondhand for those not pictured above, and some of it may not be correct. For instance, we’ve heard from listener Steve that the trade paperback edition of The New Discworld Companion is not updated to include The Wee Free Men. (It’s possible the regular paperback edition was, but we don’t know yet.) This goes to show the importance of checking primary sources where possible, which is why Ben has ordered the various editions! But here’s a quick list of the major revisions mentioned:
    • The Discworld Companion, first published in 1994; at least two editions
    • The Discworld Companion: Updated, first published in 1997; probably just one edition?
    • The New Discworld Companion, first published in 2002; at least three editions
    • Turtle Recall: The Discworld Companion…So Far, first published in 2012; just two editions
    • The Ultimate Discworld Companion, first published in 2021; just one edition
    • The Ultimate Discworld Companion: Expanded Edition (aka “The Dunmanifestin Edition”), first published in 2022
  • The mystery is solved! The only male member of the Seamstresses Guild, Mr Harris of the Blue Cat Club, appears in just one place in the novels – the third-last footnote in Jingo. Mr Harris – likely a reference to the author of My Life and Loves, Frank Harris – is a member of the Guild’s committee. The club is also given a brief write-up in the “Nightlife and Clubland” section of The Compleat Ankh-Morpork. Thanks to Old Dickens of the afore-mentioned L-Space Wiki.

More notes coming soon!

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

#Pratchat1 Notes and Errata

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Theses are the notes and errata for episode 1, “Boots Theory”, featuring guest Cal Wilson discussing the fifteenth Discworld novel, 1993’s Men at Arms.

  • We did indeed have Cal back to discuss Sourcery – see #Pratchat3, “You’re a Wizzard, Rincewind”. Cal also returned for our fiftieth episode, “Salt Rat Arsenic Heat“, to discuss Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook. Tragically Cal passed away unexpectedly in 2023; but a person’s not dead while their name is still spoken. GNU Cal Wilson.
  • For more on our decision to start with Men at Arms, see #Pratchat0, “And the Winner is…”, and also Liz’s post, “Let’s Start From the Very Beginning (but not actually)”.
  • Men at Arms is the fifteenth Discworld novel, and the second to feature the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Ben does now write these things down (and, indeed, has a very comprehensive spreadsheet).
  • What Ben meant about the copyright on “Discworld” is that this is the first book in which “Discworld” appears on the imprint page as a registered trademark. Intellectual property (or IP) law is a complex topic, and can differ greatly from region to region, but to cover the basics:
    • Copyright (denoted by ©) is the protection of original works from being copied or otherwise used without the creator’s permission. This mostly applies to literary, dramatic, musical or other artistic work (including visual art), often lasts for a fixed period (the creators’ life plus 70 years in Australia), and is automatically applied without a creator having to do anything. A creator can extend it to others, as Terry later did by assigning copyright to he and his wife Lyn, and then their company, Dunmanifestin Limited. Copyright doesn’t protect ideas, only the specific expression of ideas, which is where some of the complexity comes in.
    • A trademark (denoted by ™️ or ®) is a “sign” that shows a product was made by a certain person or company. The sign can be almost anything: a word, a specific colour or style of packaging, a logo, a design, even a sound. It’s an old concept, similar to the “maker’s mark” used by artisans on silverware, jewellery, ceramics and so on, as often mentioned on Antique Roadshow. Anyone can start using the ™️ symbol, which suggests a common law trademark, but the ® denotes a registered trademark which is more easily enforceable by law. These are managed by government agencies (e.g. IP Australia). Also worthy of note: if you have a trademark, you have to actively be using it – and you must defend it if someone else starts using it, or you will likely lose it.
    • It didn’t come up in this episode, but there are some complexities involved if a copyright belongs to a company and that company ceases to exist without its assets being transferred to another company or person. In the UK this can mean ownership of a work transfers half to the original creators, and half to the Crown, which has led to speculation that King Charles now owns half the rights to the Discworld videogames – though this has yet to be resolved… See our episode #Pratchat89, “An Awfully Teeny Weeny Adventure”, about the first Discworld game for more.
  • You’ve probably heard of the Thames, but the Yarra is the common name for the river Birrarung or Biarrarung Marr, which flows through the heart of Melbourne, or Narrm. It runs for nearly 250 kilometres from the Yarra Ranges in inland Victoria to the ocean in Port Phillip Bay, though its course and nature has been changed extensively since European colonisation. It was previously nicknamed “the upside down river” due to the golden-brown muddy colouring it acquires by the time it flows through Melbourne. This is also the product of colonisation, as land clearing and mining have increased the erosion of surrounding fine clay into the water.
  • The negative reviewer of Pratchett’s work to which Ben refers was Northern Irish poet and literary critic Tom Paulin, who appeared on BBC2’s Late Review television program and derided Pratchett, writing him off as a populist: “… selling thousands of copies – a complete amateur – doesn’t even write in chapters – hasn’t a clue.” This seems to have been in around 1993 or 1994; Pratchett proudly reproduced the quote in the front many of his books, with the earliest example Ben can find being in the 1995 Corgi paperback of Interesting Times.
  • Terry Pratchett’s debut novel, The Carpet People, was first published in 1971, when Pratchett was 23 years old. However an earlier version of the story was serialised as some of his very first published fiction in the Bucks’ Free Press in 1965, when he was only 17! Most of the instalments of that version appear in the second collection of his early stories, Dragons at Crumbling Castle, published shortly after Pratchett’s death in 2015.
  • While the Vimes Boots Theory is articulated in the way of Pratchett, the idea behind it is of course not new. We’d like to thank Jeanette Hall on Twitter, who shared a link to an earlier version of the Boots Theory! In 1914, Irish house painter and sign writer Robert Noonan wrote published the semi-autobiographical novel The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, “Being the story of twelve months in Hell, told by one of the damned, and written down by Robert Tressell.” (Tressell was the pen-name used by Noonan.) Based on his life working in Hastings between 1906 and 1910, the book contains a passage about the price of stockings and coal and how they are the means by which “the working classes are robbed.” We’ve included an excerpt below, but you can read the original text at the Union History website shared by Jeanette. You can also see the original manuscript! (This feels especially poignant because Ben’s own Great Great Grandfather was a painter in Belfast until his death in 1910 prompted the McKenzies to migrate to Australia.)

Although their incomes are the lowest, they are compelled to buy the most expensive articles – that is, the lowest-priced articles. Everybody knows that good clothes, boots or furniture are really the cheapest in the end, although they cost more money at first; but the working classes can seldom or never afford to buy good things; they have to buy cheap rubbish which is dear at any price.

Six weeks previously Owen bought a pair of second-hand boots for three shillings and they were now literally falling to pieces. Nora’s shoes were in much the same condition, but, as she said, it did not matter so much about hers because there was no need for her to go out if the weather were not fine.

The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell, 1914
  • Also of note: the Vimes Boots Theory influenced the work of UK equality and anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe, who in January 2022 created the Vimes Boots Poverty Index. The Index was intended to be a record of the prices of staple foods and other essentials over time, to demonstrate the disproportionate impact of rising prices on the poor. It was also specifically meant to show that government reports which only take inflation into account are inadequate, since they are not an accurate indicator of the way goods prices change. The Pratchett Estate – particularly Rhianna Pratchett – wholeheartedly endorsed this use of Vimes’ name. In the end, media and social media attention for the idea (using the hashtag #VimesBootsIndex) was enough to persuade the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) to change how they calculated cost of living expenses, largely making the compilation of the Index unnecessary. You can read more about it on the L-Space wiki.
  • Scooby-Doo is a children’s adventure show which began in 1969 with the Hanna-Barbera animated series Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! It centres on a group of mystery-solving teenagers: Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, Shaggy Rogers and Shaggy’s dog, a Great Dane named Scooby-Doo. Sometimes calling themselves “Mystery Inc.”, the group travel America in a mini-van called the Mystery Machine investigating supposedly supernatural occurrences. Famously most of their adventures end by revealing that the ghost, monster or other weirdness was a hoax all along, perpetrated by an old man in a costume. The show was hugely influential – not least because it helped fill the gap left after more violent superhero cartoons of the 60s like Space Ghost and The Herculoids were cancelled following protests from parent groups. There have been numerous animated series and films, and even live-action films, since 1969, and more are still being made. The characters are not usually explicitly romantically linked; Cal references a reboot that had genius Velma and dorky hippie Shaggy dating, and this has happened at least a couple of times. They are shown to try dating in both the 2010 animated series Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated and the 2011 live-action film Scooby-Doo: Curse of the Lake Monster (a sequel to the 2009 reboot of the previous live-action films from 2002 and 2004). For the record, in both versions they quickly realise they don’t have a spark and remain “just friends”.
  • It is a 1986 horror novel by Stephen King in which a group of teenagers face a nameless evil creature, the titular “It”, which changes shape to evoke fear in its victims. It primarily appears in the shape of a clown named “Pennywise the Dancing Clown”. In a memorable sequence from early in the novel – replicated in both the 1990 TV mini-series adaptation and the first of the two-part film adaptations in 2017 – the Clown appears in the town sewer. In both versions Pennywise has primarily white-face makeup, not dissimilar to Paul Kidby’s version of Dr Whiteface. (“It” was portrayed by Tim Curry in 1990, and Bill Skarsgård in 2017.)
  • Clowns in our world can and do copyright their face makeup, and the egg gallery is based on the “Clown and Character Registry”, where many clowns actually did register to have their makeup painted on a goose egg and displayed. In the UK, the tradition can be traced back to Stan Built in the 1930s, though most of his original eggs were damaged or destroyed. In 1988 (or 1984 according to some sources), Clown Bluey, Chairman of Clowns International at the time, resurrected the tradition. This mini documentary from 2017 features Debbie Smith, the Clown Egg Gallery artist from 2010 to 2023. Clowns International still seems to run the egg gallery, with their website including a form to order a pair of eggs (one for the gallery and one for you), now painted by current artist Julie Proctor. So we’re sorry again, clowns. (Thanks to Maia in Michigan, who put us onto some sources via Twitter which helped us update this entry!)
  • Ben uses commedia dell’arte more-or-less correctly.
  • 99% Invisible is a podcast all about design, hosted by Roman Mars. The episode about the invention of cellulose mentioned by Ben while discussing the Alchemist’s Guild is “The Post-Billiards Age” from May 2015. (This episode will get mentioned again in #Pratchat10, “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Broomstick”.)
  • There are indeed ghosts on the Discworld, appearing in several of the novels. We’ll be meeting some of them fairly soon, as one plays a major role in Wyrd Sisters. (See #Pratchat4, “Enter Three Wytches”.)
  • The final Discworld book is actually The Shepherd’s Crown; I Shall Wear Midnight is the fourth-last, and the second-last to feature young witch Tiffany Aching. (We try to keep our spreadsheet handy in future episodes to avoid such basic mistakes.)
  • “Shoot” is used for arrows, as the term predates guns by many centuries.
  • CMOT Dibbler is pervasive once he arrives, but is not in The Colour of Magic. (See #Pratchat14, “City-State Lampoon’s Disc-Wide Vacation”.) In fact he first shows up when the Watch does, in Guards! Guards! (See #Pratchat7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch”.)
  • Not only are Lord Vetinari’s plans for the future unknown, but it has also never been revealed how he ascended to the position of Patrician in the first place. We do get a little of his backstory in Night Watch; see #Pratchat54, “The Land Before Vimes”.
  • We are aware that despite being asked “which Guild would you join”, we decided we would be wizards, witches or members of the Watch, none of which have an official guild – at least at the time of Men at Arms. See #Pratchat40, “The King and the Hole of the King”, for the creation of at least a temporary guild of Watchmen in The Fifth Elephant.

#PratchatNALC Notes and Errata

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These are the notes and errata for our bonus live episode “Twice as Alive”, revisiting #Pratchat1 and the 1993 Discworld novel Men at Arms.

  • The episode title is a reference to the teaser at the start of #Pratchat1, in which both guest Cal Wilson and Liz declared that they didn’t think of werewolves as undead, but rather “twice as alive”.
  • The Lost Con was intended “as an 8 hour taster for the non-virtual convention in Sydney next year” – the Australian Discworld convention, Nullus Anxietas 7a (NA7a). The Lost Con was free to all members of the 2022 convention, whether full or supporting, and ran from 4 PM to midnight on Saturday, July 3rd – the original weekend planned for NA7a, which was last year postponed from 2021 to 2022. The move was prudent – Sydney was at the time of publication experiencing a serious outbreak of the Delta strain of COVID-19 and had been in lockdown since 26 June, with several stages of local restrictions imposed before that. This is the first major lockdown experienced by Sydney since the nation-wide lockdown in early 2020. From your hosts in Melbourne – we really hope you can get out of it faster than we did last year. Our thoughts are with you all.
  • The theme of Nullus Anxietas 7a was intended to be “Ankh-Morpork: Citie of One Thousand Surprises”. (The theme of NA7 was “Going Postal”.) Unfortunately, due to further concerns as part of the COVID-19 pandemic, the convention was eventually cancelled. The next Australian convention would be in Adelaide in 2024 (with the theme “Come ALIVE in Überwald!”), but Sydney will host the one after that, to be held in April 2026, and themed around celebrating the witches of Discworld. We’ll be there!
  • We discussed the vote for the first book preview episode in #Pratchat0, “And the Winner is…“, and in Liz’s blog post “Let’s Start From The Very Beginning (but not actually)“.
  • #Pratchat1, “Boots Theory“, was released on the 7Ath of November, 2017 – three years and eight months ago in real time, or 237 years ago in COVID time, at release of this podcast.
  • Members of The Lost Con Zoom chat were split over whose pronunciations they preferred. The folks from Discworld Monthly informed us that according to Stephen Briggs, there were definitely disagreements over pronunciation for the audiobooks. You can find his guides for some pronunciation in the front of some of his play adaptations; for example in Jingo he specifies that Angua’s name should be pronounced with a hard “g”, but either “Angwa” or “Ang-you-ah” is listed as acceptable.
  • One of the perils of not actually having time to re-read the book (or even re-listen to the entire previous episode) is that we forget little details. Like the fact that Carrot does indeed pick up the gonne, and after a brief look smashes it against a wall, destroying it. As he says when Vimes warns him not to touch it: “Why not? It’s only a device.” Of note: he leaves the broken bits in the clocktower of the Assassin’s Guild.
  • The western roleplaying videogame with the spittoons that Ben mentions is West of Loathing, a spin-off from the online game Kingdom of Loathing.
  • You can read more about the Yarra river in the episode notes for #Pratchat1.
  • Liz’s Detritus pun, which Ben didn’t pick up on at the time, was “inflammation of the d’être”, as in raison d’être, a French term meaning “reason to be”. It’s commonly used by English speakers as an alternate way of referring to something so important if gives them a reason to be alive. Note that in French it’s not really pronounced in such a way that makes the pun work, but English speakers often say it that way.
  • Detritus’ brain-cooling helmet makes later appearances in Jingo (#Pratchat27, “Leshp Miserablés”), where it breaks down trying to keep his brain cool in the desert, and The Truth (#Pratchat42, “Truth, the Printing Press, and Every -ing”), where he switches it on in order to deal with William de Worde.
  • The two-player roleplaying game Ben is discussing is Tin Star Games’ Partners, released in digital form in 2021 following a successful Kickstarter campaign.
  • We discussed Feet of Clay in #Pratchat24, “Arsenic and Old Clays”, released in October 2019.
  • We discussed Jingo in #Pratchat27, “Leshp Miserablés”, released in January 2020.
  • Hitchcock and Scully are the two rusted-on detectives who serve in the 99th precinct of the New York Police Department on the sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, portrayed by Dirk Blocker and Joel McKinnon Miller respectively. They are notoriously incompetent, unhealthy and lazy, concerned primarily with snacks and other food. Originally supporting characters, they became a staple of the show and feature in the opening credits as of season six, the second episode of which (titled “Hitchcock & Scully”) explored their backstory as hotshot detectives in the 1980s.
  • The Ankh-Morpork Archives, Vol. 2 was published on the 29th of October, 2020, collecting material from the Discworld’s Ankh-Morpork City Watch Diary 1999, the Discworld Fools’ Guild Yearbook and Diary 2001, the Discworld (Reformed) Vampyres’ Diary 2003 and Lu-Tze’s Yearbook of Enlightenment 2008. Ben is right that the City Watch diary, published in September 1998, came out after Jingo (November 1997) and before The Fifth Elephant (November 1999).
  • We discussed The Fifth Elephant in #Pratchat40, “The King and the Hole of the King”, released in February 2021.
  • Asimov is one of Liz’s cats, who along with her other cat Huxley and Ben’s cat Kaos are collectively known as the “Pratcats”. Huxley and Kaos are relative newcomers, but Asimov has been around since the beginning; as well as hearing his bell jingling in the background of many episodes, he was featured as a guest on #Pratchat22, “The Cat in the Prat”.
  • The cult in Guards! Guards! are the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night (not to be mistaken for the Illuminated and Ancient Brethren of Ee). We discussed their similarity with incels and other “alt-right” groups in #Pratchat7A (see the next point).
  • We discussed Guards! Guards! in #Pratchat7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch”, released in June 2018 and The Truth in #Pratchat42, “The Truth, the Printing Press and Every -ing”, released in April 2021. The other book in which there’s a plot to dispose Vetinari is Feet of Clay, which as mentioned above was discussed in #Pratchat24.
  • As per the excerpt from #Pratchat1, our original suggestion was that Vetinari become a vampire, but we have previously discussed the idea of a zombie Vetinari…though we’re not entirely sure when! Possibly it was in #Pratchat30, “Looking Widdershins”, which is also where we first discussed the possibility of Moist Von Lipwig being groomed as the next Patrician (as suggested by listener Luke Jimenez).
  • The “critical Black Mass” joke in The Light Fantastic, as discussed in #Pratchat44, “Cosmic Turtle Soup”, refers to a collection of “books that leak magic”.
  • Ben and Liz both discuss their Pratchett origin stories in #Pratchat9, “And the Winner is…”. Liz realised her first was not in fact The Fifth Elephant just after recording #Pratchat7A, as discussed near the start of #Pratchat9, “Upscalator to Heaven”.
  • We discussed the Johnny Maxwell books in 2020: Only You Can Save Mankind in #Pratchat28, “All Our Base Are Belong to You”, released in February; Johnny and the Dead in Pratchat34, “Only You Can Save Deadkind”, released in August; and Johnny and the Bomb in Pratchat37, “The Shopping Trolley Problem”, released in November.
  • Early versions of ”Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” go back to as early as 1913, in press releases in various American magazines from a lobby group aligned with gun manufacturer Colt. These were designed to counter growing public concern about the availability of cheap mass-produced firearms, especially pistols, and the resulting escalation in deaths by shooting, which even back then were leading to calls for more regulation and control of guns. While earlier versions included things like “it’s not the gun, it’s the man behind the gun”, the current version is the most recognisable, and seems to have first arisen in the 1950s or 1960s. It’s nonsense, of course; no-one ever suggested that a gun could kill someone on its own. The point of the phrase is to make guns themselves seem neutral, neither good nor evil, but also to paint the perpetrators of gun deaths as obsessed murderers: killers who will use any means necessary, whether they have a gun or not. This ignores the fact that guns are deadlier than other weapons, and indeed the fact that guns even are weapons, i.e. devices designed only to harm living creatures. If you want to know more, the phrase is also the title of a very useful 2016 book on the subject: “Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People” and Other Myths About Guns and Gun Control, by Dennis A. Henigan.
  • The gonne influences Vimes by telling him that All that you hate, all that is wrong, I can put right, and Vimes finds it difficult to resist. He also remembers it pulling its trigger by itself, dragging his finger along with it, and only ends up putting it down and not shooting the villain because Carrot orders him to attention.

#Pratchat90 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 90, “Mind the Ginnungagap”, discussing the 40th Discworld novel, 2013’s Raising Steam, with returning guest Craig Hildebrand-Burke.

Iconographic Evidence

The cover of the first edition US hardcover, the first of Pratchett’s books to be published by Doubleday in the US. The cover art is by Justin Gerard, his only cover for a Discworld novel, though he did do the US covers for The Science of Discworld books, The Folklore of Discworld, A Blink of the Screen and A Slip of the Keyboard.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title makes the obvious gag that Pratchett himself didn’t, combining ginnungagap – the primordial “yawning void” of Norse (and Discworld dwarfish) mythology, from which the world (or one of them, at least) was created – and “mind the gap”, the famous advice on posters and announcements in the London Underground, warning passengers of the gap between the train and the platform.
  • As mentioned, Craig was previously a guest on one of our last pre-pandemic episodes: #Pratchat27, “Leshp Miserablés”, discussing Jingo.
  • “Gunzel” is uniquely Australian slang for a train or tram spotter – or by analogy, anyone with a specific nerdy interest (though that usage is uncommon). While it has an uncertain etymology, the term is at least several decades old; one account traces it specifically back to employees of the Sydney Tramway Museum in the 1960s, who supposedly picked it up from The Maltese Falcon (as they enjoyed using exaggerated American slang from old films and magazines). Originally used as a insult akin to British terms like “gricer” and “anorak”.
  • Melbourne’s City Loop is a central underground railway system passing in a circle through five stations in Melbourne’s central business district (CBD). Until 2025, all major train lines in Melbourne entered the loop on one of four tracks, passing through all of these stations before exiting again. In order to relieve congestion – there are eleven different train lines, but only four tracks in the loop – a new Metro Tunnel project was commenced in 2015 to dig a new tunnel across the CBD, linking the southeast directly to the northwest and creating five new underground stations (some of which are connected directly to the existing ones) in Melbourne and its inner suburbs. Those stations and the new tunnel opened in November 2025, and eventually some of the train lines will stop running around the loop and only run through the tunnel. (While not a true gunzel, Ben is very keen on public transport, so unlike Liz he’s very much looking forward to travelling on the new train route and seeing the new stations.)
  • Rob Wilkins gives an account of the writing of Raising Steam in the final chapter of the official Pratchett biography, A Life with Footnotes. He described the process as quite different from the usual, with Pratchett producing many, many scenes, but never getting to the stage of finding the “unifying, crystallising vision that would have turned these scenes into a novel”. He credits Pratchett’s UK editor, Philippa Dickson, with finding the pattern and the gaps in those scenes, and giving Wilkins advice on where to guide Pratchett in order to turn them into a book. Notably not involved was Pratchett’s previous and just as talented and beloved US editor, Jennifer Brehl, as he had only recently switched US publishers from HarperCollins to Knopf Doubleday. (This explains the new cover artist, as seen on Ben’s edition.)
  • Train-based fantasy, sci-fi and other fiction that we mention include:
    • Perdido Street Station and its sequels The Scar and The Iron Council, weird fiction novels by China Miéville which combine elements of fantasy and steampunk. The Iron Council features trains most prominently of the three.
    • Iron Dragon, perhaps the first “crayon rails” style train board game set in a fantasy world.
    • Westworld, the television series (based on the 1973 film) about fantasy theme parks staffed by “Hosts”, artificially intelligent robots indistinguishable from humans. The titular “Westworld”, a wild west town, was serviced by a replica steam train, which later plays an important part in the plot.
    • Points and Lines, aka Tokyo Express in the newer 2022 English translation, a 1958 Japanese crime novel by Seichō Matsumoto involving trains and timetables.
    • The Dark Tower series of novels, specifically The Waste Lands and Wizard and Glass, by Stephen King. These books feature Blaine, an insane artificial intelligence which controls a monorail train. The children’s book which references Blaine is Charlie the Choo-Choo.
    • Deadlands is a roleplaying game originally designed by Shane Lacy Hensley. The supernatural ore that powers some of its steampunk technology is called “ghost rock”. The current version is a setting for the Savage Worlds roleplaying game, rather than a game in its own right. Note that like many “weird west” games and stories of the twentieth century, the original 1990s edition contained plenty of appropriation (and misrepresenation) of the cultures of Native and Black Americans; we’re not sure what the later versions are like.
    • Spire: The City Must Fall and Heart: The City Beneath, a pair of related tabletop roleplaying games designed by Grant Howitt and Chris Taylor. The class Ben mentions is the “Vermissian Knight”, though Ben got their ability twisted a bit; one of their “zenith abilities” (that are generally a character’s final act) turns them into a living train, who steams off into the Heart (the weird, living dungeon beneath the city of Spire, from which the abandoned Vermissian train system drew its power). The remaining members of their party get a special “Deus Ex Machina” abiltity that they can cash in once to have the train-thing return, smashing into an enemy who is defeating them and dealing massive damage before going on their way again.
    • The Peter Grant novels, particularly Whispers Underground, by Ben Aaronovitch. Aaronovitch is a big Pratchett fan, and references the Discworld in most of his novels; he also coincidientally reviewed Raising Steam for The Guardian when it was first published.
    • Snowpiercer, a film and subsequent television series, both based on the French graphic novel by Jacques Lob.
    • Abiotic Factor, a survival videogame by New Zealand developers Deep Field Games. The Train, also known as “the Steam Engine” or IS-0138 (a designation usually given to creatures or objects, rather than worlds), is noted as “highly dangerous” with the note “IT MUST NEVER STOP”.

More notes coming soon!

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

#Pratchat89 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 89, “An Awfully Teeny Weeny Adventure”, discussing the 1995 computer game Discworld, with guest Jody Macgregor.

Iconographic Evidence

We’ll add a few choice screenshots here! Watch this space.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title is obviously a reference to one of the companies who made Discworld, Teeny Weeny Games, and the fact that it’s a graphic adventure game. But it’s also a riff on “an awfully big adventure”, which is how Peter Pan describes death in the original play by J M Barrie. An Awfully Big Adventure is also the title of a film – coincidentally released in 1995, the same year as Discworld – about a teenage girl drawn into the drama and trauma behind the scenes of a post-war production of Peter Pan. It was directed by Mike Newell, and starred Georgina Cates, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. (Note that the film comes with a few content warnings.)
  • You can read a PDF of the 1993 interview with Terry from PC Gamer #1 via the PC Gamer website. It was originally made available for ‘A tribute to Terry Pratchett’, an article by Christopher Livingston published on 13 March 2015, soon after his death.
  • We mention two articles which discuss who holds the rights to the game:
  • Unsurprisingly we mention a lot of videogames in this episode, especially adventure games. Here’s a quick list of the adventure games; we’ll add more games, and some details, soon.
    • The Secret of Monkey Island (LucasArts 1990)
    • Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (LucasArts 1991)
    • Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers (Sierra On-Line 1991) – Ben was wrong about the prequel that was skipped; he’s confusing the time travel in this game (in which space janitor Roger Wilco visits several sequel games that don’t yet exist) with the missing fourth game in Sierra’s Leisure Suit Larry series. (Similar “Search for the Sequel” jokes have been proposed for films, but none filmed as far as we can find.)
    • Day of the Tentacle (LucasArts 1993)
    • Sam & Max Hit the Road (LucasArts 1993)
    • Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds (Humongous Entertainment 1994) – designed by Ron Gilbert, who also made The Secret of Monkey Island and most of the other adventure games mentioned by Ben this episode!
    • Full Throttle (LucasArts 1995)
    • The Curse of Monkey Island (LucasArts 1997)
    • Grim Fandango (LucasArts 1998)
    • Duck Quest? (Waffle Friday Studios 2013)
    • The Cave (Doublefine Productions 2013)
    • Thimbleweed Park (Terrible Toybox 2017)
    • Return to Monkey Island (Terrible Toybox 2022)

More notes coming soon!

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

#Pratchat88 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 88, “They’re All Good Dragons, Bront”, discussing Paul Kidby’s 2024 art book, Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, with guest Brendan Barnett.

Iconographic Evidence

We can’t show you photos of the book, but you can find a lot of the art on Paul Kidby’s official website.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title refers to a famous tweet from the social media account WeRateDogs. This account shared photos of dogs submitted by their owners on Twitter, and rated them with outrageously positive comments, giving all of them scores of at least 10 out of 10. In 2016, another Twitter user named Brant complained about their rating system. WeRateDogs asked “Bront” (a deliberate misspelling of his name) why he was so mad, and he replied that “you give every dog 11s and 12s, it doesn’t make any sense”. Their now famous reply: “They’re good dogs Bront”. (We based our title on the misquote “They’re all good dogs, Bront”.) WeRateDogs is still going, and still a delight; you can find their social links at weratedogs.com.
  • The book Brendan describes from his youth with Death keeping bees is almost certainly the original large-format edition of Eric, lavishly illustrated by Josh Kirby. See #Pratchat7, “All the Fingle Ladies”.
  • The desktop calendar Brendan mentions might have been a Discworld Day-to-Day Calendar, available in 1999 and/or 2000. It’s one of those types with a plastic stand holding a pad of small square sheets, one for each day of the year. Ben thinks he might also have had one of these back then.
  • George Rex is an Adelaide-based illustrator and cartoonist, and friend of the podcast. She appeared as a guest in #Pratchat7, “All the Fingle Ladies” and #Pratchat55, “Mr Doodle, the Man on the Moon”.
  • For the record, the book does a great job of crediting all the art by other artists or from other publishers in an appendix. Ben just wishes the Kidby pieces were given years and sources as well!
  • Colin Morgan is an Irish actor most famous for playing the titular young wizard in the BBC fantasy adventure TV series Merlin from 2008 to 2012. His other credits include the sci-fi series Humans, Kenneth Branagh’s film Belfast, and the podcast drama Passenger List. He was the narrator for the first full sub-series of new Discworld audiobooks from Penguin, the Wizards books. That includes The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Sourcery, Eric, Interesting Times, The Last Continent, and Unseen Academicals. (The Last Hero is not published by Penguin, and did not get an audiobook.)
  • Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch is a 2023 book written by Rhianna Pratchett and Gabrielle Kent, compiling Tiffany’s in-character thoughts on witchcraft with commentary by many of her mentors (amongst other characters). It’s published in a very similar format to Designing Discworld, and is also lavishly illustrated by Paul Kidby. We originally planned to discuss both this book and Tiffany Aching’s Guide in the same episode as this one, but we’ve got other plans for it now – watch out for a discussion of it next year. We interviewed Rhianna and Gabrielle when it came out in #Pratchat74, “Hogswitch”.
  • On closer inspection, Ben thinks the “handwritten” footnotes might be done using a handwriting font rather than actually being written by Paul. He’s not sure, but either way, it’s a fun visual choice!
  • The painting Ben describes is actually The Discworld Massive Massif, a larger and much expanded version of Kidby’s earlier Discworld Massif. The new was painted to commemorate Paul’s thirty years of illustrating Discworld in 2023. It features 140 characters, which we assume isn’t a deliberate reference to the old days of Twitter. You can buy one of a limited collector’s edition print of it from Paul Kidby’s website, or get it in jigsaw puzzle form from the Discworld Emporium.
  • There’ll be more notes on art and artists to come, but for now, here’s a list of UK first edition cover artists of Terry Pratchett’s major works. (The American covers are a whole other thing.)
    • Terry did his own covers for his first two novels, The Carpet People and The Dark Side of the Sun (#Pratchat18, “Sundog Gazillionaire”). His third, Strata (#Pratchat68, “Discus Ex Machina”), had a piece by Tim White which bears little connection to the novel itself.
    • The original cover for The Colour of Magic (#Pratchat14, “City-State Lampoon’s Disc-Wide Vacation”) was by Alan Smith.
    • Josh Kirby was brought in when the Discworld novels moved to Gollancz and Corgi, and he did them all – as well as various spin-offs – until his death in 2001, his last being Thief of Time (#Pratchat48, “Lu-Tze in the Sky with Lobsang”). Kirby also did the original covers for Truckers (#Pratchat9, “Upscalator to Heaven”), Diggers (#Pratchat13, “Don’t Quarry Be Happy”) and Wings (#Pratchat20, “The Thing Beneath my Wings”), plus new covers for Terry’s older novels when they were re-published by Corgi. He also did art for most German editions of Pratchett’s other books, including anthologies of short stories in which work by Pratchett appeared.
    • Cartoonist Gray Joliffe collaborated with Pratchett on The Unadulterated Cat (#Pratchat22, “The Cat in the Prat”), including the original cover art. (The most recent edition was The Unadulterated Maurice, which replaced the cover and all interior illustrations with images of Maurice from The Amazing Maurice film.)
    • The original cover for Good Omens (#Pratchat15, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It, But We Feel Nice and Accurate”) was designed by Chris Moore, though the most famous early cover was for the paperback edition, which features art by Graham Ward.
    • The Johnny Maxwell books didn’t originally have unified cover designs, with each one done by a different artist: David Scutt for Only You Can Save Mankind (#Pratchat28, “All Our Base Are Belong to You”), John Avon for Johnny and the Dead (episode currently unavailable), and an uncredited designer for Johnny and the Bomb (#Pratchat37, “The Shopping Trolley Problem”).
    • In between Kirby and Kidby, presumably because it was the first Discworld book for younger readers, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (#Pratchat33, “Cat, Rats and Two Meddling Kids”) originally had cover art by David Wyatt.
    • Paul Kidby’s first Discworld covers weren’t for novels, but for other books – diaries, maps, the New Discworld Companion, and The Science of Discworld (#Pratchat35, “Great Balls of Physics“). After collaborating on The Last Hero (#Pratchat55, “Mr Doodle, the Man on the Moon”), he took over the main Discworld covers beginning with Night Watch (#Pratchat54, “The Land Before Vimes”), including the Tiffany Aching books. He did the original cover for Dodger (#Pratchat6, “A Load of Old Tosh”), and later new covers for the Johnny books, and a deluxe illustrated edition of Good Omens.
    • The spin-off picture book Where’s My Cow? (#Pratchat62, “There’s a Cow in There”) had cover and interior art by Melvyn Grant.
    • The original UK cover of Nation (#Pratchat41, “The Adventures of Crab Boy and Trouser Girl”) is by Johnny Duddle, who also did the interior artwork.
    • The Long Earth (#Pratchat31, “It’s Just a Step to the West”) and all four of its sequels have covers designed by Rich Shailer, who also did all the exploded diagrams that appear on the inside.

More notes coming soon!

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#Pratchat19 Notes and Errata

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These are the show notes and errata for episode 19, “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got Rocks In” featuring guest Fury, discussing the sixteenth Discworld novel, 1994’s Soul Music.

Iconographic Evidence

We didn’t know about this when we recorded this, but twenty episodes later in #Pratchat39, “All the Fun of the…Fish?”, guest Marc Burrows told us about the 1981 song “There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis”, the lead single from debut album Desperate Character from British singer/songwriter Kirsty MacColl (1959-2000). Clearly the inspiration for a certain line of dialogue! And, no doubt, one of many music references we likely missed (though this one might be forgiven; we’re not sure it charted highly in Australia!). Here’s Kirsty is performing it on what we think might be Top of the Pops. (Thanks to listener James for prompting us to add this Kirsty in the comments.)

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title puns the title of Duke Ellington’s 1931 jazz standard “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”, which has been recorded dozens if not hundreds of times over the last 90 years.
  • The Valhalla Cinema was a cinema in Melbourne which specialised in audience participation films – and in its early days you had to bring your own seats. Opening in 1976, it later relocated to Westgarth and changed names. The Wikipedia entry has a charming story about a rather eventful screening of The Blues Brothers – though we doubt that this was the one that Pterry attended (if, indeed, he attended one at all).
  • Look, the French Foreign Legion have a long and storied history, but in popular culture they are the go-to reference for the group you join when you want to get well away from your old life. Brendan Fraser’s character in The Mummy? French Foreign Legion.
  • Why are denim trousers called jeans? They’re named after the city of Genua, where the original fabric was manufactured. Read more about their history here. We know; we hoped they would be named after Gene Wilder too.
  • Rebel Without a Cause is one of James Dean’s most famous films and is often credited with kicking off the idea of the teenager.
  • Arthur Daley is a character from Minder, a British comedy-drama series that ran from 1979 to 1994.
  • Animorphs, first a book series, later adapted into a TV show, followed the adventures of a group of friends who had been given the power to morph into different animal shapes in an attempt to fight back against a secret alien invasion on Earth. Their enemy were the Yeerks – a parasitic species which would occupy the body of a host and control them.
  • Is Sioni bod da real Welsh? According to the Annotated Pratchett File: “‘Bod Da’ is Welsh for ‘be good’. Ergo, ‘Sioni Bod Da’ = ‘Johnny B. Goode’.”
  • “The Day the Music Died” is the name given to the tragic day where musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and “The Big Bopper” J.P. Richardson were killed in a light aircraft accident. Both Holly’s wife and mother heard the news from media rather than authorities (his wife, Maria Elena, via a TV report and his mother via the radio). His mother collapsed at the news, and Maria Elena shortly afterwards had a miscarriage. This series of events led to the development of a policy for proper notification of victims’ families. The events of the day also inspired Don McLean’s song “American Pie”.
  • There have been at least two Dalek invasions of contemporary Earth in Doctor Who; the first was in the 1964 story The Dalek Invasion of Earth, later adapted into a feature film starring Peter Cushing.
  • The natural human preference for length of day is a subject of much debate. Some studies showed that the human circadian rhythm, when absent of outside stimuli like light and knowledge of time skewed more towards 25 hours, but later studies dispute this. Need more people to volunteer to sleep whenever they want for further study? We’re available!
  • Two-up is a traditional Australian gambling game. A designated “spinner” throws two coins into the air from a special paddle or board called a “kip”, which has recesses to hold the coins. Players bet on which way the coins will land: obverse (both heads), reverse (both tails) or “Ewan” (one of each). It’s often played on ANZAC Day, when it is officially legal (at least in the state of New South Wales), as it was very popular among soldiers during World War I. Modern games still often use old pre-decimalisation pennies from a significant year like 1915, the year of the Gallipoli campaign.
  • According to the Stratocaster Guide, Keith Richards once said “The Strat is as sturdy and strong as a mule, yet it has the elegance of a racehorse. It’s got everything you need, and that’s rare to find in anything.” Basically? They’re the quintessential cool guitar.
  • In the TV series Gilmore Girls, Dean and Jesse are, respectively, Rory Gilmore’s first and second boyfriends. Dean is an absolute garbage heap of a human being which only becomes more apparent as the show progresses. Jesse starts out only marginally better, but he improves. In the end it doesn’t actually matter though, as the re-boot proves that Rory herself is actually the worst of them all.
  • Popular Scottish indie group Belle & Sebastian are named for the book and television series about a boy and his dog. Their namesake is about as charming as the music they produce.

#Pratchat87 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 87, “Exclusive Possession: Ankh-Morpork Edition”, discussing Martin Wallace’s 2011 Discworld board game, Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, with guest Richard McKenzie.

Iconographic Evidence

The box and its contents, though only two player colours of tokens are on display here. The cards at the bottom are green and brown player cards; personality cards (the secret roles); area cards; and event cards.
The state of the board at the end of our second game. Ben was green, Richard was red, and Liz was blue.

Below are all the specific cards we mentioned this episode; you can also find lots more photos of the game on its BoardGameGeek page.

Photo of the seven personality cards from the Discworld: Ankh-Morpork board game: Dragon King of Arms; Commander Vimes; Chrysoprase; Lord Vetinari; Lord Selachii; Lord Rust; Lord de Worde
The seven personalities.
Photo of six player cards from the board game Discworld: Ankh-Morpork.
The cards Mr Shine, Dr Whiteface, The Fools’ Guild, Gaspode, The Fresh Start Club and Igor.
Photo of six player cards from the board game Discworld: Ankh-Morpork.
The player cards The Luggage, Shonky Shop, Wallace Sonky, Harry King, Mrs Cake and CMOT Dibbler.
Photo of six player cards from the board game Discworld: Ankh-Morpork.
The player cards Errol, The Fire Brigade, History Monks, Sergeant Angua, The Peeled Nuts, and DEATH.
Photo of six player cards from the board game Discworld: Ankh-Morpork.
The player cards Moist von Lipwig, Rincewind, Mr Slant, Wee Mad Aerthur, Hubert and Carcer.
Photo of four player cards from the board game Discworld: Ankh-Morpork.
The player cards Ruby, Harga’s House of Ribs, Susan and Zorgo the Retrophrenologist.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title refers to Exclusive Possession the suspiciously Monopoly-like game to which a dying person once challenged Death. Death briefly mentions this in Reaper Man. (He was the boot.)
  • Richard previously appeared on #Pratchat5, “Ten Points to Viper House” discussing Pyramids, and #Pratchat40, “The King and the Hole of the King”, discussing The Fifth Elephant.
  • We only mention them a little, but the other (official) Discworld board games are:
    • Thud (2002, designed by Trevor Truran) – a Hafltafl-style game in which one side of pieces are dwarfs, and the other are trolls. As seen in the novel Thud!, though as mentioned the game pre-dates the book! Discussed in the bonus episode #PratchatPlaysThud, “The Troll’s Gambit” with guest Dr Melissa Rogerson.
    • Guards! Guards! A Discworld Board Game (2011; designed by Leonard Boyd and David Brashaw) – players take on the role of various Guilds who recruit various Discworld characters to help track down the missing spells from the Octavo. We played it for #Pratchat75, “…And That Spells Trouble” with guest Dr Melissa Rogerson.
    • The Witches (2013, designed by Martin Wallace) – a semi-cooperative game in which the players take on the role of Tiffany Aching and her fellow apprentice witches, solving problems around the Ramtops. We discussed it in #Pratchat67, “The Three-Elf Problem”, with guest Steve Lamattina.
    • Clacks: A Discworld Board Game (2015; designed by Leonard Boyd and David Brashaw) – players are Clacks operators competing to send their messages the fastest – or collaborating to send a message before Moist von Lipwig can deliver it via horse… Discussed in #Pratchat82, “Clack Go the Gears”, with guests Nicholas J Johnson and Lawrence Leung.
  • We mention a lot of other board games in this episode; some we have more to say about below, but here are most of them in a handy list with BoardGameGeek links and a brief description:
    • Ticket to Ride (2004, designed by Alan R. Moon) – a popular gateway game still going strong after all these years. Players take turns to collect sets of coloured cards and play them to place trains on a map of the US (or various other countries in other editions), trying to complete routes between specific cities for points. It’s easy to learn and plays pretty fast, but if you’ve played a few board games already, you might like to consider some of the alternatives in this video from No Pun Included.
    • Gloom (2005, designed by Keith Baker) – a storytelling card game in which you try to have the most miserable life in a very miserable family. It’s fun schtick is that the cards are transparent, and you layer them on top of each other. There’s also a Cthulhu version, and a handful of others, including one based on Game of Thrones.
    • Big Trouble in Little China: The Game (2018, designed by Christopher Batarlis, Boris Polonsky and Jim Samartino) – a miniatures-based game, adapted from John Carpenter’s 1986 action-comedy movie starring Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall and James Hong. Up to four players take on the roles of characters from the film to collaboratively defeat the sorcerer Lo Pan, who is trying to lift a curse so he can return to his evil ways. We think Richard might have found an actual playthrough video, though; this how to play video is only 12 minutes long!
    • Magic: The Gathering (1993, designed by Richard Garfield) – the first and still the most successful collectible card game, or trading card game. Buy packs of random cards and build a deck consisting of lands which give you points of “mana” in one of five colours, and spells that spend that mana to summon creatures and otherwise attack your opponent.
    • Talisman (1983, designed by Robert Harris) – originally published by Games Workshop, this game sort of resembles fantasy Monopoly. Players roll dice to move one of many different characters around a board to land on spaces where something good or bad might happen to them as they seek the “Crown of Command” to win the game. There are several “levels” to move through, and as Richard mentions, lots of expansions which add even more.
    • Blood on the Clocktower (2022, designed by Steven Medway) – a modern social deduction game – essentially a much more sophisticated version of Werewolf. Players live in a village struck down by a curse of some kind; everyone has a unique role, and tries to figure out which of them is possessed by a murderous demon – or conceal the demon, to further their own evil plans. The game comes with multiple scenarios and a large number of unique roles, and players are able to continue influencing the game even if their character is killed.
    • Pandemic (2008) – we mention this every board game episode, because it’s one of Ben’s favourites. Collaboratively try to collect samples to cure four rampant diseases before they overwhelm the world. The game’s mechanisms have been adapted to everything from Cthulhu to World of Warcraft, Star Wars, Ancient Rome and most recently Lord of the Rings. Designed by Matt Leacock, whose other similar games include Thunderbirds, the Forbidden series, and the “solve climate change” game Daybreak, co-designed with Matteo Menapace.
    • Mythos (1996, designed by Charlie Krank) – another collectible card game from the 1990s, Mythos was a Cthulhu-themed game in which you scored points by telling stories about your investigator’s adventures. Ben still has a bunch of cards and is hoping to play it again soon.
    • Oath (2021, designed by Cole Wehrle) – beautiful and colourful, Oath is more or less a wargame about the fight over the throne in a fantasy kingdom. It’s often bigged up for creating interesting stories, but Ben has found it wanting in that department. He’s willing to give it another go, though – not least because it was very expensive. The Discworld fan conversion Ben mentioned is by BGG user dugbride, and basically transforms every card in the game into a Discworld equivalent. Heads up that it uses entirely AI-generated art.
    • Cluedo (1949) – an old-school deduction game in which players move around a map of a mansion gathering cards representing clues to a murder. By slowly figuring out which person, weapon and location are missing from the deck, they race to be the first to put the solution together. The original American name is Clue, but the name more familiar to the rest of the world is a pun on “clue” and “Ludo”. Like Monopoly, it’s been released in many themed versions, though it’s usually modified a little more than Monopoly. A lot of the themes have been TV shows, like Brooklyn-99, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Doctor Who and Bob’s Burgers. (In more family friendly versions, the crime is no longer a murder.)
  • The board game video by Aunty Donna is “Explaining a Board Game” from April 2020.
  • There are three editions of Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, and you can find photos of all three on BoardGameGeek:
    • The standard edition, the one Ben owns and the one you’ll most likely find secondhand, comes in a standard square-shaped box the same size as Ticket to Ride. It has a painting of Great A’Tuin on the cover (which we think is the art by Paul Kidby). This has the regular wooden pieces seen in our photos, with cardboard coins. It was published by Treefrog Games and Esdevium in the UK, Mayfair Games in the US, KOSMOS in Germany, Phalanx Games in Poland, and a few others in other European countries.
    • The Collector’s Edition comes in a rectangular box with alternate art of a dragon flying over Ankh-Morpork by the game’s main artist Peter Dennis. This version includes wooden coins, a custom d12 with “no eight”, a larger board, and a poster of Peter Dennis’ card designs.
    • The Deluxe Edition is the same as the Collector’s Edition except that it replaces the minions, buildings, trolls and demons with resin miniatures. Ben particularly likes the demons in this version, which better match the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions in the books than the wooden horned demon tokens.
  • The Ankh-Morpork map on the board seems to be based on The Streets of Ankh-Morpork by Steven Player, the first official published map of the city. It lines up pretty well with that version of the city, though there are likely a few more differences with the later Compleat Ankh-Morpork. Note that some fan sources treat the board game map as canonical, including using the names of the areas as names for neighbourhoods or suburbs of the city. While most are drawn from the books, some seem to be an invention for game purposes.
  • The part of the kidney that Liz thought Ankh-Morpork resembled is the glomerulus.
  • The card that lets you add a minion without adding trouble is Mr Shine.
  • “Mulligan” is a term used in games for when a player is allowed to have another go at something to keep the game competitive and fun. It may have originated in golf, or possibly baseball, and dates back to at least the 1930s, though its exact origins are unknown. A mulligan in golf is only for casual play, but is where a golfer is allowed to take a shot again from the same position when they lose their ball. Another well-known use is in Magic: The Gathering, where it is an official rule that a player can choose to take a “mulligan” and re-draw their initial hand of cards for the game, albeit with an increasing penalty for multiple mulligans in most most formats of the game.
  • As far as we know, there has never been a Discworld: Ankh-Morpork tournament. An opportunity for a future Discworld convention, perhaps?
  • Nanty Narking (2019) is the “re-implementation” of Discworld: Ankh-Morpork plublished by PHALANX. Re-implementation is board game jargon for re-using the same (or significantly similar) rules with a new theme or narrative – in this case, fictional Victorian London. As Ben mentions in the footnote, the main rules changes are a tweak to the Chrysoprase personality card, and some alternate rules for more advanced play. That includes the alternate personalities Ben mentioned – and you can find Ankh-Morpork versions of those on BoardGameGeek – but also an “Agent & Buildings” variant which introduces two additional sets of cards. Players are dealt three Agent cards and one Building card at the start of the game; these are initially hidden, and provide specific additional powers which interact with the player’s Agents (equivalent to Ankh-Morpork’s Minions) or Buildings on the board.
  • The Cthulhu expansion for Nanty Narking is titled Nanty Narking: The Rise of Cthulhu, and was funded by a successful campaign on GameFound (a crowdfunding platform specifically for games) in February 2025, raising over €200,000. As of July 2025, you can still join the campaign via a “late pledge” to get discounted copies of the expansion and a new printing of the base game, as well as some other bits exclusive to the campaign. The expansion adds a lot: players can now play as “Great Old Ones” attempting to take over London, using giant miniatures, powerful “Elder Ones” who are like Agents (the game’s version of minions) but with special powers, and many additions to existing elements of the game. It seems to evoke similar themes to Wallace’s 2024 Cthulhu in Victorian London game, Cthulhu: Dark Providence by CMON Games, part of their Cthulhu: Death May Die game setting. (This is itself a re-implementation of Wallace’s 2013 game A Study in Emerald, based loosely on the short story by Neil Gaiman.)
  • We’re pretty loose with the game’s terminology. We don’t recommend anyone learn to play from our description, but we thought we’d clarify a few game terms and rules:
    • The board is divided into twelve “City Areas”, each representing a district or neighbourhood, like The Shades, Dolly Sisters, the Unreal Estate or The Scours. Each has a corresponding City Area Card (the game is very good at naming things plainly), which gives a player a specific benefit: usually a simple ability they can use once per turn, like gaining $2. A City Area Card is claimed when a player builds a building in the corresponding area (not by controlling an area as we repeatedly say; see below), and only one building can be in each City Area. In the (relatively rare) event that a building is destroyed, the player loses the corresponding City Area Card.
    • A player controls a City Area by having more pieces (minions or buildings) in the area than any other single player. This has no special effect aside from helping to satisfy the win condition of the three Lord personalities.
    • Ben refers to Rincewind’s power to draw a “special ability”, but what he means is the Random Event cards that include (among other things) a riot, a dragon attack, or adding trolls or demons to the board. All wizards have the octogram symbol that requires a player to draw a Random Event; this is the only action that is not optional. These are quite rare in the first half of the game.
  • The Discworld train game was shared with us by subscriber Lachlan, who’s a big fan of train games. The game in question is an “18xx” game – part of a family of games which all draw inspiration from the 1970s game 1829 designed by Francis Tresham. Each game has its own quirks, and there are two main “lineages” which take the form in different directions; many of them take a long time to play. A major theme of these games is that players don’t have their own train company; but instead are buying stock (i.e. shares, not train stock) in private train companies, which become active when they receive enough investment. The player with the most stock in a company then gets to spend the company’s money and choose how it operates, hoping to make money and then decided what to do with its profits, affecting its stock price. BoardGameGeek lists nearly 300 18xx games, some which adapt the rules to other themes, and there are many more fan-made games as well. The one Lachlan brought to our attention is called “18DW” or “18Discworld”; it was based heavily on Raising Steam, and includes one major company, forty-seven private companies and “attacks by fundamentalist dwarves”, among other things. The only evidence of the game is a photo on a BoardGameGeek list of 18XX expansions in progress (it’s #124 in that list), and an online auction listing for a seemingly finished version of the game that lists the designer’s name as Christopher Bird. Perhaps this was the only copy? As an unlicensed fan game, its unlikely to ever fully see the light of day, but its nice to know someone out there has a copy. (Sorry it’s not you Lachlan!)
  • There are indeed fan expansions and variants of Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, as well as fan recreations of the game to deal with the fact that it’s long out of print! Most add additional personalities, player cards and event cards, though some also add new pieces as well. You can find discussions of a bunch of these – including the Discworld adaptations of the variant personalities from Nanty Narking – in the game’s Variants forum on BoardGameGeek.
  • We’ve previously discussed the history of Monopoly and its origins as The Landlord’s Game in #Pratchat59, “Charlie and the Whale Factory”. The 99% Invisible podcast has a good overview of this history in episode 189, “The Landlord’s Game“. The website landlords-game.com has lots of info about the multiple versions of Elizabeth Magie’s original game, and has brought one of them back into print!
  • Not only is Elton John Monopoly real, but it’s recent – released in March 2025, and available via Elton John’s official merch store. It renames (but doesn’t remodel) the houses and hotels as stands and stadiums, and replaces the traditional playing pieces with iconic pieces of Elton’s headgear.
  • You can find Thinker Themer on YouTube. They’ve made a lot of videos, but currently are focussing on their “Shelfworthy?” series of reviews. If you like their channel, you can support them by buying their merch – their logo is super cool!
  • Armello (2015) is a digital board game from Melbourne developers League of Geeks. As described by Richard, it has a fairytale talking animals theme in which the old king (a lion) is paranoid and dying after a corruption has taken hold of the land. Players take on the role of various animals vying to be the next monarch, though means fair or foul. Armello is available on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, XBox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Android. It remains a reasonably popular multiplayer game, and in its final update in 2022, added crossplay, supporting multiplayer between different platforms. A tabletop version of the game, designed by Rob Heinsoo, was crowdfunded in 2024 and is expected to be published in 2025 by Australian company King of the Castle Games.

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#Pratchat86 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 86, “Of the Watch the Last”, discussing Terry Pratchett’s thirty-ninth Discworld novel, 2011’s Snuff, with guest Freyja Stokes.

Iconographic Evidence

Watch this space!

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title adapts one of the common formats for goblin names to describe Snuff in bittersweet terms. The book is the eighth and last in the Watch sub-series, though characters from the Watch books do appear in the final two Discworld novels. (No spoilers about who, though.)
  • There are several publicly available theses and academic articles about Terry Pratchett and/or Discworld from Australian scholars, most (but not all) the result of the Pratchett Scholarship at UniSA. Here are are a few we’ve found; references are in Australian Government (author-date) style.
  • There are several published collections of Pratchett-related academic writing, including:
    • Discworld and the Disciplines: Critical Approaches to the Terry Pratchett Works (Anne Hiebert Alton and William C. Spruiell (eds), 2014)
    • Philosophy and Terry Pratchett (Jacob Heald and James B South (eds), 2014)
    • Terry Pratchett’s Narrative Worlds: From Giant Turtles to Small Gods – Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature (Marion Rana (ed), 2018)
    • Terry Pratchett’s Ethical Worlds: Essays on Identity and Narrative in Discworld and Beyond (Kristin Noone and Emily Lavin (eds), 2020)
    • Powers and Society in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld: Building a Fantasy Civilization (Justine Breton (ed), 2025)
  • How Christie wrote her mysteries – going back and putting the clues in afterwards
  • Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries was a series of historical crime novels starring glamorous sleuth Phryne Fisher (played by Essie Davis in the television adaptation, which was produced from 2012 to 2015; there was a film too, but forget that, just watch the show). Mostly set in Melbourne, the books were written by Australian author Kerry Greenwood, who sadly passed away on 26 March 2025, aged 70. Greenwood was, by all accounts, a delightful person. GNU Kerry Greenwood. We’ve previously mentioned Phryne in #Pratchat37 (about Johnny and the Bomb) and #Pratchat75 (about the Guards! Guards! boad game), as well as the bonus episode #EeekClub2023.
  • Downton Abbey was a hit British television series about fictional aristocratic family the Granthams and their servants, set in their eponymous country estate in the early twentieth century. It ran for six series on ITV between 2010 and 2015, and two feature films in 2019 and 2022. We’ve previously talked about it, most notably in #Pratchat36 (about Carpe Jugulum), #Pratchat48 (about Thief of Time) and #Pratchat61 (about the previous Watch book, Thud!).
  • The children’s authors we mentioned who scratch the itch of “gross stuff for kids” were:
  • We had to cut Freyja’s explanation of spontaneous human combustion for time, but the short version is that it happened to people sitting in armchairs which, at that time, were stuffed with and covered in extremely flammable materials. Even a small spark or ember would cause them to go up instantly in a fire so hot, it rendered a human body quickly into ash. Only the sitter’s outstretched foot would escape. Charles Dickens did indeed believe in it; a character dies from spontaneous human combustion in Bleak House.
  • The book series Freyja mentions with the harp-playing subjugated alien is Sheri S. Tepper’s Marjorie Westriding trilogy, set on the planet of Hobbs Land, hence the alternate name “Hobbs Land Gods”. We think the specific book is probably the second one, Raising the Stones.

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