Discworld

Magic
Magic in the Discworld is an element with it's own colour, taste and properties. It's abundant on the Disc and scarce in other parts of the universe. There are two types of magic practitioners in the Discworld, wizards, who are organised and scientific, gather in universities and try to learn the laws of magic to master it's use, and witches, who are more about Headology, which is similar to psychology, stick to small villages where they serve as midwifes and healers and mostly try not to use magic itself when it can be helped. A group of witches is called an argument. Both wizards and witches enjoy bossing people around.

 

Anthropomorphic Personification
This means that if enough people believe in an entity it will begin to exist purely because people belief in it. This means that there is a literal Death, Boogie Monster and Easter Bunny, that gods rise and fall in power based on how popular they are, and that if I was living in the Discworld I'd immediately form a cult devoted to worshipping Cashblor, the friendly spirit who gives his followers gold and precious gems while also making them irresistable to women. Not that I don't already. Praise Cashblor.

_{Death likes cats and doesn't understand plumbing.}

Narrative Causality
The law of Narrative causality means that the million to one chance will happen nine times out of ten, as long you make sure to say "It's a million to one chance, it just might work." immediately beforehand. It means that whenever there's a car crash with resulting explosion a single tire will roll out of the flames. If someone is chasing someone through city streets there will be people carrying panes of glass across the street and stalls of fruits and vegetables to be smashed into, even if they've never been there before. It means that if an elderly society dame somehow end up in a south central LA nightclub she will end up smoking the chronic and calling people "My nigga'" and everyone will be all like "She is dope, I'm talking old school".  Narrative causality is probably the most powerful force in the Discworld.

The Discworld books are comedy fantasy novels written by Terry Pratchett. Although the books started out as broad parodies of the fantasy genre. Over time they started reflecting and parodying the real world more and more including Hollywood in Moving Pictures, the music industry in Soul Music, Eastern Philosophy in Thief of Time, The Watergate scandal in The Truth... Look, I could just keep listing these forever, I mean, he's got magic computers that run on ants (so there's an "Anthill Inside" Get it?) in there and I swear in his more recent ones he's trying to bring in a fantasy world internet somehow. It's probably easier to just give a list of things that haven't been parodied in Discworld somewhere:

1. Todays news.

2. This Topic Page.

3. What you had for breakfast this morning. ^{citation needed}

As well as the novels there have been several books aimed at younger readers, but which are still enjoyable by anyone, numerous companion books, quiz books, maps, the list goes on. If you're reading this page let's just assume you've either read the books or you should read the books. Here's our forum thread on Pratchett and Discworld in general.

Alright, now some pictures of Discworld Cosplayers!

_{Is that real chainmail? That's actually pretty good.}

_{Is it just me or is this one disturbingly erotic? Wait, forget you just read that.}

_{Ok, I think we took a wrong turn somewhere.}

GAMES

There were a few Discworld games made in the 90's. The first two were point and click adventures featuring cartoony graphics where the player took on the role of Rincewind, the wizard who can't spell wizard, who was voiced by Eric Idle. They're pretty good as far as point and click adventures go and are well worth a play for anyone into the genre, especially the second one.

The third game, Discworld Noir, had players take on the role of Lewton, the Discs first private investigator. Instead of the more standard collect and combine objects style play of the first two games in this one you had to collect clues and investigate murky goings on in Ankh Morpork (the setting for a large proportion of the books). Later in the game in a unique twist you are SPOILER turned into a werewolf SPOILER and can investigate using your sense of smell. This game is also worth seeking out.

The Discworld MUD is a free text based MMORPG that has been going since 1992. The writer of this page put many hours into this game on a laggy 56k connection back in the late 90's, sneaking around the Worlds cities mugging wizards, stepping into random portals and being marooned in Klatch, he regrets not a second of that time.

Arbitrary rating: 8 out of 10.

TV SHOWS
British TV station Sky One broadcast adaptations of Hogfather in 2006 and The Colour of Magic in 2008. The general consensus was that they were pretty good with people who hadn't read the novels enjoying them more than those who had, mostly. We discussed it on our forums here

Soul Music and Wyrd sisters were adapted into animated series in 1996. Both feature Christopher Lee as the voice of Death and are pretty good. Check out a clip from this series at the bottom of the page.


Arbitrary rating: 6 out of 10.