A Blink of the Screen

by Dr Peristyle Slack, Ankh-Morpork Guild of Barber-Surgeons – ‘Come to Us for a Close Shave’
.

THUD: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

    T HUD: T HE D ISCWORLD B OARD G AME , T REVOR T RURAN, 2002
    We get at least one approach every month about Discworld board games. Many of them are fine, but too often the Discworld name has been pasted on to something generic, or Discworld history would need a major rewrite in order to fit the game. Letters burble: ‘In this game there is a big war between the wizards and the witches …’ Uh, no, I don’t think there is
.
    But Trevor Truran, who designs games the way other people breathe, came up with something good in ‘Koom Valley’ – the game’s working title. It was what I’d asked for: a true Discworld game, a game that could reasonably exist and be played there. It pitches dwarfs against trolls – a conflict hallowed by time – and, in order to play a complete game you have to play both sides, which was a specification I hadn’t laid down but which was exactly what I wanted. A game which forces you to think and play like your hereditary enemy could be extremely useful to a thoughtful author. It had the right feel, in short, and slotted neatly into Discworld history
.
    It looked easy to play, but championship players have told me it can stretch the mind more than chess. It also gave me the germ of a plot, which quite soon afterwards got written. 1
    All that remained was to choose the name, which was obvious
…
    The role of games in the histories of both dwarfs and trolls has been very important.
    Perhaps the most famous was the dwarfish game of
Hnaflbaflsniflwhifltafl
, devised by the cunning inventor Morose Stronginthearm for Hugen, Low King of the Dwarfs. Hugen had asked for a game that would teach young dwarfs the virtues of preparedness, strategy, boldness, and quick thinking, and Morose came up with a board game that has some early resemblance to the Thud board.
    The game swept through the dwarfish world, and was very popular. Hugen, being well pleased, asked Morose what he wanted as a reward. The inventor is on record as saying: ‘If it please you, your majesty, I ask for nothing more than that you should place one
plk
[a small gold piece then in general circulation] on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and so on until the board is filled.’
    The king readily agreed to this, and had a sack of gold brought from the treasury. However, the count had not been going on for very long before it became clear that what Morose had asked for was, in fact, all the gold in the universe.
    This presented a problem for the king, who had given his word, but he solved it by producing his axe and ordering two of his servants to drag Morose over to the window, where the light was better. At this point Morose hastily amended his request to ‘as much gold as he could carry’, whereupon Hugen agreed and merely had one of Morose’s arms broken. ‘For,’ he said, ‘all should know that while
Hnaflbaflsniflwhifltafl
teaches preparedness, strategy, boldness, and quick thinking, it is also important to know when not to be too
drhg’hgin
clever by half.’
    Troll games are closely bound up with troll religion and some are quite hard to understand. There is a game like a simplified form of chess, in which play consists of putting the pieces on the board and waiting for them to move, and another in which stones are thrown up into the air and players bet on whether or not they will come down. Quite a lot of money can be won that way.
    Koom Valley
    The traditional enmity between dwarfs and trolls has been explained away by one simple statement: one species is made of rock, the other is made of miners. But in truth the enmity is there because no one can remember when it wasn’t, and so it continues because everything is done in completely justifiable revenge for the revenge that was taken in response to the revenge for the vengeance that was taken earlier, and so on. Humans never do this sort of thing, much.
    There are at least three sites in Koom claiming to be
the
Koom Valley and at least fourteen major battles are now believed to have been fought there, wherever
there
turns out to be.
    The most likely site of Koom Valley, which is in Koom Valley, is a lonely, forebidding place. Even stormclouds go around it. It has been suggested by some wizards in the History Department at Unseen University that the rock formations in the valley, in the path of the