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Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork is rip-roaring chaos I suspect Sir Pratchett would have approved of

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork review

Katie Wickens

19 September 2025

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(Image: © Modiphius)

GamesRadar+ Verdict

Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork is a tabletop RPG that constantly pushes players to chase the unknown. With fail-forward mechanics and a reward system that favors outlandish plays, the momentum is constant, willing players to rest when they’re dead and never say never. The focus on one-shots and short campaigns means there’s minimal character development to speak of, but there’s certainly space for big character moments, and no small amount of chaos.

Delightfully Pratchett-y tone

Traits that evolve as you play

Great forward momentum

Helpful (and hilarious) flavor text and tables

Luck points are a bit catch-all

Leans hard into oneshot territory

Rules-lite can lead to inconsistency

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Features & design

Should you buy

How we tested

Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork is a tabletop RPG that leans heavily into the tomfoolery of the Discworld novels. Built around Modiphius’ Narrativium system, the game is, at its core, a chaos engine. It’s a rules-lite romp that leaves players somewhat adrift to design wonderfully strange stories together, but for the creatively inclined, there’s a smashing framework that’ll see adventurers reaping exactly what they sow, usually spectacularly, and usually resulting in a near-death experience.

Expecting heaps of on-the-fly creativity from both player and Game Master, Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork favors the bold, and anyone willing to torture the English language to within an inch of its life. Backed by a delightfully Pratchett-y tone, the core book brims with lore and legendary characters ready to enact whatever Pratchett fanfic your little heart desires. That alone will make it one of the best tabletop RPGs for fans of Sir Terry’s work.
Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork features & design

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Narrativium

~5hrs per session

Andrew Douthwaite, Jack Caesar, Bryce Johnston, Evie Moriarty

Modiphius Games

Play if you enjoy

Everyone’s John, Monster of the Week, Legend in the Mist

Hilarious tone and fantastic footnotes capture the Pratchett vibe perfectly
Well organized, with a good deal of examples
Plenty of prompts, roll tables, & support for newer RPG players
As the name suggests, this RPG tips players headfirst into Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld – or more specifically, the grimy metropolis of Ankh-Morpork that is “only two meals away from chaos at the best of times.” That means good humor is at the forefront, but it’s also pitched as a great starting point for newcomers to the roleplaying hobby.

Players mill about the Disc facing tests, which see them rolling off against the Game Master in heated dice battles. Pitting their wits and Outcome die (either a d4, d6, d10, or d12) against the GM’s Narrativium die (d8), they’re encouraged to bend the English language, teasing it to their advantage with just about anything plastered on their character sheet. The better the justification and likely character experience, the better the die awarded by the GM, and the higher the chance to outmaneuver Death (don’t mind him, he has a book to read).

Where to find the game

(Image credit: Modiphius)
Adventures in Ankh-Morpork isn’t available at retail yet, but you can grab a late pledge via Gamefound head of launch or get a taste for the game from the free Quickstart guide at DriveThruRPG. New to the Disc and want a crash course? A good place to begin would be Guards! Guards! (available for $14.21 at Amazon or £9.19 at Amazon UK) thanks to its focus on the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. And, y’know, the fact that it’s hilarious.
Since Adventures in Ankh-Morpork is a (mostly) co-operative endeavor, it first asks you to create a party. That means picking or rolling for an organization to be aligned with. This may be decided for you if you’re playing one of the three starter adventures, but you’ll still get to roll for the party’s past and present to gain some shared traits drawn from where they’ve been, what they’ve cocked up, and who they’re currently indebted to. I recommend skipping ahead and coming back to the party questions post-character-creation and introductions, as they feed better into one another that way around.
Alongside plenty of pregenerated characters per established Discworld organization, which can be found on the Modiphius site, players can design their own characters. Anything from a (secret?) female Wizard, to a Zombie or Troll, or even a sentient Pearwood travel accessory. Players simply roll on the list of Niches and Quirks specific to their organisation, padding their sheet with a background, and a couple more broadly applicable Quirks. Quirks come from answering prompt questions, and although translating these answers into appropriately Pratchett-esque traits is the hardest part of character creation, there’s a lot of fun to be had twisting them to your will.

(Image credit: Modiphius)
The core book is brimming with hilariously-footnoted examples, too. With a well-linked PDF supporting a comprehensive spread of roll tables, oodles of illustrated flavour text, and easy-to-follow rules, it’s a delight to use for plotting. You don’t even need to be a die-hard Pratchett fan to get a kick out of it.

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The three starter adventures included in the core book provide a comprehensive spread of the kind of GM notes you’ll need, with useful roll tables for related ongoings, consequences, clues and secrets. There’s even a “Without Intervention” section for GMs to whip out, should players take the pacifist route or manage to mess up every roll.

(Image credit: Modiphius)

Evolving trait system encourages fun justifications & even funner consequences
Luck points are a catch-all for skin-of-your-teeth moments & Plays with a capital Pee
Core traits provide an opportunity to learn something about your character as you play
Thanks to Adventures in Ankh-Morpork’s fantastic trait-based system, players are constantly probing their character sheet for inventive ways to apply Quirks and Niches to the situations they’re faced with. As long as they can justify that awful pun or play on words, there’s a good chance they’ll gain the GM’s favor and be granted a more prolific polyhedral. It’s a system that rewards the kind of out-of-the-box thinking the late Sir Pratchett would undoubtedly have approved of.
This reliance on traits as opposed to a concrete set of attributes does mean there’s no real levelling mechanics to speak of. As such, play never feels entirely balanced, and balancing a party becomes quite difficult, pushing the game even further into oneshot territory which might disappoint those looking for a longer campaign. With character advancement being so minimal, you’re forced to consider the short term consequences of your actions.

A familiar face

(Image credit: Rob Burman)
Recognize the name Modiphius? It’s responsible for everything from Fallout wargames (the latest one, Fallout Factions, is a wild ride) to Star Trek RPGs and an Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim board game.
That said, the tools Modiphius’ Narrativium system uses to engender oneshots are ingenious; from encouraging players to round off characters with a Core trait in a moment of realization, to multi-usage Luck points. The Lady is a big player too, with Luck points contributing to everything from magic usage to helping hands that let you reroll for your pals. It’s a little catch-all, but it means you don’t have to stop for a nap since they replenish when you “pull off something unlikely, unusual, or unique,” rather than simply “on a rest,” emboldening players to make ever-more outlandish plays.
It’s a chaos engine, for sure, but it lends itself to some truly stellar roleplay as players vie for that million-to-one chance at adventure, which is an actual mechanic that could land them an auto success for wild ideas that just might work.
Playing with an experienced group of tabletop and wordplay enthusiasts, it becomes increasingly difficult not to award players a d12 when their references to the source material are spectacularly apt. Thankfully, NPCs can use their traits to reroll the Narrativium die. Along with detrimental consequence traits, the GM has just enough pushback against particularly cunning players.
Should you buy Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork?

(Image credit: Modiphius)
As much as the core book hammers home the need for consistency, the rules-lite nature of Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork’s Narrativium system makes it a haven for accidental favoritism and handwaving that leads to inconsistent rules, particularly around which dice to award whom, and for what. If you can get around that, you’ll have a cosmic whale of a time barrelling through a story with incredible forward momentum.
It may not be a game for those who want to craft lengthy legacies, since it’s geared more toward oneshots, but it does short, chaotic stories, and it does them with no small amount of pizazz. Just don’t expect Adventures in Ankh-Morpork to be kind to literalists, or people who call Orangutans ‘Monkey’.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Game mechanics

Thanks to a tag-based system with fail forward mechanics and a reward system that encourages chaos, it’s definitely more oneshot oriented.

Accessibility

It might be a little tough to plot for those less familiar with Pratchett, but the lore is easy to find online.

Replayability

Several starter campaigns and homebrew potential is great, though the lack of stats means character development might be a little thin.

Setup & pack down

It’s amazingly quick to make a character, and only one dice set is needed. That makes it quick to get going.

Component quality

We can’t rate this quite yet as we looked at a PDF copy, so bear with us while we wait for a physical version.

Buy it if…

✅ You’re a diehard Pratchett fan
Any fan of the utter nonsense that goes on in the Discworld books will eat up this TTRPG. You may need to read up on your Pratchett to get the most out of it, though less-invested fans will still get a good giggle.

✅ You’re OK with handwaving
Since the Narrativium system is superbly rules-lite, you’ll often find yourself handwaving more intricate rules. Just remember to be consistent or you might be accused of playing favorites.

Don’t buy it if…

❌ You’re more interested in a long campaign
Adventures in Ank Morpork lends itself more to a oneshots format, with little in the way of character advancement for long-form games.

❌ You prefer your TTRPGs politics free
Pratchett made some pertinent points in his books, particularly where Sex and Gender are concerned. Players who prefer politics not to seep into their gameplay will likely find this isn’t to their taste.

How we tested Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork

(Image credit: Modiphius)

This review was conducted using a PDF of the game provided by the publisher.
Following a thorough look through the game’s core rulebook, our reviewer ran a test session of the game so that they could see how it works first-hand. This allowed them to take notes and form their critique based on practical experience.
To get a broader overview of our system, don’t miss the GamesRadar+ reviews policy.

If you want other recommendations, don’t miss the best board games or the best card games.

Katie Wickens

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Freelance writer

Katie is a freelance writer with almost 5 years experience in covering everything from tabletop RPGs, to video games and tech. Besides earning a Game Art and Design degree up to Masters level, she is a designer of board games, board game workshop facilitator, and an avid TTRPG Games Master – not to mention a former Hardware Writer over at PC Gamer.

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