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A Gaming Life
Martin Wallace Discworld Game to be Rethemed
I am a big Terry Pratchett fan, so I was so sad to read it when he died three years ago. Knowing that no more Discworld books would be coming out was a big blow to this reader. Those books are hilarious, thought-provoking, and definitely must-reads.
When he died, the Pratchett estate began to pull back the Discworld licenses, which had a big effect on gaming.
Martin Wallace has quickly become one of my favourite designers, and he designed what was supposed to be a trilogy of games based on the Discworld franchise. Two of them came out, one based on the main Discworld city of Ankh-Morpork and one based on the Witches franchise.
When I heard that the estate pulling back the licenses would mean there would be no more Discworld: Ankh-Morpork printing once the current game was out of stock, I quickly went out and bought it. Sight-unseen (though I did look it up on Boardgame Geek, of course).
It is a really fun game. Not a heavy Wallace economic game, but instead a game with some fun card play that really uses the Discworld setting and characters to their fullest extent.
The game has each player taking a hidden role, and each role has a different win condition (actually, three of them are the same, but then there are still other roles with a different one).
It’s played out among the slums and higher-end estates of the major city of Ankh-Morpork
It uses a deck of cards that you can play for various effects, either killing other players’ minions or placing minions of their own, or lots of other things, until somebody fulfills their win conditions or the deck is empty.
How the game works isn’t the point of this article, however.
I’ve been following the thread on Boardgame Geek for a while now, but it’s now made official news: Wallace and Phalanx Games are reskinning Discworld: Ankh-Morpork into Victorian-era London and the game will be called Nanty Narking.
This is the first time I’ve seen the cover, and it is quite good!
Some of the other pictures over on Boardgame Geek look good too.
While there was a lot of griping about the name of the game, seeing some of the actual product makes me believe that just maybe they can pull it off, especially with the Wallace design behind it all.
But I’m getting lazy, so let’s see what the publisher has to say about it:
“Nanty Narking is a Victorian board game of wit and podsnappery that reimplements the well-known Discworld: Anhk Morpork board game. Immersed deeply in the world of Dickens’ and Doyle’s literature (which inspired Sir Terry Pratchett in his Ankh-Morpork-themed novels), the card events in the game are now tied to real and fictional characters and places in London, and the more than ninety miniatures are based on true London characters.
More specifically, following a scrupulous analysis of Sir Terry Pratchett’s inspirations that were found and identified in historical English literature, all game locations, events and characters have received new identities, corresponding to the ones found in the Ankh-Morpork game. This way the game retains its attractiveness to the already established audience, but expands its reach to a wide range of people generally interested in human history and literature of the Victorian period.
Nanty Narking also includes more player goals than in the original game, allowing for more variety during play.”
Interesting that they will be adding miniatures to this one, as the original just had discs.
I wonder what they’ll represent?
I do know that if I didn’t already have the Discworld game, I may have considered picking this up.
Keep an eye out for this one, as it’s supposedly coming to Kickstarter in Q2 2018.
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