Havelock Vetinari Puns

The more books I read, the more I appreciate Lord Vetinari and the way that Sir Terry developed him as a character.

Every book he's in, you learn a little more: some likable, some spooky, and some funny.

Just wanted to have a sound-off for the Patrician and his magnetic personality.

Would love to see any costumes/fan art, whatever, about this lovable creeper.

For reference, I've read:

• The Tiffany Aching books (except Shepherd's Crown)
• Going Postal
• Making Money
• Raising Steam <— Particularly loved him in this book.
• Guards, Guards!

If you haven't read Night Watch, or if you're a goblin druid, turn back now.

Ok, so now that they're gone I want to share my Vetinari backstory. Very little is recorded of the events in the years/decades following *NW*, which makes the Glorious 25th of May an ideal starting point for my D&D campaign!

After taking power, Snapcase asked for a list of up-and-coming students at the Assassin's Guild, presumably to carry out a purge and prevent himself from being Lord-Windsor-ed. Havelock escaped suspicion because his studies focussed on language and theory.

Instead of summary execution, Havelock was enlisted as a diplomatic clerk/attache in the palace. His aunt, Lady Meserole, remains in Snapcase's favour - but her network of revolutionaries remains active and are regrouping to 'solve' the Snapcase problem, which they justifiably feel responsible for. It's an out-of-the-frying-pan-and-into-the-fire scenario.

Havelock and his aunt are playing the long game now. They are perfectly positioned to undermine Lord Snapcase both within Ankh Morpork and abroad. They have connections and plans. The only thing they require is a team of capable adventurers who can be dispatched to tip the scales in their favour... and that's where my players come in ;)

Only 1/6 of them have read the series, so the world is completely new to them. I think that they'll finally meet Lady M next session, and the *actual* campaign will begin (the past two sessions were mostly exposition / learning the rules).

Anyways, yeah - that's how I'm filling in the blanks! I love this series and figured that a couple of y'all would be interested in it. I'm excited to see how my players write this missing piece of Discworld history :)

“I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”

• Lord Vetinari Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

EDIT. Thank you guys so much. Nice group of people! I ended up ordering Guards! Guards! Too. That seemed to be a poplar one. I'm pretty exited to read both of them. I know nothing about this series. The only thing I have read is that quote. I have no clue what to even expect. I'll post a review if you guys want. Insight from a complete unknown.

Lets assume both men know each others backstories ad thrawn has had a chance to look at the artwork in Vetinari's office.

All of them start as 20 year old lords of small holdfasts, one in each region of Westeros, listed below. Each man gets copies of all five books and wake up the day Robert sets off for Winterfell. Who gains the most power, who wields it best, who keeps it best, and do any of these men ascend the Iron Throne?

Tallyrand: Reach

Underwood: Stormlands

Vetinari: Crownlands

Bismarck: Vale

Wayne: Riverlands

Caesar: Iron Islands

Wiggin: Westerlands

Clinton: Dorne

Corleone: North

Is Havelock Vetinari Terry Pratchett's incarnation on the Disc?

He brings new players onto the world stage, he knows everything that is going on, he is an all powerful tyrant, and yet he appears to sit back and let things unfold around him with only the occasional tweak or assassination.

This thought just occurred to me after 8 years of reading, re-reading, and re-re-reading these books...

The Patrician, The Big Cheese, the Man with The Vote.

• What drives Vetinari?

• Is he evil, good or neutral?

• How do his personality and ideals come across through his interactions with other major characters (Vimes, for instance)?

• Spoiler question

Discuss!

So, here's the challenge: Ankh-Morpork's own benevolent dictator finds himself in the world of ASOIAF, and wants to claim the Iron Throne and establish a peaceful world. All rounds in character, unless otherwise specified. Would Vetinari win the game, or die?

Round 1: He is alone, dropped without resources on an alleyway in King's Landing with no idea how he got there or any knowledge of that world.

Round 2: He switches places with Tywin Lannister in the story, and has access to all Tywin's resources (gold, allies, family ties, etc.).

Round 3: Ankh-Morpork magically appears in the riverlands of Westeros, with all the associated characters (The City Watch, the Unseen University, etc.) working with Vetinari.

Rounds 4-6: Same as rounds 1-3, but he is given a month of prep time as well as access to a library's worth of information on the world of ASOIAF.

First Lord vs the Patrician; two men that are respected members of Assassins Guilds; two political powerhouses.

Round 1: Malcador is given the Patrician-ship in an alternate Discworld. Which can raise the GDP of the city-state higher during their rule? Malcador's psychic powers are locked.

Round 2: Havelock, in an alternate version of the 40K-verse, must bend the ear of The Emperor and create an Administorum on Terra. Whose Administorum is more stable 5000 years after the Horus Herasy? Havelock is granted psychic powers on the level of Malcador, but dies on the Golden Throne just like Malcador.

Round 3: Both men start out with nothing more than a city council position in Yonkers, NY. Which is able to wrest full control of the US government the fastest? Malador may use telepathy for communication purposes only. No telekinesis.

using their genius intellect, glorious Lord Vetinari and Zero land in Westeros. I will not give away their positions, but they can use any method to get to the Red Keep. Who does it first?

I just started reading Leviathan Wakes and the name leapt out at me since I've been reading the Watch series of Discworld recently.

A quick search didn't turn up anything, so I thought I'd ask.

They have a year of prep but they both cheat and start immediately so that doesn't count. Both start at "home base", aka Badass / Ankh-Morpork. Fight to retirement / deposedness from leader-of-the-witches-that-witches-don't-have-because-witches-are-all-equal / Patrician.

I assume there was some sort of power vacuum while Vetinari went on his Grand Sneer... Who was responsible for the city administration? With Keel gone and the guilds nonexistent, who was in charge? The archchancellor?

Came to mind because Charles Dance played both. I don't know much about Tywin that isn't in the show so was just wondering

Is it just me or should there be some major effort to create new powers around Pratchett's Disc?

It's been confirmed in the AMA that minor factions can be turned into powers

Round 1: Getting tired of this morning's crossword puzzle, Lord Vetinari decides to try one of these new-fangled "Videogames" and comes across one called "Dwarf Fortress". Hearing about it's difficulty, he decides to try it for a challenge.

Knowing nothing other than it's reputation and being too proud to resort to a wiki for his first playthrough, how long until his fortress falls into disarray?

Round 2: While engrossed in this morning's crossword puzzle, Lord Vetinari was caught unaware by a stray teleportation spell from the Unseen University and finds himself in the middle of a group of particularly slow dwarves. These "dorfs" seem to think the new comer a god and vow to follow his lead because it's just easier that way.

The Dorfs have what would count as decent starting equipment and are in a decent starting location. Can Vetinari save these idiots from themselves and perhaps somehow create a new shiny fortress? The trumpet of elephants sound in the distance.

Bonus round: Round 2 but it's Captain Carrot who was teleported in the middle of his morning crossword.

Vetinari has one month to become acquainted with the new world, including the local cape politics. Assume he feels the same devotion to BB that he does to Ankh-Morpork. How does the story change?

Round 1: Beginning of story

Round 2: Post-Leviathan

Rounds 3 & 4: Same as rounds 1 and 2, but he can bring Vimes, Drumknott, and Moist with him, appointing them to whatever duties he sees fit.

Shortly after the Battle of Blackwater Bay, Lord Vetinari shows up among the nobility of Kings Landing, with his trusty bodyguards Carrot and Vimes. He's greeted with suspicion, and has to build alliances and reputation from the ground up, but is still considered an important enough noble to participate in the games.

Carrot, true to form, is the true heir to the Iron Throne, but Vetinari plans to take the throne for himself and modernize the Seven Kingdoms along Ankh-Morpork model.

so, here's the conditions.

light, for whatever reason, has a perfectly translated replica of himself in ankh-morpork, like a parallel universe version of him. pretty much all of light's traits are perfectly carried over and just made acceptable for a discworld version of him. you can treat him exactly like a non japanese, non-tokyo light yagami. so, instead of soichiro being a police chief, we can assume he's a captain in the city watch (under sam vimes, of course). lord vetinari, is of course, lord vetinari.

light starts off as he does at the beginning of the series, becoming kira, and killing criminals from ankh-morpork and the other cities all the way across the disc. lord vetinari, however, fills the role of L, and understands that, for whatever reason, kira is capable of killing with just a name and a face. light of course, does not know that in this scenario, L is lord vetinari.

the aim of the game is, like in death note, a race to discover the identity of L/Kira. who can outgame the other?

a few conditions:

• unseen university's magic is straight up non functional in all matters related to this, due to Bullshit. they're of absolutely no bloody help, as usual.
• light has a much harder time here because he can't rely on easy distribution of photographs, tv, internet, etc in order to see people's faces - to be able to actually have a supply of criminals to kill, he'd need someone to supply names and faces to him like newspapers, the watch, actively visiting jails, etc.
• for the sake of it not being something he does by accident, vetinari's face, for whatever reason, has never been published in a newspaper, and light has never seen vetinari in person. that said, he's still a pretty public figure - light just doesn't know that he's L, specifically. moreover, light probably understands that vetinari is necessary to keep ankh-morpork in order.
• light has access to ryuk, but ryuk is about as unhelpful as you'd expect, except in cases where for example, getting people to touch the death note nad see ryuk and get scared shitless applies.
• light, outside of meeting them in person, cannot get the names or faces of the city watch because their photos aren't published properly in the papers.

bonus: lord vetinari also starts with a death note. what happens?

Frank Underwood is in the middle of his South Carolina election campaign in 1989. Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish is master of coins under King Robert Baratheon. Havelock Vetinari graduated the Assassin's Guild and just met Lady Margolotta in Uberwald.

Round 1: Their goal is to become Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. Francis and Littlefinger have one month to get used to the environment, its people, politics and everything else that is to know.

Round 2: They claim the Iron Throne. Vetinari and Underwood get one month prep time.

Round 3: They want to run for President of the United States. Littlefinger and Vetinari get prep time.

He has Vimes, Moist, and Mr. De Worde to help him.

Both characters as portrayed by Charles dance.

1. Battle of wits.
2. Single combat, A) To the death, B) First blood/first to yeald
3. Commanding thier respective forces in open battle.

By inexplicable work of deus ex machina, it's mid-late January 2016 and Havelock Vetinari has just been inaugurated as President of the United States. Let us say that it is also part of this deus ex machina that, somehow, he cannot be removed from office on the basis that he is not a United States citizen, nor was he born here. Let's say it cannot be proven -- he has all the necessary documents, somehow. (However, it is possible for others to use rumors to that effect to attempt to discredit him.)

Accompanying him are Sam Vimes and Moist von Lipwig.

Accompanying Vimes are his immediate family, Sybil and Young Sam, and 'main' members of the watch: Carrot, Angua, Nobby, and Colon.

Accompanying Moist are Adora Belle Dearhart and Mr. Pump.

Vetinari can appoint Vimes and Moist to whatever positions he feels are appropriate, and they can use their other contacts as they choose. (Except Vimes's family and Adora Belle; they will assist in non-official capacity but will not work for the government.)

What will Vetinari try to accomplish?

Will he succeed on some or all of these things?

Charles Foster Offdensen - CEO of Dethklok, overseer of Mordhaus. Ruthless businessman, brilliant military commander, logistical genius, trained fencer and martial artist. Genuinely cares about the world and his clients.

Havelock Vetinari - Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, star pupil of the Assassin's Guild, master of classical camouflage. Benevolent dictator, utterly unafraid to have obstacles murdered, tortured or otherwise obliterated if it is the correct course of action but always considers more humane tactics if their available, because all that matters in the end is using the right tool for the right job.

I can't fathom a canonical stretch that would send these two into actual war against each other. Neither would risk their kingdom to gain anything the other owns. The two would certainly have clear respect for each other and certainly enjoy a high degree of professional courtesy.

So for sport, the two meet and play at challenges to hone their similar yet unique skills.

1. Table Games. Risk, Cards, Thud.

2. Field Chess. Each brings some expendable minions or prisoners and stages strategic field warfare. A player taking an opponent's square must battle that opponent to the death, the survivor will then own that square. Each minion may choose from a mixed supply of assorted weapons - modern and medieval - from both Mordland and Ankh-Morpork.

3. Sparing. Fencing to touché, unarmed to take-down.

Two rounds, one in Washington, one in Ankh-Morpork. Possible scenario: Vetinari is the President/Patrician, and Underwood is trying to bring him down and take over. Who would win?

Sorry if this is very negative and moany but I just saw The Watch and I’m shell-shocked.

Discworld is important to me - I had the privilege of meeting Mr Pratchett in the 90s and still have my signed books, and was aggrieved when my mother threw out the PC Discworld game boxes that were also signed. I absolutely love the novels and have been reading them to my daughter for quite a while now. We’re on novel 19 and I’m astonished we’ve got this far, I thought she’d get sick of it at some point, but she loves them too. The Watch is the favourite character set of both of us.

So anyway a friend of mine told me the show was available to stream here in New Zealand now. I hadn’t been following along with any of the news or updates or anything so I came to it without any preconceptions. Maybe that‘s actually a bad thing as I had no idea what was about to happen. I watched it without my daughter because I wasn’t sure how teen friendly it would be - the intention was, if it wasn’t too adult, to later watch it together. But now I don’t want to. I don’t think a show has ever made me angrier. No Nobby and Colon? Seriously? WHAT? That absolutely flabbergasted me - they’re the heart of the watch - and that is only one item on a laundry list of gut punches as I gradually realized I was not watching an adaptation of Pratchett - this was the work of an extremely arrogant crew thinking they know better than the masterful Pratchett and “fixing” it to make it cool, only it ends up being Poochy from Itchy And Scratchy as a laughably transparent checklist of ”kool kidz” tropes.

I don’t mind the gender swapping, it’s the loss of character that’s the issue. That character is not Havelock Vetinari. Heck, Sybil isn’t gender swapped and I can’t recognize her. Having a gender fluid person as Cheery makes sense given that the character’s struggle to escape gender role norms was a big feature of Feet Of Clay, but I still can’t see Cheery in this character. RIDCULLY DOESN’T EVEN WEAR A HAT. And if they’re like “oh this ain’t your daddy’s discworld, this is DISCWORLD EXTREME X 300 FOR THE NU GENERATION”, my reply is if you have such contempt for the IP, why use it? Just do an original cyberpunk cop show.

Anyway I could go on but I won’t. I just want to commiserate and mourn. I hoped for a glossy, special adaptation of a work I cherish that I could share with my family and instead I got a flaming pile of poo. Unfunny, tryhard, trendy vicar, stylistically garish tat. (Not the first time

Hello!

First and foremost I hope my english isn't too broken for I made a wall of text and I hope it's understandable and I strongly believe there are no better places to ask this,thanks in advance!

A few months ago I made a post related to a Discworld's tabletop (well, ROLL20) RPG, since then we started playing, I started off with 1 on 1 scenarios because most of my players didn't know Discworld (Only my gf does), explaining -a bit- what this is all about and more specifically what their own characters knows about that Universe.

Here is the explanation for the situation.

>They all played their solo-oneshot, they have met each other without knowing it, Player A was a peasant that happened to meet an oddly hairy lady, who met a small headed man and so on, each player have influenced the solo-one shot of their future teammates (to the point one of them eventually got beaten up and others will have to apologize for what happened to him).
>
>So far I have -
>
>- A human peasant who wants to become a doctor "for humans" as she used to take care of her cows "the shape is different but are we not all cows inside?"
>
>- A kind-of religious gnome that once tried to enter the UU using stilts to reach human size, hiding it with a garment but he was refused for having a small head and mages considered there were not enough room in his brain to learn spells.
>
>- Another gnome that wants to become an Assassin, considering his size as an advantage for going unnoticed.
>
>- A werewolf that doesn't fully controls its power and most of the time ends up simply being a very hairy lady that dreams of becoming a Barbarian Hero.
>
>- A private-guard dwarf that was kicked out for sleeping on duty and basically allowed the city to burn.
>
>- A zombie mummy that thinks of itself as an old Djelibeybi king.
>
>They ended up Ankh-Morpork's prison (with a lot of other people who were arrested at the same time) and are about to meet the Lord Patrician,Lord Havelock Vetinari for the first time, who will, in front of all of them say exactly what each character did that got him here and he will eventually offer them to choose between doing what he says or the choice of being free to chose the consequences for refusing his offer, thus leading them to be, I don't know the english word for it, kind of free workers for the city, its inhabitants and of course Lord Vetinari himself, they are not allowe

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

Do your worst!

I'm surprised it hasn't decade.

They were cooked in Greece.

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

It really does, I swear!

Because she wanted to see the task manager.

Heard they've been doing some shady business.

but then I remembered it was ground this morning.

Edit: Thank you guys for the awards, they're much nicer than the cardboard sleeve I've been using and reassures me that my jokes aren't stale

Edit 2: I have already been made aware that Men In Black 3 has told a version of this joke before. If the joke is not new to you, please enjoy any of the single origin puns in the comments

BamBOO!