Dr Melissa Rogerson

#Pratchat75 – …And That Spells Trouble

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In this very three-quarters-of-a-century episode, Liz, Ben and guest Dr Melissa Rogerson get out the eight-sided dice and roll for initative – or at least cunning – as we play the 2011 board game, Guards! Guards!, designed by Leonard Boyd and David Brashaw, and based on the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett.

The eight great spells have escaped from Unseen University’s library, ready to unleash chaos on Ankh-Morpork! Thankfully Commander Vimes has taken charge. He’s assigned members of the Watch (that’s you) to liaise with four of the Guilds to round up volunteers and bring those spells back. But Guild rivalries run deep, and surely the Patrician will look kindly on whoever saves the day the most. So if one of the other Guilds’ volunteers should go missing or explode or fall into the Ankh, your Guild would only be too willing to shoulder more of the burden of saving the city…

Created by two Irish Discworld fans who approached Terry with the idea (see David Brashaw’s great interview with The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret), Guards! Guards! A Discworld Board Game sees players roaming about a hexagon-based map of Ankh-Morpork collecting Discworld characters, casting spells from scrolls, equipping magic items and occasionally fighting dragons. Which sounds suspiciously like a very different kind of game… Originally published in 2011 by BackSpindle Games and Z-Man Games, and reprinted with a revised rulebook in 2012, Guards! Guards! was a hit with fans – but board game hobbyists were less enthusiastic.

Have you played Guards! Guards! – and if so, how long did it take you? Do you like the kind of game where being mean to the other players is part of the fun? Do you think it captures the essence of the source material, and if so, which books in particular? Is this the best name for the game, or do you have a better suggestion? (Ours was Guilds! Guilds!) And should we play an exhibition match at the Australian Discworld Convention, of this or one of the other games? We’d love to hear what you think: use the hashtag #Pratchat75 to join the conversation.

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Dr Melissa Rogerson is a Lecturer and Assistant Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at The University of Melbourne. She was last on for #PratchatPlaysThud, “The Troll’s Gambit”, discussing the first Discworld board game in Nivember 2022. Melissa’s current research is about hybrid games which use both physical and digital components, as well as the possibility of using games to tell the stories of older people. You can find out more about her work at hybridgameresearch.net, melissarogerson.com, or find her on Twitter and Mastodon as @melissainau, and on BoardGameGeek as melissa. (A mentioned last time, Ben is on there too, as beejay.)

As usual you’ll find comprehensive notes and errata for this episode on our website, including lots of photos of the components we discuss.

Next episode we’ll be discussing a Discworld novel for the first time in ages – and not just any Discworld novel, but one of the most beloved! Yes, for #Pratchat76 we’re finally talking about Monstrous Regiment. Get your questions in before the last week of February to give them a chance of getting on the show! Use the hashtag on social media (Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and BlueSky), or email us 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.

#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.

#PratchatPlaysThud – The Troll’s Gambit

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Things are a bit hectic in Pratchat land this month, so to fill a gap in our schedule while Liz was unavailable, Ben has joined forces with guest academic and professional board game nerd Dr Melissa Rogerson to play and discuss Thud, the game that inspired the novel of the same name!

Have you played Thud? Have you ever won as the dwarfs? Is it true that the trolls have an advantage? Are you a Thudmaster with insight to share about standard openings and endgames? We’d love to hear your Thud stories! (Ben really is keen to play some more, so there may be a follow up on this in future!)

Be sure to check the episode notes for some pictures of the game, and use the hashtag #PratchatPlaysThud on social media to answer join the conversation.

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Dr Melissa Rogerson is a Lecturer and Assistant Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at The University of Melbourne. Her PhD thesis was titled “Between Cardboard and Computer: The hobbyist experience of modern boardgames”. Melissa’s currently studying the use of digital tools in hybrid games – which included the “Biometric D&D” project, where they used a facial recognition algorithm to assign you a Dungeons & Dragons character! You can find out more about her research at her website, melissarogerson.com, or find her on Twitter (or Mastodon – aus.social) at @melissainau, and on BoardGameGeek as melissa. (Ben is on there too, as beejay.)

Our “Thud trilogy” continues in our next two episodes! #Pratchat61 will be a discussion of the 34th Discworld novel, 2005’s Thud!, with guest Matt Roden, scheduled for release in late November. Then, bumped to December 8, we’re teaming up with Jo and Francine from The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret to read a discuss the very meta book-from-the-book, Where’s My Cow? You still have time to ask questions for this one! Use the hashtags #Pratchat62 and/or #MakeYeChat.

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.

#PratchatPlaysThud Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for the bonus Pratchat episode “The Troll’s Gambit“, discussing the first Discworld boardgame, Thud by Trevor Truran, with guest Dr Melissa Rogerson.

Iconographic Evidence

A board of black and white squares sits on a green patterned matt on a wooden table. On the board are dark-coloured playing pieces, some large in a rough humanoid shape holding up clubs, and some smaller, stylised bullet-shaped pieces with bearded faces. In the centre is a tall pointy piece representing a stone. Behind the board is the box for this game, with "Terry Pratchett" in white above "THUD" in large red letters, and an illustration of a man in leather armour holding a torch while standing on a giant version of the game board. Behind the table are some shelves full of board games.
The 2005 “Koom Valley” edition of Thud, with the pieces in the “King’s Game” positions (more about that next episode). You can see some of Ben’s board game collection in the background.
A square board with an octagonal arrangement of black and white squares sits on a green patterned matt on a wooden table. On the board are dark-coloured playing pieces, some large, humanoid shaped ones holding up clubs, and some smaller, stylised bullet-shaped pieces with bearded faces. There are many of the smaller pieces on squares around the outside edge, while the larger ones are all near the centre. Eight of the smaller pieces are off the board, on the matt closer to the camera.
Near the start of the first match, with Ben as the trolls
A square board with an octagonal arrangement of black and white squares sits on a green patterned matt on a wooden table. On the board are dark-coloured playing pieces, some large, humanoid shaped ones holding up clubs, and some smaller, stylised bullet-shaped pieces with bearded faces. The smaller pieces are in a group on the bottom edge of the board, while the larger ones are on the left and top right of the board. Eight of the smaller pieces are off the board, on the matt closer to the camera. About two-thirds of the smaller pieces are off the board at the bottom, close to the camera, while three of the larger pieces are off the board at the top.
Here you can see Melissa’s dwarfs in a block or phalanx, ready to capture more trolls
A square board with an octagonal arrangement of black and white squares sits on a green patterned matt on a wooden table. On the board are four large, dark-coloured playing pieces, humanoid-shaped and holding clubs. There's also a pointy piece in the centre of the board. Four more of these pieces are off the board at the top, while 32 smaller pieces with points are clustered in groups of four off the board at the bottom, near the camera.
The end of the first match, in which Ben captured all the dwarfs, but lost half his trolls
A large black playing piece of roughly humanoid shape sits on a black square on a board that resembles a chess board, with some other smaller pieces behind it. The humanoid one faces away from the camera and you can see its butt. It's a troll's butt.
The “troll butt” mentioned by Melissa
Some photos from Ben’s game of Thud with Melissa, mostly from the first match where Melissa was the dwarfs and Ben the trolls.
Turns out one of Ben’s educational videos about Vikings is available on YouTube! This was filmed in 2014 in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title refers to the 1983 novel The Queen’s Gambit by American author Walter Tevis. The book gained new attention in 2020 when it was adapted as a mini-series for Netflix by American writer/director Scott Frank, and starring Anna Taylor-Joy as Bath Harmon, an orphaned chess prodigy in 1950s America. The series and novel, in turn, take their name from the classic chess opening “the Queen’s gambit“. In a Queen’s gambit, the white player moves the pawn in front of their Queen forward two spaces; then the black player moves their matching pawn (in front of their Queen) forward two spaces; then the white player moves the pawn in front of their Bishop on the Queen’s side forward two spaces. This sets up a situation where one of the players will take the others’ pawn, possibly leading to an opening for the white Queen…and likely a lot more besides, if you’re knowledgable about chess.
  • We never get around to mentioning the scores of Ben and Melissa’s game in the episode, so for the curious:
    • In the first round Melissa scored 0 (as the dwarfs) and Ben 16 (as the trolls).
    • In the second round Melissa scored 20 (as the trolls) and Ben 2 (as the dwarfs).
    • The final score was 20 to 18, in Melissa’s favour.
  • There are three editions of Thud, and you can find details of them all on BoardGameGeek. (The specific editions below are also linked to their pages on BGG, but you’ll find most of the details on the main page.)
    • The original 2002 edition, which has the title and a rune-like symbol on the cover of the box.
    • The 2005 “Koom Valley” edition, released to tie-in with the novel Thud! It uses a similar box, board and pieces, though the cover and rulebook art is replaced with Paul Kidby’s art for the novel (though it’s reversed from the book), and the rulebook includes an additional Koom Valley variant with very different rules, and a setup for the “King’s Game” that features in the novel.
    • The 2009 edition comes in a printed cloth bag with a cloth board, and several smaller booklets for the rules. It uses new versions of the pieces: the trolls hold their clubs down, and the dwarfs have a bigger beards. This is the edition shown at Essenspiel, the big German games convention held each year in the city of Essen, with the fancy wooden octagonal board we mention later in the episode.
  • Agricola is a “eurogame” (see below) by veteran German game designer Uwe Rosenberg. First published in 2007, and still popular today, Agricola has won many awards, including a coveted Spiel de Jahres (Essenspiel’s “Game of the Year”) in 2008, and had many expansions. A revised version of Agricola released in 2016 uses some refinements developed for the 2013 spin-off Caverna: The Cave Farmers, which is basically Agricola but with dwarfs! In either game, each player is a family of farmers who grow crops, breed animals, gather resources and build improvements to get the highest score at the game’s end. It’s a “worker placement” game, in which you have have to place your limited number of worker pieces on specific spaces to take actions each turn – the well to gather water, the mine to get stones etc – but most actions can only be picked by one worker, so you can’t always do what you most want to be doing. A key feature of Agricola and Caverna is that you can use resources to have children who grow up to become additional workers, but you have to grow enough food to feed everyone… Ben prefers Caverna, because you can also send your dwarfs on underground adventures to seek their fortune, but they’re both great.
  • Eurogames are a style of board game popular in Germany and across Europe. There’s not a precise definition, but they usually feature components in abstract shapes like cubes, often made of wood; themes grounded in the real world and/or history (farming, trains and city building are all popular); and rules which involve the interaction of many systems, but not necessarily much direct interaction between players, making most of them a race to get the most points. While it’s now used as a general descriptor, there used to be quite a “rivalry” between those who loved euros (as they’re called for short), and those who preferred what was derisively named”Ameritrash” – a style of deeply thematic games which feature detailed plastic components and high degrees of player vs player interaction. That term has fallen out of use as the designs of such games has become more sophisticated.
  • Asymmetric games are games in which players do not have the same pieces, roles or rules. For example, chess is a symmetric game, because both players have the same set of pieces and follow the same rules; Thud is asymmetric, since one player has dwarf pieces and the other has trolls. Many modern games fall between the two with what is sometimes called an “exception-based” design: the players all follow the same general rules, but each has a specific role (or, sometimes, acquires special items or powers) which grant exceptions to the rules (or adding new ones) just for that player.
  • Melissa mentioned Schachnovelle (literally “Chess Novella”), a 1941 novella by Austrian author Stefan Zweig (1881-1942). It’s been published in English as Chess Story and The Royal Game, sometimes collected with other short stories by Zweig. Among many other things it was notable for its use of algebraic notation to describe chess moves, which was common in Germany at the time but not widely adopted among English-speaking chess players for another few decades. Zweig fled the Nazi rise in power in 1934, first to England and then America and Brazil.
  • We’ve mentioned the other Discworld board games before, back in #Pratchat30; here’s a reminder:
    • Watch Out: Discworld Board Game (2004) was the other Discworld game designed by Trevor Truran. Like Thud, it was an asymmetrical game with chess-like pieces, but the board was made of square cards representing Ankh-Morpork locations, and one player controlled eight thieves while the other controlled eight Watchmen. As mentioned, it was never published, though you can find some pictures of it on BoardGameGeek via the link.
    • Discworld: Ankh-Morpork (2011), designed by Martin Wallace, has the players secretly take on the roles of various Ankh-Morpork characters as factions vie for control of the city in the wake of Lord Vetinari’s disappearance. Published by Wallace’s Treefrog Games, it’s generally regarded as the best of the Discworld games, but is no longer in print. As mentioned, Wallace re-used the rules in 2019 to make Nanty Narking, which is set in Victorian London with characters from period fiction. We’ll try and play that as well when we get to discussing this game!
    • Guards! Guards! A Discworld Boardgame (2011) was designed by Leonard Boyd and David Brashaw for BackSpindle Games. Players are new recruits in the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, sent to infiltrate one of the city’s guilds to retrieve the Eight Great Spells of the Octavo, which have been stolen from Unseen University.
    • The Witches: A Discworld Game (2012) is Martin Wallace’s second Discworld game. Players are trainee witches in Lancre dealing with the everyday problems of the local folk. It can be played competitively, cooperatively and even solo.
    • Clacks: A Discworld Boardgame (2015) is the second Discworld game from Leonard Boyd and David Brashaw for BackSpindle Games, and aside from Thud is the only one still in print. Players are Clacks operators for the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, trying to win the race against Moist von Lipwig’s newly revitalised postal service, as depicted in Going Postal (see #Pratchat38, “Moisten to Steal“). It also has rules for competitive and cooperative play. It’s popular enough that BackSpindle released a new “Collector’s Edition” in 2021 with a fancier board and components.
  • Ben will add some more detail when he has time, but for now, here’s a list of the other modern boardgames we mentioned in this episode:
    • Firefly: The Board Game
    • Battlestar Galactica – now out of print, but re-implemented as the H P Lovecraft themed Unfathomable
    • Igloo Pop
    • The Illimat
    • Calico
    • Pandemic and its later versions Pandemic Legacy: Season One, Pandemic Legacy: Season Two and Pandemic: Fall of Rome.
    • The Exit series of escape room games
    • Thunderbirds: The Board Game, Forbidden Desert (and its cousins Forbidden Island and Forbidden Skies), and Daybreak

More notes coming soon!

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