Verdict
Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork was clearly designed with great reverence for Terry Pratchett’s source material. The rulebook’s writing and visuals offer a loving nod to the tone and topics that made the Discworld series great. However, the overly simple, structureless rules make for unsatisfying roleplay, and they don’t always capture the self-aware tone of the beloved fantasy series. A mixed bag of pre-written adventures and an overwhelming lack of detailed mechanics further muddy the waters.
- An enjoyable, nostalgic read
- Quick and easy to start playing
- You don’t need to be a Discworld superfan
- Lack of structure makes rules unsatisfying
- Hit-and-miss adventure writing
- Very few rules for such a long rulebook
I find myself quite disappointed by Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork. The Terry Pratchett TTRPG was my most anticipated new system of the year by far – so much so that, rather than waiting for Modiphius to provide review copies, I put my own money towards the Kickstarter campaign.
I won’t say that I regret purchasing the tabletop RPG. To read, and to hold, it’s a lovingly crafted collector’s item, filled with affectionate nods to the source material. But while the initial readthrough smelled of roses, the playthrough smelled a bit more like the mighty, murky river Ankh. Now that I’ve had time to test a digital copy of the core rules, my fiery excitement for the system has cooled significantly.
So, let’s talk about the Discworld RPG in detail: the good, the bad, and the Nobby Nobbs (read also: ugly).
The setting
The new Discworld RPG is a rules-light tabletop RPG for three to six players, including the Game Master. It doesn’t take a Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography to figure out that the game is based on Terry Pratchett’s esteemed fantasy (Disc)world of the same name.
If you want to be specific, though, the core rulebook focuses solely on the stories being told in the city of Ankh-Morpork. Lancre, Überwald, and beyond are absent (for now). It also specifies that these adventures take place at the turn of the Century of the Anchovy, before the events of books like Thud! and Going Postal.
The natural target audience is existing fans of the novels, but the lore isn’t too obscure to bar newcomers entry. In fact, the Discworld RPG goes to great pains to establish some basic knowledge of the setting before play begins. Much of its page count is taken up with introductions to Ankh-Morpork’s most famous players, most populous communities, and most important buildings.
It’s a solid primer for the uninitiated, but for the Discworld veteran, it’s like slipping on a pair of gloves knitted with love by your grandmother. It’s like taking a trip down memory lane into the Shades themselves (though, hopefully, with far less of the stabbing).
The system
The Discworld RPG proudly touts itself as an engine of one-shots, a palette cleanser after a long campaign with some more complex system. Its simplicity makes it easy for inexperienced roleplayers to pick up and play, but I’m reluctant to declare this game ‘beginner-friendly’.
The Discworld RPG is so simple, so open-ended, that it’s barely a ‘system’. The rulebook explains how to actually play in around 10 pages. You could remove the other 207 pages, and you’d still have a fairly complete understanding of how everything works.
The driving force of the game is traits. Rather than stats, a player’s abilities are instead decided by a small, snappy list of quirks. That could be anything from ‘Wizard at Unseen University’ to ‘Bottomless Pockets’. If a player can justify it, they can even use their character name as a trait to modify their role.
At its core, that’s what the Discworld RPG is: not just a conversation between player and GM, but an argument. When faced with a problem, players must pitch one of their traits as a possible solution. The Game Master considers their argument, and they assign a die for the player to roll. If their method of attack is a poor fit for the conundrum, they’ll roll a d4 or a d6. Solutions that are perfectly suited instead net a d10 or a d12.
The system encourages you to bend its rules to breaking point. Outlandish interpretations of your own wording, loopholes, and puns are a fundamental part of the experience. There’s even a ‘million in one chance’ rule stating that any idea that’s so inconceivably out there, so utterly stupid that it could never ever succeed is considered an automatic success – no roll needed.
The problem with the system
That all sounds very Pratchett-esque, but as a set of RPG rules, it’s about as sturdy as a three-legged chair. Let me explain.
Every tabletop RPG has a structure. It’s often not stated outright, but the rules themselves indirectly define the cycle of play. They establish the expected behavior of a character in a scene. They set clear goals that drive players from one encounter to the next, even when it doesn’t seem like much is happening.
These expectations create limitations, which might sound counterintuitive in a roleplaying game, where anything should be possible. The opposite is true, however. Limitations are often the driving force behind creative decisions. This is as true in poetry – where the rules of a sonnet influence the exact words used and the themes you explore – as it is in gaming.
Many will argue that D&D is not a beginner-friendly game, but it gets at least one thing right: the structure. The conventions of a scene, whether it be combat-heavy dungeon crawl or skill-based social interaction, are so effectively communicated that new players will begin to pick up on its conventions without really noticing.
A new D&D player usually knows what their character wants to achieve and the best way to go about it. An inexperienced Dungeon Master is more prepared for improv because they have a formula to rely upon, particularly if they’re running a pre-written adventure. The hardest part of the job is done for them; all they need to do is flavor a meal that’s already been cooked.
Adventures in Ankh-Morpork only communicates the most basic convention of roleplay: a player faces a conflict, they must make a roll to address it, and the GM narrates the consequences. It never elaborates on these consequences or on the nature of the conflict. There are no additional rules for combat, conversation, or investigation, so there are no signposts showing which would be useful when. According to the Discworld RPG, they are, in fact, identical activities.
This total simplicity places a lot of responsibility in the hands of the GM and, to a lesser extent, the players. They require an almost academic understanding of what makes narrative games interesting, because the game provides no guard rails to guide them. They must define their own clear goals and come armed with a bucket-full of ideas for driving a scene forward, because the system does not do it for them.
While veteran roleplayers will have years of these conventions baked into their subconscious, less confident players will find themselves stumbling over indecision. The wide open road where anything is possible is suddenly populated by ‘uuuhmms’ and ‘errrms’. Their confidence grows even more fragile as they struggle to pull a rabbit out of the hat and get their friends to clap. And when this stumble occurs, Adventures in Ankh-Morpork isn’t there to catch them.
It’s ironic, really, that a Discworld game provides such a poor structure for storytelling. The world that Terry Pratchett built is one where the characters know they are players in a story. They understand narrative conventions to the point that they can use them to their own gain.
The Discworld RPG is clearly trying to capture this idea in its trait mechanics. But, in order to break away from form, you need a form to break. How are your quirky fantasy heroes supposed to defy convention if we don’t really know what those conventions are?
The adventures
One way to solve this conundrum would be to create structure through adventure design. A well-written adventure can set a strong goal that inspires the party’s actions. It might set up a genre – mystery, war, or romance – that helps define why the characters are there and what they should do next.
Adventures in Ankh-Morpork offers three pre-written adventures, and they’re fairly hit-and-miss. The best by far is the City Watch adventure, which immediately entrenches you in the detective genre. Your goals are clear: keep the peace, gather clues, and stop a crime in its tracks. The narrative offers escalation of the core conflict at appropriate times that keeps players interested. This is also the only adventure that attempts to recreate some of Pratchett’s biting political commentary. It’s the most fleshed-out and lively of the trio by far.
In contrast, I ran an adventure based around the haphazard wizards of Unseen University. My players’ goal was to escort some exchange students to odd and dangerous events around UU – and to make sure no precious university secrets were stolen in the process.
Each encounter was vague and unconnected from the others. There was no clear escalation of stakes. Descriptions of the scene and its intended outcomes was minimal. I was presented with a list of things that could go wrong in a scene, but there was no other guidance on the events of the encounter.
On multiple occasions, I handwaved over an encounter because it was growing as dull as a troll in a desert. The players simply weren’t sure how to respond to the adventure’s murky goal of ‘witness a scene, but make sure your exchange students don’t do something they shouldn’t’. I would hastily move us on, not because the players had found a clear reason to advance to the next scene, but because they no longer knew how to engage with the adventure’s contents.
The wrap-up
It’s important to note that my guinea pig group did have fun with Adventures in Ankh-Morpork. At least, that’s what they tell me (I hope they weren’t just being polite).
But fun is such a nebulous word to use when reviewing game design. Everyone’s definition of the term is so immensely personal that it becomes near-useless when trying to write objectively.
It becomes even more unhelpful when you don’t specify the source of said fun. Were we enjoying ourselves because of a robust RPG system, or was it simply because (as us Brits would put it) we were mucking about with chums? A terrible movie (like, say, Birdemic) can still make for a great evening with the right crowd.
Does it perfectly capture its source material? No. Is it an elegant, innovative design? Certainly not. Will you have a good time with this game if you and your buddies love Terry Pratchett? That’s very probable.
Perhaps it’s a bit unfair to compare Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork with one of the worst movies ever made, but there is a grain of truth in that sentiment. The ‘fun’ that’s taking place here is in spite of the art, not because of it.
Have your own thoughts on the Discworld RPG? Let us know in the Wargamer Discord. Or, for more on TTRPGs, here’s an intro to DnD classes and DnD races.