Discworld - A Terry Pratchett RP

[Yvanna]

Ok, I tried this before, but I was slightly more noob back then, so here it goes in a more detailed and potentially attractive edition.

NB. For this roleplay, it will help if you have read any of the Discworld novels, but this is not essential as most of the important bits will be explained here.

Introduction

The Discworld is a fictional world, complete with many different fantastical species (see below for details). The world itself, as the name describes, is disc shaped and flat, and lies on the back of four giant elephants, which in turn lie on the back of a huge, ancient turtle that spends all of eternity swimming through the infinite expanse of space. The Disc's seas cascade over its rim, to join the Great A'Tuin turtle in the neverending depths.

To clarify, Terry Pratchett's works are mainly comedies, or written with a satirical edge, and largely parody "stereotypical" fantasy novels and worlds. With this in mind, I would like the writing in the RP to be comedic (the story, however, will of course remain the main emphasis). If you don't think you can write comedy into your posts at all, please do not join, as this thread has been made as a means for RPGC members to try their hand at this sort of style.

Although I do not expect everyone to have to copy Pratchett's writing style for this thread, I of course don't mind if people draw influence from it.

The Discworld's Countries and Regions

The Disc itself is stated as roughly 10,000 miles wide, giving it a surface area two-fifths that of the Earth.*

The Hub - The area at the centre of the Disc. It is mainly comprised of icy mountain ranges and snowy crevices. It is also home to Cori Celesti, the land of the Gods.

The Rim - The area around the edge of the Disc. This is a tropical region, as it is the place where the suns orbit is closest. It is also where the Disc's neverending waterfalls cascade from the world.

Ankh-Morpork - A massive city, almost equidistant between Rim and Hub. It is a highly-industrialised place, working mainly on steam, clockwork and magic, and is split into two main areas: Ankh, the upper-class part of the city, and Morpork, the poor district. These are separated by the River Ankh.

Sto Plains - The region in which A-M is situated, the Plains are a land of rich black loam, upon which rests a great squat forest of cabbages. Its principle export is cabbages, its flora consists of cabbages, and its fauna are things which mainly eat cabbages and do not mind not having any friends. Although they have been an empire in the past, the Sto Plains currently exist as a loose collection of independent city-states, ruled over by a close-knit (and probably interrelated) ruling class.*

Other Countries (this is purely here for reference and is not necessary reading)
Klatch
Uberwald
Lancre
Map of Ankh-Morpork

Notable Ankh Locations

Patrician's Palace - The home and workplace of the city's leader and head politician, the Patrician. The buildings are vast and elaborate and act also as a government facility for paper-work, information gathering, and report-reading.

Unseen University - UU is the Discworld's premiere (and possibly only) magic academy, staffed by a faculty composed of mostly indolent and inept old wizards. The official motto of UU is "Nunc Id Vides, Nunc Ne Vides", loosely translated as "Now you see it, now you don't". The University is centred around the 800-foot Tower of Art, out of which it grew; any further attempt at grasping its geography is close to pointless. Due to the high levels of background magic in the vicinity, a typical map of UU vaguely resembles an exploding chrysanthemum and is usually only valid for a day or so, though it is generally agreed that the inside of UU is larger than the exterior walls, under normal circumstances, should be able to contain. *

The Mended Drum - Formerly the Broken Drum until it burned down in an attempt at insurance fraud, it is the city's principal inn. Located on Filigree Street, it is a rowdy, cloudy, crowded, smelly and utterly disreputable establishment, and therefore the ideal haunt for the Disc's plethora of heroes.

The Shades - Ankh-Morpork's slum district, comprise the oldest region of the city. The moral equivalent of a black hole. A pretty nasty place, all told (a horse in the Shades is often called "lunch", and nothing is seen as more suspicious than fresh paint). *

Pseudopolis Yard - Headquarters of the City Watch, Ankh-Morporks equivalent of a police force.

Cave Network - Ankh-Morpork is built on black loam, broadly, but mostly what it is built on is more Ankh-Morpork. Because of the nature of the Ankh-Morpork citizenry and the flooding of the River Ankh, they figured it was simply easier to build on top of the existing buildings when the sediment grew too high, rather than excavate them out. This has resulted in two things: First, many people own basements and have no idea they do. Second, there is a "cave network" below Ankh-Morpork made up of old streets and abandoned sewers – these "unknown basements" allow people to get around relatively unimpeded. The city's dwarf population have extended this into a complex network of tunnels, which has recently been made municipal property. *

Species and Classes

Humans - Just as you and I, except, living in the relatively primative world of the Discworld (and especially AM), highly uneducated, except by life, and relatively stupid.

Watchmen - AM's equivalent of a police force. They also deal with investigative work and are generally a group of quite rugged, down-to-earth men and women. They are led, at the moment, by Sir Samuel Vimes, who doubles up as the Duke of AM and its ambassador.

Wizards - The eighth son of an eighth son of any human becomes a wizard (8 being a very magical number in the Discworld). Wizards are generally bewildered by their powers and spend most of their time trying to control it and figure out how it works. Older wizards tend to rely on centuries of lore to achieve their effects, while younger wizards enthusiastically experiment, pushing back the boundaries of knowledge and making new discoveries about the nature of the universe. They don't understand how magic works either, but have much more exciting words to explain why not. *

Trolls - Trolls on the Discworld are, essentially, living, mobile rocks. They tend to take on some of the appearance and characteristics of certain stones and minerals, after which they are usually named (ie. a brick-coloured troll might be called, unoriginally, Brick). Rock and stone is also the natural diet of trolls, and they have diamond teeth to enable this. Troll society is based on rocks and hitting people - they are generally quite slow beings, but in very cold temperatures they can become as clever as a normal human being.

Dwarfs (yes, not dwarves) - These are short, stocky, bearded metal-workers, generally seen wearing armour and brandishing axes, this applying to both sexes (although dwarfs generally tend not to distinguish between genders). They are a very traditional race, and prefer to live underground in caves and caverns (see "Cave Network"). However, recently, and much to the outrage of conservative dwarfs, "females" have been sprouting up in defiance of outdated protocols, and some have even begun living above ground. Dwarfs originate from the Ramtops and Überwald, but many have moved down to the Sto Plains (Ankh-Morpork is now the largest dwarfish colony on the Disc outside of Überwald).

Gargoyles and Golems - Stone and clay (respectively) beings which have been brought alive by magic. While gargoyles have distinctive stoney wings and spouted mouths, golems are said to have innards of fire, and their eyes glow red.

Gods - The Disc has an uncountable number of Gods, as in the Discworld there are Gods for everything. When an event of any note occurs — say, two snails happening to cross at a single point — a god becomes tied to it and begins to manifest in the physical world, so you see, their numbers are (in potentia) infinite. Examples include Aniger, the Goddess of Squashed Animals, Foogol, the God of Avalanches and Offler, the Crocodile God. Blind Io is thought of as the Disc's leading God. Although I would not recommend playing a God unless you know how the Discworld works, I have added this as a playable class as I think it would be very interesting.

[Yvanna]

Witches - Witch magic is very different from the wizard magic taught in the Unseen University, and consists largely of finding the right lever that makes everything else work. Witches rarely do any magic, in fact, relying more on common sense, hard work, and a peculiar brand of psychology known as headology. This can be taken very far - a witch's way of magically setting fire to a log of wood consists of staring at the log until it burns up from pure embarrassment. Generally speaking, witches are women and wizards are men. Witches are thought of as practicing more "natural" (perhaps pagan?) magic. For this reason, they are not generally found in Ankh-Morkpork, so if your character is a witch they should probably have some kind of reason for being there.

The Undead - Zombies, Mummies, Vampires, Werewolves, Banshees, Boogeymen and Ghouls. These are generally stereotypical of their races in appearance, however they seem to generally just live their lives like normal human beings, but with extended abilities.

Non-Playable Characters

Death - Also occasionally called Mort. Discworld's Death is a parody of several other personifications of death. Like most Grim Reapers, he is a black-robed skeleton carrying a scythe and, for royalty, a sword. His steed is a great pale horse called Binky who is very much still alive. His hollow, peculiar voice is represented in the books by unquoted small caps; it is peculiar because since he is a tall skeleton, he has no vocal cords to speak with, and therefore the words enter your head with no involvement from your ears. Death is not invisible. Most people just refuse to acknowledge him for who he is, unless he insists. Death is efficient but not cruel, and sees his job as a necessary public service. His task is not to kill, but to collect. He harvests the old, worn-out souls of the dead so they may be properly "recycled" into fresh new lives. He is fond of cats (who can see him at all times) and curry (although he doesn't need to eat). *

The Patrician - Currently Lord Havelock Vetinari, formerly a member of the Assassins Guild. Lord Vetinari's genius political thinking and his running of the city can be summed up by his belief that what people wish for most is not good government, or even justice, but merely for things to stay the same; the Vetinari family motto is, after all, Si non confectus, non reficiat (If it ain't broke, don't fix it).

Minstrum Ridcully - Archchancellor of UU, and a Seventh Level Wizard (there are, naturally, eight levels of wizardry on the Discworld). He is not stupid, and in fact has a mind like a freight train, but finds it very difficult to deal with unexpected information, and generally ignores it until it goes away or becomes someone else's problem. He holds the view that if someone is still trying to explain something to him after about 2 minutes, it must be worth listening to, and if they give up earlier, it was not worth bothering him with in the first place.

Sam Vimes - His full name and title is His Grace, The Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes. Other titles include His Excellency, Ambassador for Ankh-Morpork, as well as Blackboard Monitor Vimes. Vimes is the Commander of the City Watch. Born into poverty, he is now a highly reluctant member of the nobility; both a knight and a duke, and married to Sybil Ramkin, the richest woman in the city. An incorruptible idealist with deep beliefs in justice and an abiding love of his city, he is also a committed cynic whose knowledge of human nature constantly reminds him how far off those ideals are.

The Hogfather - Similar to our Santa Claus, The Hogfather comes every Hogswatch Eve to deliver presents to the children of the Discworld. He rides a sleigh pulled by eight magical boars.

Important Information

The Discworld Calendar - Ick (the "Dead Month"), Offle, February, March, April, May, June, Grune, August, Spune, Sektober, Ember, December. Each have 32 days except Ick, with only 16. The week is similar to ours, beginnning on Sunday and ending on Saturday, but finalising with Octeday, the eighth day of the week.

Communication - Apart from the widely-used postal service, the clacks towers are the main communication method in the Discworld. They are a number of towers set within sight of those surrounding them around the Disc, and communicate via reflective panels which send a sort of morse code between one another. They are usually manned by two men - one to man the clacks, and one to write down the messages.

Guilds - The main law in AM is subject to the Watch and the guilds. Rather than punish people for crimes they have commited, AM crime is regulated by the guilds - for example, the Thieves Guild is allowed a certain number of robberies per day. If one pays "insurance" to the theives guild, the likelyhood of them being robbed is reduced. There are many guilds in the city, including the Fools' Guild, the Guild of Assassins and the Beggar's Guild.

And last but not least...

Character Sheet

Name:
Age: (If undead split this category into Alive and Dead)
Species:
Job or Purpose:
Physical Description:
Personality:

If you have any questions about anything, or would like to know more, please post your questions!

* Taken (mostly) from Wikipedia.

[N*E*R*D]

Hey would love to help, shame you've put Death as a NPC I would have loved to have played him.

Anyway is there a plot?

Love & Peace

N*E*R*D

[Yvanna]

Hey! Thanks for the interest. Well, I don't want to give too much away, but the general premise for the story is that the magic in and around Ankh-Morpork has started not taking too kindly to wizards constantly trying to control it, and things start going wrong.

I've decided for this thread that I don't want to set the story in stone, or give too much away, as I miss the suprises, and also new ideas, that come with unplotted storylines rather than premeditated ones. However, I do have a general outline in my head and I will be maneuvering characters into it once the thread gets started (provided there's some more interest ).

EDIT: To clarify, you can write Death and other NPC's into your post and interact with them provided they are not your main characters.

[sugaholic]

I didn't know that Death was known as Mort in the series; although I havn't read all the books yet.
I thought that Mort was just a boy who was Death's apprentice for a time then married the Princess of a realm who was supposed to die but he didn't reap her soul etc etc and she is now still alive but people forget and they have to keep reminding them that she exists... A side effect of not being reaped at the appropriate time.
Possibly Mort does take over but I don't see Death erm dying and Mort doesn't want to be death so...?
Over the small ity details this sounds interesting.
Oh and are people like Granny Weaterwax, Ricewind the Wizard and the Luggage still around and NPC characters or are they just people you can reference to?

[Yvanna]

Playable characters, but make sure you know their personality well enough to be able to RP them.

[Karces]

I like the sound of this RP. I'll post my character sheet later on. Think I'll be a troll.

[I am Jack's]

Woop woop Discworld, I shall most definitely be taking part in something like this. Most probably a wizard, dwarf or assassin. Also while we're on the subject of those bearded fellows ( dwarfs, not wizards) can I say that it may be an interesting move to include grags, dwarf priests, as a class since they are integral to the running of their society.

[Yvanna]

Oh yep, go ahead and make a grag if you want to! All you need to do is specify the title under the "Job or Purpose" section of the character sheet.

Thanks for the interest guys! I'm still not 100% what I want my own character to be, but I do like the watchmen. I'm thinking that or wizard... or maybe witch. Hmm. :\