Discworld

#Pratchat67 – The Three-Elf Problem

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This month we welcome back the very game Steve Lamattina as we put on our witch’s hats, grab our brooms and head out into Lancre to solve problems in Martin Wallace’s The Witches, the fourth official Discworld board game.

As Tiffany Aching or one of her fellow apprentice witches, you’ll run around Lancre solving problems big and small with headology and magic, helped by an assortment of local characters. But it’s not just about getting the highest score – you’ll also need to watch each other’s backs or everyone in the kingdom could lose! Be sure to stop and share tea, or you might end up a cackler…

Which witch is your favourite? How does The Witches rank against the other Discworld board games? Do you see it as a great family game, a mediocre co-op challenge, or something in between? Who do you wish had been included as a card or playable character? And would you use the game to introduce your friends to board games, the Discworld, or both?

Check out the episode notes for pictures of the game components, and use the hashtag #Pratchat67 on social media to join in the conversation on this one!

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Steve Lamattina is a writer and editor whose work spans film, music, education and technology. He was once CEO of the youth publishing company Express Media, whom we still stan, and currently works for the Victorian Department of Education. You can find him on Twitter as @steve_lamattina.

Next month we’re going back…back to nearly the beginning! Yes, for #Pratchat68 we’re setting the procrastinator coordinates for 1981 as we read and discuss Pratchett’s proto-Discworld sci-fi novel Strata. It’s a nice short book to get in before we tackle The Long Utopia in July… Use the hashtag #Pratchat68 to send us questions about Strata!

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

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

#Pratchat74 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 74, “Hogswitch”, an interview with the authors of Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch, Rhianna Pratchett and Gabrielle Kent.

Iconographic Evidence

This is “Love is All”, the music video Ben talks about for a song from the 1974 concept album The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast. See below for the origins of the album, which was written by Roger Glover and featured lots of high profile rock stars, including here Ronnie James Dio as the frog.

Notes and Errata

  • The talk at the British Library mentioned by Rhianna is the book’s launch event at the British Library, organised by the Living Knowledge Network and held in conjunction with the “Fantasy: Realms of Imagination” exhibition. It was held on 27 October 2023, the day after the book’s original release date – the release was delayed by Typhoon Saola, which delayed shipping to the UK including the initial supplies of the book. You can watch the whole event on the Living Knowledge Network website.
  • The talk at Waterstones Picadilly is not available as a video or audio recording; you had to be there, folks! For those not in the know, Waterstones is one of the major book chains in the UK, and the Picadilly store is one of their flagship shops in London. Its hosted many Pratchett events in the past, including a midnight opening for The Shepherd’s Crown, an event for Crystal of Storms (see below), and many signings.
  • Travelling Man is a games, comics and fantasy books business with stores in Leeds, York, Newcastle and Manchester in the UK. They also run their own small press. You can find outmore about them at travellingman.com.
  • Crystal of Storms is Rhianna’s 2020 Fighting Fantasy book: a branching narrative told in the second person in which the reader chooses their path through the story, and also must occasionally roll dice to try and overcome obstacles and defeat monsters. The series was created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone of Games Workshop fame in 1982. Crystal of Storms was part of a revival of the Fighting Fantasy books by Scholastic Books that began in 2017, one of six new books published along side new editions of the classic ones.
  • Gabrielle’s previous seven books are:
    • The Alfie Bloom trilogy: Alfie Bloom and the Secrets of Hexbridge Castle (2015), Alfie Bloom and the Talisman Thief (2016) and Alfie Bloom and the Witch of Demon Rock (2017)
    • The three Knights and Bikes books: Knights and Bikes (2018), Knights and Bikes: Rebel Bicycle Club (2019) and Knights and Bikes: Wheels of Legend (2020)
    • The first Rani Reports book, Rani Reports on the Missing Millions (2023)
  • The second Rani Reports book is due to be published on 5 September 2024, and currently available info lists the title as Rani Reports on the Copycat Crimes.
  • “Frou-frou” is term derived from French (originally the sound of a rustling bag), which has become British slang meaning overly ornamental or excessively fancy. (A famous example is the character Le Comte de Frou Frou from Blackadder the Third.) Frou-frou flavoured coffees might therefore include a pumpkin spice or salted caramel latte. We’ve no objection to any of this, by the way; enjoy your coffee any way you like! (Ben’s partner often has a bit of cardamom mixed into her coffee, and uses a spiced drinking chocolate on top of the frothed milk for a cappuccino.)
  • Yorkshire Biscuit Tea is indeed a frou-frou flavoured tea, manufactured by the Yorkshire Tea company and marketed as tasting like “tea and biscuits”. They also have a “Toast & Jam” flavour, and both were at least temporarily available in Australia in 2023.
  • There are several official Discworld and Terry Pratchett websites:
    • terrypratchett.com – the main official source for Terry Pratchett news.
    • dunmanifestin.com – the site for Dunmanifestin, the company created by Terry and Lynne Pratchett to hold copyright for Pratchett’s work, and the official site for the Terry Pratchett estate. Dunmanifestin directly publishes deluxe editions of various Pratchett works, like the Ultimate Discworld Companion and the upcoming graphic novel adaptation of Good Omens.
    • narrativia.com – the production company that controls licensing rights for all Pratchett’s works since 2012.
    • discworld.com – an official Discworld shop, originally known as PJSM Prints, founded, owned and run by Sandra and Jo Kidby. They originally sold only Paul Kidby’s art prints, but have since expanded to many other Discworld items, notably special editions of the books. (Note that Paul Kidby also has his own website, paulkidby.com, and sells items based on his artwork there, too.)
    • discworldemporium.com – the Discworld Emporium is the other official Discworld merchandise shop, set up by Bernard and Isobel Pearson after they closed their first business, Clarecraft.
  • Geoffrey Swivel is, as mentioned, Tiffany’s apprentice in The Shepherd’s Crown. In the novel Geoffrey uses he/him pronouns, but also makes it clear he doesn’t think of himself as either traditional gender. This led Rhianna and Gabrielle to update Geoffrey’s pronouns to they/them for Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch. We’ll leave any further discussion for our episode about The Shepherd’s Crown (and eventual return to Tiffany Aching’s Guide).
  • Spill words are a concept introduced in I Shall Wear Midnight. Mrs Proust, the city witch in Ankh-Morpork who runs Boffo’s Emporium, explains it to Tiffany: “A spill word is a word that somebody almost says, but doesn’t. For a moment they hover in the conversation but aren’t spoken”. We discussed them in #Pratchat66, “Ol’ No Eyes is Back”.
  • Annagramma is the conventionally attractive mean girl and presumptive leader of the coven of young witches introduced in A Hat Full of Sky. In Wintersmith she takes over the steading that belonged to Miss Treason; she is only mentioned in passing in I Shall Wear Midnight, and plays a very minor role in The Shepherd’s Crown.
  • You is the white kitten Tiffany gives to Granny Weatherwax in Wintersmith, described her as the daughter of “Pinky, the Widow Cable’s cat”. During research for Tiffany Aching’s Guide, Gabrielle connected this to Tiffany’s next book, I Shall Wear Midnight, where she tells her father about having to deal with a widow up near Slice who’d been dead two months, locked up alone in her house with her cats. The cats couldn’t escape the house and had started to eat her, including one who had a litter of white kittens in her bed…
  • Granny Whitlow is the witch who built the gingerbread house in the Forest of Skund, as depicted in The Light Fantastic. Rincewind and Twoflower are led there by the gnome Swires when they need food, and steal Whitlow’s broomstick, which has handlebars, to escape the wizards sent to capture them. According to Swires, Whitlow herself hasn’t been seen in a long time, rumoured to have been “done up good and proper by a couple of young tearways”. This is usually interpreted as a version of the story of Hansel and Gretel.
  • Marchessa is a young Krullian wizard who appears in The Colour of Magic, in the final book, “Close to the Edge”. She describes herself as a wizard of the fifth level, and wields Ajandurah’s Wand of Utter Negativity when taking Rincewind and Twoflower captive so they can be sacrificed. She is well informed about Rincewind’s history.
  • Mistress Pullunder and Old Mother Dismass are mentioned briefly as Tiffany’s previous mentors at the start of Wintersmith. Dismass also appears during the sabbat at the start of Witches Abroad with Granny, Nanny and Gammer Brevis, discussing the shortage of young witches in the wake of Desiderata Hollow’s death. Her oracular ability causes her attention to wander backwards and forwards from the present moment in a manner not dissimilar to Mrs Cake. We discussed Witches Abroad way back in #Pratchat12, “Brooms, Boats and Pumkinmobiles”.
  • The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast is a 1974 concept album (and 1975 rock opera) written primarily by Welsh musician Roger Glover, best known as a bassist and member of Deep Purple. The album, credited to “Roger Glover & Guests”, features Ronnie James Dio (of Black Sabbath fame) and Micky Lee Soule, who was in the band Rainbow with both Dio and Glover. The album is based on the 1972 children’s book which Gabrielle mentions: The Butterfly’s Ball, and the Grasshopper’s Feast by Alan Aldridge and William Plomer. The book is itself based on an 1802 poem written by English banker, lawyer, abolitionist and Member of Parliament William Roscoe (1753-1831). The song Ben mentions is called “Love is All”, sung by Dio, and written by Glover, Dio and Eddie Hardin; it’s the nineteenth track, the second-last of the album. It was a number one hit in a few countries in Europe on release. Ben is probably incorrect about the music video being part of a larger animated film project, but it was definitely a hit on television: in Australia the song also made it into the top 10 in 1980 when the video was played on the music programme Countdown, and remained a frequently shown clip on the ABC for many years. It was also played regularly in France and some stations in the US, and featured in a 2021 trailer for French jeweller Cartier.
  • The Jedi Path: A Manual for Students of the Force is Star Wars book written by Daniel Wallace, and first published in 2010. Similarly to Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch, it’s presented as an in-universe book – though in this case a specific copy of the third edition training guide for Jedi, which has been owned or used by several Jedi characters from the films who leave notes and other marks on the book. It survived the destruction of the Order, and was eventually being given to Luke Skywalker, it’s “owner” at the time it was published. The original edition was inside a “Vault”, but it has been re-published several times since with some additional material added and minor corrections. A similar volume also by Wallace, Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side, was first published in 2012 and later bundled with The Jedi Path and then also with two similar books, The Bounty Hunter Code: From the Files of Boba Fett (2013) and Imperial Handbook: A Commander’s Guide (2014). The most recent editions of all four were published by Chronicle Books in 2016.
  • Toggenburgs are a medium-sized purebred variety of goat originally from the Toggenburg region of the Canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland. They’re very popular and farmed all over the world, known for their high milk production, though the UK has it’s own local breed, the British Toggenburg, recognised in 1921. Compared to the Pure Toggenburg, British Toggenburgs are bigger, heavier, have shorter hair and longer faces, a greater variety of coat colours, and make even more milk. One source we found described Toggenburgs as having a “robust nature” which makes them “a hardy goat able to look after its best interests,” which seems clear inspiration for the way goats are described in the Discworld books.
  • Indira Varma is a British actor best known to nerds for her screen roles in Game of Thrones, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Torchwood, though she’s done plenty of other film and television – and will appear in the upcoming 2024 season of Doctor Who as a Duchess. She has narrated all the Witches and Tiffany Aching books for the new Penguin Audiobooks series, which also feature Peter Serafinowicz as Death, Bill Nighy as the voice of the author reading the footnotes, and Steven Cree as the Nac Mac Feegle. The illustration of Miss Level inspired by her appears on page 31 of Tiffany Aching’s Guide, as well as in the collection of portraits used in the endpapers.
  • Joan Hickson (1906-1998) played Agatha Christie’s sleuth Miss Marple in the BBC television films adapting all twelve Miss Marple novels made between 1984 and 1992. She is the most recognisable screen version of the character.
  • Big thanks to listener armcie, who managed to uncover Nanny’s scribbled-out note on page 22 via some ebook jiggery pokery. According to them, the note reads:

Brings back a memory. Mr Ogg had a similar party piece, and after narry two sips of scumble, he’d get out his party piece and wave it around, we did all laugh, though we’d all seen it plenty before.

Nanny Ogg, Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch
  • Tiffany’s favourite word being susurration is another classic bit of Terry re-using something he’d already written – in this case, his own answer to the question which he wrote for The Word, a publication for London’s Festival of Literature in 2000, three years before the publication of The Wee Free Men. In his introduction to the piece, he says these sorts of questions are referred to as “My Fabourite Spoon” items.
  • Fecund means “very fertile”, and – like so many other English words – comes from the Latin (fecundus, “fertile”) by way of French.
  • Crepuscular is an adjective meaning “of or resembling twilight”, but is more often used in its zoological context, where it means “active and dawn and/or dusk”, describing animals which are not diurnal (active during the day) or nocturnal (active during the night), but which inhabit the edge in between. A fitting word for a writer of edge witches!
  • The Overlord series are videogames published by Codemasters and originally developed by Triumph Studios. In the games the player is “the Overlord”, the new incarnation of evil who resembles Sauron from Lord of the Rings, who must vanquish the heroes who defeated the previous incarnation to regain enough strength to again conquer the land. Initially too weak to fight on their own, the Overlord instead commands a small army of goblin-like “Minions” who come in various colours with different special abilities. The games are a dark comedy, and the first game particularly parodies Lord of the Rings, with the heroes who are the player’s enemies parodying various members of the Fellowship, but later games include other fantasy elements as well, notably . The games in the series are:
    • Overlord (2007) for the XBox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
    • Overlord: Raising Hell (2008); an expansion for Overlord.
    • Overlord II (2009); a sequel to the original games for the XBox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
    • Overlord: Dark Legend (2009); an Overlord II spin-off for the Nintendo Wii developed by Climax Action.
    • Overlord: Minions (2009); an Overlord II spin-off for the Nintendo DS, also developed by Climax Action.
    • Overlord: Fellowship of Evil (2015); a for the XBox One, PlayStation 4 and PC (developed in-house at Codemasters)
  • Gnarl is the older minion who advises the new Overlord, and also does most of the narration for the player, since the Overlord themselves is a non-speaking character. He is played by Marc Silk, a prolific English voice actor who you’ve probably heard in something. He’s been Bob the Builder and various Danger Mouse characters, and been in some other classic videogames including Black & White and the Two Point series of sim games.
  • Knights and Bikes is a 2019 videogame designed by indie company Foam Sword, which was formed by developers who had previously worked at Media Molecule on games like LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway. It was originally a PlayStation 4 exclusive but was later released on the XBox One and Nintendo Switch. The game is set on the small (and fictional) British island of Penfurzy in the 1980s, and one or two players control Nessa and Demelz, two young girls who explore the island on their bikes and have fantastic adventures inspired by films like Goonies.
  • Adventure games are traditionally ones in which the player must navigate a story by examining their environment, talking to other characters and collecting and using objects to solve puzzles. The original text adventure games used typed commands, but in the 1990s companies like Sierra On-Line and LucasArts transitioned the genre into graphic or point-and-click adventures. These used graphics, sound and more-and-more sophisticated mouse-based interfaces to place the emphasis on the puzzles and their narrative solution instead of how to tell the game what you wanted to do, though some – including the original Discworld adventure game – were still very difficult. Telltale Games was a games development company founded in 2004 by ex LucasArts employees who developed a serialised, episodic format for adventure games. They started out making new stories featuring characters from the old LucasArts games, then moved on to using licensed characters and worlds like Back to the Future, Game of Thrones, Batman, The Walking Dead and the comic book Fables, which produced one of their most critically acclaimed games, The Wolf Among Us. The company collapsed in 2018 after revelations of extreme “crunch” culture – punishing hours and conditions for staff under pressure to meet unrealistic deadlines, something common in the videogame industry but at an extreme at TellTale. The name is now owned by a different company, LCG Entertainment, who re-released the TellTale Batman games and is working to complete a sequel to The Wolf Among Us.
  • The Quarter Quell is an event in The Hunger Games books by Suzanne Collins and their film adaptations. In the future dystopia of Panem, the government responds to an attempted rebellion by instigating the “Hunger Games” – an annual lottery where a boy and a girl are selected from each of the twelve Districts as “tributes” who will fight to the death in a specially designed arena. The Games are televised, and each twenty-five years since the original they do a special “Quarter Quell” in which the usual rules are bent in some way; during the second novel, President Snow uses the 75th Hunger Games to bend the rules and make the protagonist Katniss fight again, something that is usually forbidden.

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

#Pratchat75 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 75, “…And That Spells Trouble”, discussing the 2012 revised edition of Guards! Guards! A Discworld Board Game, designed by Leonard Boyd and David Brashaw, with guest Dr Melissa Rogerson.

Iconographic Evidence

Guards! Guards! has a lot more components than the other board games we’ve discussed so far. Here’s a gallery featuring the board and the playing pieces; and another with some of the specific cards we mentioned.

A photo of the game Guards! Guards! laid out on a table. Visible are the board, rulebook, top and bottom halves of the box, player reference card, three piles of volunteer cards, four dragon pieces, the Fate deck, and player boards, starting money and other tokens for three players. On the board are the token for the Luggage, the pawns for three players, and four piles of cards in the corners, two for scrolls and two for items.
All the components set up and laid out for a game, plus the box, rules and player reference card.
A photo of the cardboard standee piece of the Luggage on it’s starting space on the Guards! Guards! board, a bridge over the river Ankh.
The Luggage piece in all its glory.
A photo of the player board for the Guild of Alchemists. Three red wooden cubes marke the starting values for the stats of Charm, Magic and Guild. The board also has the Guild crest, a pentagram-shaped symbol showing which spells this player can collect, and two parchment-like sections description the Sabotage and Guild Ability rules. Above the player board are a pile of “Fire Water” markers, one cardboard $5 coin, a round green “Spell Run” marker, and a pile of square Saboteur markers.
A sample player board, in this case one for the Guild of Alchemists. The red cubes track your three player stats.
A photo of the four Saboteur markers face up, showing the crests of the four different guilds in the game, and labelled “SABOTEUR” above and the name of the quadrant: the Fool’s, Alchemist’s, Thieve’s and Assassin’s Quadrants. Some other game components are visible at the edges of the photo.
The Sabotage markers, face up. (They are kept face down in play.)
A closer photo of part of the Guards! Guards! board, showing a pattern of hexagons. Most are coloured grey with a stone-like texture; others have names and small illustrations, special spaces that allow players to perform certain actions. There are also gaps where hexagons are missing, constraining the players’ movement. A path of tiny barefoot footprints goes clockwise round the board, branching and then joining back up in some places.
Detail of the board, showing spell spaces, various locations, and the path of the Luggage (the footprints).
A photo of the four cardboard standees for the dragons in the game, on the board next to a player’s pawn. Three of them are clearly visible: the illustrations are of the head and long neck of a purple, red and green dragon.
The dragons. Oh my!
A photo of the six decks of cards for the game, each bound by a coloured rubber band.
There are a lot of cards in the game.
A photo of the Guards! Guards! board game with most of the components still in place. The game is in the final state: one player has five gold-coloured wooden cylinders arranged in a row in their slice of the central large University area, showing they’ve returned five spells. Two other players have four.
Ben’s view of the end of the game.
A photo of the Guards! Guards! board from above, showing the twelve-sided central section representing Unseen University, the River Ankh dividing the board into two halves, and the pattern of hexagonal spaces representing the city streets and various special locations. Around the outside of the board are labels showing where piles of item and spell scroll cards should go, as well as the cardinal directions of the Disc.
Just the board from above. A functional representation of Ankh-Morpork.
A close up photo of two eight-sided dice: one the plastic red one from the Guards! Guards! game, showing an eight face up; the other a gold-coloured metal die showing “7a”.
The eight-sided dice from the game, and the golden D8 from the Australian Discworld Convention.
The Guards! Guards! rulebook. The illustration on the cover shows a member of the City Watch in breastplate, leather skirt and helmet running while carrying a glowing mote of light which hovers just above his hands. He is surrounded by various other characters running with him through the streets of Ankh-Morpork at night, including a red-bearded wizard in a red robe, a Feegle riding a cat, a dwarf, an older woman in black leather armour and a huge rocky troll. A classic witch silhouette flies through the sky in the background above a full moon.
The rulebook has the same art as the box.
A photo of various volunteer cards from the Guards! Guards! board game, depicing Magrat Garlick, Granny Weatherwax, Mrs Earwig, Gladys (a Golem), Errol (a swamp dragon), the Maquis of Fantailer (a boxing fop), Moist von Lipwig/Albert Spangler (in a Groucho Marx style disguise) and Tawnee (an exotic dancer).
Some of our favourite character illustrations from the cards, and others we mentioned in the episode.
A photo of various volunteer cards from the Guards! Guards! board game, depicing Constable Visit, Detritus, Lance Corporal Cuddy, Cheery Littlebottom, Errol (the swamp dragon), Lady Sybil Ramkin, Constable Downspout (a gargoyle), Constable Brakenshield (a dwarf) and Findthee Swing.
These are the most prominent characters who appear from the Watch books, along with a few other supporting characters we love, but the main cast of Guards! Guards! do not appear!
A photo of various volunteer cards from the Guards! Guards! board game, depicting Constable Brakenshield (a dwarf), Armpit (probably a dwarf), George Aggy (senior postman) and a generic Swamp Dragon (not Errol).
Ben mentions that some of the characters who appear are a bit more obscure; here are a few examples.
A photo of two volunteer cards from the Guards! Guards! board game: Lias Bluestone and Glod Glodsson, both characters from Soul Music. Lias’ card has text from his book describing a man getting out an axe to throw at him. Glod’s card has a quote about the nature of dwarfs from Guards! Guards!
Two of our fave characters from Soul Music, who are also examples of quotes that didn’t quite hit the mark for Ben.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title was more or less inspired by the song “You’ve Got Trouble” from the musical The Music Man. In the song, con man Harold Hill convinces the residents of River City that they’ve got trouble, inventing spurious dangers to their youth which he blames on the introduction of a pool table to the town’s billiard parlour.
  • Ben wonders how up-to-date the characters are in the game. At the time it was first published in September 2011, all but the last three Discworld novels (Snuff, Raising Steam and The Shepherd’s Crown) had been published. The game definitely includes characters from beyond the 31st novel, Monstrous Regiment, including Mrs Earwig (who didn’t appear in a novel until the 32nd book, A Hat Full of Sky); Moist von Lipwig and Gladys the golem (both introduced in the 33rd book, Going Postal); and Constable Brakenshield (a very minor charcater from Thud!, the 34th novel).
  • Ben several times mentions David Brashaw’s interview with The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret; we linked to it in the main episode description, but for completeness’ sake, it’s “Picture Books and Board Games with Pratchat and David Brashaw” from 20 November 2023. David’s interview starts at around the 1 hour, 8 minutes and 45 seconds mark. (If you’ve not listened to it already, don’t skip the start; as you may have guessed from the title, Liz and Ben are also guests!)
  • We’ve mentioned Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries many times before; it’s a television series about the high society lady Miss Phryne Fisher, who solves mysteries in 1920s Melbourne, adapted from the popular series of books by Kerry Greenwood. Liz mentions that it seems like the perfect setting for the Maquis of Fantailer, a minor character mentioned in The Fifth Elephant as the Disc’s equivalent of the Maquis of Queensberry – i.e. the nobleman who invented rules for boxing as a sport, which are entirely useless in a street fight.
  • Mrs Harris Goes to Paris (2022, dir. Anthony Fabian) is a British film adaptation of the 1958 novel Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris. It tells the story of Ada Harris, a working class cleaner whose husband died in World War II; she never realised she was supposed to receive a war widow pension and when she is paid it in arrears, uses the windfall to visit Paris in the hopes of buying a Dior dress.
  • On BoardGameGeek, a game’s “weight” is described as a measure of how difficult it is to understand (though not everyone thinks of it that way). A heavier weight generally means more rules and/or components, and more complex interactions and strategies; the scores are Light (1), Medium Light (2), Medium (3), Medium Heavy (4) and Heavy (5). Guards! Guards! has a weight (averaged from votes by users of the site) of 2.61 out of 5, so between Medium and Medium Light. For comparison, Monopoly scores 1.65 (between Light and Medium Light), while Chess has a weight of 3.66. (In case you’re interested, the heaviest game in Ben’s collection is Oath: Chronicles of Empire & Exile, with a rating of 4.11; he also has a lot of party games with a weight at or near 1.0, but most of his favourite games are Medium or Light Medium.) We’ve listed the weight of the other games suggested below for contrast, but keep in mind it’s a subjective measure; most games fall in between two of the scores.
  • Shut Up & Sit Down (SUSD) was launched in 2011. Its major components are a YouTube channel, where they are best known for their funny but thoughtful board game reviews, and a website, where they have extensive forums and written reviews and features as well. They’ve also expanded to produce a podcast, and a games convention, SHUX, which is held in Vancouver, Canada. If you like their stuff, Ben reckons you’ll also like No Pun Included, who make similarly in-depth and funny board game review videos, and also have a website and podcast (now called Talk Cardboard).
  • Unsurprisingly, we mention a lot of board games in this episode. Here’s a full list; links are to the game’s entries on BoardGameGeek.
    • Talisman (weight 2.17, Medium Light) was first published in 1983, but hit it big with the second edition in 1985. Players take are one of many fantasy archetypes like wizard, barbarian, sorceress and thief, all racing around a slightly Monopoly-like board having weird encounters as they try to reach the centre space and claim the Crown of Command. The currently available revised fourth edition is substantially similar to the earlier versions, and was first released in 2007.
    • Dungeon! (weight 1.56, Light/Medium Light) was first published in 1975 by TSR, the company behind Dungeons & Dragons at the time. Players choose a “class” (elf, hero, superhero or wizard) and then delve into the chambers of a board designed like a dungeon, hoping to fight monsters and steal their stuff. The most recent edition was first published in 2014 by D&D’s current owners, Wizards of the Coast, and hasn’t changed much except the art and production values.
    • The Witches (weight 1.66, Light/Medium Light) is the previous Discworld board game we covered on the podcast, in #Pratchat67, “The Three-Elf Problem”. Ben mentions it’s the “other Martin Wallace one”, the first one being Ankh-Morpork, which we have yet to discuss.
    • King of Tokyo (weight 1.49, Light/Medium Light) was first published in 2011, and has remained popular. There are a few spin-offs, including King of New York and King of Monster Island, which feature twists on the original; and plenty of expansions, mostly extra giant monsters. It also comes with a set of very satisfyingly big and heavy dice, which use symbols instead of numbers.
    • Survive: Escape from Atlantis! (weight 1.70, Medium Light) was first published in 1982, and sees players trying to get as many of their ten people to safety as possible as Atlantis sinks. The fun twist is they’re once the game starts, you can’t look at the bottom of your people tokens – and they’re each worth a different number of points. A 30th anniversary edition is still in print. The dolphin, giant squid and two other expansions were available combined in one box, but are a bit hard to find now.
    • Reign of Cthulhu (weight 2.16, Medium Light) is the 2016 game Liz mentions playing at a board game cafe in New Zealand. It is based on Pandemic by Matt Leacock, but is now marketed as a “Pandemic System Game” rather than having “Pandemic” in the title. Players work together to close magical gates to other dimensions before an ancient “Old One” – a cosmic entity with the power of a god – arrives to destroy the world.
    • Castles of Mad King Ludwig (weight 2.65, Medium Light/Medium) has players trying to build a castle that will please the randomly selected whims of the King. It’s (very) loosely based on the real King of Bavaria, Ludwig II, who spent his fortunes on building a number of lavish castles during the nineteenth century, earning him the nickname “the Fairytale King”. Ben also likes the spin-off game The Palace of Mad King Ludwig, in which all the players build the same castle.
    • Big Top (weight 1.03, Light) from GameWright is, as Melissa mentions, one of many versions of the game originally published as Barnyard Buddies in 1996. (The versions are pretty much identical aside from art and theme, so there’s just one entry for all of them on BGG.)
    • Kingdomino (weight 1.22, Light) is a 2016 game in which players build medieval kingdoms by playing domino-like tiles showing various kinds of land, like fields, lakes and mountains. It’s been a pretty big success and has spawned many spin-offs and similar games, including Queendomino, which can be combined with the original.
    • Daybreak (weight 2.96, Medium) is Matt Leacock’s 2023 game of fighting climate change. It’s really interesting and important, but also great fun to play. Has a great solo mode.
    • Paperback Adventures (weight 2.70, Medium) is a solo deckbuilding game where you make words out of letter cards to generate points used by your protagonist character to fight a series of six villains. It does have rules for two players, but they’re generally not considered that great; but you can play it with multiple players cooperating to work out the best word to play! Ben has all three of the available characters, and loves them all, but if he had to pick a favourite it’s a toss-up between assassin princess Damsel and undead pirate Plot Hook.
  • Liz mentioned the Quarter Quell, which she also referenced last episode; it’s a special version of the Hunger Games (from the book series of the same name by Suzanne Collins), a death match by lottery imposed by the fascist state, where they bend the usual rules to make it even more horrible.

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

#Pratchat74 – Hogswitch

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In this very special Hogswatch-adjacent episode of Pratchat, Liz and Ben don’t discuss a Terry Pratchett book! Instead, they interview Rhianna Pratchett and Gabrielle Kent, authors of Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch.

Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch is a new lavishly illustrated guidebook to witchcraft, compiled by the famous young witch of the Chalk – with a little help from her friends, of course. Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, Miss Tick, Mrs Letice Earwig and more have all annotated the manuscript – as have Tiffany’s fairy allies and protectors, the Nac Mac Feegle.

We’ll return to the book for a regular discussion in a future episode, but for now, please enjoy our chat with Rhianna and Gabrielle – though note that as Tiffany Aching’s Guide is set after The Shepherd’s Crown, you might catch a couple of brief spoilers for the final Discworld novel in this interview. The same is true for their previous appearances on our spiritual sibling podcasts, The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret and The Compleat Discography, which you will probably also enjoy.

You can send us comments and questions about this episode using the hashtag #Pratchat74. And as usual you can find errata and other notes for this episode on our website.

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Guest Rhianna Pratchett is a writer best known for her work in videogames, most famously the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider, and most recently Lost Words: Beyond the Page with Sketchbook Games. Rhianna also works in film and television production, and since 2012 has co-run Narrativia, the company which manages Terry Pratchett’s intellectual property. Rhianna recently made her first podcast series, Mythical Creatures, for BBC Radio 4; find it via your favourite podcast app, or on the BBC Sounds website. You can also follow Rhianna on social media at @rhipratchett on Twitter and Mastodon, and as @rhi.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Guest Gabrielle Kent is now best known as a children’s author, but worked in videogames as an artist and lecturer for many years. Her books include the Knights and Bikes series based on the videogame of the same name; the Alfie Bloom series about a boy who inherits a magical castle; and most recently Rani Reports, a series about a young aspiring journalist, co-written with her husband Satish Shewhorak. You can find out more about Gabrielle via her website, gabriellekent.com. Gabrielle is also on social media as @gabriellekent on Twitter and Bluesky.

Next month we get our game one again as we play and discuss the second published Discworld board game, Guards! Guards!, designed by Leonard Boyd and David Brashaw of BackSpindle Games. Get your questions in via social media using the hashtag #Pratchat75, or send us an email at chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

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.

#PratchatElsewhere Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for the bonus Pratchat episode “We’re on a Road to Elsewhere“, in which Ben discusses recent Pratchett news, and interviews guest Danny Sag from the Australian Discworld Convention.

Iconographic Evidence

The opening sequence to Good Omens 2 – and handily, the still image for this video is the poster Ben also mentioned!
Here’s the official trailer for Good Omens 2!

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title is a riff on the chorus lyric from the Talking Heads son “Road to Nowhere”. It might have made a good title for the Strata episode, but Ben will have to think of another one now! (Elsewhere is the equivalent of hyperspace in Strata, traversed through the use of a “Matrix drive”.)
  • You can see the new narrators and covers for the Penguin Discworld audiobooks at their official website.
  • As well as the intro sequence above, you might find these Good Omens links handy:
  • “Cute aggression”, originally “playful aggression”, was popularised around 2013 by the work of psychologists Rebecca Dyer and Aragón. Note that it refers to superficial aggression; folks who express their feelings about cute things this way are not actually violent or aggressive.
  • A Stroke of the Pen was announced on the 28th of February 2023. You can read about how the stories were rediscovered in this article at LoveReading. The blurb available on several bookstore listings has this to say about the stories within: “Meet Og the inventor, the first caveman to cultivate fire, as he discovers the highs and lows of progress; haunt the Council with the defiant evicted ghosts of Pilgarlic Towers; visit Blackbury, a small market town with weird weather and an otherworldly visitor; and travel millions of years back in time to The Old Red Sandstone Lion pub.”
  • Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch was announced on the 12th of May 2023, with more details revealed on the 1st of June. There’s an official page for the book at terrypratchett.com, and an article in The Bookseller magazine which includes some of Rhianna’s thoughts about writing for Discworld.
  • You can find out more about Gabrielle Kent on her website, gabriellekent.com. The books about a boy who inherits a magic castle are the Alfie Bloom series, beginning with Alfie Bloom and the Secrets of Hexbridge Castle, published in 2015. Rani Reports is the series about the young journalist, beginning with Rani Reports on the Missing Millions, which was published in May this year.
  • Knights and Bikes (2019) is the first videogame from indie UK developer Foam Sword Games. It was created by Rex Crowle and Moo Yu, who you might know from their work on games like Tearaway, Little Big Planet, Ratchet & Clank, Ring Fling and MonstrosCity. Crowle is also the brain behind the roleplaying game inspired to-do list app Epic Win. The game is available on most platforms.
  • There are several Discworld books specifically credited to the Discworld Emporium, but most of them do include Terry’s name in one way or another! The credit on The Compleat Ankh-Morpork and The Compleat Discworld Atlas is “Terry Pratchett aided and abetted by the Discworld Emporium”. (The copyright has Terry Pratchett and the Emporium as a partnership as the officially credited authors, with Emporium identified as Isobel Pearson, Reb Voyce, Bernard Pearson and Ian Mitchell in that order.) Earlier books produced by the Emporium like The World of Poo and Mrs Bradshaw’s Handbook are credited on the cover only as “Terry Pratchett presents”, with the Handbook “aided and abetted” credit on the inside, while for the earlier World of Poo fictional author Miss Felicity Beadle was “assisted by Bernard and Isobel Pearson”. Only The Nac Mac Feegles’ Big Wee Alphabet Book uses the credit “by the Discworld Emporium”, separately including the same “Terry Pratchett’s Discworld” identifier seen on Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch. (The description on the website says the Feegle book was “lovingly produced by Ian Mitchell”.) Earlier books worked on by Bernard Pearson, like the Discworld Almanack, have him as a co-author with Terry.
    So the new Tiffany book is not the first to identify specific people as the author without Terry being one of them, but it is the first to do so on the front cover. Ben is wrong, but it still feels like a big deal to him.
  • You can see Colleen Doran‘s impressive list of comic book credits, and some of her amazing artwork, at colleendoran.com. You can get notified about the crowdfunding campaign for the Good Omens graphic novel by signing up at Kickstarter.
  • You can see a list of the books published by Dunmanifestin on the company website. They don’t yet list the Good Omens Kickstarter, but “The Terry Pratchett Estate” is listed as the campaign owner, and their username is “dunmanifestin”, so that seems pretty clear. The campaign has been mentioned by the official Good Omens Twitter account, which is @GoodOmensHQ.
  • There are currently eight other active Pratchett podcasts by Ben’s count. He keeps track of them via the Pratchat side-project wiki, The Guild of Recappers & Podcasters.
  • Ted Lasso is an Apple TV+ show starring Jason Sudeikis as the title character, a college football coach from Kansas who is hired to manage Richmond AFC by the ex-wife of its previous owner, who took it in her divorce. It’s a beautiful and heartwarming show that has just finished up its third and (supposedly) final season, and as so many people have said about Unseen Academicals, “the important thing about football is that it’s not about football.” Ben highly recommends the show.
  • As well as Nullus Anxietas, which you can find at ausdwcon.org, we mention lots of Discworld conventions this episode, but missed out a few. Here’s a run-down:
    • The original Discworld Convention, now known as the International Discworld Convention, started in the UK in 1996, as Danny mentions, and runs every two years. Thanks to Rachel Rowlands of Discworld Monthly for pointing out that it has missed two of those years: 2000 and 2020. The next one is in Birmingham in August 2024, and you can find out more at dwcon.org.
    • The Irish Discworld Convention began in 2009 and also runs every two years, though not in 2021. The next one is in Cork in October 2023; find out more at idwcon.org.
    • The North American Discworld Convention also started in 2009, and has run five times since then, most recently (as per Ben’s footnote) in 2019. Their website, nadwcon.org, is offline as of the publication of this episode, but Rachel Rowlands informs us that a team is working on putting together another convention in the US, so keep an eye out for information about it in the near future.
    • Die Scheibenwelt Convention, aka the German Discworld Convention, has run six times since 2011, most recently in May 2023 – and they hold it in a castle! (The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret’s Joanna Hagan went this year; keep on eye on their social media for her video diary if you want to know more about what that was like.) They’re planning the next one for 2025. Find out more at discworld-convention.de (the website is in German and English).
    • Cabbagecon, the Dutch Discworld Convention, has run six times since 2011, and most recently in 2022. The next one will be in October 2024; find out more at dutchdwcon.nl (they also have info available in English).
    • The Ineffable Con is not a Discworld convention, but as it’s name suggests a celebration of Good Omens, specifically the television series. It’s run three times in the UK since 2019, and a fourth online-only convention is coming in October 2023. Find out more at theineffablecon.org.uk.
    • The Llamedos Holiday Camp is the newest fan event, which has run in Wales since 2020. It’s organised by the folks behind Discworld Monthly (hello again Rachel – thanks for the reminder!), and rather than being a traditional convention, describes itself as an “Interactive Immersive Discworld Experience” – it’s presented as if the event is taking place in Llamedos as the Discworld equivalent of an old-school British holiday camp. It will next appear in 2024 with a “Scout Jamboree” theme, and you can find out more at llamedosholidaycamp.com.
  • The special convention episodes we’ve released in conjunction with Nullus Anxietas are:
    • #PratchatNA7, “A Troll New World”, recorded live at Nullus Anxietas 7 in 2019.
    • #PratchatNALC, “Twice as Alive”, recorded for The Lost Con online event in 2021.
    • A special Hogswatch video for the con’s 2021 Christmas event; it’s available to Pratchat subscribers on YouTube.
    • “A Tale of Two Carpets”, recorded for the Discworld Virtual Fun Day in June 2022; the title is from a special version released to Pratchat subscribers with extra footnotes, but you can see the original that played at the event at this link.
  • Blow Up is a 2023 Australian reality television show made by Channel 7 in which contestants compete to make the biggest and best balloon sculptures. It’s based on a Dutch show, also called Blow Up, from 2022. You can watch Blow Up via 7Plus, which is the channel’s catch-up streaming service, though it may not be available to viewers outside Australia. We won’t spoil the results in case you want to watch it for yourself, but don’t get your hopes up for a second season; Blow Up was moved from Channel 7 to one of their digital-only channels, 7flix, after two episodes, thanks to disappointing ratings.
  • Werewolf is a social deduction party game. Players are secretly assigned a role as a werewolf or villager, and play in alternating day and night turns. The werewolves, who know who each other are, eliminate one villager player each night turn, while during the day turns the villagers must debate who are the werewolves and vote to eliminate players they suspect. Either team wins if they eliminate all of the other players. The game was invented in Russia as Mafia by Dimitry Davidoff in 1986, but didn’t take off in America until it was re-themed to be about werewolves by Andy Plotkin in around 1997. It is often treated like a folk game, even though it’s origin can be traced, and there are many, many published and free versions available, many with large numbers of unique roles for the villagers which grant them various special abilities and win or lose conditions. Personally Ben considers it inferior to newer social deduction games that don’t rely so heavily on player elimination, but he’s developed a couple of variations of his own, including Spy Catcher and Smuggletown.
  • For more about the Australian Discworld Convention, visit their website or Facebook page, join their Facebook group, or follow them on Twitter, Instagram or YouTube.

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

#PratchatRuby – How Did Discworld Get to 40?

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24 November 2023 marks forty years since Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic was first published. That’s right – it’s Discworld’s fortieth birthday! To celebrate, join Pratchat producer and co-host Ben McKenzie as he – and a bunch of special guests – try to figure out why that book, and moreso the Discworld series it started, have endured for so long.

This episode is something of an experiment for Pratchat, and as Ben says during the episode, this can’t possibly cover all the reasons why the series is so beloved. We want to hear about your favourite Discworld books, and what the Discworld means to you. And we’d love to know what you thought of this episode, and whether you’d like to hear more like it in the future! Tell us via the hashtag #PratchatRuby on social media, or get in touch via email or our subscriber Discord.

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Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to this episode:

Our original discussion of The Colour of Magic can be found in #Pratchat14, “City-State Lampoon’s Disc-Wide Vacation”, from December 2018.

Our December episode will be #Pratchat73, discussing the stories of Father Christmas’s Fake Beard. But we are hoping to bring you one more little extra before the year is out.

Want to help us get to every Pratchett book? You can subscribe for as little as $2 a month – and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! (Sorry.) Check out our Support Us page for details.

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.

Oggswatch Feast 2021

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Ho ho ho, Merry Hogswatch! To celebrate the festive season, and our own fiftieth episode, we’ve brought together a bunch of guests of Hogswatch Past, Present and Future – including the hosts no fewer than three other Discworld podcasts – for a special feast of additional recipes from Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook. Be warned: this podcast contains bananana!

Got comments on our efforts – or want to share your own? Do you want us to do this again next year? Please, join the conversation using the hashtag #Oggswatch2021 on social media.

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Our guests this episode are:

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our web site; it might take a few days to fully appear, but we’ll be adding photos of many of the dishes cooked for this episode!

While our January episode is already in the can, in February we’ll be discussing BBC America’s series “based on characters created by Terry Pratchett” – The Watch! So have a watch yourself over the holidays, and send us questions by tagging us on social media and using the hashtag #Pratchat52, or by sending us an email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

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.

#Pratchat51 – Boffoing the Winter Slayer

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Welcome to the Year of the Lachrymating Leveret! Bestselling sci-fi and fantasy author Garth Nix joins Liz and Ben up in the Ramtops, where Tiffany Aching dances a forbidden dance and gets into more trouble in the thirty-fifth Discworld novel, 2006’s Wintersmith.

Two years after her first Witch Trial, Tiffany Aching is nearly a teenager and two months into her stint with her latest mentor – terrifying Miss Treason, the 113-year-old deaf and blind justice witch. In the dead of night Miss Treason takes her to witness the “dark dance”, but against the rules she is given, Tiffany does more than observe – after all, what good is a dance you can only watch? But Tiffany’s been noticed: the spirit of Winter himself has his eye on her now. There’s something different about Tiffany, too…but that might have to wait. The Nac Mac Feegle are back, there’s a witch’s cottage up for grabs, the boy she’s been writing went to a party with someone else, and if she can’t figure out how to fend off the Wintersmith, it might be an uncomfortably long Winter…

Published in one of Pratchett’s rare one-book years, Wintersmith advances Tiffany Aching into adolescence – and appropriately enough deals with themes of unwanted attention, uncontrollable urges, the perils of teenage and adult politics, and hordes of tiny blue men. Plus it’s full of favourite characters, both old and new.

Do you think Tiffany could have chosen not to enter the dance? Have the Feegles been to our world – and do they belong in this book, or has Tiffany outgrown them? What’s the most ridiculous thing someone has done to try and impress you? Join the conversation using the hashtag #Pratchat51 on social media.

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Guest Garth Nix is a bestselling and award-winning Australian author, best known for his young adult fantasy series “The Old Kingdom”, which began with Sabriel in 1995. In November 2021 he published the prequel Terciel and Elinor, about the parents of the original novel’s protagonist. He’s also written dozens of other novels and short stories, including the Seventh Tower and Keys to the Kingdom series of novels, 2015’s Newt’s Emerald, 2017’s Frogkisser, and 2020’s The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, which recently won the Ditmar Award for best novel. You can find Garth on Twitter as @garthnix, and info about his books on his website at garthnix.com

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our website.

Next month we’re not reading a book or a short story; instead we’re getting in front of the television and checking out the somewhat divisive BBC America series The Watch, “based on characters created by Terry Pratchett”. Is it a bold new punk direction for the Disc, or a travesty born from years in development hell and too much distance from the source material? We’re going to find out! Send us your questions via the hashtag #Pratchat52, or via email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

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.

#Pratchat52 – A Near-Watch Experience

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This month, we’ve put down the books and picked up the remote control! Guests Patrick Lenton and Fury join us to discuss a show “based on characters created by Sir Terry Pratchett”: 2021’s The Watch.

Sam Vimes was a street kid in Ankh-Morpork who joined the Watch to kill its Captain and free the imprisoned members of his gang. But he had a change of heart. Twenty years later, he’s still there – a washed-up drunk of a Captain, whose force of misfits have almost nothing to police since the criminal Guilds were all legalised. But during his latest assignment – to find a missing library book – he sees someone who died twenty years ago. Soon the Watch is up to their necks in dragons, ancient artefacts and magical experiments gone wrong, and it’ll take all their cunning and heart to get to the bottom of it…plus a little help from noblewoman-turned-vigilante, Lady Sybil Ramkin.

After a long road through development hell, initially with Pratchett himself at the helm, The Watch eventually emerged as a surprisingly “punk rock police procedural”; a brightly-coloured Dungeon-punk explosion which wears its queerness on its sleeve. The Watch remixes characters and concepts from the books into something so different that fans and friends of Pratchett quickly disowned it. The critical reaction was middling at best, and it took six months for it to be released on Pratchett’s home soil.

But is it any good?

Could you divorce yourself from the source material? If so, does The Watch work on its own terms? Is it funny? Is it comprehensible? Is watching it a good time? Which bits got up your nose, and which did you love? Who was your favourite character, and why was it Cheery? And given we barely scratched the surface of talking about it this episode – should we do a bonus mini-series, discussing it episode by episode? Let us know by joining the conversation, using the hashtag #Pratchat52.

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Guest Patrick Lenton is currently Deputy Editor: Arts + Culture for The Conversation, and was previously a senior editor at Junkee. He is also a freelance writer whose work has spanned journalism, theatre, fiction and comedy. His most recent short story collection is Sexy Tales of Palaeontology from Subbed In, and he writes the newsletter All the Hetereosexual Nonsense I Was Forced To Endure with Rebecca Shaw. You can find Patrick on Twitter as @PatrickLenton, and his handy LinkTree will help you find his other stuff.

Guest Fury is a writer, illustrator and performer who previously appeared on Pratchat in #Pratchat19 (Soul Music) and #Pratchat29 (The Last Continent) – our last in-person episode, recorded in the before times! Their live multi-disciplinary show Gender Euphoria toured Australia in 2019 and 2020, and their book I Don’t Understand How Emotions Work is (probably) still available. You can find out more about them at furywrites.com, or follow them on Twitter as @fury_writes. Their first TV show, Crazy Fun Park, is currently in production and scheduled to premiere on ABC ME and ABC iview in late 2022.

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our website.

Next month we’re heading to one of the books that (sort of) provided a big chunk of inspiration for The Watch, and a fan favourite, frequently topping rankings of the Discworld series: Night Watch! Meet the original Carcer Dun, Jocasta Wiggs, young Sam Vimes, and – eventually – Young Sam Vimes… Send us your questions via the hashtag #Pratchat53, or via email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

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.

#Pratchat53 – A (Very) Few Words by Hner Ner Hner

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Surprise! In an emergency substitution, Liz and Ben get a glimpse of everyday life in Ankh-Morpork as they dive into three very small bits of Discworld ephemera collected in A Blink of the Screen.

The Ankh-Morpork National Anthem captures the experience of those forced to sing patriotic songs everywhere – but even the single complete verse tells us quite a lot about the character of the city. Meanwhile the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Barber-Surgeons have put together a few Medical Notes to keep the population informed about a few diseases peculiar to the city. And, on the occasion of Ankh-Morpork being “twinned” with a small city on Roundworld, we read A Few Words from Lord Havelock Vetinari to mark the occasion…

We picked these three “Discworld Shorter Writings” as they are both about Ankh-Morpork, whose history is explored in Night Watch (our next book), and written around the same time as that book – the anthem is from 1999 (though it its based on jokes from Moving Pictures, published in 1990) while the others are from 2002, the year Night Watch was published.

How do you feel about your national anthem? Does anyone know the second verse? What weird “diseases” are particular to the place where you live? Would you like to live in a town twinned with Ankh-Morpork – or somewhere else from the vast universe of fiction? And does anyone want a “sausoboros” T-shirt? We’d love to hear your answers! Join the conversation using the hashtag #Pratchat53.

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As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our website.

Next month we’re back on track to talk about 2002’s Night Watch with guest Nadia Bailey! It’s a fan favourite and we already have an absolute tonne of questions, but if you have one you’re burning to have us answer, you can send it via the hashtag #Pratchat54, or via email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

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.