Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork review - "Rip-roaring chaos I suspect Sir Pratchett would have approved of"

Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork is a tabletop RPG that leans heavily into the tomfoolery of the Discworld novels. Built around Modiphius' Narrativium system, the game is, at its core, a chaos engine. It's a rules-lite romp that leaves players somewhat adrift to design wonderfully strange stories together, but for the creatively inclined, there's a smashing framework that'll see adventurers reaping exactly what they sow, usually spectacularly, and usually resulting in a near-death experience.

Expecting heaps of on-the-fly creativity from both player and Game Master, Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork favors the bold, and anyone willing to torture the English language to within an inch of its life. Backed by a delightfully Pratchett-y tone, the core book brims with lore and legendary characters ready to enact whatever Pratchett fanfic your little heart desires. That alone will make it one of the best tabletop RPGs for fans of Sir Terry's work.

Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork features & design

• Hilarious tone and fantastic footnotes capture the Pratchett vibe perfectly
• Well organized, with a good deal of examples
• Plenty of prompts, roll tables, & support for newer RPG players

As the name suggests, this RPG tips players headfirst into Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld - or more specifically, the grimy metropolis of Ankh-Morpork that is "only two meals away from chaos at the best of times." That means good humor is at the forefront, but it's also pitched as a great starting point for newcomers to the roleplaying hobby.

Players mill about the Disc facing tests, which see them rolling off against the Game Master in heated dice battles. Pitting their wits and Outcome die (either a d4, d6, d10, or d12) against the GM's Narrativium die (d8), they're encouraged to bend the English language, teasing it to their advantage with just about anything plastered on their character sheet. The better the justification and likely character experience, the better the die awarded by the GM, and the higher the chance to outmaneuver Death (don't mind him, he has a book to read).

Since Adventures in Ankh-Morpork is a (mostly) co-operative endeavor, it first asks you to create a party. That means picking or rolling for an organization to be aligned with. This may be decided for you if you're playing one of the three starter adventures, but you'll still get to roll for the party's past and present to gain some shared traits drawn from where they've been, what they've cocked up, and who they're currently indebted to. I recommend skipping ahead and coming back to the party questions post-character-creation and introductions, as they feed better into one another that way around.

Alongside plenty of pregenerated characters per established Discworld organization, which can be found on the Modiphius site, players can design their own characters. Anything from a (secret?) female Wizard, to a Zombie or Troll, or even a sentient Pearwood travel accessory. Players simply roll on the list of Niches and Quirks specific to their organisation, padding their sheet with a background, and a couple more broadly applicable Quirks. Quirks come from answering prompt questions, and although translating these answers into appropriately Pratchett-esque traits is the hardest part of character creation, there's a lot of fun to be had twisting them to your will.

The core book is brimming with hilariously-footnoted examples, too. With a well-linked PDF supporting a comprehensive spread of roll tables, oodles of illustrated flavour text, and easy-to-follow rules, it's a delight to use for plotting. You don't even need to be a die-hard Pratchett fan to get a kick out of it.

The three starter adventures included in the core book provide a comprehensive spread of the kind of GM notes you'll need, with useful roll tables for related ongoings, consequences, clues and secrets. There's even a "Without Intervention" section for GMs to whip out, should players take the pacifist route or manage to mess up every roll.

Gameplay

• Evolving trait system encourages fun justifications & even funner consequences
• Luck points are a catch-all for skin-of-your-teeth moments & Plays with a capital Pee
• Core traits provide an opportunity to learn something about your character as you play

Thanks to Adventures in Ankh-Morpork's fantastic trait-based system, players are constantly probing their character sheet for inventive ways to apply Quirks and Niches to the situations they're faced with. As long as they can justify that awful pun or play on words, there's a good chance they'll gain the GM's favor and be granted a more prolific polyhedral. It's a system that rewards the kind of out-of-the-box thinking the late Sir Pratchett would undoubtedly have approved of.

This reliance on traits as opposed to a concrete set of attributes does mean there's no real levelling mechanics to speak of. As such, play never feels entirely balanced, and balancing a party becomes quite difficult, pushing the game even further into oneshot territory which might disappoint those looking for a longer campaign. With character advancement being so minimal, you're forced to consider the short term consequences of your actions.

That said, the tools Modiphius' Narrativium system uses to engender oneshots are ingenious; from encouraging players to round off characters with a Core trait in a moment of realization, to multi-usage Luck points. The Lady is a big player too, with Luck points contributing to everything from magic usage to helping hands that let you reroll for your pals. It's a little catch-all, but it means you don't have to stop for a nap since they replenish when you "pull off something unlikely, unusual, or unique," rather than simply "on a rest," emboldening players to make ever-more outlandish plays.

It's a chaos engine, for sure, but it lends itself to some truly stellar roleplay as players vie for that million-to-one chance at adventure, which is an actual mechanic that could land them an auto success for wild ideas that just might work.

Playing with an experienced group of tabletop and wordplay enthusiasts, it becomes increasingly difficult not to award players a d12 when their references to the source material are spectacularly apt. Thankfully, NPCs can use their traits to reroll the Narrativium die. Along with detrimental consequence traits, the GM has just enough pushback against particularly cunning players.

Should you buy Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork?

As much as the core book hammers home the need for consistency, the rules-lite nature of Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork's Narrativium system makes it a haven for accidental favoritism and handwaving that leads to inconsistent rules, particularly around which dice to award whom, and for what. If you can get around that, you'll have a cosmic whale of a time barrelling through a story with incredible forward momentum.

It may not be a game for those who want to craft lengthy legacies, since it's geared more toward oneshots, but it does short, chaotic stories, and it does them with no small amount of pizazz. Just don't expect Adventures in Ankh-Morpork to be kind to literalists, or people who call Orangutans 'Monkey'.

Ratings

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

How we tested Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork

Following a thorough look through the game's core rulebook, our reviewer ran a test session of the game so that they could see how it works first-hand. This allowed them to take notes and form their critique based on practical experience.

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