Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Using Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork as a Resource for the Discworld RPG (pt. 1)

I've always tried to tell people that, as the (original) Discworld Roleplaying Game, hereafter "DRPG", is all about roleplaying on the Discworld as published, any canonical(-or-thereabouts) published material relating to the Disc can serve as source material for the game. So, obviously, that principle must apply to the new Discworld: Adventures in Ank-Morpork RPG, hereafter "DAiAM". (And, likewise,  the older RPG can serve as source material for the new one; see my post on Adapting my own Discworld Roleplaying Game Scenarios.) Having now looked through the new game, I'll say that it absolutely does. How much use it is will be determined by individual GMs and the nature of their campaigns.

Okay, to start with - much of DAiAM consists of basic introductory material about the Disc and its inhabitants. This is absolutely not a criticism; the same would go for any half-decent published Discworld roleplaying game, and certainly goes for my own - anything else would be crazy. However, that means that anyone who's happy with the DRPG and on a budget may wish to think about their priorities before buying the new game. You won't get a huge amount that isn't in the DRPG or the Discworld Companion (let alone, of course, the novels); it does go into quite a bit of detail on Ankh-Morpork, but I think even that mostly comes from the street map and The Compleat Ankh-Morpork. Still, it's nicely presented and amply illustrated with colour Paul Kidby art (if not very many new images that I can see), and anyway, well, Discworld completists will be completist.

Which said, I think that the main reasons to buy the new game and its supplements, from a DRPG GM's point of view will be the scenarios, and also some random scenery and item generation rules (basically numbered tables of one-line ideas or descriptions). This is good - new sources of scenario ideas are always welcome, especially to GMs who find themselves scrabbling on the edge of burnout - but quite how usable these scenarios will be will likely vary a lot from GM to GM.

(From a player's point of view, an additional use for the new game would be as a source of prompts when stuck for ideas in character generation. DAiAM character generation basically involves generating and then answering a bunch of questions about the character's past, which can be a good approach when coming up with a new character in any system. DAiAM just has tables of ideas to roll dice against.)

The point being that the Discworld is a world, which means that there are countless locations and narrative niches that could be used in campaigns - along with enough blank spots on the map and unexploited plot possibilities that enterprising GMs can jump into. I emphasised this in the DRPG, expending a few pages on the Brown Islands (barely mentioned in the books) as a campaign location, and a few more on other possibilities, from Klatch to Fourecks. As the title suggests, DAiAM focuses much more specifically on Ankh-Morpork ("Lancre and Uberwald" will be covered in a whole new game in the near future), but even there, it points to a whole range of game possibilities, working for various groups such as the various guilds or the Watch, or playing supernatural beings. That, by the way, is scenario possibilities, not campaign possibilities; DAiAM is open about its intention to support one-off games and scenarios rather than continuing campaigns.

This vastness of possibilities is a wonderful thing about the Disc as a game world, but makes the idea of using any published Discworld scenarios for any system in an on-going campaign a little tricky. With the best will in the world, the chances of any given published scenario fitting into any given campaign are going to be a little slim. At a guess, the single most likely campaign framework to show up might be an Ankh-Mopork City Watch game, which fits with some of the DAiAM sample scenarios, but I wouldn't bet on even that being especially common.

But enough negativity; the real question here must be "How easy is it to convert DAiAM scenarios to the DRPG in some form?" And the answer is "Quite easy, really", but as in all RPG system conversions, there'll be some work involved. Still, the DAiAM system means that there won't be an excessive amount of number-crunching - because DAiAM barely counts as a system at all, to cranky old-school tabletop roleplayers like me. Characters, both PCs and NPCs, are defined by a short list of descriptive phrases, and that's it. To "convert" them to the DRPG, all you can do is take that brief description and any accompanying notes, and, umm, create a DRPG character from scratch that fits that description, in whatever level of detail is useful. Scenarios then consist of a bunch of objectives for PCs and scene descriptions, and it's up to the GM and players to make things happen within that framework. Given that (a) DAiAM characters are defined entirely by their personal foibles, and (b) the resolution mechanic is quite heavy on randomness and seems actively designed to lead to a lot of chaos, I suspect that a lot of scenarios run under those rules will go way off the rails very quickly, and that this is pretty much intentional. Different groups will probably have different opinions about this.

But still, these scenarios can certainly be run using the DRPG. There's nothing wrong with the idea that a GM should just start with a loose framework and improvise a lot as required, and the GURPS rules mechanics permit that; the GM just has to be ready to invent a few appropriate numbers (NPC skill levels and stats, difficulty penalties, and so forth) when required. To get technical for a moment, it might be worth pinching the "Basic Abstract Difficulty" rule from GURPS Action; the process of subtly choreographing an action movie scene isn't that different to that of running a comedy scene, after all.

Which I think covers the theory; my next post will run through the DAiAM scenarios published to date in terms of their possible usefulness to a DRPG GM.

Monday, October 05, 2026

Adapting my Discworld Roleplaying Game Scenarios to Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork

As the author of the original Discworld Roleplaying Game, I have of course picked up the new Discworld: Adventures in Ank-Morpork, as a matter of professional curiosity. And, having got it, I decided to convert the demo scenarios that I've previously created for my game to the new model, just to see how they look. (Which is probably "a bit weird", given the new game's fixation on improvisational roleplaying over everything else, but whatever.) I'm still working on this, but I've now made a couple publicly available; the curious should go to my scenarios page and scroll down to the bottom.

Saturday, June 27, 2026

Today Gets Magical

I seem to have established a pattern of having one GURPS supplement appear per year (though I don't have anything lined up for 2027 yet), and this year's is GURPS Magical Styles: Modern Magic. This is something of a follow-up to last year's Traditional Styles, being a collection of spell-based magical styles that owe more to modernity in various forms than to old-school concepts of magic.

Specifically, you get magical librarians, demagogues, punks, rock'n'rollers, and trenchcoat wearers. I suspect that most gamers will be geeky enough to identify my inspirations. It was another interesting exercise in showing how GURPS rules can be fine-tuned for flavour - well, interesting for me. I hope that others agree.

Monday, March 30, 2026

Harping on Steampunk

Every now and again, I actually get a writing gig for a company other than Steve Jackson Games. However, this being the roleplaying games writing business, I may then have to wait a little while for my work to be published... Something I should mention here because people may have heard me talking about this one for a little while now. But that's by the by.

The important thing is that HARP Steampunk, my supplement adapting Iron Crown Enterprises's "HARP" ruleset to the steampunk genre, is now available through DriveThruRPG (in PDF form; I believe that a print option will follow in due course).

I'm quite fond of this one, as it's a long while since I wrote for any kind of class-and-level ruleset. In this case, that meant coming up with Professions (i.e. classes) such as Detective, Pilot, and Engineer, cultural Backgrounds based on the Victorian class system, and creature stats for black dogs, dinosaurs, and theosophical root races. Not to mention steam-powered power armour and ornithopters. I got to flex a few odd creative muscles with this one; I hope that people enjoy it.

And by the way, I've put up the wherewithal for a demo scenario on my Web site, and I'll try to get a second up in the near future.

Friday, April 25, 2025

Trading on Trad

 

I seem to get a GURPS supplement out approximately once a year these days, and 2025's has just come around. GURPS Magical Styles: Traditional Styles is 22 pages of "how to use the standard GURPS spell-based magic system to represent traditional conceptions of magic". Well, five such more-or-less traditional conceptions that I found interesting, anyway. (Bodily, Dream, Spoken Word, Theurgic, and Mystical Assassin magic, specifically.) Available now from Warehouse 23, for a mere $7.

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Boundary Movement

Just for the interest - my Trail of Cthulhu 18th century supplement, Boundary of the Darkness, is finally moving towards publication - and is being launched as part of the ToC 2nd edition project, which is getting a Backerkit (i.e. quasi-Kickstarter) launch.

Go to https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/pelgrane-press/trail-of-cthulhu-2nd-edition if you're interested. Note that a couple of the support levels are cheaper if you act in the first 48 hours (I think that's what qualifies you as an "Early Bird").

Wednesday, October 04, 2023

Catching Up on Publications

 Oops, it's been a little while since I posted here - which wouldn't matter much if I hadn't had experienced an outburst of productivity.

GURPS Fantasy Folk Kobolds Front Page To begin with, Steve Jackson Games published my second "Fantasy Folk" creation - the short and sweet (well, not too unsavoury) GURPS Fantasy Folk: Kobolds. Yes, the mild annoying little guys. Except that GURPS Banestorm kobolds aren't that small, when you look at them, and I'm also covering more folkloric kobolds, which came in at 245 GURPS points. Then there's the question of the myth's possible roots in Greek myth... the project was slightly more fun than I might have expected.

And then, just a little later, I released a couple more books that collect characters who I originally created for volume 2 of Pyramid magazine (i.e. the Web-based version). Pyramid Characters: Fantasy Foes and Friends has characters for a variety of fantasy settings, while Pyramid Characters: Crosstimers and Other Oddities mostly features characters for the GURPS Infinite Worlds milieu, plus a couple of others who sort-of fit with that concept.

 


(Both of those latter two are currently only available from DriveThruRPG, as Warehouse23 seems to be having some technical issues with third party sales at the moment.)

Friday, June 30, 2023

Goblin Mode


 After a bit of a lag (for, as I understand it, administrative reasons), my latest effort is now out (in PDF form) from Steve Jackson games: GURPS Fantasy Folk: Goblins and Hobgoblins. It's a generalised sort of guide to playing and GM'ing the creatures known by those names in RPGs - and not just genre fantasy games. (I'm rather pleased with the goblin template for Monster Hunters.) It walks the line between "very generic RPG fantasy" and "what words actually originally meant", and I hope avoids falling off.

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Transhuman Space: What is Old is New Again

 Oh yes, this blog still exists.


Well. I have a new (small) roleplaying book out - self-published, even. (Though some people would doubtless quibble with "new", because some people are born to quibble.) Transhuman Space: The Pyramid Personnel brings back half-a-dozen NPCs for the Transhuman Space setting which I originally wrote up as short articles in Pyramid magazine volume 2 (the Web page version), but which haven't been available to new readers since that went offline. So I negotiated a deal with Steve Jackson Games, put together a 30-page compilation, and am now selling this. It's available as a PDF from Warehouse 23, and as the same PDF or in print on demand form from DriveThruRPG:

The Pyramid Personnel on Warehouse 23.

The Pyramid Personnel on DriveThruRPG.

(One note; some people seem to be under the impression that DriveThru do all their print-on-demand printing in the USA, with ensuing exorbitant shipping costs to Europe. This is out of date; they now have printing options on this side of the Atlantic.)


Sunday, April 03, 2022

Leaving LiveJournal

Just for the record, in case anyone is interested; I'm dropping my LiveJournal account (because reasons), and will probably delete it entirely in a few days. It was always echoed here, anyway, and this will remain as much of a blog as I've got.

Monday, November 08, 2021

Back in Print (on Demand)


The Discworld Roleplaying Game
went out of print a while back, but the thing about modern technology is that "Out of Print" no longer means quite what it used to — at least sometimes. The book is now available through Amazon's Print on Demand service — just follow that link.

(I've not seen a copy of this version; it's paperback, of course, and I'll be interested to see what the quality is like.)

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

First Thoughts on Dune part 1

 Hmm.

Spoilers follow, of course.

I walked out of the cinema moderately impressed, but then I often do. I’m a sucker for ci
nematic techniques, and anyway I’d seen it on IMAX and had just spent two hours being physically assaulted by Hans Zimmer’s score (which is definitely great). But the refrigerator logic hit before I’d even reached the refrigerator.

It looked impressive. The sets and scenery were epically vast. It reminded me of that historical theory about the end-state of all civilisations being stasis and architectural giganticism; every building and spaceship was ten times bigger than it needed to be. But then, equally, the movie itself could be taken as an art film which had succumbed to giganticism.

And dear god, I wish that Villeneuve could find a lighting cameraman or set designer with the guts to to tell him that murky fog isn’t big and isn’t clever. The murk was appropriate in Arrival, but neither Blade Runner nor this needed so much of it.

And then I was reminded of my personal response to some of the Harry Potter films. I should explain that I’ve never read the Harry Potter books, so I came out of the later movies especially thinking “well, there was clearly a story in there, but blowed if I know what it was” — but the people who went in knowing the story generally enjoyed it. Call me literal-minded, but I feel that an adaptation of a book should be more than a set of illustrations of scenes from that book.

And there was certainly a lot squeezed out from the book. Sometimes that’s necessary, but the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment when Thufir Hawat’s eyeballs turn white as he does some mental arithmetic suggest that mentats were supposed to be in there, but had ended up on the cutting room floor. Couldn’t they just have cut half an hour or so of Timothy Chalamet looking slightly angsty? Losing the idea of mentats just turned Hawat into an all-purpose bureaucrat, and also made Yueh’s attempted revenge and Leto’s death scene less interesting and plot-useful — because by killing the Harkonnen mentat, you set up Hawat’s move into his position for the second half of the plot (and grant Yueh some posthumous revenge).

(Losing the stuff about Yueh’s psychological conditioning also deprived the Harkonnens of some Evil Schemer points, and makes the Atreides look a bit incompetent in having defences that can be brought down by one undetected traitor. But then, “unbreakable conditioning” that could be broken by the baddies pulling the age old “we have your wife, bwah-hah-hah” tactic never made sense to me, so whatever.)

A lot of what felt off to me may be patched in part two. We’ll see. But that would make part two a very different film to part one, so I suspect we’ll mostly get murky fog and Timothy Chalamet looking vaguely angsty. Or maybe there’ll be a five hour director’s cut with all the Herbertian politics back in.