Ben McKenzie

#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!

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

#Pratchat88 – They’re All Good Dragons, Bront

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Illustrator, game designer and educator Brendan Barnett joins Ben to discuss art, ideas, inspiration, creative process, dragons, wizards and goblins (oh my!) as we leaf through Paul Kidby’s 2024 gorgeous coffee table book, Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

Paul Kidby started bringing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld to life when, on the third attempt, he showed off his skill to the author by drawing his own versions of Discworld characters who had so captured his imagination. After several successful collaborations on art books, diaries, maps and the epic The Last Hero, he took over as the cover artist for the series after the death of Josh Kirby in 2001. His illustrations of the characters have become iconic, and Pratchett himself referred to him as his ‘artist of choice’. In this book, Paul discusses his pre-Discworld career, his long collaboration with Terry, and even shows us a glimpse of what might have been by sketching drafts of covers for the books that never were.

Do you have a favourite illustration from the book? What was most interesting to you about Paul’s process as an artist – and what’s it like to read if you don’t consider yourself one? How many of originals that Kidby parodies or does an homage to did you know? And who are your other favourite artists? Illustrate your point by sending us your answers (or questions) via a comment, or on the back of a social media post using the hashtag #Pratchat88.

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Guest Brendan Barnett (he/him) has spend around 15 years working with young people to foster their creativity, including for most of the last decade with Ben at their previous workplace, the creative writing centre 100 Story Building. Trained as an animator and an actor, he is also a keen lover of fantasy roleplaying, and has designed some very well-received adventures for Dungeons & Dragons and similar games. You can find out more about his work at brendanbarnett.com, and find his latest adventure, Grotto of the Golden Gargoyle, on itch.io – as well as his recent collaboration with Ben, the one-page adventure Flee the Flying Saucer!

You can find episode notes and errata on our web site.

Next month we’re surfing the wave of Melbourne International Games Week (which happened just as this episode was being edited) to discuss the 1995 graphic adventure videogame Discworld! A slightly odd adaptation of the plot of Guards! Guards!, Discworld stars Eric Idle as the voice of Rincewind, alongside a small but equally impressive cast of UK comedy talent. It’s not currently commercially available, but you can find play-through videos of it on YouTube. Get your questions in via email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com, or send them via social media using the hashtag #Pratchat89.

Then, for December, #Pratchat90 will return us to the Discworld novels for nearly the final time, as we read the final Moist von Lipwig book, Raising Steam! We’ll remind you about it next month, but if you want to get your questions in early, the hashtag for that episode is #Pratchat90. And don’t worry – we have plans to discuss Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch in the new year. Watch this space!

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

#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.

More notes coming soon!

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

#Pratchat87 – Exclusive Possession: Ankh-Morpork Edition

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Comedian and quizmaster Richard McKenzie returns to vie with Liz and Ben for control of the most odorous city on the Disc, as they discuss Martin Wallace’s 2011 board game Discworld: Ankh-Morpork.

The Patrician has gone missing! This leaves a huge power vacuum in Ankh-Morpork, and several of the most powerful figures in the city immediately start jostling for control. Lords, criminals and vampires position their minions in every district, each on their own path to power – and getting in each others’ way. Ankh-Morpork can only remain leaderless for so long – and there will be only one winner…

The first of the later Discworld board games, and generally considered by fans the best, Discworld: Ankh-Morpork (or just Ankh-Morpork) is a medium-to-light complexity game designed by Martin Wallace and published by Treefrog Games. Players take turns to play cards, following symbols and written instructions to alter the state of a map of Ankh-Morpork. Each card represents a character or location from the city, wonderfully illustrated by Peter Dennis. If the cards run out, then points are added up – but more likely, one of the players will achieve the secret objective of their “personality”, a hidden role which gives them one of five different victory conditions. Unfortunately the game was only available for five years before Treefrog lost the Discworld license, but it still holds pride of place in many fan collections – and goes for a pretty penny in the secondhand market. Especially the collector’s editions!

Have you had a chance to play Discworld: Ankh-Morpork? Does it capture the feel of the Discworld, or the city of Ankh-Morpork? Do you have a favourite card? What’s missing from the books that you’d love to see added in? And now we’ve covered all the Discworld board games, do you have a favourite? Or an idea for a new game? Play your cards right by joining our online conversation, using the hashtag #Pratchat87.

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Guest Richard McKenzie (he/him) has been a comedian in the Melbourne scene for around twenty-five years. As well as writing and performing many solo storytelling shows, he’s supported big names like Adam Hills and Ross Noble, written and performed sketches and plays with WATSON and the Anarchist Guild Social Committee, and partnered with Ben for nerd comedy, including the Dungeons & Dragons-themed improvised show Dungeon Crawl. As of July 2025 you’ll find Richard hosting trivia at The College Lawn in Prahran on Wednesday evenings from 7 PM, and at The Cornish Arms in Brunswick on Thursday evenings (7 PM, general knowledge) and Sunday afternoons (2 PM, pop culture).

Liz’s upcoming event to which psychology is relevant is the Sci-Fight comedy science debate for National Science Week, with the topic “Psychology is a Freud”. It’s on Tuesday, 12 August 2025 in Brunswick; find out more and book tickets via the Sci-Fight website.

You can find episode notes and errata on our web site.

Next month we’re back on the books – and we’re doing two at once! We’ll be discussing a couple of Discworld companion volumes, namely Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch by Rhianna Pratchett and Gabrielle Kent, and Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld by Paul Kidby – who also illustrated the Tiffany Aching book! Get your questions in via email (chat@pratchatpodcast.com), or sling them at us on social media using the hashtag #Pratchat88. Do listen to our interview with Rhianna and Gabrielle first – we’ll be avoiding doubling up on questions we asked them!

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

#Pratchat85 – AT LAST, SIR TERRY

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To mark ten years since Terry Pratchett’s death, Liz, Ben and guest Myfanwy Coghill discuss his 2010 Richard Dimbleby lecture, “Shaking Hands with Death”. Please note that this episode includes discussions of death, terminal illness, assisted dying and suicide.

Pratchett was the first novelist to give the Richard Dimbleby Lecture, an annual talk broadcast on the BBC in memory of Dimbleby, a BBC broadcaster who died in 1965. His subject was a turning point in his activism: from raising awareness (and money) for Alzheimer’s Disease, to talking openly about the inevitability of death, and the importance of being able to choose a good one, safely and legally. The speech was collected in A Slip of the Keyboard in 2014, and published in a standalone volume with an introduction by Rob Wilkins in 2015. (A new edition, with an updated introduction by Rob, will be published in October 2025.) The televised version is also (currently) on YouTube.

We hope we’ve done Pratchett justice in carrying on this discussion. We are lucky to live in Australia, where citizens in most states have access to assisted dying – if under more narrow circumstances than Pratchett might have liked. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill provides similar access, and was introduced in the UK parliament by backbench Labour MP Kim Leadbeater in November 2024. At the time of publication (March 2025), it’s currently at the committee stage; see the episode notes for more details.

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Guest Myfanwy Coghill (she/her) has been many things, including an opera singer, a teacher, a funeral director, and a Dungeon Master (of the Dungeons & Dragons variety). She previously appeared to discuss Maskerade in #Pratchat23, “The Music of the Nitt”, in September 2019.

GNU Elspeth Sutherland; Kat Muscat; Stella Young; Cal Wilson; DJ Ian; and Terry Pratchett. We’d love you to consider supporting the Kat Muscat Fellowship, which provides support and development for a young Australian writer or editor each year; or helping to fund a new documentary about Stella Young, I Am Not Your Inspiration (which coincidentally launched in between us recording and publishing this episode). Pratchett’s favoured charities are well known: the Orang Utan Foundation, and the Alzheimer’s Society. The local Australian equivalent is Dementia Australia.

You can find episode notes and errata on our web site.

Next month is our rescheduled discussion about both volumes of the Ankh-Morpork Archives, which collect material from the Discworld diaries, and their sibling publication The Discworld Almanack! There’s still time for a few more questions; send them in via email (chat@pratchatpodcast.com), or social media using the hashtag #Pratchat84.

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

#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.

More notes coming soon!

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

#Pratchat86 – Of the Watch the Last

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Liz and Ben are joined by Pratchett academic and cosplayer Freyja Stokes as they head out to the Discworld countryside for a bit of peace, quiet and definitely no murders, in Terry Pratchett’s final City Watch book, 2011’s Snuff.

Sam Vimes is facing his ultimate ordeal: a holiday. But no sooner has he made a mess of meeting the staff at Crundles, the Ramkin country estate, than he smells something rotten in the Shires. When the local blacksmith offers to meet him at midnight, he and his trusty valet Willikins instead find a puddle of blood and the ire of the local magistrates. A lot more’s afoot than a simple murder – and it seems to have something to do with goblins, tobacco, and Fred Colon taking a funny turn…

One of the last of the Discworld novels, and the final one starring Sam Vimes and (in their by now customary secondary roles) the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, Snuff also introduces a new species of fantasy creature to the Disc: goblins. Not so much hated as barely considered by other peoples, they eke out a wretched existence in the corners of the world that can hide them, a remnant of the Old Days of Dark Lords and magical war. But for Pratchett, of course, goblins aren’t just tiny evil filthy things – and their story is much more about the evils of humans than any other monster.

Have you read as far as Snuff, and do you think it feels different to the books that come before it? Were you expecting more of a mix of Pride & Prejudice and Midsomer Murders, and how do you feel about it being more of “howcatchem”? Was it a weird choice to take Vimes so far out of his element in his final book, or does it do us all a favour by showing us what his retirement might possibly look like? What’s the weirdest rule in crocket? How great are goblins???* And what’s your goblin name? Don’t get distracted by the new Clacks tower – join the conversation using the hashtag #Pratchat86.

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Guest Freyja Stokes (he/she) was one of the first recipients of UniSA’s Pratchett Scholarship, and finished her Masters thesis in 2023. It’s titled ‘The turtle moves : how Terry Pratchett’s Discworld does vernacular theory’, and it’s available via the UniSA library. Freyja is also a keen cosplayer and crafty person, and you find her and her creations on Facebook and other social media.

You can find episode notes and errata on our web site.

Next month we take a break from the few remaining Pratchett novels to play a game that we promise is simpler than crocket: Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, the fan favourite of the board games! Get your questions in via email (chat@pratchatpodcast.com), or social media using the hashtag #Pratchat87.

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

* This one is rhetorical. They’re really great.

#Pratchat3 – You’re a Wizzard, Rincewind

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In episode three, comedian Cal Wilson is back to discuss the book that started her passion for Terry Pratchett – Sourcery! It’s the fifth Discworld novel, published in 1989, and both revisits locations and characters from the first two books and takes us to new parts of the Disc.

Happy to have left his adventuring days behind him, inept “wizzard” Rincewind now works as assistant librarian at Unseen University, the Disc’s premiere college for wizards. But just as a new archchancellor is about to be named, a young boy arrives. Coin is the eighth son of an eighth son of an eighth son: a Sourcerer, a source of raw magic not seen on the Disc since the ancient time of the Mage Wars. As Coin takes over the university and wizards across the world awaken to power they’ve never known, the end of the world draws nigh…and Rincewind just can’t seem to avoid getting involved.

Rincewind was Pratchett’s first protagonist, and this novel exemplifies all the things that make us love him: genre-awareness, unrepentant cowardice, reluctant heroism, lack of any skill at wizardry and fierce self-identification as a wizard. It also sees the return of the Luggage, a living chest which follows Rincewind wherever he goes. It was a delight for us all to see these characters again, and we have grand plans to go back to their beginnings in the very first Discworld novels…

In the meantime, when you’ve finished listening to this episode, get ready for the next one by reading Wyrd Sisters! We’ll be recording on January 14th, so get your questions in ASAP if you’d like us to answer them on the podcast.

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Guest Cal Wilson (she/her) was one of Australia and New Zealand’s most beloved comedians. She previously appeared in our first episode, “Boots Theory“, and would return for our fiftieth episode, “Salt Rat Arsenic Heat”. At the time of publishing Cal was about to tour a new live stand-up show, Hindsight, in multiple cities at festivals throughout 2018. (You can see the poster she mentions in our episode notes.) Cal passed away unexpectedly after a brief illness in October 2023; she is sorely missed. GNU Cal Wilson.

You can find the full notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

#Pratchat1 – Boots Theory

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In our first full-length episode, Elizabeth and Ben are joined by comedian Cal Wilson to discuss the winner of our poll – Terry Pratchett’s 1993 novel Men at Arms! The fifteenth Discworld novel, Men at Arms is the second to focus on the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, following Guards! Guards!

Samuel Vimes, Captain of the Ankh-Morpork Night Watch, is only a week away from marriage and retirement. So of course “ethnic tensions” between dwarfs and trolls are at boiling point, something explodes in the Assassin’s Guild, and there’s a murderer on the loose – a murderer who uses a mysterious and uniquely deadly weapon… Luckily the Watch has expanded, taking on three unorthodox new recruits. But will they be enough to stop war in the streets, and catch a murderer who can kill from a distance?

Men at Arms is a real smorgasbord of Discworld stuff, and a great introduction to the world – especially the quintessential Discworld city of Ankh-Morpork. It’s also a fun howdunit (i.e. we know who, just not how they’ll be identified and caught), has one of the best (and most tragic) friendships in the series, introduces (if clumsily) one of Pratchett’s favourite romances, and carries a message about the dangers of killing machines which sadly hasn’t got any less relevant in the last quarter of a century.

Do you agree this is great place to start? Is it the best Watch book, or at least up there? Was Pratchett ahead of his time in how he handled the issues in the book, and would he have done it differently if he’d been writing now? We want to hear from you! Use the hashtag #Pratchat1 on social media if you want to comment on our discussion here.

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Guest Cal Wilson (she/her) was a Melbourne-based New Zealand stand-up comedian and author. The children’s book she couldn’t name at the time is George and the Great Bum Stampede, illustrated by Sarah Davis and published by Scholastic. It’s the first in a series about George’s family, the Peppertons. Cal passed away unexpectedly after a brief illness in October 2023; she is sorely missed. GNU Cal Wilson.

You can find the full show notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.