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#Pratchat67 – The Three-Elf Problem

8 May 2023 by Pratchat Imps Leave a Comment

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!

https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Pratchat_episode_67.mp3

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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.

Posted in: Podcast Tagged: Annagramma, Ben McKenzie, board game, Discworld, Elizabeth Flux, games, Martin Wallace, no book, Petulia Gristle, Steve Lamattina, The Witches, Tiffany Aching

#PratchatElsewhere Notes and Errata

8 June 2023 by Ben 2 Comments

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:
    • Our episode discussing the book, #Pratchat15, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Nice and Accurate)”, from January 2019.
    • The release date was announced via a musical parody produced by The Hillywood Show; you can find “Good Omens Parody” and a behind the scenes video on YouTube.
  • “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.

Posted in: Episode Notes Tagged: Ben McKenzie, Bonus Episode, Danny Sag, Discworld, Discworld Convention, Good Omens, interview, news, no book, Tiffany Aching

#Pratchat60 – Eyes Turnwise

8 October 2022 by Pratchat Imps 1 Comment

For our sixtieth episode – our troll’s teeth anniversary – Liz and Ben are once again devoting an entire show to answering your questions, about the Discworld, Pratchett’s other work, and their own – with an eye on what’s still to come. (And yes, we allowed ourselves to break the 2.5 hour limit, just this once.)

What would your ideal Pratchett adaptation look like? Who’s the best Dicsworld villain? If one of your possessions could be made from sapient pearwood, what would it be? Which books have been the worst, the most challenging, and the most surprising? If Vetinari died and the people of Ankh-Morpork could queue up to see his body, what would happen? And which is the most confused bird? You asked these and many more amazing questions!

Plus we specifically asked you: Do you have other people in your life with whom you share your love of Pratchett? How are you reading – or re-reading – the books, if you are? What do you do when you listen to the show? Can you follow the show if you haven’t read the book? Do you have a word or phrase you’ve said most of your life that you discovered was wrong? What joke did you not get until years later?

Use the hashtag #Pratchat60 on social media to answer any of the above. (Thanks again to listener Jodie for this eternally useful idea.)

https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Pratchat_episode_60.mp3

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You can find Elizabeth on Twitter as @elizabethflux, and on Instagram at @elizabethflux. Watch out for her amazing self-made outfits.

You can find Ben and via his web site benmckenzie.com.au, on Twitter at @McKenzie_Ben and Instagram at @notongotham, where you might catch a glimpse of his T-shirt collection.

Special thanks to our sibling Pratchett podcasts for their questions: Who Watches the Watch, Desert Island Discworld, Wyrd Sisters and The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret.

And thanks to each and every one of you listens, asks questions or sends in answers.

Next month is a special double-header: we’ll be reading the 34th Discworld novel, 2005’s Thud!, with guest Matt Roden. Get your questions in via the hashtag #Pratchat61 by late October! Plus we’re teaming up with Jo and Francine from The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret to tackle the book-within-a-book, Where’s My Cow? Ask questions for this team-up using the hashtag #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.

Posted in: Podcast Tagged: Ben McKenzie, Discworld, Elizabeth Flux, no book, non-Discworld

#PratchatPlaysThud – The Troll’s Gambit

8 November 2022 by Pratchat Imps Leave a Comment

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.

https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Pratchat_bonus_episode_Thud.mp3

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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.

Posted in: Podcast Tagged: Ben McKenzie, board game, Discworld, Dr Melissa Rogerson, games, no book, Thud

#PratchatElsewhere – We’re on a Road to Elsewhere

8 June 2023 by Pratchat Imps Leave a Comment

We had very little wriggle room this month, so when we couldn’t record at the scheduled time, we had to postpone our episode about Strata. To make sure you’re not left hanging, Ben has conjured up this bonus episode on his own! He’ll discuss the latest news in the world of Terry Pratchett – and there’s surprisingly a lot – and also have a quick chat with Danny Sag, Vice-Chair of Nullus Anxietas, the Australian Discworld Convention, to talk about what makes fan conventions – and Nullus Anxietas – tick.

Which of the upcoming Pratchett projects has you most excited? Are there any specific short stories you think we should have on our list for a whole episode? Have you read any of Gabrielle Kent’s books? Are you keen to go to a Discworld convention? Do you really want to hear a bonus episode about how the sausage…sorry, the podcast gets made? And why is this last-minute bonus episode still nearly an hour long???

Use the hashtag #PratchatElsewhere on social media to answer these questions, or get in touch via email or our subscriber Discord.

https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Pratchat_bonus_episode_Elsewhere.mp3

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Big thanks to Danny Sag for making time for this episode at the last minute – and for dropping so many hints that he wants us to be guests for Nullus Anxietas 9… We hope we can! That website again is ausdwcon.org.

We also mentioned the Pratchett podcasts The Compleat Discography; Radio Morpork; The Death of Podcasts; Wyrd Sisters; I’ve Never Read Discworld; Desert Island Discworld; The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret; and Who Watches the Watch. Plus two others edited by Ben: Kate and Adele’s Bridgerton podcast What Would Danbury Do?, and Brock Wilbur’s big weird heart of a show, Caring Into the Void.

Unfortunately we won’t be bringing you #Pratchat68 discussing Strata on the 25th of June; while it was the plan at the time of recording, we’ve had to postpone it further. So our next episode will be #Pratchat69 on the 8th of July, when Deanne Sheldon-Collins returns for the fourth Long Earth novel, The Long Utopia. Send in questions using those hashtags on social media, or send us an email at chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

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.

Posted in: Podcast Tagged: Ben McKenzie, Bonus Episode, Danny Sag, Discworld, Discworld Convention, Good Omens, interview, news, no book, Tiffany Aching

#Pratchat30 – Looking Widdershins

8 April 2020 by Pratchat Imps 1 Comment

For our thirtieth episode, Liz and Ben take a break from reading books and instead read your comments and questions, looking back on both Terry Pratchett’s work and their own.

Which one of Dibbler’s schemes would you fall for? What’s your least favourite Discworld novel? Are there any good Pratchett-inspired games? What line would you quote to sum up Pratchett’s style of humour? We want to hear your answers to all the questions you asked us! Use the hashtag #Pratchat30 on social media to join the conversation.

https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Pratchat_episode_30.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:59:12 — 54.9MB)

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You can find Elizabeth on Twitter as @elizabethflux, where you will find links to her articles and some very good puns. (Ben is flinching already.) You can also find her (and her impractical outfits) on Instagram as @elizabethtiernan.

You can find Ben and his projects via his web site benmckenzie.com.au, on Twitter at @McKenzie_Ben and Instagram at @notongotham. For creative story-based activities, check out the social media of 100 Story Building; they’re on Twitter at @100StoryB.

Next month’s episode we’re returning to our original plan for this month: we’ll be reading Pratchett’s 2012 parallel universes collaboration with Stephen Baxter, The Long Earth, the first in a series of five novels. Get your questions in via the hashtag #Pratchat31 by late April!

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.

Posted in: Podcast Tagged: Ben McKenzie, Discworld, Elizabeth Flux, no book

#Pratchat67 Notes and Errata

8 May 2023 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 67, “The Three-Elf Problem“, discussing Martin Wallace’s 2013 Discworld board game, The Witches, with returning guest Steve Lamattina.

Iconographic Evidence

As promised, here are some photos of the game.

A photo of the board, components, rules and box of The Witches board game.
The board, components and the box.
An annotated photo of the box for The Witches board game, showing the names of each of the characters on it.
Which witch is which? Get your answers here!
A photo of the board, cards and other components of The Witches board game.
A pile of components. The pink tokens featuring townsfolk are Crisis tokens; the yellow ones featuring a witch with crazy eyes are Cackle tokens; and the larger square ones are Black Aliss tokens. The green square tiles are Easy Problems, and the purple ones are Hard Problems.
A photo of The Witches board game during play.
Ben’s hand during his first, four-player game of The Witches.
A photo of four cards depicting more obscure characters.
A photo of the cards from The Witches board game we mentioned as our favourites in the episode.
Some of our favourite cards, as discussed in the questions section near the end.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title takes inspiration from the 2008 science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem by Chinese author Liu Cixin. The novel in turn takes it’s title from the three-body problem of physics, which refers to the difficulty of calculating the relative motion of three bodies whose masses will interact thanks to gravitational force. In the game, three elves are a problem because they cause everyone to immediately lose.
  • Steve last appeared on Pratchat for Pratchat28, “All Our Base Are Belong to You”, discussing Only You Can Save Mankind, back in February 2020 – the second-last time we recorded regularly in person.
  • The last in-person episode was #Pratchat29, “Great Rimward Land”, with Fury. We moved to remote recording from episode 30 (“Looking Widdershins”), though Ben did record in person for “The Troll’s Gambit” with Melissa Rogerson, in November 2022.
  • Dimity Hubbub is not actually known for being talkative, but rather being clumsy; in her first appearance she has set fire to her own hat, and steps on a piece of Annagramma’s occult jewellery. Dimity appears in A Hat Full of Sky (where she appears in two scenes), Wintersmith (in which she gets a whole two lines of dialogue) and The Shepherd’s Crown (again, only very briefly).
  • Tiffany’s time in Lancre is covered in A Hat Full of Sky (#Pratchat43, “Big Wee Hag: Far Fra’ Home”) and Wintersmith (#Pratchat51, “Boffoing the Winter Slayer“).
  • Lancre Gorge features fairly prominently in Wyrd Sisters, and is where Lord Felmet eventually ends up. In Lords and Ladies, its described like this: “Lancre is cut off from the rest of the lands of mankind by a bridge over Lancre Gorge, above the shallow but poisonously fast and treacherous Lancre River.” (A footnote admits that “Lancrastians did not consider geography to be a very original science.”)
  • Garth Nix, who was our guest for #Pratchat51 a bit over a year ago, is an Australian science fiction and fantasy author best known for his Old Kingdom series of young adult fantasy novels. In the books, the “Old Kingdom” is a place of sorcery and monsters, separated from its neighbour Ancelstierre by a wall which keeps the magic out. The first book is 1995’s Sabriel, while the latest is the prequel Terciel and Elinor, published in late 2021.
  • The various editions of The Witches (which is called The Witches: A Discworld Game on BoardGameGeek) include:
    • The Treefrog Games’ Collector’s Edition, published in an edition of 2,000 copies, featuring the pewter miniatures and a cloth bag to keep them in, an A1 poster of artwork from the game, different artwork on the box cover, a different shaped box, and a larger map. (We presume this just means physically larger, not that there are any additional locations.) While you can’t buyt the minatures separately, you did used to be able to buy a set of coloured plastic miniatures for the game from Micro Art Studio in Poland, who still produce a line of Discworld miniatures – though the young witches are no longer available.
    • The Mayfair Games Standard Edition, the one we played. It has wooden witch’s hat pieces for the players.
    • The game has also been published in several other languages: German, Polish, Russian, Bulgarian, Czech and Spanish. These all appear to use the same art, with only the text translated.
  • Mayfair Games was
  • Martin Wallace is an English game designer who now lives in Australia. After getting his start in wargames in the 1990s, he became a very well-known game designer. His games include the heavy train games Brass: Lancashire (originally just Brass) and it’s successor Brass: Birmingham; two quite different editions of A Study in Emerald, a Sherlock Holmes/H.P. Lovecraft mash-up based on the short story by Neil Gaiman; and most recently the fantasy war game Bloodstones. (Ben is mistaken, however, about Once Upon a Time and The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which were designed by the entirely different (if similarly named) James Wallis. Sorry James!) Martin’s company Treefrog Games was active until 2016, when he closed it down to focus on working as a designer. Bloodstones was his first new venture in self-publishing since then, this time under the name “Wallace Designs”.
  • The very brief Martin Wallace interview about The Witches can be found in the BoardGameGeek forums for The Witches. Read the interview here.
  • When Nanny visits the Long Man in Lords and Ladies, she takes Casanunda along with her. His mind is boggled both by the Long Man, and the resemblance of the King of the Elves within to “his picture”.
  • The Felmets appear in Wyrd Sisters (#Pratchat4, “Enter Three Wytches”), and they do indeed both die by the end of the book. Lord Felmet plunges to his death in Lancre Gorge, while Lady Felmet is cast into the woods, where the woodland creatures, acting as the soul of the country itself, er…take care of her.
  • Ben hasn’t been able to think of any other games that split a dice roll in half, though there are many that use a “push-your-luck” mechanic. This is usually achieved by allowing a player to re-roll one or more of their dice with an escalating level of risk and reward.
  • Melbourne’s public transport network, created by the “Octopus Act” in the late eighteenth century, has a large number of train and tram lines radiating out from the Central Business District. While there used to be two “circle lines” that connected stations on these lines to each other, nowadays to change from one to the other you generally have to travel into the city and back out again. Only buses travel in alternate directions, but they are generally less frequent and less reliable, thanks to traffic.
  • Agnes Nitt and Perdita X Dream appear briefly in Lords and Ladies, but are best known from Maskerade (#Pratchat23, “The Music of the Nitt“) and Carpe Jugulum (#Pratchat36, “Home Alone, But Vampires”).
  • Ben’s favourite board game Pandemic was designed by Matt Leacock and first published in 2008. It’s a fully co-operative game (see below) in which players are members of the Centre for Disease Control, trying to keep four global pandemics in check while they find cures for them all. The current edition of the game is published by Z-Man Games.
  • Fully cooperative games are ones in which players do not compete, but instead win or lose (and sometimes score) together. Board game examples include Pandemic, Flash Point: Fire Rescue and Spirit Island. Semi-cooperative games feature some cooperation, but the players also compete against each other in some way. In Ben’s experience, most such games feature strong player cooperation, usual through a high chance of everyone losing, but add in secret personal goals that might put them into conflict. This is a feature of “hidden traitor” and social deduction games like Battlestar Galactica and Dead of Winter, though these might also be considered team games. The Witches is different in that the competitive side of the game dominates; the cooperative element is relatively light, with the threat of losing fairly slight.
  • Solo board games are very popular in the “print and play” scene – cheap games you can download and print on paper yourself. They include Bargain Basement Bathysphere (since published as a boxed game), Utopia Engine and RATS: High Tea at Sea. Nemo’s War is at the other end of the scale: it’s a large game with a big board, hundreds of components and several expansions. Other boxed solo games include Under Falling Skies (which started life as a print and play game), Final Girl, Coffee Roaster and Deep Space D-6.
  • We discussed Good Omens back in #Pratchat15, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Nice and Accurate)”.
  • The Discworld Emporium is the most famous officially licensed producer of Discworld merchandise which grew out of Clarecraft, a fantasy figurine business run by Isobel and Bernard Pearson, who started doing Discworld miniatures in the early 1990s. We most recently talked about them in #Pratchat53, “A (Very) Few Words by Hner Ner Hner”. They are credited as the author of many of the more recent spin-off books, like The Compleat Ankh-Morpork and The Nac Mac Feegle Big Wee Alphabet Book, so you’ll no doubt here some more about them before we’re done.
  • The fans whose likenesses were used for the box art witches were Kate Oldroyd (Tiffany Aching), Victoria Lear (Petulia Gristle) and Pam Gower (Granny Weatherwax). As we mentioned, Pam sadly passed away in January 2023. She wasn’t just the inspiration for this box art, but also Paul Kidby’s bust of Granny Weatherwax. You can read Bernard Pearson’s thoughts about Pam in his Cunning Artificer blog in 2015, including an anecdote about her meeting with Terry which also appears in the biography.
  • Rowlf the Dog was one of the original muppet characters, originally performed by Jim Henson. He notably achieved solo fame in the early 1960s as a regular on the Jimmy Dean Show, before becoming the piano player in The Muppet Show and subsequent movies. His big number in The Muppet Movie is a duet with Kermit, “I Hope That Somethin’ Better Comes Along”.
  • Wilfred is the title character of a short film and two television series, all created by Australian comic actors Adam Zwar and Jason Gann, and starring Gann (in a costume) as “Wilfred”, an anthropomorphic dog, who is suspicious and jealous of his owner’s new partner. The original short won awards at Tropfest, Australia’s biggest short film festival, in 2007, and became a series on SBS which ran for two seasons in 2010. It was then adapted for the US market, starring Gann as Wilfred and Elijah Wood as Ryan, a depressed man who befriends Wilfred when his neighbour asks him to look after the dog. In this version the question of whether Wilfred can truly speak, or even really exists, is much more present. The American Wilfred ran for four seasons on FX between 2011 and 2014. There was also a Russian adaptation, retitled Charlie.
  • The board games we recommended are:
    • Wingspan
    • Dominion
    • Castles of Mad King Ludwig
    • The Palace of Mad King Ludwig
    • Pandemic
    • Pandemic: Fall of Rome (now called Fall of Rome: A Pandemic System Game)
    • Thunderbirds

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

Posted in: Episode Notes Tagged: Annagramma, Ben McKenzie, board game, Discworld, Elizabeth Flux, games, Martin Wallace, no book, Petulia Gristle, Steve Lamattina, The Witches, Tiffany Aching

#Pratchat30 Notes and Errata

8 April 2020 by Ben Leave a Comment

Theses are the show notes and errata for our special questions-only thirtieth episode, “Looking Widdershins”.

Iconographic Evidence

The licensing agreement for the fan production Troll Bridge imposed fairly tight restrictions on how and where it can be sold or screened, so it seemed at the time of recording there was no way left to see it if you hadn’t already got on board. But that’s no longer the case! You can watch Troll Bridge on YouTube.

Notes and Errata

  • Widdershins is an old English word (not, to be clear, an Old English word) which means anti-clockwise, or to move around something by keeping it on your left. On the Discworld, it is one of the four cardinal directions, along with hubwards (towards the centre or hub of the Disc), rimwards (towards the edge or rim) and turnwise (in the direction of the Disc’s spin; the opposite direction to widdershins). Knowing this in year twelve really impressed Ben’s English teacher, who had never read any Pratchett.
  • We’ve listed a few solid options here for Discworld books to start with:
    • Wyrd Sisters – Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick, three witches from the country kingdom of Lancre, are forced to meddle in politics when their king is murdered by a Duke who cares nothing for the kingdom. If you like the idea of the Witches, this is probably the best book to start with. We discussed it in #Pratchat4, “Enter Three Wytches”. As discussed, Equal Rites precedes it, but only features Granny. We covered Equal Rites in #Pratchat25, “Eskist Attitudes”.
    • Mort – the anthropomorphic personification of Death takes a gormless country lad as his apprentice. This is the first book to feature Death as a protagonist, though he’s more or less the B plot to Mort himself. Introduces many ideas, places and themes of the Discworld, and is arguably the first to have the familiar Discworld tone. We discussed it in #Pratchat2, “Murdering a Curry”.
    • Men at Arms – the Ankh-Morpork City Watch has its work cut out for it as racial tensions simmer between dwarfs and trolls, at the same time as a mysterious series of murders takes place. The second of the Watch books, we (and our future listeners) thought it a great enough introduction to the Discworld to pick it as the first one we discussed in #Pratchat1, “Boots Theory” (and we later return to it, sort of, in a special live recorded show, #PratchatNALC, “Twice as Alive”). The Watch books start with Guards! Guards! It’s not essential to read it first, but it is a great read, even if the characters themselves are still finding their feet a little. We read it for #Pratchat7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch”.
    • The Colour of Magic – failed “wizzard” Rincewind is forced to look after the Discworld’s first tourist, Twoflower, on a series of misadventures across the Disc. Still brilliantly funny, but much more a parody of sword and sorcery and high fantasy than establishing itself as its own thing, and with a definite different tone. Ends on a cliffhanger, making the second book, The Light Fantastic, the only direct sequel in the series. We discussed it for its 35th anniversary in #Pratchat14, “City-State Lampoon’s Disc-wide Vacation”.
    • Going Postal – con-man Moist von Lipwig is forced to revive the flagging fortunes of the Ankh-Morpork post office. A particular favourite of Liz’s, and a great intro as Moist is a new protagonist and not originally from Ankh-Morpork. It happens much later in the overall series than the other suggestions, but Moist returns in two later books, Making Money and Raising Steam. We will discuss it in #Pratchat38, “Moisten to Steal”.
  • The three live-action Discworld telemovies, all very faithful to the books, were produced by The Mob, a UK production company previously best known for their advertising work. Each was originally broadcast on Sky1 in the UK in two parts, and are usually available in two parts wherever you can find them. At the time of this episode, they’re currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. Terry Pratchett appears in a cameo role in all three productions, and many cast members appear in at least two of the films, though rarely in the same role.
    • Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather (2006) – Death has taken the place of the Discworld equivalent of Father Christmas; his granddaughter Susan tries to get to the bottom of it. Starring Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey), Marc Warren (Hustle) and Ian Richardson (House of Cards) as the voice of Death, plus a great supporting cast including David Jason, Nigel Planer and David Warner. It was first broadcast a week or so before Christmas, and is very faithful to the novel. We discussed the book in #Pratchat26, “The Long Dark Mr Teatime of the Soul”.
    • Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic (2008) – adapts both The Colour of Magic (see above) and its sequel The Light Fantastic, though it streamlines the plot and takes a few liberties. First broadcast over Easter, it stars David Jason as Rincewind, despite the fact that he’s a great deal older than the character of the books. Twoflower is played by Sean Astin (The Lord of the Rings). The supporting cast includes David Bradley (Harry Potter, Doctor Who), Tim Curry, Jeremy Irons and Christopher Lee as the voice of Death.
    • Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal (2010) – an adaptation of the first Moist von Lipwig novel. Stars Richard Foyle (Coupling, Sabrina) as Moist, with David Suchet (Poirot) and Clare Foy (The Crown), plus a supporting cast including Charles Dance and Tamsin Grieg.
  • Cosgrove Hall actually made three animated Discworld adaptations, if you include the short Welcome to the Discworld, starring Christopher Lee as Death – a part he plays in all three animations – in a sequence based on the novel Reaper Man. They’re quite hard to find now, though we hear that if you search a certain popular video platform you might find them… They were sort of one series, originally broadcast on the UK’s Channel 4 as 23-minute episodes and titled Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, with a subtitle for each series specifying the book being adapted.
    • Soul Music (1994, 7 episodes) – young bard Imp wants to be the greatest musician the Disc has ever known, but he should be careful what he wishes for… As “Music With Rocks In” sweeps the world, Death feels moved to intervene, and his granddaughter Susan is drawn in as well. As Ben mentions, the soundtrack is something special, especially fans of the Beatles or the history of rock and roll; it’s not on Spotify, but it is still available on Apple Music. We covered the book in #Pratchat19, “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got Rocks In”.
    • Wyrd Sisters (1997, 6 episodes) is a faithful adaptation of the novel (see above) over six episodes, with the witches played wonderfully by Annette Crosbie (One Foot in the Grave), June Whitfield and Jane Horrocks (the latter two both probably best known to modern audiences from their supporting roles in Absolutely Fabulous). One of Ben’s comedy heroes, Eleanor Bron, plays the Duchess, and there’s some other great cast too.
  • There are definitely other Pratchett adaptations; the most notable would be Cosgrove Hall’s stop-motion adaptation of Truckers, Amazon Prime’s BBC co-production of Good Omens, and the upcoming BBC America series The Watch, though that seems more a loose interpretation than a direct adaptation. There have also been low-budget TV versions of Johnny and the Dead (for ITV) and Johnny and the Bomb (for the BBC). An animated feature of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is in production in Europe, though whether it will retain its Discworld setting is unknown. (It was released in December 2022, though as of this update in April 2023, we’ve not seen it yet.) An adaptation of Discworld novel The Wee Free Men has been in pre-production with the Jim Henson Workshop, though there’s been little news of it since it was announced in 2016.
  • As Ben mentions in the footnote, Troll Bridge is an epic short film based on the short story about ageing Discworld hero Cohen the Barbarian. (We discussed the short story it’s based on in our first live episode, “A Troll New World”.) See the Iconographic Evidence section above if you want to watch it!
  • If you’d like to listen to Ook Club, see our Support Us page.
  • The Discworld Collector’s Library editions were first published from 2014 to 2016 by Gollancz, Terry’s first publisher, who only had rights to the books up to Jingo, which explains why initially only the first 21 books were available in this format. Penguin Random House have since continued the imprint for the later books, and now all of them are available except for the younger readers books – The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, and all the Tiffany Aching books, though the latter have had their own series of fancy new editions (which include dust jackets, much to Liz’s dismay). They retail for about £13 in the UK, and $27 AUD in Australia. The early ones weren’t available in the US or Canada for licensing reasons; we’re not sure what the situation is now. We could list an affiliate link, but instead we’d like to recommend you contact your local independent bookshop – they can order in anything you want, and they could really use your business right now. If you’re in Melbourne, this Broadsheet article lists some bookshops which were providing free local delivery (though it wouldn’t hurt to double-check if that’s still the case).
  • The Folio Society have been publishing deluxe, illustrated editions of books since 1947, including some extra special limited editions. Ben and Liz remembered correctly that they have published editions of both Mort and Small Gods, and they also have an edition of Good Omens.
  • Howl’s Moving Castle is a 1986 fantasy novel by Diana Wynne Jones. It tells the story of Sophie, the oldest of three sisters in a magical kingdom, who expects her life will be boring as it is always the youngest sister who has romantic adventures. Instead she ends up cursed by a Witch and working for the Wizard Howl, hoping to free his fire demon Calcifer so he will break her curse. The book was brilliantly (if fairly loosely) adapted into a film by Hayao Miyazaki for Studio Ghibli in 2004. Brave New World is Aldous Huxley’s famous 1932 dystopian novel which depicts a future society genetically engineered into castes and kept compliant and docile with drugs and sex.
  • The year of five books was 1990, during which Pratchett published Eric, Moving Pictures, Good Omens, Diggers and Wings. He was no slouch in 1989 either, publishing four books: Pyramids, Guards! Guards!, Truckers and The Unadulterated Cat. We’ve covered all nine of those books on Pratchat.
  • We’d like to apologise to listener Neil Webber (@RugbySkeptic on Twitter), who was actually the asker of the question about which books we thought were most politically on point! This was entirely an error at our end when collating questions from the various social media platforms.
  • We’ve covered many of the books mentioned in this section, including Jingo (“Leshp Miserablés”), Small Gods (“He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Vorbis”), Feet of Clay (“Arsenic and Old Clays”), Lords and Ladies (“Midsummer (Elf) Murders”) and Maskerade (“The Music of the Nitt”). We have since also covered Night Watch (“The Land Before Vimes”), The Truth (“Truth, the Printing Press and Every -ing”) and The Fifth Elephant (“The King and the Hole of the King”).
  • Agnes Nitt does indeed appear again in Carpe Jugulum, as well as another later book, but we won’t say which because of slight spoiler possibilities. (You can find out by listening to our episode about it, #Pratchat36, “Home Alone, But Vampires”.)
  • We discussed Dodger way back in #Pratchat6, “A Load of Old Tosh”, with guest David Astle.
  • We covered Moving Pictures in #Pratchat10, “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Broomstick”, and Soul Music in #Pratchat19, “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got Rocks In”.
  • Rhianna Pratchett was given official permission by her father to continue writing for the Discworld, but announced back in June 2015: “I don’t intend on writing more Discworld novels, or giving anyone else permission to do so”, and neither would Terry’s assistant Rob Wilkins. She also ruled out the possibility of publishing any of his unfinished works; they were later destroyed by crushing Pratchett’s hard drives under a steam roller, as per the stipulations of his will.
  • And Another Thing… is a sixth book in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “trilogy”, written by Eoin Colfer with permission from Adams’ widow, Jane Belson. It was published in 2009 to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the first novel, and met with mixed reviews. It was adapted for radio as The Hexagonal Phase, incorporating some of Adams’ unused material.
  • The Rivers of London series of novels by Ben Aaronovitch follow the adventures of Constable Peter Grant, a police officer whose dreams of making detective are complicated when he meets a ghost and becomes apprenticed to Detective Chief Inspector Nightingale – the last official wizard in England. The series encompasses eight novels, two novellas and at least seven volumes of comics. Most of the novels contain at least one Pratchett reference, so Aaronovitch is clearly a fan.
  • Since there’s no significant Discworld character named Vincent, we are pretty sure that when Liz says “Vincent and Moist” she meant Leonard of Quirm and Moist.
  • The Dysk Theatre features in Wyrd Sisters, and rates a mention in Lords and Ladies and Thief of Time. The chief characters there are Olwyn Vitoller, proprietor; his adopted son Tomjon, a gifted actor; and the genius and constantly writing dwarf playwright Hwel.
  • Johnny Maxwell is the protagonist of three of Pratchett’s books for middle grade readers. An ordinary thirteen year old boy with no wish for supernatural adventure, he nevertheless becomes the Chosen One destined to save a fleet of computer game aliens, speaks to the dead, and travels back in time. We’re covering these books this year, starting with Only You Can Save Mankind in episode 28, “All Our Base Are Belong to You”.
  • The Watch, as mentioned briefly above, is a new BBC America series currently in production in South Africa and expected to be released later this year. It is loosely based on the Discworld books about the City Watch, and stars Richard Armitage as Commander Sam Vimes. The wider casting, and the initial on-set photos so far released, suggest a very different interpretation of the characters and stories, with a more modern (though still fantastical) setting. We’re keen to see how it all works out. (You’ll find out what we think when we later discuss The Watch in both #Pratchat52, “A Near-Watch Experience”, and Eeek Club 2022.)
  • Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is a Netflix original series very loosely based on the novel of the same name by Douglas Adams. It takes the core concept of a “holistic detective” devoted to the idea of the “fundamental interconnectedness of all things” and then runs in a very different direction. Despite this, Ben rather loved it for being its own thing. It ran for two seasons, each telling a different long story, with some plot elements carrying over between the two.
  • The Borrowers is a 1952 children’s fantasy novel written by English author Mary Norton, about a family of tiny people who secretively live in a house of normal-sized humans, “borrowing” what they need to survive. It was followed by four sequels between 1955 and 1982, and adapted into several television series and films.
  • Land of the Giants was a 1960s science fiction series produced by Irwin Allen (of Lost in Space fame), in which the passengers and crew of the sub-orbital commercial spacecraft Spindrift are sucked through a dimensional tear and crash on a planet of human-like aliens who are twelve times larger than humans.
  • You can find Nanny Ogg’s hand washing song in this video from the Australian Discworld Convention. It’s not her most offensive song, but probably strays into NSFW territory.
  • There have been several officially licensed Discworld board games (links are to entries on BoardGameGeek.com, aka BGG):
    • Thud (2002) was the first official Discworld boardgame, and is based on the game Thud played by dwarfs and trolls in the novel, er…Thud. It plays like a modernised version of the Viking game Hnefnatafl: it uses a Chess-like symmetrical board (though this one is octagonal) and asymmetrical player pieces – one player controls 32 dwarfs, and the other eight trolls. Thud was designed by Trevor Truan with “liner notes” by Pratchett and pieces designed by “the Cunning Artificer” Bernard Pearson (now proprietor of the Discworld Emporium). After an initial limited release it had two big box editions, both now out of print. A third major edition, first released in 2009, comes in a cloth bag with a cloth board, and is available from the Discworld Emporium.
    • Watch Out: Discworld Board Game (2004) was designed by Trevor Truan with pieces again by the Cunning Artificer, but was never published. 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.
    • Discworld: Ankh-Morpork (2011) has the players secretly take on the roles of various Ankh-Morpork characters as factions vy for control of the city in the wake of Lord Vetinari’s disappearance. Designed by Martin Wallace for his company Treefrog Games, it’s the highest rated of the Discworld games on BGG. It’s now out of print, but Wallace’s 2019 game Nanty Narking is a new and slightly improved version of the same game with a new theme of Victorian London, replacing the famous Discworld characters with characters from the works of Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and more.
    • 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.
    • In The Witches: A Discworld Game (2013), also by Martin Wallace, players are trainee witches in Lancre dealing with the more everyday problems of the local folk. Notably it had rules for solo and cooperative play, as well as the competitive version. (Ben found multiple references suggesting Martin Wallace designed a third Discworld game, but it seems it was never finished, or at least never published. We’ve heard on the grapevine that it would have involved the gods of the Discworld.)
    • Clacks: A Discworld Boardgame (2015) is also from Leonard Boyd and David Brashaw for BackSpindle Games. Players are Clacks operators for the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, trying to win the race against Moist von Lipwig’s newly revitalised postal service. Includes rules for competitive and cooperative play. Still in print, so it might be available via your local game store (who needs your support right now); otherwise it’s also at the Discworld Emporium.
  • Though no version has ever been commercially released, BGG does list Cripple Mr Onion in its database – specifically the 1993 rules devised by Andrew Millard and Terry Tao, and originally posted online at alt.fan.pratchett. These rules are reproduced in later editions of The Discworld Companion, including the one titled Turtle Recall, and suggest players combine a deck of regular playing cards with a deck of Spanish cards (which use Tarot suits) to get the eight suits required. An alternative is “The Fat Pack” deck of cards from The Fat Pack Playing Card Company, designed in part to support play of Cripple Mr Onion. Its eight suits are Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, Roses, Axes, Tridents and Doves. The company still has a web site, so we’re ordering some cards and will let you know how we go.
  • Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell – one of Ben’s favourite books – is the Hugo Award winning 2004 debut novel from English author Susannah Clarke. Set in an 1800s England with a lost history of wizardry, it tells the story of two modern magicians destined to revive English magic: the bookish recluse Mr Norrell, and the idle gentleman Jonathan Strange. It was adapted by the BBC into a largely faithful seven part mini-series in 2015. A collection of short stories set in the same world, The Ladies of Grace-Adieu and Other Stories, was published in 2006.
  • You can find the famous Discworld reading guide diagram in high resolution on imgur here; the makers also have a Facebook page. HarperCollins also released a very similar official one on their Epic Reads blog. These don’t really tell you where to start, but they represent the various sub-series in clear visual style.
  • We talked about Interesting Times in our previous episode, “Great Rimward Land”.
  • The Victorian Discworld Klatch is the local Discworld fan group, who hold occasional meetings in Melbourne, Australia. You can find out more at their Facebook group. If you’re looking for fan groups in other parts of Australia, you can find a list on the Australian Discworld Convention site.
  • Stargates are the ancient technology in the film and various television series of the same name, which form stable wormholes between planets allowing for instantaneous travel. Jump by Sean Williams is the first in a trilogy of novels imagining a future Earth where an unlimited energy source has enabled a worldwide network of matter transporters, which has transformed human culture.
  • In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Picard’s first officer Will Riker discovers that when he was transported to safety from a dangerous situation eight years earlier, the transporter beam split and two Rikers were created – him on the rescue ship, and another one back on the planet. The philosophical implications of this are covered in Richard Hanley’s book The Metaphysics of Star Trek. The one trapped on the planet is rescued, and after a brief time spent with his transporter twin, decides to go by his middle name, Thomas, and start a new life. It…doesn’t end well.
  • The lemming-like animal Ben is thinking of is the vermine, which appears in footnotes and asides in several of the earlier Discworld novels.
  • The Casanova TV series starring David Tennant was written by Russell T Davies of Queer as Folk and Doctor Who fame, and produced for the BBC in 2005. Several actors from it also later appeared in Doctor Who.
  • Hail and Well Met is a podcast production team based in Perth, Western Australia, who make several audio drama shows.
  • The “Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness” can be summarised in this sentence from Men at Arms:
    “A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”
Posted in: Episode Notes Tagged: Ben McKenzie, Discworld, Elizabeth Flux, no book

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#Pratchat84 - Ankh-Morpork Archives & Discworld Almanak8 April 2025
Listen to us discuss the in-universe Discworld books The Ankh-Morpork Archives volume I and II, collecting the Discworld diaries, and The Discworld Almanak. Join the discussion using the hashtag #Pratchat84.

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