A new RPG set in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld universe is coming to Kickstarter on October 15, according to UK-based tabletop games publisher Modiphius. It will be the first officially licensed Discworld RPG in over two decades, and every single member of team Wargamer is frothing with anticipation.
Modiphius announced that it had the rights needed to create this game earlier this year. The Discworld RPG – or to give it its full title, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld: Adventures in Ankh Morpork – will “honour the humour, satire, and darkly entertaining fantasy series”.
Back when the game was first announced Wargamer spoke to Modiphius’ head honcho Chris Birch, to learn what was being discussed in the design studio. He was full of passion for Pratchett’s beloved world, and bubbling over with cool ideas that may have made it into the game, like having a system to procedurally generated Ankh Morpork as you play, different ways to represent the sentient Discworld species, and not giving the named characters from the novels game stats.
You can check out the Kickstarter preview page to sign up for notifications when it goes live. Signing up to the Modiphius Discworld mailing list will get you access to the quickstart rules for the game a day earlier than everyone else: Modiphius says to expect a preview before the end of September.
It’s been a long, long time since we last had an official Discworld RPG: the last was released in 1998, a supplement to Steve Jackson Games’ GURPs rules. It’s a strange omission, given that Pratchett himself was (briefly) a DnD player: the Luggage made its first appearance as a sometimes useful, sometimes dreadful magic item that Pratchett gave to his players to store their loot in.
Team Wargamer is not being cool about this, because we all love the Discworld novels, and only one of us will get to review the game. Mollie Russell is the site’s foremost RPG expert, and has more than earned a treat after the literally dozens of hours that went into her DnD 2024 Player’s Handbook review. Matt Bassil and I are plotting against her – naturally I plan to backstab him once the book is within my grasp – but site editor Alex Evans has a wild glint in his eye that suggests none of us are safe.
If you can’t wait a month (plus however long the Kickstarter takes to deliver) we can recommend some funny board games that are sure to raise a chuckle – though nothing hits like Discworld.
The original version of this article, published on Wednesday, September 11, incorrectly stated the RPG would use Modiphius’ 2D20 rules system – in fact we don’t yet know what dice system the game will use. It’s been updated on Thursday, September 12 to reflect this.
Source: Wargamer
