Discworld

There are many ways to read the series, obviously, so I am curious as to what are people's preferred method.

I read them chronologically by publishing date the first time, then once by theme (Watch, Witches, and Moist novels first) and then been reading books here and there kinda randomly (although when I read one Watch novel, I tend to read all of them to the end, plus Raising Steam).

What do others do?

The People's Revolution of the Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May is depicted in Night Watch. It ended the increasingly tough reign of Lord Winder. Tension had been rising, and while the nobility arranged a quiet succession by Lord Snapcase in the background, the people on the streets started a revolution and attacked Watch Houses all over the city.

A few streets around Treacle Mine Road were barricaded at first. Soon more people started barricading streets, barricades were moved forward and merged together, covering at least a quarter of the city - including the food industry. The resulting area was called The People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road. The watchmen of the Treacle Mine Road Watch House led the Republic together with some enthusiastic angry young men, among them the then-living Reg Shoe.

Although the Republic originally was invaded succesfully, the change of history recorded in Night Watch resulted in Sam Vimes under the name of John Keel saving the Republic until Lord Snapcase had become Patrician. But because history finds a way, those who died in the original revolution still died, in an attack planned by Carcer prompted by Snapcase's concerns about what "Keel" could get up to if left alone for a month after serving as such a prominent leader after less than a week in the city.

Each year, on the 25th of May, a group of survivors of the uprising gathers at Small Gods' Cemetery to honor the casualties with lilacs and, affectionately, one hard-boiled egg (from Madam Roberta Meserole). The seven killed were mostly Watchmen from Treacle Mine Road: John Keel, Cecil Clapman, Horace Nancyball, Billy Wiglet, Dai Dickins, Ned Coates, and, temporarily, Reg Shoe - he will lie in his grave for a time during that day, and then leave.

The 25th of May is also memorialized, among those who survive, by the wearing of lilac on that date. Persons known to wear it include Sam Vimes, Fred Colon, Nobby Nobbs, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, and, improbably, Havelock Vetinari (he, at the time a young assassin, has kept his and his aristocratic aunt Lady Roberta Meserole's, not-insignificant involvement in the affair entirely secret).

The date is not publicly known as it was one of those revolutions where everybody likes to pretend in the aftermath that it never happened, with many new Watchmen uncertain of its relevance to the point that one new recruit tried wearing lilac only to be sharply criticised by Fred Colon. Vetinari once speculated about erecting a statue in memory of the soldiers, but Vimes rejected the idea, stating that the dead men would not want to be immortalised and inspire others to be heroes after they were betrayed for going beyond the call of duty, requesting that the men be simply left in peace.

Wear your lilac and if you're well prepared bring a towel, too.

To celebrate Sir Terry's Birthday there are some things on the official page:

We have brought together ways to get involved for all ages, from activity sheets to social media assets, all of which focus on one thing: celebrating the joy of Terry’s work. You can click on all the below images to access and download the files to use.

Made this proof-of-concept "Discworld" inspired gameplay video starring Discworld's the Watch

GNU Terry Pratchett!❤️

Collaboration with @Imajunation (https://imajunation.com/), Thijs Viegers and Paco Vink

#Discworld #GNUTerryPratchett #SpeakHisName #TerryPratchett
@discworld

GamesRadar+ can exclusively reveal that Modiphius, the studio responsible for tabletop adaptations of Star Trek, Fallout, and more, is working on a Discworld TTRPG.

Having secured the rights to the beloved series with an agreement from the late author Sir Terry Pratchett's estate, Modiphius is already at work on a Discworld roleplaying game "around the city of Ankh-Morpork and the wider Disc." This will hit Kickstarter later in the year.

Dubbed 'Terry Pratchett's Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork,' it's the first tabletop RPG to use that setting in almost 30 years. (To be precise, Discworld's last pen-and-paper outing was in 1998.) While it's unclear whether this version will use a new system or utilize one from the best tabletop RPGs, Modiphius promises "to publish tabletop games that honor the humor, satire, and darkly entertaining fantasy series."

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/7849066

A follow up to a previous post:

Eeek. Writer and narrative designer Rhianna Pratchett has kindled a little frail hope that we might one day play another brand new Discworld videogame, while responding to earlier comments from Perfect Entertainment co-founder Gregg Barnett about who exactly owns the intellectual property rights to Perfect's old Discworld adventure titles from the 90s.

Barnett made these comments during a lengthy interview with Time Extension about the creation of the 90s games. In between the anecdotes about collaborating with Terry Pratchett and getting cussed out by John Cleese, he dangled the carrot of a potential re-release, explaining that the key problem is that half the intellectual property rights for the games have now reverted to the British monarchy under UK law. To quote Night Watch, "two types of people laugh at the law: those that break it and those that make it."

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"Whenever something closes in the UK, intellectual property rights revert 50% to the original creator and 50% to the crown, which is King Charles. So that's the two owners of the games. So yes, there have been discussions and something may be happening down the track - a rerelease or a remaster. But it's obviously a complicated process when you're dealing with the crown."

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"We only have rights to the characters, not the games themselves," Pratchett told PCGamer following Barnett's statements. "If we did have the rights, then this would be a whole lot easier. We're genuinely not sure who does own the rights because studios have been bought and sold over the years, along with IP.

"Last time we investigated this, they were thought to be with Sony, but that's never been fully confirmed," she continued. "We'd certainly love to see the old games rereleased. It's news to us if His Majesty owns 50% of the Discworld games. Who knows what might happen if that's really the case. Maybe he's a fan!"

In the same interview with Time Extension, Barnett broached the ambition of making a brand new Discworld game, but suggested that this would be impossible, again due to legal obstacles. "Unfortunately, before Terry passed away, him or his agent or somebody had signed off every property to either ITV or Prime or the BBC literally across the board," he said.

Pratchett says this is incorrect, however. "No one has signed off everything to anybody," she told PCG. "We still own the IP rights... The reason why Gregg got the rights to do the games was that he came with solid ideas which fitted the nature of Discworld. The simple reason that there's never been a fully fledged Discworld game since then is no one has come to us with the right ideas and the resources to actually make it happen."

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/7568495

In a recent interview with Time Extension, Gregg Barnett (the designer of the classic Discworld point-and-click adventures from the '90s) revealed that remasters of the games may finally be on the cards after years of confusion over who owns the rights.

The series of games based on Terry Pratchett's Discworld books was released between 1995-2000, and is comprised of Discworld, Discworld II: Missing Presumed...!?, and Discworld Noir. All three titles were originally published on PC and were also notably created with the input of Pratchett himself, who helped to edit the dialogue.

For years, it's been believed that the rights around the game were in a state of limbo due to most of the companies involved in their creation either being absorbed by a larger company or going out of business altogether. Still, though, we couldn't resist sneaking in a cheeky question to Barnett during our recent chat regarding a potential rerelease, and his answer sort of took us by surprise.

We asked Barnett whether any retro publishers had tried to contact him to try and pick up the trail of where the rights may be, and shortly after, he replied:

"Yeah! We are a little bit beyond that point. I don’t want to give you a scoop, but a Discworld re-release may happen. The original rights are complicated in the UK, but it turns out that 50% reverted to me as the creator because the company Perfect Entertainment had been closed for over 10 years."

"Whenever something closes in the UK, intellectual property rights revert 50% to the original creator and 50% to the crown, which is King Charles. So that’s the two owners of the games. So yes, there have been discussions and something may be happening down the track – a rerelease or a remaster. But it’s obviously a complicated process when you’re dealing with the crown."

TierMaker Discworld Community Tier List

Apologies for not being able to upload an image at the moment.

Obviously TierMaker isn't the be all end all of community opinion, but I stumbled upon this tier list recently and found it strange. I have a handful of friends who have read some of the books, and they were surprised by some of the tierings too. Some trends I noticed:

• "Entry" books seem to be tiered high, and books occuring later in the Discworld timeline get tiered lower
• Tiffany Aching books are tiered very low
• I believe the earlier books are generally getting tiered higher than the later books, but I haven't actually verified that.

I guess my biggest question is is the opinions of the community actually so diverse? Maybe many folks haven't read all the books so it gets skewed like that? The site says it compiles 32 tier lists which sounds like a decent amount of data to me.

Josh Kirby’s art has adorned hundreds of book covers – perhaps most notably dozens of Terry Pratchett novels, especially the bestselling Discworld series.

His body of work is far more wide-ranging, though – Kirby’s paintings have graced the covers of volumes by Ray Bradbury, Ian Fleming, HG Wells, Jack Kerouac, Herman Melville and Neil Gaiman, and he’s done posters for movies including the Star Wars franchise.

Now the family of the artist, who died in 2001, is looking for a philanthropist of the arts to keep the vast collection of original paintings together and make sure Kirby’s original artworks are preserved for posterity in one or more museums or galleries. (...)

Cohen the Barbarian was angry. Angry that he never died in battle, angry that the world had forgotten him, and angry that his knees were starting to play up in the cold.

He was also angry that his faithful mount had been gifted the ability of magical speech. The horse was insisting that they had made a wrong turn back at Slice.

He was also angry that the horse was probably right.

This was not how it was supposed to end for the barbarian. This was not how the Discworld’s greatest hero imagined it at all.

TROLL BRIDGE is a love-letter to Terry Pratchett and Discworld. It exists because an awful lot of people thought it ought to.

The film is adapted from the short story 'Troll Bridge', published in the anthology 'A Blink of the Screen': https://discworld.com/?s=blink+of+the+screen

Special thanks to The Pratchett Estate, Discworld.com, The Foundry, Shotgun Software, GarageFarm.NET Render Farm, Golaem, our 300 volunteers, and over 4,500 backers. Every frame pressed with love – this is your production.

The solution/key: https://abload.de/img/finalkeyc3c5s.jpg

Original Source: https://shop.paulkidby.com/discworld-massive-massif/

Original Artist: Paul Kidby

Calling all crafters & Discworld fans!

Myself and some friends from my crafty Discord are holding ourselves a “Discworld makealong”. And naturally we’d love to invite our friends in the Fediverse to join in too 🥳

No pressure. No deadlines. Just for fun. And any craft welcome!

So far knitting and cross stitch are well-represented but I’m sure we’ll pick up a few more along the way 😄

November 4th, through Hogswatch season, ending in the new year*. You’re very welcome to join in with your project at any point!.

Some of us will be on Mastodon under #DiscworldMAL. I for one will be on Lemmy too. And of course if you want to join the Discord, link’s in my bio, but not necessary if you’re not into that.

(Oh and for those of you who have no idea what Discworld is or what I’m talking about, congratulations you’ve got 41 books to look forward to!)

*I suspect most projects will not actually be finished by then, because we’re slow and easily distracted. As demonstrated by me not posting about this until it’s a week away 🙃

Edit: WIP pattern suggestions list https://docs.google.com/document/d/1--9xJSdy_y7KqBPMqQCFCVmCgvzyJFsP_WooG5TzA-o/edit?usp=sharing

@discworld #Discworld #GNUTerryPratchett #Knitting #CrossStitch

Site | Paintings | Drawings |

Paul Kidby is an English artist. Many people know him best for his art based on Terry Pratchett's Discworld. He has been included on the sleeve covers since Pratchett's original illustrator, Josh Kirby, died in 2001.

Anyone else notice that Moist Von Lipvig(Richard Coyle) is narrating the new Going Postal and Making Money audiobooks?

I've only gone through 3 books of the whole series and 2 of which were DEATH books, so, I do like DEATH, and my favorite line is "WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?" in the Book Reaper Man. So, tell me what are your Favorite lines and Favorite characters?

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/1659628

I've previously mentioned the runaway success of the Good Omens graphic novel adaptation and that has got people thinking about Discworld:

Good Omens' Kickstarter has broken all records for comics on the platform and shows that Terry Pratchett's Discworld is due a rebirth. Discworld is beloved by millions, and despite a spotty history with adaptations, Good Omens shows that it can and should be given the opportunity to flourish.

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Discworld has had comic adaptations before, including The Color of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Guards! Guards! and Mort. However, these adaptations start at the beginning of Discworld canon, which is significantly weaker than mid and later novels, leaning more heavily into outright fantasy parody than the dense and inviting world that quickly forms. The Discworld books are broken up into both one-off adventures and series following unconnected main characters, most famously the upright Watch Commander Vimes, the powerful and petty witch Granny Weatherwax, and Death, who has a cameo in almost every Discworld novel. At the same time, Discworld's settings evolve as the stories progress, with the city of Ankh-Morpork undergoing social and technological evolution. This kind of true growth and progress is perfect for a serial comic story, as is the ensemble way in which Pratchett structures each book's cast.

One of the major disadvantages with adapting Pratchett's Discworld novels for screen - as seen in pretty much every TV-movie and series - is the huge budget needed to create living, breathing locations shaped by an army of colorful characters, including trolls, werewolves, and orangutans. However, this is far less of an issue in comics, where talented artists can realize Pratchett's vision without breaking the bank. At the same time, Discworld is famous for its witty dialog and strong narrative voice - elements which comics can bring across, especially by drawing on devices like caption boxes and thought balloons.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/2841976

Spoiler warning: If you do not know yet, but want to read the Terry Pratchett novel Going Postal, please stop reading here. Spoilers below and in the links!

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The page XClacksOverhead.org lists public-facing websites broadcasting the X-Clacks-Overhead header aka Known websites carrying the signal.

I learned about this tribute to Terry Pratchett from a recent Golem.de article [German]: GNU Terry Pratchett: Eine Hommage für Eingeweihte an den Scheibenwelt-Erfinder

Citing Wikipedia:

Users of the social news site Reddit organised a tribute by which an HTTP header, "X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett", was added to web sites' responses, a reference to the Discworld novel Going Postal, in which "the clacks" (a semaphore system, used as Discworld's equivalent to a telegraph) are programmed to repeat the name of its creator's deceased son; the sentiment in the novel is that no one is ever forgotten as long as their name is still spoken.

A June 2015 web server survey reported that approximately 84,000 websites had been configured with the header.

Among the many things I love about the Discworld novels are the descriptions of people. Terry Pratchett often manages with a few sentences to paint a picture that is often a bit funny, sometimes slightly weird but always hits the nail right on the head.

As an example, these descriptions of the witches in Lords and Ladies:

"The first one - let us call her the leader - flies sitting bolt upright, in defiance of air resistance, and seems to be winning. She has features that would generally be described as striking, or even handsome, but she couldn't be called beautiful, at least by anyone who didn't want their nose to grow by three feet."

"The second is dumpy and bandy-legged with a face like an apple that's been left for too long and an expression of near-terminal good nature. She is playing a banjo and, until a better word comes to mind, singing. It is a song about a hedgehog."

"The third, and definitely the last, broomstick rider is also the youngest. Unlike the other two, who dress like ravens, she wears bright, cheerful clothes which don't suit her now and probably didn't even suit her ten years ago. She travels with an air of vague good-natured hopefulness. There are flowers in her hair but they're wilting slightly, just like her."

I also found this one in my collection of quotes, but I can't find out where it is from. Does anyone know? I think it might be my favourite.

"Many people could say things in a cutting way, Nanny knew. But Granny Weatherwax could listen in a cutting way. She could make something sound stupid just by hearing it."

Do you have more examples?

I finished the second series yesterday and I'm ready to share what I thought of it.

If I have to give it a rating out of ten, ten being perfect, one being not only technically bad but also morally offensive, this is a 6,9. I liked it enough, but series 1 was an 8,8.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2863924

Love the discworld puzzles! Completed this one a while ago. The boxes are also really beautiful: