Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork - Starter guide

What is Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork?

Ankh-Morpork is a city where anything can happen, and usually does, twice before breakfast. The river is thick enough to walk on. The Thieves' Guild issues receipts. The Watch is run by a man who would rather not be, and the Patrician runs everything else by letting people believe they are running it themselves. Somewhere in the middle of all that, your characters are trying to get through the week.

Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork is the official roleplaying game of Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, set in the Disc's biggest, dirtiest and most beloved city. You do not play Vimes or Granny Weatherwax. You play the people in the background of those books: a night-shift watchman, a junior wizard, a licensed thief with ambitions, a dwarf who took up iconography. The game lets you walk the streets you have been reading about for years, and get into exactly the kind of trouble Pratchett would have written for you.

It was written by Andrew Douthwaite, Bryce Johnston, Evie Moriarty and Rachael Cruz and published by Modiphius Entertainment after a Kickstarter in late 2024 that passed a million dollars. The core rulebook arrived in 2025. Netherbook sells the Digest Edition of that rulebook, the compact full-colour softcover.

How does the system work?

Modiphius built a new engine for this game rather than using their usual one, and named it after the substance that makes stories happen on the Disc: Narrativium. There are no numbers on your character sheet. No strength score, no levels, no experience points, no spell list. Everything that defines your character is a Trait, written in words: your Background, your Niche, your Organisation, your Quirks. Even your name is a Trait.

When you try something that might fail, you pick a Trait and argue to the game master why it helps. Argue well, or argue cleverly, and the game master hands you a bigger die: a d12 if the Trait fits perfectly, a d4 if you are clearly out of your depth, a d6 or d10 in between. The game master rolls the Narrativium die, an eight-sided die the book steadfastly refuses to call by that name. Roll higher and you succeed. Roll lower and you fail, and you may pick up a Complication: a new, temporary Trait like "soaked to the skin" or "wanted by the Assassins' Guild" that follows you into the next scene.

Then there is Luck. Every player has a small pool of it, and the game master hands out more for good roleplaying, good storytelling and good puns. You spend Luck to help a friend with a test or to soften a Complication. The result is a game that rewards the thing Discworld readers already do, which is playing with words.

What do you need to start?

The core rulebook is a complete game. It holds the rules, character creation, five ready-made characters from the Thieves' Guild, and a tour of the city: Unseen University, the Shades, Sator Square, the Guilds, the Patrician's Palace, with profiles of Vimes, Vetinari, Rincewind, Ridcully and the Librarian and a generator for residents of your own. It ends with Bad Eggs in the Big City, an introductory adventure of about fifty pages.

Beyond the book you need a set of polyhedral dice per player and a spare d8 for the game master, plus pencils and a group. The rules assume a game master and a handful of players; the introductory adventures are built for up to five. Sessions run about three to four hours. You do not need to have read the novels, but at least one person at the table should love them.

Who is this game for?

For Pratchett readers, obviously, and especially for the ones who have never played a roleplaying game: the rules are light, the setting is already in your head, and the whole system runs on the kind of wordplay you have been enjoying for thirty books. For game masters who like improvising over preparing. For groups that want a fantasy game where a good line matters more than a good roll.

It is not for tables that want tactical combat, character builds or a rulebook that settles every argument. This game asks the game master to make judgement calls constantly, and it asks players to accept that a d4 is sometimes the honest answer. It is also not a whole-Disc game: this book is Ankh-Morpork only, by design. Lancre, Überwald and the Chalk are for later books.

How does it compare to other systems?

Next to Dungeons & Dragons, this is fantasy with the maths taken out. D&D gives you a character sheet full of modifiers and a combat system built for a grid; Ankh-Morpork gives you a handful of sentences and a conversation. A D&D group will find the freedom either liberating or unnerving, usually within the first hour.

Dragonbane is the closer cousin on our shelves: also fantasy with a grin, also friendly to newcomers. But Dragonbane is a proper adventure game with skills, initiative cards and monsters to fight; Discworld is a city game, and its dangers are guilds, landlords and the Patrician's attention.

Monty Python's Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme is the other great British comedy on our shelves, and the contrast is instructive. Monty Python is a sketch: absurd, loud, built for one riotous evening. Discworld is a novel: the jokes come from character and city, and the game is happy to run for months.

Where do you start?

Read the rules chapter and the city chapter, and skip the rest until you need it. Then run Bad Eggs in the Big City with the five pre-made thieves; it is written to teach the game and it saves you inventing a plot for your first night. Before you start, say out loud what kind of Discworld book your table is playing, a Watch book or a Wizards book or a Guild book, so everyone aims at the same tone.

At the table, be generous with the big dice and stingy with nothing else. The game lives on players stretching their Traits into places they were never meant to go, and on a game master who laughs and says yes, a d10. Hand out Luck every time someone makes the table groan. Complications are not punishments; they are the next scene.

Recommended products at Netherbook

Discworld - Adventures in Ankh-Morpork: Core Rulebook (Digest Edition) is everything you need for your first campaign. If you prefer fantasy with more of a rulebook underneath, the Dragonbane Core Set is the friendly next step; if you want the comedy louder and the evening shorter, Monty Python's Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme is waiting. You will find this game and its future companions in our Discworld collection, and more games that make the table laugh in Comedy & Satire.