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Managed to stay up until stupid o'clock last night finishing the book and surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I never really enjoyed a lot of the Witch books on my first read through, so I'll have to go back through them all now.
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Dec 23, 2012 16:07
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It is one of my personal favourites, especially when everything comes together.
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Dec 23, 2012 16:32
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Flipswitch posted:Managed to stay up until stupid o'clock last night finishing the book and surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I never really enjoyed a lot of the Witch books on my first read through, so I'll have to go back through them all now. You should, I personally prefer Witch over Watch (Night Watch aside). Esme is a much better character than Vimes (heresy, I know).
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Dec 23, 2012 20:33
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I don't know if the comparison is so much Weatherwax/Vimes as Ankh-Morpork/Lancre. The Witch books are pretty much about the Witches, whereas the Watch books have a broader scope (while still focusing on characters).
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Dec 23, 2012 22:41
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Redmark posted:I don't know if the comparison is so much Weatherwax/Vimes as Ankh-Morpork/Lancre. The Witch books are pretty much about the Witches, whereas the Watch books have a broader scope (while still focusing on characters). Well, you may be right, but that's probably why I prefer them. The Witch books almost all have a theme of "how certain people change the world around them", with the subheader "and how Esme uses headology to beat them". I think the latest Watch books are much more about Vimes than the city, though, I don't think that's disputable (Thud!, especially). That said, I like the "city" books a lot - The Truth, the Moist books, etc.
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Dec 23, 2012 22:48
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SeanBeansShako posted:It is one of my personal favourites, especially when everything comes together.  And yeah, Esme Weatherwax is definitely one of his best characters, headology is something else.
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Dec 23, 2012 22:55
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precision posted:That said, I like the "city" books a lot - The Truth, the Moist books, etc. Those books are those ones where Pratchett is doing more than usually obvious current events commentary.
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Dec 24, 2012 00:22
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precision posted:Well, you may be right, but that's probably why I prefer them. The Witch books almost all have a theme of "how certain people change the world around them", with the subheader "and how Esme uses headology to beat them". Going Postal is probably my favorite book in the series; everything just fits together fantastically well, and every single character is gold. I didn't like Making Money as much, from the moment there a major character was named Topsy Turvy  . I think Going Postal was kind of like Small Gods in that there wasn't too much space for it to extend into, so the sequel just had Moist retreading old ground character-wise.I'm not sure what the current events commentary is referring to, though given the age of the series quite possibly I don't know the actual events either.
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Dec 24, 2012 01:42
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Does anyone else wish they'd have all those lovely themed Diaries reprinted for the same year? I really did enjoy my Fools Guild and Black Ribbon one in the past and it hurts that most of them are really expensive to get. I want to look at those drat Diaries!
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Dec 24, 2012 01:51
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I just got the Discworld boardgame for Christmas. There are so many pieces I am terrified. Also I busted up laughing at the Sam Vimes victory condition. Everyone runs out of cards to play
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Dec 24, 2012 23:05
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rejutka posted:I just got the Discworld boardgame for Christmas. There are so many pieces I am terrified. Also I busted up laughing at the Sam Vimes victory condition. Don't worry about the number of pieces, they're all just markers. It's a really simple game to play - all the icons on the cards are obvious, and the mechanics are reasonably simple.
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Dec 25, 2012 00:18
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I swear there used to be a Flash version of the Thud! boardgame, but it looks like it's been taken down. Shame, it's fun.
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Dec 25, 2012 01:08
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precision posted:I swear there used to be a Flash version of the Thud! boardgame, but it looks like it's been taken down. Shame, it's fun. I own a Thud board - I have never played a game. I look at the pieces, sometimes, and wonder what it's like to play.
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Dec 25, 2012 06:24
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My parents framed me some of the best bits from my previous Discworld calenders as a Christmas present. I now have The Battle Of Koom Valley and the assembly of the Glorious Revolution on my walls. Oh, and that neat UU Football team one too. They also got me Dodger. Still trying to convince my teenage sister to try the series now she is considering getting into Lord Of The Rings. That crazy Harry Potter sibling generation eh?
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Dec 25, 2012 09:58
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VanSandman posted:I own a Thud board - I have never played a game. I look at the pieces, sometimes, and wonder what it's like to play. I played it with the guy who created it. He came to my local game shop, he was very nice. The new game seems awesome from the couple times I've played it but teaching it to new people is troublesome, any questions they might ask during the actual playing will probably tip you off as to who they're playing as.
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Dec 25, 2012 11:17
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Release date for The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day is down as 13/04/2013. Gird your hatches, batten down your loins etc etc.
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Dec 25, 2012 14:38
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SeanBeansShako posted:They also got me Dodger. Still trying to convince my teenage sister to try the series now she is considering getting into Lord Of The Rings. That crazy Harry Potter sibling generation eh? You might try introducing her to the Tiffany Aching books. Then she can read the the other books about Granny and Nanny. And then, all of Discwold.
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Dec 27, 2012 00:08
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SeanBeansShako posted:Still trying to convince my teenage sister to try the series now she is considering getting into Lord Of The Rings. That crazy Harry Potter sibling generation eh? Crazy indeed - "needs convincing" to read Discworld, but "considering" LOTR? She must be a very dour kid indeed. Does she hate fun?
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Dec 28, 2012 06:41
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precision posted:Crazy indeed - "needs convincing" to read Discworld, but "considering" LOTR? She must be a very dour kid indeed. Does she hate fun? The correct answer to "What genre is it?" is "Good."
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Dec 28, 2012 07:15
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rejutka posted:I just got the Discworld boardgame for Christmas. There are so many pieces I am terrified. Also I busted up laughing at the Sam Vimes victory condition. The game is brilliant! Don't be deterred by how complicated it looks; it's as simple as "play a card, follow the instructions, pick up a card". It goes from interesting to bloody great after the first game, when everyone knows how to play quickly and the devious screwing-each-other-over begins. The cheat sheets really help, so make sure everyone has one. They've got the symbols on one side and the personalities/ locations on the other.
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Dec 28, 2012 11:57
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precision posted:Crazy indeed - "needs convincing" to read Discworld, but "considering" LOTR? She must be a very dour kid indeed. Does she hate fun? She is my sister at the end of the day. She doesn't hate fun. She grew up with the Media and everyone else praising that series. I'm trying my best though, going to hint really hard and everything.
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Dec 28, 2012 13:58
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The Supreme Court posted:The game is brilliant! Don't be deterred by how complicated it looks; it's as simple as "play a card, follow the instructions, pick up a card". It goes from interesting to bloody great after the first game, when everyone knows how to play quickly and the devious screwing-each-other-over begins. Yea it is quite a bit of fun - some of the cards are fantastic and make me chuckle every time I see them. I wish more people around me had actually read Pratchett, as some of the people I have played with don't get the jokes on the cards (they have fun regardless, just not as much).
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Dec 28, 2012 17:01
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When I was in middle school, for a class project one year I made a Discworld board game (well, actually it was supposed to be the game the gods play in the first few books, Heroic Quest IIRC?) and the existing game looks pretty much exactly how I wanted mine to look, even with similar cards. Shoulda been a game designer... How long is an average game? I've managed to get a few of my friends into Cosmic Encounter, but that's pretty short. Everyone I know has incredibly short attention spans. Even watching a movie usually devolves into hijinks before it's over.
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Dec 28, 2012 19:14
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precision posted:How long is an average game? With the usual caveats for game length increasing while you learn to play: 90 minutes to two hours, depending how many players you have.
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Dec 28, 2012 19:42
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Woah, wait is this the Ankh Morpork game where you don't know who everyone else is playing as? If so we were knocking games of that out in 20-30 minutes, it's basically our warmup game if we're going to be playing alot of board games.
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Dec 28, 2012 23:31
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thebardyspoon posted:Woah, wait is this the Ankh Morpork game where you don't know who everyone else is playing as? If so we were knocking games of that out in 20-30 minutes, it's basically our warmup game if we're going to be playing alot of board games. Exactly. You play a lot of games. precision is playing with non-gamers, so you have to allow for that. Unless someone runs away with it, Discworld is about 15 minutes plus 15 per player. When dealing with non-gamers, tack on an extra half hour.
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Dec 29, 2012 01:39
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Yeah I'm going to allot a half hour alone to explaining Discworld to the one or two people who haven't read it. I'm starting to realize more and more that my friends have terrible taste. Even my wife's favorite author was Chuck Pahlaniuk before I started throwing books at her when we started dating...
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Dec 29, 2012 07:01
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precision posted:Yeah I'm going to allot a half hour alone to explaining Discworld to the one or two people who haven't read it. You don't need to do that by any means. A few of my gaming group haven't read any Discworld and have fun regardless. The only card that caused a "huh?" reaction was The Peeled Nuts (the Ankh-Morpork Historical Re-Creation Society) because it doesn't do anything at all, but that's ok because sometimes you want to have cards to discard or you can force another player to take it.
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Dec 29, 2012 08:01
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I think that half hour is less explaining Discworld in general and more to do with new players' uncertainty with rules and getting into the rhythms of board games. On the plus side if they're curious about Discworld afterwards you can always start lending books or maybe throw on one of the tv adaptations to lure them in.
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Dec 29, 2012 16:12
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Speaking of, any more word about the watch series?
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Dec 29, 2012 21:52
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I'm reading my way through Discworld in between reading more serious books. (I read a lot of them as a kid, but I can't remember anything). Anyway, I just finished Wyrd Sisters. Granny moves an entire kingdom 15 years into the future? That seems like if it was possible, then it's something that should have taken every wizard on the Disc to do. In previous books simple little magic battles between a couple wizards start attracting the Things from Dungeon Dimensions, but this doesn't raise a peep? Also so far most of these stories are "We have to stop him! Otherwise, Something Unknown will happen". I understand that gets better, though. I can buy the premise of the world, but a some consistency would be nice.
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Jan 1, 2013 09:16
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It works on the same principle as all Discworld magic: it happens because it fits a particular narrative (in this case, the young prince growing up as a pauper and returning to save the kingdom). If they tried to do it for no reason, no doubt it would take all the wizards on the Disc and more. But since the narrative demanded it, it was relatively easy. That's what passes for "consistency" and "logic" in Discworld.
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Jan 1, 2013 09:44
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Witchcraft is more like principles of leverage anyway, and we know in Discworld there are already time differentials. Most likely she just exploited a naturally occurring kink in time at Lancre(which as noted, is pretty twisty in the time/space sense already). Where a wizard would have to create the whole effect, a witch just needs to find that effect and put it into the right spots.
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Jan 1, 2013 09:51
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Narrative causality is a big thing in the Witches books in particular. I think in Witches Abroad Pratchett really gets down into the nuts and bolts of it. The basic explanation is that stories are parasitical realities that prey on the Discworld and, if handled properly, can be harnessed by witches and other people to ensure a set outcome (eg the prince gets the girl). Unlike witches, wizards don't go with the flow of the story, so they have a more dangerous time of it when they use magic. EDIT: Also, time is all messed up on the discworld and the History Monks are constantly patching one bit of it into another. It's probably easier to move an entire country forward or back in time than it is to do some of the things wizards do in the earlier books.
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Jan 1, 2013 09:54
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Cacto posted:Narrative causality is a big thing in the Witches books in particular. I think in Witches Abroad Pratchett really gets down into the nuts and bolts of it. From Wyrd Sisters on all the witch books do. Wyrd Sisters is about following the narrative, Witches Abroad about making other people follow it. Lords and Ladies is about how we can make up our own narrative to suit ourselves, Maskerade deals with living out fantasies and Carpe Jugulum caps it off by showing what happens when you don't have a narrative at all.
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Jan 1, 2013 11:24
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It's also heavily implied that the Wizards have far more power than they let on. The process of becoming a Wizard is a process of simultaneously learning a) how to wield reality warping powers and b) that actually using said powers is generally a terrible idea.
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Jan 1, 2013 19:16
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Alchenar posted:It's also heavily implied that the Wizards have far more power than they let on. The process of becoming a Wizard is a process of simultaneously learning a) how to wield reality warping powers and b) that actually using said powers is generally a terrible idea. Yes, but it looks like anyone short of a Sourcerer would have enormous trouble causing a huge magical effect without a narrative to back it up or some sort of leverage (broken time, weak spot in reality, parasite universe, etc). Pratchett's pretty clear that the stories happen because "story" means more in that world than a thing you make up. Humans even have "narrativium", which is what makes them human as opposed to "a sack of impure water" - humans have the ability to participate in, and sometimes change, the story. Even the Gods can't really do that.
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Jan 2, 2013 13:50
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Finished Lords and Ladies the other night, not sure why I'd been putting it off so long. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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Jan 2, 2013 17:15
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Lords and Ladies is definitely one of my favourites, but I have a massive weakness for anything that attempts to portray 'proper' fairies.
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Jan 2, 2013 17:53
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Hodgesaargh and his birds really kick arse in Lords And Ladies, one of my favourite bits.
SeanBeansShako fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Jan 2, 2013 |
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Jan 2, 2013 18:16
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