Modiphius’ upcoming official Discworld RPG – coming to Kickstarter next month – will allow you to play as any of the weird and wonderful fantasy species in Terry Pratchett’s iconic novels, the designers confirm to Wargamer. Shockingly, this presumably includes whatever species Nobby Nobbs is.
“As long as you can describe a species, you can play as them”, explain designer Andy Douthwaite and line editor Bryce Johnston in a recent interview with us.
“This is because the system is very much based on words rather than numbers,” they explain – “so if you’re playing as a troll, you won’t be getting +4 Strength or anything like that”.
“But if you are a troll, you can use that to your advantage when trying to wrangle a better chance on a test out of the GM when doing something trollish. – be that whacking someone on the head or, under the right circumstances, figuring out the fundamental mathematics of the universe.”
The new Discworld RPG – or, to give it its full title, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork – was announced in March 2024 by Modiphius, the publisher behind the Fallout TTRPG, the much feted Dune: Adventures in the Imperium; and numerous other licensed tabletop adaptations – including the new Mass Effect board game.
We reported back in March on Modiphius’ early musings for the Discworld RPG races – but the final product launching on Kickstarter in October seems to go beyond anything we suspected in terms of being a wide, open smorgasbord of narrative options.
Douthwaite and Johnston tell us Modiphius’ word-based system rejects numbers, stats, and mechanics across the board, in favor of key words – many of which are deliberately designed to be misused by the players for advantage.
“The system itself encourages players to deliberately misinterpret, wrangle, and twist meanings of even perfectly innocent words to get the best chance of succeeding on a test,” they say.
“Combine this with your usual TTRPG group nonsense and you’re well on your way to an adventure in Ankh-Morpork.”
You’ll not find any regular character archetypes like the familiar DnD classes in their game, either.
“There are parts of character creation that are class adjacent, in that they look at classes from other TTRPGs and shuffle sheepishly around a corner,” they tell us – but “[t]he focus is more on what type of group you are playing.”
“In Pratchett’s work, people of a similar bent tend to flock together
like startled waterfowl,” they add – “as such, the first thing you’ll be deciding on is who you are going to play – will you be student wizards? Beggars? Seamstresses?”
“The whole weird and varied melting pot of Ankh-Morpork is your
mollusc.”
We’ve got lots more shiny jewels of info about the upcoming release in our full Discworld RPG interview with Modiphius’ team, so click that link for the full shebang.
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Source: Wargamer
