Discworld

#Pratchat93 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 93, “We’re Not Here to Folk Spiders”, discussing Terry Pratchett’s 2008 collaboration with Dr Jacqueline Simpson, The Folklore of Discworld, with guest Roslyn Quin.

Iconographic Evidence

We’ll add those TikTok videos Ros mentioned here soon!

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title is a riff on the Australian slang phrase “I’m not here to fuck spiders”, which we discuss in this episode. We previously talked about it way back in #Pratchat29, “Great Rimward Land”, about The Last Continent. For more on Ben’s investigation of its origins, see the notes and errata for that episode.
  • Toastmasters is an international non-profit organisation, based in the US, which runs clubs teaching public speaking and other communications skills. It was formed in 1905 by Ralph C. Smedley, a YMCA educational director from Illinois. While it remains popular, it is fair to say its methods haven’t changed a great deal in 120 years, but if you want to get more confident with public speaking or interpersonal communication, you could do a lot worse than look up your local club.
  • Jim Henson’s The Storyteller was a 1987 anthology series of nine stories told by an old Storyteller played by John Hurt, in heavy makeup to give him a “half-puppet” appearance (and to occasionally allow him to appear as his “younger self” in the stories). Each episode he sat by a fire and told his talking dog (a puppet performed by Brian Henson) a version of a classic folk story, shown to the audience by a full cast of humans and creatures, including demons, dragons and giants. A second, shorter series titled The Storyteller: Greek Myths featured Michael Gambon as a different storyteller, telling the same dog stories of heroes from Greek mythology. Both series were produced in the UK, and feature a guest cast of many great British actors who were (or would go on to become) very famous.
  • “Davey and the Fish King”, Roslyn’s comfort story, is a variation on the “Fish returned to water: grateful” story type, number B375.1 in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index of folk stories. There are lots of versions of this, but the one Ros knows is a Scottish variation which also involves the Devil and a magical cow. Ask her to tell it to you if you get the chance!
  • British storyteller Taffy Thomas is based in the Lake District, and is (as you might expect) a story of his own. He was awarded an MBE in 2001 for services to storytelling, and named the first Storytelling Laureate of England in 2009 for a period of two years, from 2010 to 2012. The role isn’t appointed by the monarch, but was created by a number of local and former national Poet Laureates. Other storytellers have claimed to hold the position too, but we were unable to confirm if it had indeed been passed on.
  • Devil’s Cave is located near Heathcote, a small town in Central Victoria dating back to the gold rush era. The cave itself now appears to be behind a vineyard, but we don’t know if the wine is any good. As for the story behind the cave…you’ll have to ask Ros next time she’s telling stories.
  • There are four Science of Discworld books, all collaborations between Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. We’ve done episodes about all four of them, though heads up that we liked the first one by far the best, and had a great dislike of the second and fourth ones. The episodes are:
  • The mystery object mentioned by Liz is the “Roman dodecahedron”, an object cast in copper alloy in the shape of a dodecahedron (think of a twelve-sided dice). They have circular holes in the middle of each face, and spherical knobs on each corner. A hundred or so have been found since the eighteenth century, and they date back to the second to fourth century CE. The idea that they were used for knitting gloves has been popular, but has little basis in history – for one thing, the earliest known examples of knitting are from around the 11th century, the best part of a millennium later. Their true purpose remains a mystery.
  • The clay tablet on display at the State Library of Victoria is from around 2,050 BCE (so around 4,000 years ago). It’s written in cuneiform script in the Sumerian language, and records taxes paid in sheep and goats. It’s older than the one Liz mentions, the famous “complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir”, which was one of many similar clay tablet discovered in 1953. The tablet was sent as a letter from the merchant Nanni complaining about sub-standard copper and the rude treatment of his servant during a business dealing with Ea-nāṣir. The tablet became an internet meme in 2015, via a Reddit post drawing parallels with modern-day customer complaints.
  • While the title of the show is Doctor Who, the main character is always known as simply “the Doctor”. Well…almost always. A computer intelligence in the 1960s once asked for him by name by stating “Doctor Who is required”, but that was an anomaly. In every other instance “Doctor Who” has been used in the show, it’s been a joke. In-universe, the Doctor has variously claimed that their real name is unpronouncable, that they’re an actual Doctor of one kind or another (or “everything”, “this and that”, but not usually a medical doctor), and eventually that they chose the name “as a promise”. They have also often used the alias “Dr John Smith”. Most Time Lords have individual names, and while they’re sometimes very long and grand, they’re generally pronounceable. But “renegades” who leave their home planet of Gallifrey have something of a tradition of adopting a title instead. Those seen in the show include the Master, the Rani, the Monk and the War Chief.
  • Pratchett’s own feelings on Doctor Who are not recorded in print in many places, though as Ben says he is featured in the anthology Behind the Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who, edited by Steve Berry. Pratchett didn’t write an essay, but the introduction: the book is a fundraiser for Alzheimer’s UK. Pratchett talks about having “been there at the beginning” and watching the original Doctor, William Hartnell, from the very first episode (screened twice because of “that pesky business with the grassy knoll”). He had stopped watching by the time Patrick Troughton came along, and tried it again in the 1980s with Rhianna, but it wasn’t really his speed. Of the revived series, he said he liked that we had a Doctor who could really act (a bit rude), but describes it as not really science fiction, since it’s full of “make-it-up-as-you-go-alongium” (what we now generally call “handwavium”). But, he notes, perhaps it was always that way. He acknowledges it’s service in introducing many to science fiction, but also makes a point of saying that he remembers the sci-fi you used to get before Doctor Who… While this might sound like a mixed reaction, Rachel from the Better Than a Poke in the Eye newsletter informs us that Terry was actually an avid fan, insisting he not have events scheduled when it was on, and having an episode projected on the big screen (a sheet) at one of the Discworld conventions so he could watch it live with the fans. See her comment below for more!
  • Scheherazade is the main character of the framing narrative of One Thousand and One Nights, the English title for the famous collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled between the 8th and 11th centuries CE. In the story, she is the daughter of the Vizier of King Shahryār. The King had decided all women were eventually unfaithful, and so would only marry virgins; he would have them killed the day after their wedding night so they could not “dishonour him”. (Like many folk tales, it’s grisly stuff.) When the Vizier could find no more virgins for him to marry, Scheherazade volunteered as tribute, but on their wedding night told him a story…but not how it ended. The King was so intrigued by the story that he stayed her execution, and on she goes, each night finishing a story and beginning a new one to leave on a cliffhanger.
  • We previously discussed Victorian-era and earlier authors who were paid by the word, line or instalment in #Pratchat65, “Let There Be Gaimans”.
  • “The Backrooms” are an online “creepypasta” story, and are imagined as an unsettling, endless liminal space that exists outside of reality, mostly empty but occasionally inhabited by strange creatures. The idea originated in an anonymous post on the infamous forum site 4chan in 2019, inspired by a photograph of yellow featureless rooms (later revealed to be a store in Wisconsin during its renovation by a new tenant). The idea found further fame in 2022 with a web series about exploration of the Backrooms in the 1990s, created by teenager Kane Parsons, and reaching hundreds of millions of views. Parsons adapted this series into the 2026 feature film Backrooms starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, which is now a global hit.
  • The Slender Man (or Slenderman) is another creepypasta Internet meme, created in 2009 by Eric Knudsen for a Photoshop contest on the Something Awful web forums. In the original, Knudsen added an impossibly tall, thin figure in a black suit to old photographs of groups of children running, and a brief caption indicating that the children disappeared from a library which was burned down. The Slender Man has many similarities to elves and faeries, with a shifting appearance, mysterious motivations, and the ability to steal away children without a trace. It has continued to be popular, inspiring films, videogames and other media, though unlike the Backrooms, no one depiction of the Slender Man has been popular enough to solidify him and bring him into the mainstream.
  • Ben is right that the quote Ros is thinking of is from G. K. Chesterton, though the more famous version is a pithy paraphrase by Neil Gaiman. Here’s the original, which comes from Chesterton’s book of peronal writings, Tremendous Trifles:

Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

Chesterton G K (1909), Tremendous Trifles, Chapter XVII: The Red Angel, p. 102, Methuen & Co, London.
  • We’ve mentioned H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) many times before, as the influence of his work is found in the Discworld – most obviously as the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions, Bel-Shahamroth, the creatures of Holy Wood, and the Necrotelicomnicon. He was in no uncertain terms a white supremacist, as well as elitist and classist, and it’s not hard to find clear evidence of these views in his writing. Cosmic horror is still a great genre, but if you’re reading the original stories, go in with your eyes open. (The last couple of longer stories, “At the Mountains of Madness” and “The Shadow Out of Time”, are Ben’s favourites, and contain less prejudice than many.)
  • The Magnus Archives is a horror fiction podcast told in the audio equivalent of “found footage” horror films. (Ben has suggested names for this format, including “recovered recordings” or ” In each episode, a member of the Magnus Institute for paranormal research – often creator Jonathan Sims as “the Archivist” – will read or play a recording of a witness statement recounting some strange phenomena. Over time these build up a world and several stories, and other members of the Institute and various witnesses become major or supporting characters. The show ran for 200 main episodes over five seasons between 2016 and 2021, and has since spawned a sequel show (The Magnus Protocol, which began in 2024), merchandise, a tabletop roleplaying game and an upcoming board game. As Ros mentions, the vampires of the Magnus Archives universe are very different to the usual kind, or those from earlier folklore. They first appear in the first season episode MAG 10, “Vampire Killer“, from 14 April 2016.
  • Comedian Steve Martin probably wasn’t the first person to appear on television with “an arrow through his head” during his appearances on Saturday Night Live in the 1970s. The whole reason it worked as part of his schtick was that it was a hackneyed “comedy prop” which pre-dated him. (Some sources credit 1940s American magician Dell O’Dell with creating the prop, though I’ve been unable to confirm if this is true. She’s very interesting though, you should look her up!) Martin reportedly told Playboy in a 1980 interview that the point wasn’t that the arrow was funny – it was that someone thought it was funny.
  • The classic jester cap is also known as a “fool’s cap” or “cap ’n’ bell”, and seems to have been real. Some versions do seem to have resembled asses’ ears, but the cap is also said to be a mock crown, which along with a mock sceptre represented the “jester’s privilege”: their permission to speak truth to power through comedy. I’m still looking for some good historical sources for all of this, but images of this kind of jester costume are pretty old, dating back to at least the fourteenth or fifteenth century, when they were often depicted in illuminated manuscripts.
  • Scottish actor, writer and folklorist Kenny Boyle can be found on TikTok, explaining a variety of Scottish folk tales and creatures. One relevant to our discussion is that he explains the pronunciations and meanings of all the Gaelic names of dragons from popular romantasy series Fourth Wing…
  • The Moomintrolls or Moomins are the creations of Finnish author and illustrator Tove Jannson, published in a series of books beginning with Muumit ja suuri tuhotulva (The Moomins and the Great Flood), first written and published in Swedish as Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen in 1945. The books recount the adventures of Moomintroll, a young troll who lives with his Moominpapa and Moominmama, and who along with friends like Little My and Snuffkin, meets and has adventures with other supernatural creatures. The first couple of books were moderate successes, but the third, Taikurin hattu (“The Magician’s Hat”, Trollkarlens hatt in Swedish; translated into English as Finn Family Moomintroll and The Happy Moomins), was a worldwide hit, and the series continued for a total of nine novels and five picture books. The Moomins continue to be popular worldwide, and have appeared in comic strips and books, animated films and TV series, and videogames, and there are Moomin theme parks and cafes in Finland, Japan and other countries. Both Terry and Rhianna Pratchett are known Moomin fans.
  • It appears that Australian ebook editions of The Folklore of Discworld are the ones with only updated covers. Ben has the Apple Books version, and has checked the Kindle version too; both have 2014 edition’s “Updated up to Raising Steam” cover, but still have the 2009 contents. You can easily check your own copy; if it has a chapter titled “Notes on the folklore of Unseen Academicals” at the end, it’s the 2009 version. Note that the 2014 version is the only one published in the US, so that seems to be correct; we’d love to hear if ebook editions are current in the UK and other countries!
  • Lovecraft Country is a 2020 television series created by Misha Green, based on and serving as a sequel to Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel, also titled Lovecraft Country. Set in the 1950s, it follows young Black man Atticus “Tic” Freeman, a Korean war veteran, as he searches for his missing father in parts of America which served as inspiration for Lovecraft’s stories. It ran for one season of ten episodes and was a critical success, though not without some concerns over the way it used real-life historical events. The series was cancelled in 2021 before a planned second season, Lovecraft Country: Supremacy, could be produced.
  • The Kraken Wakes is a 1953 science fiction novel by English writer John Wyndham, best known for Day of the Triffids. An important detail in the novel that Ben forgot is that the creatures are aliens – they land in Earth’s oceans, and are thought to come from a gas giant or other world with high pressure, so they can only live at great depths. When they destroy a human bathysphere sent to investigate them, the British government detonates a nuclear weapon at one of their undersea locations, kicking off a war which humanity – at odds from the Cold War – lose badly.
  • Alexander Bunyip is a children’s character created by Michael Salmon for the 1972 picture book The Monster That Ate Canberra, which was popular enough for five follow ups. Alexander is a large pink creature resembling a cross between a dragon, Godzilla and a cow. In the original book he is huge, but he is best known from the television series Alexander Bunyip’s Billabong, where he was played at human size by Mike Meade. It should be noted that, aside from living in a Billabong, Alexander probably has little in common with most Bunyip stories, of which there are many among the indigenous peoples of southeastern Australia.
  • A rip – not to be confused with a riptide, or undertow, which are two separate things – is a strong current found on beaches which flows directly out to sea. Rips are very strong, but also very narrow, so if you’re ever caught in one, you should swim across it, parallel to the beach, rather than tiring yourself out trying to swim directly against it back towards the shore.

More notes coming soon!

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

#Pratchat93 – We’re Not Here to Folk Spiders

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Storyteller and librarian Roslyn Quin joins Liz and Ben to discover there’s nowt as queer as folklore, as we discuss Terry Pratchett’s 2008 (and 2009 and 2014) collaboration with folklorist Jacqueline Simpson, The Folklore of Discworld.

Wherever there are folk, you’ll find folklore: the stories, traditions, superstitions and more that tell people who they are, and make up their world. The curious thing is, the folklore of a flat world swimming through space on the back of a giant turtle turns out to have a considerable amount in common with that of a round world orbiting a star…

The Folklore of Discworld is part a greatest hits collection of Terry’s imagination, and part a summary of the Roundworld lore that inspired or at least resembles its Discworld counterparts. Like The Science of Discworld books it’s a collaboration with an expert in the field – in this case, Dr Jacqueline Simpson of the Folklore Society. Unlike those books, however, there’s no neat division into fiction and non-fiction chapters, with the whole thing written in one voice. It both assumes a fair amount of interest in the Discworld, but also repeats lots of lore about creatures, people and places that fans will probably know, so it’s the discussion and the comparison to Roundworld – and especially British – folklore that makes it shine.

What are your favourite bits of folklore here, whether from the Disc or from Roundworld? Do you feel like this has Pratchett’s voice, or is it mostly Simpson’s? Was there enough detail, or were you yearning for more? Which of the versions did you read? And what folklore would you love to see included if it was ever revised again? Join our online conversation via email or by incanting the magic phrase #Pratchat93 on the social media platform of your choice (assuming it’s one where we are).

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Guest Roslyn Quin (she/they) is a storyteller, librarian, puppeteer, actor, clown and artist who began her performance career with the 2012 solo storytelling show The Red Bird and Death. Since then she’s performed as part of festivals, cabaret and burlesque nights, on podcasts (including the hit Australian audio comedy Love and Luck), and wherever two or more are gathered together and ready to hear a tale. These days you’ll mostly find Ros telling stories to children of all ages at Yarra Plenty Regional Libraries. As mentioned in the episode, she’ll also be telling stories at 6, 7 and 8 PM on Friday 3 July for Melbourne’s free Firelight Festival at Docklands Park! You can also find out more about Ros at roslynquin.com.

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

Next month it’s back to the pixels one more time, as we try and solve three missing persons cases at once in Perfect Entertainment’s third and final Discworld adventure game, Discworld Noir! Send us your questions via email (chat@pratchatpodcast.com), use the hashtag #Pratchat94 on social media, or just turn up at our office acting mysterious. That always works.

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.

#PratchatNAX Notes and Errata

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These are the notes and errata for our bonus live episode “The Snail Trick”, discussing Rhianna Pratchett and Gabrielle Kent’s 2023 Discworld book, Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch – in front of a live audience at the Australian Discworld Convention in Sydney!

Iconographic Evidence

Liz, Ben and the Megapode (ho! The Megapode!) at the Gala Dinner during Nullus Anxietas X.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title blends Ben’s favourite new detail from the book, Petulia’s “snail hotel” purse, with the most infamous – her “pig trick”. But you knew that.
  • We’ve previously appeared at several other Nullus Anxietas events, and released the results as episodes in one way or another:
    • “A Troll New World” about “Troll Bridge”, was our first live episode, recorded at Nullus Anxietas 7 in Melbourne in 2019, with guest Tansy Rayner-Roberts.
    • “Twice as Alive” was a special live online episode recorded for Nullus Anxietas: The Lost Con, the online convention held in 2021. It revisited Men at Arms for the first time since #Pratchat1, “Boots Theory”, in 2017.
    • “A Tale of Two Carpets” was a pre-recorded discussion comparing The Carpet People (1971) and The Carpet People (1992). It was broadcast as part of the Virtual Discworld Fun Day in 2022, as a replacement for the sadly cancelled Nullus Anxietas 7a. The original Nullus Anxietas version is available on YouTube, and there’s also an annotated version (i.e. Ben added text-caption footnotes and a few other extras) available only to podcast subscribers.
    • “Unalive from Überwald” about “Death and What Comes Next” was our second live in-person episode, recorded at Nullus Anxietas 9 in Adelaide in 2024, with guests Tansy Rayner-Roberts and Karen J Carlisle.
  • Our interview with Rhianna Pratchett and Gabrielle Kent about Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch was released as Pratchat74, “Hogswitch”, in December 2023.
  • On a related note, you can now watch Rhianna and Gabrielle’s interview for the convention on YouTube.
  • Paul Hogan (1939-) is an Australian actor and comedian who leveraged appearances on a television talent show into his own sketch comedy series, before finding international fame as Mick “Crocodile” Dundee, the titular character in the 1986 Australian film Crocodile Dundee. It’s essentially a romantic comedy in which Sue, a journalist from New York, travels to the Northern Territory to meet Mick, a “legendary” white bushman who fights off snakes and crocodiles with ease. It hasn’t aged well in many respects, but several of its scenes and lines became iconic, including one in which Mick scares off a would-be armed mugger by drawing his much bigger knife. The film was a major hit at the time, and established the modern American “outback fantasy” idea of what Australia (and Australians) are like. Hogan went on to become a tourism icon for Australia, famously inviting Americans by promising to “throw another shrimp on the barbie”. The film had two sequels, neither of which is highly regarded, though 1988’s Crocodile Dundee II – in which Sue’s ex-husband sends evidence against a drug cartel to Sue before being murdered, putting her and Mick in danger – was also a box office hit.
  • James Eoin Stephen Paul McKeown, better known as Jimeoin, is an Irish comedian who rose to prominence in the 1990s in Australia. His self-titled television show, Jimeoin, ran from 1994 to 1995, and featured the snail joke Ben re-tells in this episode.
  • The Fifth Element is a 1997 sci-fi action film directed by Luc Besson, starring Bruce Willis, Mila Jovovich and Gary Oldman. Set a few centuries in the future when the Earth is threatened by the return of a “great evil”, the weapon that can defeat it made up of the four classical elements, and a mysterious “fifth element”, represented by a young woman who is destroyed and then re-built using futuristic technology. The film is visually incredible, but is perhaps the poster child for the problematic narrative trope dubbed “born sexy yesterday” – a “blank slate” young woman who is magically or technologically created as a physical adult, but with limited maturity and life experience.
  • The Fifth Elephant is the 24th Discworld novel, published in 1999 when The Fifth Elephant was still fresh in everyone’s memories. Aside from the title, it doesn’t really have any connection to the film. We discussed in #Pratchat40, “The King and the Hole of the King”, in 2021.
  • The 1990s hit TV series Charmed originally starred Shannen Doherty, Holly Marie Combs and Alyssa Milano as “the charmed ones”, a trio of sisters who discover they are witches, each with a magical superpower, who can combine their magic to cast spells and vanquish demons. It ran for eight seasons between 1998 and 2006, though Shannon Doherty left after the third season and was replaced by Rose McGowan as a secret half-sister of the other three. They don’t seem to ever seriously claim that zippers were invented by witches, but in an early episode from the first season, “The Witch is Back”, a witch summoned through time from 300 years earlier is so impressed with the zipper on a dress she is loaned that she declares “a wise witch made this!” A reboot of the series with a new trio of charmed ones ran for four seasons from 2018 to 2022, though it had no involvement from the original cast and crew, and wasn’t as successful as the original.
  • We covered The Witches board game in #Pratchat67, “The Three-Elf Problem”. In the game, players take on the role of Tiffany or one of three other trainee witches, visiting various locations in the Lancre area to solve “problems” like sick pigs, pregnancies and deaths. Successfully solving a problem involves rolling dice, but there are various ways to improve the result, including using magic – though this and other missteps earn you “cackle counters”, which track your progress to becoming like Black Aliss. You can only remove cackle counters by sacrificing a turn to move to a location with another witch, “taking tea” and talking about your problems to keep you both grounded.
  • We discussed Raising Steam in #Pratchat90, “Mind the Ginnungagap”.
  • The pig trick first appears in A Hat Full of Sky, where the audience at the Witch Trials are amazed that Petulia intends to do it “without a pig” and “using only a sausage”. This may indicate that “the pig trick” is something infamous from witch lore, and the sausage version is Petulia’s unique spin on it. Since Tiffany and Granny are staring at each other at the time, the narration from Tiffany’s point of view only notes “a squeal”, followed by a “gasp of amazement” and applause from the crowd.
  • Willow is a 1988 fantasy film directed by Ron Howard and produced by George Lucas, starring Warwick Davis as the titular character, a wannabe wizard from a village of humble farmers. Early in the film, Willow botches his “disappearing pig trick”, which as Ben mentions is stage magic rather than actual sorcery. The movie stands up pretty well, and also stars Val Kilmer as the swordsman who helps Willow protect a baby who is prophesied to be the doom of an evil sorceress, played by Jean Marsh.
  • “The pissing boy in Brussells” is the famous statue Manneken Pis, a bronze of a small naked boy which is part of a fountain located not far from the main square in Brussells, the capital of Belgium. Some version of the fountain dates back to the 15th century, though the version known now was sculpted by Jérôme Duquesnoy the Elder in around 1619, and upgraded in the early 18th century. The one on public display is a replica, as the original was frequently stolen, and is now in a museum. He’s a popular tourist attraction and is often dressed in various clothes made for him – there’s even a museum of his outfits (which number in the hundreds) down the street.
  • Gnomes is the English title of the 1976 book, Leven en werken van de kabouter (‘Life and work of the gnomes’) by Dutch writer Wil Huygen, and based on the illustrations by Dutch artist Rien Poortvliet. The book pretends to be a biological and historical study of a species of tiny humanoids known as gnomes, based on European folklore, and credited to a gnome named David. It was a huge hit, including in the United States and Spain. It was adapted for television, first in 1980 as a one-hour telemovie in the US, and later as several series for Spanish television, starting with David, el gnomo in 1985 (dubbed into English as The World of David the Gnome).
  • Mage: The Ascension was first published by White Wolf in 1993, with later editions in 1995 and 1999, plus a Twentieth Anniversary Edition (M20) published in 2015. That last edition contains a brief bit about magic vs magick on page 41, under the heading ‘That “M” Word with that Funny “K”’. The fictional author addressing the player’s character, a new mage, says:

Many people find the word pretentious… but then, a certain degree of pretention is inevitable when you play games with reality. As far as I’m concerned, it’s pretense only if you can’t live up to the power of your claims. And since living up to such power is what magick is all about, that spelling seems appropriate to me.

  • The snail purse does appear to be new to Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch; it’s not mentioned in any of the novels in which Petulia appears, and snails are generally only mentioned in the context of being farmed and eaten by Feegles.
  • For the record, the gear Ben used to record this episode was a PreSonus AudioBox 44VSL digital interface, three Shure SM58 microphones, and a 2019 13” MacBook Pro running Reaper (the software Ben still uses for all his audio editing). When we meet in person for board game episodes, he currently uses a set of RØDE Procaster microphones instead, and is hoping to upgrade to a newer digital interface or mobile digital mixer/recorder in the near future. (The AudioBox works, but is getting a bit old.)
  • You can read the Modiphius media release about their upcoming board games on their website. As of the publication of this episode, no updates have been given about either Readers Digested or Kill Sam Vimes, though we’ll note that the former is also the title of
  • We were pressed to mention a few of our favourite guests, and while we hasten to say “splendid chap, all of them”, the specific mentions go to:

#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 hosted the one after that, in April 2026, with the theme “A Celebration of Witches”. We were there, and you can hear the result in #PratchatNAX, “The Snail Trick”.
  • 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, where any fool (or assassin) could find them…
  • 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 it 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 (though currently not available); 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.

#PratchatNAX – The Snail Trick

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Liz and Ben were once again fortunate to be guests of the Australian Discworld Convention – this time in Sydney! In this live recording from day two of Nullus Anxietas X: A Celebration of Witches, we discuss Rhianna Pratchett and Gabrielle Kent’s 2023 book, Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch. (We previously interviewed Rhianna and Gabrielle about it in Pratchat74, “Hogswitch”.)

Tiffany Aching has been a witch for some years now, and has been writing down what she’s learned. When she gets the opportunity to publish her work, and hopefully inspire a new generation of witches, she sends the manuscript to her mentors to get their thoughts via notes in the margins. And a couple of uninvited guests give their opinions, too – on everything from proper headwear, to the relationships between witches, and the supernatural threats one is likely to face…

Which new bits were your favourites from the book? What did you think Petunia’s “pig trick” was when you first read about it in A Hat Full of Sky? Do you have a favourite witch, and why is it Nanny Ogg? (We won’t tell Granny.) Are you a Dolly Sisters fan, or a Dimwell diehard? (The reason this is important will become apparent when you listen.) What do you wish we’d do on the podcast before we finish up with all the novels – or perhaps do next, when Pratchat is over? We’d love to know! Use the hashtag #PratchatNAX on social media to join the conversation, or email us at chat@pratchatpodcast.com (we do read them all, though we’ve been a bit slow to reply of late).

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Nullus Anxietas, the Australian Discworld Convention, has been running for nearly twenty years. The next convention will be in 2028 in Melbourne! You can find out more at the official convention website, ausdwcon.org. You can also follow Nullus Anxietas on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

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

Huge thanks to everyone who attended the convention; our wonderful live audience, especially Danny, Helen and Jeremy; and especially offer enormous thanks to the “big jobs” – the team of hard-working volunteers and committee members who make Nullus Anxietas happen, especially Joanne, Steve, Danny and Kurt – but there were so many others. We hope to see you all in Melbourne for the next one.

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.

#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 Mort, an adaptation he was much less enthusiastic about. 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.
  • Thanks to listener David Llewellyn, who points out that the cartbomb in the Fool’s Guild is a parody of the opening sequence of Lethal Weapon 3, in which loose cannon cop Riggs (Mel Gibson) decides not to wait for the bomb squad when he and Murtaugh (Danny Glover) discover a car bomb in a car park. While trying to defuse the bomb, Riggs asks Murtaugh if he’ll miss this kind of thing when he retires, which Rincewind echoes in his line about missing this sort of thing “when they stop making games like this”. When he inevitably cuts the wrong wire, Riggs tells Murtaugh “Grab the cat.” The whole building explodes just as they escape. Lethal Weapon 3 came out in 1992, four years before Discworld II, so folks playing it at the time would likely have recognised it. But it’s not nearly as well known now as the other films referenced, like The Mask or Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
  • 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 in which the player takes on the role of Arthur Dent. (We will assume someone listening to a Terry Pratchett podcast is at least familiar with the premise of The Hitchhiker’s Guide.) It 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. It was co-written by Douglas Adams himself, and is infamously difficult – though there are harder text adventures! Versions have been made available for free online by the BBC, and the a 30th Anniversary version of the game is still available.
  • 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.

#Pratchat92 – Sand of the Scrounge Wizard

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Writer and game designer Kat Clay joins Liz and Ben to point and click on Rincewind once more, as we discuss the 1996 graphic adventure game Discworld II: Missing, Presumed…!? from Perfect Entertainment.

When the wizard Windle Poons dies, no-one comes to collect his soul – and this isn’t the first time Death has been derelict in his duty. Something must be done, and the Archchancellor knows just the man for the job: so-called wizard and veteran videogame protagonist, Rincewind! Can he – that is to say, you – navigate an ever more fiendish chain of elaborate tasks to summon Death, and persuade him to go back to work? Or will the Disc be doomed to immortality?

The first Discworld point-and-click graphic adventure, released in 1995, was a hit. So of course Perfect Entertainment – the merged form of Teeny Weeny Games and Perfect 10 Productions – returned just one year later with a sequel. While not quite as well known as the original, Discworld II: Missing, Presumed…!? (or Discworld II: Mortality Bytes in the US) once again features Eric Idle as Rincewind, a cast of thousands (voiced by three), and a plot constructed from bits of Discworld novels (mostly Reaper Man and Mort). It also features an original song written and performed by Idle, a brand new visual style, and more fourth wall breaks than you can shake a Suffrajester at. The team, headed by Angela Sutherland and Gregg Barnett, would go on to produce one more Discworld game: Discworld Noir, a brand new story with an original protagonist. But like its stablemates, Discworld 2 is currently out of publication.

Have you played Discworld 2? Did you find it easier than the first one? Was it written with an awareness that women play videogames? Do you prefer the cel-animation look of this game, or the cartoony pixels of the first one? Does it feel more like the Discworld, or a spin-off from Monty Python? And for subscribers especially, would you like to watch Ben stream these games and play along? Join our online conversation by using your fingers with the social media platform, and then clicking on the hashtag #Pratchat92.

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Guest Kat Clay (she/her) is a writer of fiction and tabletop roleplaying games from Melbourne, Australia. Her writing is mostly horror, and has included short stories, game reviews, novellas and hopefully an upcoming full-length novel. Kat won a Silver ENNIE award for her Call of Cthulhu adventure, The Well of All Fear, and her recent modern-day Cthulhu adventure, Resort, won Best Scenario at the 2025 Australian Industry Roleplaying Awards. You can find out more about Kat, and read some of her work, at katclay.com. You can also find her on social media, including Bluesky as @katclay.com, and buy her adventures via DriveThruRPG – where they’re all bestsellers!

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

Next month we’re getting schooled in legends and lore via Pratchett’s collaboration with Jacqueline Simpson, The Folklore of Discworld! We’ll be looking at the third edition, which references all the novels up to Raising Steam. Send us your questions via email (chat@pratchatpodcast.com), or send us a magpie via social media using the hashtag #Pratchat93.

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.

#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.

#Pratchat91 – We Can Reference It For You Wholesale

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Liz and Ben do a little light Summer reading as they tackle one of the biggest Discworld books of all – Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs’ The Discworld Companion, in all its various editions (but mostly 2021’s The Ultimate Discworld Companion).

From the Abbott of the History Monks, to dimensionally-displaced traveller Jack Zweiblumen, the Discworld Companion is an alphabetical encyclopaedia of everything Discworld! Flip to your favourite character, location or thing from across the Disc, and rediscover what made you fall in love with this world all over again.

After Stephen Briggs started adapted the Discworld novels for the stage, he started to make notes about how the pieces of this fictional world fit together. He started by suggesting it would be possible to draw a map of Ankh-Morpork, and then advanced to trying to encompass the whole of the world in a single reference work. That was in the 1990s, at the height of Discworld’s fame and success – and before the world wide web was on everyone’s desk (or in everyone’s pocket). But there have been four major editions (and multiple other revisions) of The Discworld Companion since then, each bigger than the last – and the Dunmanifestin expanded edition of The Ultimate Discworld Companion is probably the biggest Discworld book of all time!

Do you have a copy of the Companion? Which edition is it? How do you read it, and what are your favourite entries? What would you compile an encyclopaedia about, and what would you put into the Discworld Companion if you got the chance? And do you know where Mr Harris and the Blue Cat Club come from – if they come from anywhere? Let us know your answers via social media (optionally using the hashtag #Pratchat91), send us an email, or comment on our website to join the conversation!

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

Next month it’s back to the digital Discworld, as we play and discuss the second Discworld adventure game, Discworld II: Missing, Presumed…!? (aka Discworld II: Mortality Bytes.) Send us any questions you have via email (chat@pratchatpodcast.com) or social media, optionally using the hashtag #Pratchat92.

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 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.