Thank you all for your ideas so far - It's gratifying to know that a lot of themes you've all touched on, are ones that I've already been thinking about.

Quote Originally Posted by huttj509 View Post
First off: Decide on the tone you want for your game. This is always important, but for Discworld can be much more so.
This was kind of why I asked if people would suggest what sort of character that would create, if they were to go blind into a game and all they knew was "Discworld". So far, the general theme seems to be "traditional dungeon crawl, with silly and sarcastic encounters".

I think I can do that.

So far, here's what I'm shaping up with...

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The game will be set in Ankh-Morpork. I know that there are plenty of places to go on Discworld, but by and large most of the more interesting ones happen in it's Greatest City. Also, if I can start out in a city, it creates a large landscape to get people used to the rules and the setting before we try to go further afield, without being stifling or overly rail-roady.
It also gives me the greatest freedom of characters, as it's such a melting pot for everyone and has links to all peoples and lands, for the purposes of plot hooks. Yes, I would allow players to use any mortal race that they wanted, including trolls, Black Ribbon Vampires and the talking animals, because there's plenty for all of them to DO and plenty of ways to corral them if they start getting to unbalanced.
Golems and small gods, however.... probably not. Unless it was a REALLY small god, then maybe.

Similarly, I must confess, it gives me a good enough excuse to go out and buy The Streets of Ankh-Morpork, which is currently one of the few gaps in my collection.

The players are encouraged to be Guild Members but this isn't vital or even particularly urgent; they'd be good ways to hand out plot tokens and resources for those that need them, or they could just be background flavour to justify a 'class' of some kind.

The actual plot, however, starts in a library. Not THE Library of course, I'm not looking to TPK quite that early, but just a normal one somewhere in one of the middle-class parts of the city. In this library, there is a door. Not a particularly big or impressive one, but the decor matches the rest of the building and although the doorknob has been polished smooth and shiny with use, it obviously hasn't been opened for a long time. No one knows what's behind it.

This is because it wasn't there yesterday.

After investigation by the Watch (who aren't interested, because it probably hasn't been stolen) and the Wizards (who similarly aren't interested, because it isn't edible and/or covered in face-sucking tentacles from the lower dimensions) it is finally opened to reveal a small stone room with a deep, brick-and-mortar shaft descending down into darkness. A knotted chain, a fixed to the ceiling via a thick iron spike, suggests that it could be explored by even a semi-competent climber, and for the price of admission (a penny each, tickets to be collected by the librarian Mrs. Bodge) one may do just that.

That's right - I'm turning Ankh-Morpork into Waterdeep.

A small (though very quiet, in keeping to the signs in throughout the building) carnival springs up around the newly opened Dungeon Door, as small groups of adventurers and fortune-seeking city dwellers disappear into the dark. So far, none have returned, but that doesn't mean that the players won't either, right....?

The players band together for safety (and/or chance to loot each other when the time comes) and can run a gamut of whatever encounters I choose to throw at them.I have only one planned at the moment; the last one...

The players spend hours - days, maybe - traversing the dungeon and picking up equipment, gemstones and all variety of goodies along the way (note: absolutely no coins, this is important as you will soon see) until they reach what is presumably the grand chamber in the middle of the sprawling complex....

...There, waiting for them, is a little old man, wizened and bent with age, sat at a wooden counter with an old clockwork cash register beside him.
"Ah, good morning gents! Had a good look, have we? Anything else you'd like, or shall I just ring you up now?"

The Dungeon is not a dungeon. It's a single, enormous, and vastly ancient specimen of Commercialis Migratoria Gigantica - a Wandering Shop.

The party haven't been killing monsters and battling foes - they've been mugging other customers. They haven't been picking up loot and stealing precious magical treasure - they've been, metaphorically speaking, filling up their shopping trolley and making their way towards the till. Hence why they haven't been finding coins among the 'stock' - what kind of shop keeps the contents of the till on the shelf next to the wares?

Of course, the cost of the items that the party has picked up vastly exceed what they can afford to pay, and the shopkeeper turns nasty. He pulls a lever and his counter stands up.
Controlled by the keys on the cash register, the shop's counter is an Iron Brigade-style walker, and hilarity ensues as the party get pursued about the shop by an old man with a crossbow, shrieking at them something about "I belong to the Neighbourhood Watch, I do!" and "We always prosecute you thieving buggers Stand still an' be prosecuted, will yer!?!"

And then either they die horribly or they kill the poor old man, and from their I can either let them recklessly try to teleport the shop to somewhere new and find a new adventure, or if I'm feeling cruel be can have the cash-register-mech be a Load Bearing Boss and the players have to escape before the whole place comes down on them.


It's a start, I think - I just need to start planning on things for them to do en route.