Discworld

cross-posted from: https://mstdn.social/users/grickle/statuses/114348487734807305

Love thyself. #grickledoodle #death #horror #pretty #love #cartoon #art #drawing #funny #fashion

Love thyself. #grickledoodle #death #horror #pretty #love #cartoon #art #drawing #funny #fashion

I just think Vimes and Columbo would Vibe. Especially the Vimes we se in Jingo.

"No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence."

This image was originally posted to Flickr by Myrmi at https://www.flickr.com/photos/68905839@N00/15294909. It was reviewed on 14 March 2008 by FlickreviewR and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-sa-2.0.

Hey folks, I am curious how the community feels about the Penguin re-production of the Discworld audio books. I’d imagine people become attached to whatever they listen to first. I read Guards, Guards on my own, Men At Arms with Nigel Planer, and now am trying the new release of Feet of Clay.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/39505305

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/39505302

The final 6 books have been numbered out of main continuity, because the labelled 40th is the first children's novel in the series, and 41-45 are a miniseries, also for children. However, the file metadata is all in release order, so if viewed in Explorer they will order themselves by release.

"Discworld is a comic fantasy book series written by the English author Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat planet balanced on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle. The series began in 1983 with The Colour of Magic and continued until the final novel The Shepherd's Crown was published in 2015, following Pratchett's death. The books frequently parody or take inspiration from J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare, as well as mythology, folklore and fairy tales, often using them for satirical parallels with cultural, political and scientific issues."

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."

...

"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."

...

"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."

what the hell happened in there

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. (...)

Mort is a funny, heartwarming introduction to Death, one of the major Discworld characters. It starts off with Death deciding to take on an apprentice, Mort. Turns out, Death loves curry, has an adopted daughter, Ysabell, and gets REALLY UPSET and VERY ANGRY indeed when people harm or kill cats and kittens. And he rides a horse who is most adorably named Binky.

After starting on his new job and getting acquainted with Death’s household consisting of Ysabell and his servant Albert, Mort starts to realise that one of the reasons for Death taking on an apprentice was so that Ysabell would have a companion to talk with. After showing him the ropes so to speak, Death starts to send Mort on solo missions. One of the souls he has to usher into the beyond is that of young Princess Keli who is about to be assassinated by an assassin sent by her uncle. Unfortunately, Mort falls for the princess and in order to save her kills the assassin instead, thus interfering with fate, precisely something he had been told not to do. Mort is too scared to confess to Death about what he has done, so he just stays silent. Unluckily for him, reality of the history that was to be starts to resist the reality of what Mort has done, leading to the possibility that Princess Keli, whom Mort had saved, might end up dying. So now Mort tries his best to somehow save the princess’ life.

Some of my favourite things about this book are the style of humour and getting to know Death. Death is a cat loving anthropomorphic personification making sometimes refreshing, sometimes very insightful takes about mortals and existence in general:

"TAKE THESE THINGS, NOW, said Death, fingering a passing canapé. I MEAN, MUSHROOMS YES, CHICKEN YES, CREAM YES, I’VE NOTHING AGAINST ANY OF THEM, BUT WHY IN THE NAME OF SANITY MINCE THEM ALL UP AND PUT THEM IN LITTLE PASTRY CASES? ‘Pardon?’ said Mort. THAT’S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY’VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING. HAVE A GHERKIN.”

“He gave it an experimental shake. AND DUE TO LIVE ANOTHER THIRTY, THIRTY-FIVE YEARS, he said, with a sigh. ‘And he goes around killing people?’ said Mort. He shook his head. ‘There’s no justice.’ Death sighed. NO, he said, handing his drink to a page who was surprised to find he was suddenly holding an empty glass, THERE’S JUST ME.”

Death also happens to be very keen on trying to understand more about humans and various human activities, such as how people have fun. This leads to some unintentionally hilarious circumstances: “WHAT IS THIS FUN? ‘This is!’ TO KICK VIGOROUSLY IS FUN? ‘Well, part of the fun. Kick!’ TO HEAR LOUD MUSIC IN HOT ROOMS IS FUN? ‘Possibly.’ HOW IS THIS FUN MANIFEST? ‘Well, it – look, either you’re having fun or you’re not, you don’t have to ask me, you just know, all right? How did you get in here, anyway?’ he added. ‘Are you a friend of the Patrician?’ LET US SAY, HE PUTS BUSINESS MY WAY. I FELT I OUGHT TO LEARN SOMETHING OF HUMAN PLEASURES. ‘Sounds like you’ve got a long way to go.’ I KNOW. PLEASE EXCUSE MY LAMENTABLE IGNORANCE. I WISH ONLY TO LEARN. ALL THESE PEOPLE, PLEASE – THEY ARE HAVING FUN? ‘Yes!’ THEN THIS IS FUN. ‘I’m glad we got that sorted out. Mind the chair,’ snapped Lord Rodley, who was now feeling very unfunny and unpleasantly sober. A voice behind him said quietly: THIS IS FUN. TO DRINK EXCESSIVELY IS FUN. WE ARE HAVING FUN. HE IS HAVING FUN. THIS IS SOME FUN. WHAT FUN.” As the story progresses, it starts getting clearer that the loneliness of his job was getting to him, providing some clue to Death’s actual intentions for hiring Mort: "‘Drowning your sorrows, are you? I HAVE NO SORROWS. ‘No, of course not. Forget I mentioned it.’ He gave the glass a few more wipes. ‘Just thought it helps to have someone to talk to,’ he said. The stranger was silent for a moment, thinking. Then he said: YOU WANT TO TALK TO ME? ‘Yes. Sure. I’m a good listener.’ NO ONE EVER WANTED TO TALK TO ME BEFORE. ‘That’s a shame.’ THEY NEVER INVITE ME TO PARTIES, YOU KNOW. ‘Tch.’ THEY ALL HATE ME. EVERYONE HATES ME. I DON’T HAVE A SINGLE FRIEND.” After all, his job was such that “Death must be the loneliest creature in the universe. In the great party of Creation, he was always in the kitchen.”

This is followed by an interesting and humorous phase of Death actually trying to find an alternate job for himself. He ultimately ends up getting the job of a cook at "Harga’s House of Ribs down by the docks” where he thoroughly enjoyed himself as he “spun and whirled, chopping, slicing and frying. His skillet flashed through the fetid steam. He’d opened the door to the cold night air, and a dozen neighbourhood cats had strolled in, attracted by the bowls of milk and meat – some of Harga’s best, if he’d known – that had been strategically placed around the floor. Occasionally Death would pause in his work and scratch one of them behind the ears. ‘Happiness,’ he said, and puzzled at the sound of his own voice.” This leads to a truly hilarious scene when as a result of being summoned during the Rite of AshkEnte, Death appears “wearing an apron and holding a small kitten.”

Death’s efforts with trying to find work that he would actually enjoy doing and Mort’s princess problem inevitably collide leading to a satisfying conclusion. This is the second time I am reading this book and I think I enjoyed and loved it even more than I did the first time around. I would love to share some more jokes here, but then I would probably end up copy-pasting the whole book! This book definitely does the job of making me laugh and feeling a little better than usual.

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