# Modiphius Announces Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork tags: #thoughts #game/rpg/discworld [![[Discworld Announce.png]]](https://www.modiphius.net/en-us/pages/discworld-adventures-signup) So -- This thing happened. > [!quote] Email from Modiphius this morning > > We are thrilled to announce that we have secured the rights to produce tabletop games for Terry Pratchett’s beloved and internationally bestselling **Discworld** series. With the blessing of the late Sir Terry’s estate we’ve got exciting plans to publish tabletop games that honour the humour and satire of the darkly entertaining series. > > The first Discworld game to be released will be a tabletop roleplaying game around the city of Ankh-Morpork and the wider Disc, launching as a Kickstarter in late 2024. [Sign up here](https://modiphius.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3a03f2f0abc7da8e538e00cb4&id=93c2c2c2b6&e=bed1c01af9) to be among the first to hear about the launch of the Kickstarter and other Discworld updates! > > The Pratchett Estate says, “Terry had a lifelong affection with roleplaying games and it’s an entirely logical path along which you can follow his career from Dungeon Master to him becoming one of our most celebrated and beloved fantasy authors of all time. We are delighted to be partnering with Modiphius. We love their work and we love their ethos and we entirely trust them to get things right.” ![[Discworld Characters.png]] _Discworld Massive Massif_. © Paul Kidby > [!quote] > > As huge fans of the series, we want to make sure that we do Discworld justice. That’s why we are looking to find out more about other Discworld fans. We’ve created a survey [here](https://modiphius.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=3a03f2f0abc7da8e538e00cb4&id=5210b4f912&e=bed1c01af9), that will only take a few minutes to complete. Tell us about your gaming habits (if any), your love of Discworld, and a few other tidbits about you so that we can tailor our games for those who love the world the most. > > Your answers will be kept confidential and will not be shared with any third parties. Even better, if you are happy to include your email at the end of the survey, you will be entered into a prize draw to win one of ten $100 vouchers to spend on the Modiphius store! And I've got to be honest with you – it's not so much an announcement of a game as it is the intention to announce a game sometime in late 2024 based on **[Discworld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld)**, one of the most popular and beloved comedy fantasy novel series of all time. Does this make sense? I suppose from the perspective of a new rights holder it might be justifiable as part of that acquisition, to announce that you now have the rights to do something with the property. I'm not sure how that gets you ahead before you have something to show for it, but there you go. It's strangely disquieting to have a link to a survey as part of the announcement which effectively asks what kind of games do you play, how often, what's your favorite Discworld book, and whether you have any additional comments? Do they not know what they want to do with the property as potentially pivotal as **Discworld**? That's a little disquieting. Someone on the _Fediverse_ put it best: > [!quote] [Seiðr on the Fediverse](https://social.vivaldi.net/@Illuminatus@mstdn.social/112014517314070195) > > Fun fact: if you want your average Fantasy TTRPG to become a Discworld TTRPG you only need to have players with a peculiar sense of humour and not bothering about them derailing your carefully laid out scenarios. That's objectively true. The nature of **Discworld** isn't necessarily given by any particular mechanics but by the approach to the setting, a few referential axioms about the world, and – go. That's it, that's the whole thing. I am I admit, it would be interesting to see a skirmish level tactical wargame set in the **Discworld** universe (because that's one of the things that Modiphius _does_), but that seems to be a bit of a stretch. None of their current RPG systems seems to be really lightweight enough to do comedy fantasy fast and loose. I'm not sure what the plan is. I'm not sure there is a plan. Which brings us around to the most difficult part of thinking about this as a product: _You_ are not as funny as Terry Pratchett. _I_ am not as funny as Terry Pratchett. Neither you nor I are as good a writer as Terry Pratchett. As such – how can the play of such a game end up being anything more than a sad homage to the work of a great man? I've said before on multiple occasions that bad media makes for good games. A bad movie can inspire a great tabletop experience. A bad series of novels can be great game fodder. Everybody looks at it, enjoys it, and then says "I can be part of that world!" Then they do so. Great media doesn't often make for good games, as companies who license media for games have learned the hard way over the years. The play at the table reminds you that you can be enjoying the original media that made you so happy in the first place, and the worst thing a game can do is remind you of a better thing that you could be doing. I'm curious as to what the eventual offering will be – but I'm not feeling secure that it will do the source material justice. The best it can be, in a real sense, is one stop shopping as a reference to the setting to be played in whatever your choice of comfortable fantasy system is. There's absolutely no chance they're going to publish it as a system agnostic sourcebook for the world in general but… That's probably the best way to handle it. My worst fear is that they use it as an excuse for frustrated RPG writers to crank out an endless series of scenarios aping the style of Terry Pratchett without the soul, which would be the kind of undead abomination I generally expect. Let's hope I'm surprised this year.