It is said that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken. Do you still speak his name Veeky Forums?

2soon

Also, this seems like as good a place as any to ask you guys help me track down a Pratchett quote.

It was in one of the Vimes books, where he's talking about the role of police. The gist of it is that police don't exist to bring justice, they exist to bring order. They're job isn't to sort out who's right and who's wrong, it's to get everyone to quiet down and get off the street instead of having a fight over the hedges. Then there's a joke about how, if Mr. Smith picks up the garden shears and stabs Mr. Jones, then the police have some extra work to do.

It's in Nightwatch But apart from that I don't know where it is

That's a good place to start. Thanks, user. Have a proper dwarf.

You always remember everybody's name, so I don't think it really counts.

We did have a thread on the 1 year anniversary of his death.
:'(

Was it really that important to change 'matters' to 'counts'? That's wrong anyways, unless you're an autist you stop remembering people's names when they stop being important to you. Try to name your grade 3 class- unless you went to school with all of them throughout your entire basic education, you can't recall them all.

I lawys wanted to forge a sword with that quote written on it.

>female dwarves have beards

It's traditional.
The more progressive ones put ribbons in the braids.

>his waifu doesn't have a beard

Dwarves who have seen the sun should be shunned. Rhys Rhysson is not my Low King.

Over-rated hack, a couple of decent books managed to escape.

And if you could kindly go fuck yourself in the arse with a cactus.

Did he go the assisted dying route in the end?

Stay mad, faggot

Don't feed the (you)troll.

Hide (you)troll posts.

Have a better life quality because of it.

No, he died naturally.

Sure is summer in here

Eh, always enjoy using that insult. Had he been a bit more imaginative, I might even have continued...

>an opinion i don't like
>summerfags reeeeee
sure thing kiddo

I plan to run a game where the ultimate BBEGs will be The Auditors. I fully expect they'll get help from Death eventually.

1) Yes it was. For me ayway. It doesn't exactly means teh same thing.
2) C'mon man, was it really that important to bring it up?
3) He was writing in all-cap, thus suggesting he was endorsing the role of Death, who never forget anything.

I'd play it.

I don't get it, do we have to make a continuous call with our combined worldwide voices telling his name so he can not be dead, at the price of his demis if a split second is missed, or does he comes back to life everytime we say his name ?
If so, do we have to tell it regurarly and what is the most acceptable frequency ?

>it is said
It is also said that one in five US congressmen is secretly a duck with a human mask. By me, just now.
You should believe it because IT IS SAIIIID!!

Similar to what was written in Good Omens.

Yes. Benedict Cumberbatch.

I don't remember that, or anything similar, but then Good Omens had a lot of good throwaway lines

Does anyone have the screencap (or possible edit) of the guy getting banned from tg for not liking Pratchett

It's probably gonna come as a surprise, with them working through a proxy. I know some of the people I discussed lurk, so I can't spoil to much. It's more fun if it's a surprise.

But if the wizard Zargothrax reminds you of a campaign, you know and I'd appreciate it if you didn't spoil.

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Did you just take your wizard's name from Gloryhammer

user i love you

Thanks

Had a conversation about him less than an hour ago. Even in death Terry helps me get numbers.

I've read a few of Iain Banks interviews this morning. Still felt like I was being punched in the gut.

It's Night Watch, p. 308 in my copy.

>'What we gonna do, sarge?' wailed Colon. Ah ... Keep the peace. That was the thing. People often failed to understand what that meant. You'd go to some life-threatening disturbance like a couple of neighbours scrapping in the street over who owned the hedge between their properties, and they'd both be bursting with aggrieved self-righteousness, both yelling, their wives would either be having a private scrap on the side or would have adjourned to a kitchen for a shared pot of tea and a chat, and they all expected you to sort it out. And they could never understand that it wasn't your job. Sorting it out was a job for a good surveyor and a couple of lawyers, maybe. Your job was to quell the impulse to bang their stupid fat heads together, to ignore the affronted speeches of dodgy self-justification, to get them to stop shouting and to get them off the street. Once that had been achieved, your job was over. You weren't some walking god, dispensing finely tuned natural justice. Your job was simply to bring back peace. Of course, if your few strict words didn't work and Mr Smith subsequently clambered over the disputed hedge and stabbed Mr Jones to death with a pair of gardening shears, then you had a different job, sorting out the notorious Hedge Argument Murder. But at least it was one you were trained to do. People expected all kinds of things from coppers, but there was one thing that sooner or later they all wanted: make this not be happening.

I guess I should get around reading him one of these days.
Where do I start, and what am in for?
Are there several series or can I just pick them up in their publication order?

Start with Wyrd Sisters if you have read Macbeth.

If not start with Guards! Guards!.

2nd story series to read should be the Death arc starting with Mort.

Something like this.

I read them in their publication order (with a couple exceptions) although there are basically four series; the watch series, the rincewind series, the witches series and the death series.

>the rincewind series is essentially a comedic parody of sword and sorcery fantasy, it stars a wizard who can't do any magic who has to get out of dangerous situations and fight unnameable horrors.
>the watch series is about the city guard in Ankh Morpork, essentially detective/crime drama stories, the main books for fleshing out setting lore. Are also sometimes used to express TP's political views.
>The witches, the most standard fantasy in a way, three witches, some kind of villain and trying to stop an evil plan, they're essentially stories about stories, witches power is all based on belief so the stories people tell and believe in play a big part of all those books.
>the death series, books about Death (note the capital D) and family as he goes about his business of reaping souls and getting more involved in human affairs than he really should, if the watch books are political then these ones are more philosophical (and damm quotable)

the rest are standalones and usually serve to add a bit more detail to a certain part of the setting.

Thanks lads.
Goodness. Exactly what I needed though, thanks lad.

The list looks more intimidating than it really is. Then again, most people who read them, read them over the course of decades.

Watch books are probably your best bet, but they move the plot forward a bit fast if you're only reading those.

Rincewind novels are the initial ones, but they tend to be fairly self contained and the universe doesn't quite fit in with itself after it all gets fleshed in later

Saved January 2015.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. I read them completely out of order because local libraries didn't have them all in stock and could follow everything fine. I actually started with Lords and Ladies, which even has a little note at the start to say that normally you don't need any background for a discworld book but this one starts where another left off (Witches Abroad) and it still got me hooked. It gave me an incentive to read them in order later for extra context.

My personal favourite is probably Small Gods, which is about organised religion (among other things) at a point some time before the "present" discworld seen in most books.

Saved on the day.

Not until he actually died he didn't. Pratchett's form of Alzheimer's didn't really affect his mind, iirc.

Did it today already, an amusing coincidence.

I still love Small Gods, because it provides new perspective once you re-read it, having read Thief of Time. Lu-Tze may be a silly old sweeper, but he completely changed the course of history in entire regions of the Disc and saved a God's life...by removing a few screws from a device and giving a young acolyte a bonsai tree. That's basically his only actions in the book, and it completely shifted history for who knows how many people.
And that is why the Sweeper deserves all the reverence the History Monks give him.

IIRC his long term memory wasn't affected. His short term might have been.

I have to say, I started noticing a shift really quickly. Making Money felt just a little bit off-target, just a few degrees off-keel. Unseen Academials felt like his really early work before Discworld, which is good and bad, but it didn't feel Discworld-y. I never even finished Snuff. I remember going "Oh come the fuck on" at the Summoning Dark scene and putting it down not too long after. I'm not going to read Raising Steam or Shepherd's Crown, I'm just going to stay where I jumped off and remember him for the writer he was.

unless you're me and yearly re-read the entire thing, beginning to end...

Reading Raising Steam was honestly really sad, and not because of the content. Everyone sounded the same for one thing, and the distinctive voices of all the series characters had always been one of the Discworld books strengths. I've not yet read Shepherd's Crown either, but supposedly its better.

Nation isn't Discworld, but it is one of his best later books.

Tolkien?

His main work is the discworld series, about a fantasy world that's kind of a parody, but also a very strong world with stories in it's own right.
The earlier books tend to be more straightforward satires of other stories

The series is broken down into several character group based sub-series, though characters do cross over a bit (the most obvious example being Death, who cameos in all but one book, though Death also has a sub-series)

The sub-series are: The Wizards, which sends up generic fantasy, first book The Colour of Magic, The Witches, which does Shakespeare, first book Wyrd Sisters (though there is Equal Rites before that), Death, which is kind of its own thing dealing with anthropomorphic personifications, first book Mort, and The Watch, which has police procedurals in a fantasy city, first book Guards Guards. There's also a few standalone books, and I'm sure I've missed at least one sub-series
There's a lot, but they really don't have to be read in order at all

My favourite Discworld book is Carpe Jugulum, just because of Mightily Oats.

At the time in my life when I read it, I really needed a character like him: a man who earnestly wishes to do good, but is wracked with doubt over what "good" even means. A man paralyzed by his own critical thinking, who just needed to stop worrying and believe.

It was good to know that someone out there understood what I was going through, at least in part.

I had something similar going on with Brutha and Om. As I get older I find I understand Vimes' wound-up middleaged anger more and more.

>tfw as I get older I feel more and more like Sgt. Colon

Do you have a Nobby? That would help.

People say lots of things that aren't true.

I do, but all it means is I have someone to hang out with while we both work hard at looking like we're working hard.

Thank you for that necessary dash of Veeky Forums autism, bruv.

Anytime.

I do more than that.

Alright, any of my possible players, stop reading. I'll namefag so you won't by mistake, you'll know. I'm gonna trust you on this one.

The title of the campaign will be Space 2992: Resurrection of the Chaos Wizards.
A thousand years after the immortal Zargothrax escaped into a separate dimension, with Angus McFife XIII in his heels. The rift tore open and spread all over the galaxy, destroying much technology and collapsing many of the multiverse into a horrifying amalgam. The old Earth and The Great Kingdom of Fife now separate shattered pieces, the wizard and the heir fight. Using his last power, Angus McFife seal Zargothrax using the very rift he created and the Neutron Star of the Hootsman to seal him away forever. And then promptly dies.

Life continues. The intergalactic kingdom collapses as their heir disappears and communications and travel break down. The majority of humanity is flung to the separate earth known as New Fife, and the old is dubbed Fulcrum, as insane astral demons haunt its shards.

People start to adjust to the strangeness that is the new world. But it is not stable. Rifts open and close at random. Some stick around for thousands of years. Some open one day and is gone the next. Some lead to your neighbor. Some lead to ancient ruins on Mars. All are dangerous but possibly profitable, getting some of the wonders of the old world or the miracles of something completely new.

But the dark prophecies of Anstruther predict that the Chaos Sorcerer will rise again, infinitely more powerful and bring on the end of the universe. For in his eternal search for power, Zargothrax has found possibly the most powerful patrons, the Gray Wardens...

I always found "fuck off the edge of my dick", to work quite well.

It's more to the sense that each of us have different memories of Sir Pratchett and his work and that our collective memory creates a sort of 'penultimate' mirror-image. Like, take the average of every thought ever had of the person and that average is the person. Also, if you believe in him hard enough, he becomes a god.

I actually enjoyed snuff more than Unseen Academicals. UA just felt disjointed every page I read. And the ending felt completely out of place to me.

He focused too much on Vimes, von Lipwing and Aching (easily the most boring main characters of the series), his last few novels were fucking awful, and his senility led to the idiotic, brain dead decision to greenlight commisioning the TV dramas (all of which were total shit).

Anyone who hero worships this guy needs to get their fucking head checked, possibly for Alzheimer's. The Last Hero was probably the last "decent" novel, and even that pales in comparison to earlier works like Eric or Sorcery, which in turn were pretty mediocre fantasy pastiche novels.

Sounds like a good days work to me.

Greenlighting the TV dramas wasn't the alzheimer's though. He just felt that anyone who wanted to adapt his work should get a fair chance. As long as they didn't piss on the source-material, he was fine with it. And all the rest is kinda just unsubstantiated opinions, but whatever, you have the right to think that way.

I read the small gods first, then proceed to reading in publication order. I think it works better this way because there are always bunch of references to previous books.
Also, he wrote a few non-discworld books, those are very good too.

You have the right to your opinion, no matter how wrong it is.Enjoy your pointless rage.

I have not read his book yet, except for a cook book, but that makes me really sad.

>Eric or Sorcery
Eric was okay, but sourcery was passable at best - it's also the book he least liked, having been written only because the publishers wanted the next Rincewind story, in direct continuation.

Shepard's Crown is better.
I honestly wasn't sure about a Tiffany Aching book being the last one he wrote, but it works - death and coping with it was always a big part of witches, and you can tell that he knew he was close to the end from it. Much better than Snuff for the serious stuff, and definitely, definitely better than Raising Steam

I hadn't read his books in years, and decided to start again in publication order that year. I was reading "Mort" when I got the news. It was...appropriate.

Yeah. I kind of got the feeling reading it that he knew it was going to be his last proper discworld book from the word go, and he was desperate to try and get as much into it as he could, but he just didn't have the skills to pull it off like he wanted to.

It was better than his last few entries, but for his swan song he deserved better.

I pity the editor of that books. Because you know things are going wrong, but you also know the man can no longer fix them, but you don't want to change them yourself because you don't want to be the one responsible for changing one of the last things this man wrote.

>better than his last few entries
I thought Snuff was better, though both are better than Unseen Academicals.

can i please be in your campaign? preeeety pleaaase? ill mail cookies and poutine to you from canada.

Although just to mention that gloryhammer did say what the plot goes on to wich is and i quote: Next album takes place in dystopian alternate past reality. Zargothrax arrived through the space portal earlier than Angus, and has mastered time travel to become evil overlord of the universe. He also rides a dinosaur with laser eyes. Angus McFife arrives and finds Ralathor (don't ask how he got there), who tells him of the Fate of this reality. Together they build the original Hootsman cyborg clone army from the genetic stock of Dundax (the founder of Dundee), and send the hootsclones off to every parallel universe with the mission of defending space and time (this includes the Hootsman we know and love from albums 1 and 2). Meanwhile, Zargothrax has corrupted the Knights of Crail by stabbing Proletius with the Knife of Evil(TM). Eventually the force of justice prevails, and Angus attacks Zargothrax with an army of good (I.e. Not undead) unicorns, and defeats him finally for all eternity. However in the chaos of the struggle, Angus is stabbed by the Knife of Evil, and instead of giving in to its power, HE FUCKING KILLS HIMSELF.
The end " source: reddit.com/r/PowerMetal/comments/3opx19/angus_mcfife_gloryhammer/cw1q1pm

Man, I'm going to have to re-read Unseen Academicals at some point, people give it a lot more stick than I recall being due.
It wasn't amazing, but it was your fairly standard "X gets introduced/developed in Ankh-Morpork", with the wizards in the background and a bit of Romeo and Juliet parody - not as sharp as the Witches might be, but not done terribly.

So we are here now, eh.
Is there a better quality scan for this?

it was too confusing. None of the individual story lines were that bad, but there was the Romeo and Juliet story, and the wizard soccer story, and the pretty girl/ugly girl story, and the fashion scene story, and the sports star from a bad neighborhood story, and the orc story, and the ugly girl orc love story.
While there was overlap and mixing of these stories, they never felt cohesive. It always felt like we were bouncing all over the place.

Im fucking glad Gygax is dead.

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... Yeah, I can kinda see that. It certainly had a lot of threads, and though there was always at least one link to the others it could certainly do better.

To me at least it still beats Snuff, and (especially) Raising Steam - all of them have somewhat weak plots, but UA (to me, anyway) had more memorable and funny moments.

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Why was the librarian an orangutan again?

Its called classic fantasy. Read some tolkien. You beardless elf