Thoughts on Books and Reading

[moab]

In thinking about the immortal request to supply the worlds libraries with books for nobles and others to practice their read skill on I have the followign thoughts that I wanted to share and get some feedback on.

1.  The purpose of these books and libraries should not be to have nobles and templars practice their reading and writing.  A simple boost to their skill should be enough.

2. If some way to transfer information between generations is wished, then we need either to create a coded scribe that will write down what the non-reader can dicatate and then produce a scroll or book.

For example, Joe Hunter comes back from an expedition and relates to the scribe about the nasty thingamabobs he found in the lollipop forest eight clicks from here.  A record is made via coded scribe.  Trusty Joe steps outside the walls of the city to take a leak, is backstabbed by an irate Gith and dies.  All his knowledge would have been lost EXCEPT that he gave a report to a scribe.  A week later (or two, or eight) a noble picks up the scrolls the sribe has and can formulate a plan of action.

I know that I, for one have started several beautiful texts using word in the past and was really gung-ho only to have my PC die before it was complete.  If the scribe had been in place,  there would have been just a few more bits of knowledge out there.

To me this represents more what would be in place if Zalanthas was a real place.  

What do you think?

[sacac]

I like it.
Email your text to the mud and see if they could get it in a book for you..
Because you had all that time that the noble wasn't being played to write it.

[marko]

I'd rather see a noble or a templar take an interest in doing this themselves and writing it out.  

This is something that could easily be done by a PC and would have a positive impact on game relations making things far more entertaining and enjoyable to those around them.

As such, no to coded scribes.  Yes to PCs pursueing this in game.

[moab]

You try to hold a Templar's attention for six RL hours while you dictate your experiences and he writes them down.  :-)

The fact is that while ideally what you suggest is good there are problems with doing things manually:

1. It hasn't worked yet.
2. It takes a long time to get the detail into the game.  Most books are now written off-line and uploaded to the game.
3. Finding your one noble and hoping he has a couple of hours to shoot the breeze with you is many times difficult.

[Teleri]

I agree with marko that this is a far better idea for PC activity.  After all, there should not be a paid scribe in charge of copying down all information a simple commoner gives them.  That would likely be a waste of the ability so mystical to the public.  Instead, a templar could be far more scrutinizing when it comes to the sort of data he or she writes down as a commoner gives it to them.  It would be a waste of time and money for the NPC scribe's employers to copy down everything and anything anybody reported to them.  Most of the information would likely be considered commoner lies, or just unimportant to the authorities.

This would make Zalanthas more like a real place, I agree, however it would make it into the wrong kind of real place.  A coded scribe would make it more like a modern, or even fairly old, real world with creating something like a media.  After all, this scribe would essentially be writing a newspaper circulated only to the nobility and templars.  Information should be relayed on a much more word-of-mouth scale in such an undeveloped society, to be written down at the discretion of the powers that be.

In reply to the more recent post:

1.  No, it hasn't worked, or at least it does not often.  Maybe it shouldn't.
2.  I believe the immortals are working on this.
3.  Of course it's difficult, especially if your character is of low rank in whatever part of the noble's house you are in.  After all, nobles should be fairly inaccessable to all but formal reports by their higher officers and servants (so I think).  Many may believe that is it simply not worth their time to listen to what Joe-recruit has to report about some bad words said about the family in a commoner's barfight.

[moab]

Teleri,

1. Why do we make the assumption that "any old commoner" would have access to reporting to a scribe?  I agree that would be a mistake.  Only the Joe Hunter that the noble is expecting to have a report would be allowed to use that expensive resource.

2.   Having books circulated only to the nobility and templarate is already what we have (in theory).  Obviously information generated by these coded scribes would be the property of whoever owned/hired the scribe and it would be up to that house to share that with the larger world.

3.  Several times I've been told to use virtual scribes and the effect is that the information translated via email to immortals or to pcs (and the mud account) never makes it into a physical object.  This is away of fixing that problem.

If building libraries shouldn't work, then the whole discussion is moot.  This was a post about facilitating a goal of the immortals.

The immortals are working on building a library - I'm suggesting a way this might actually work.

No matter what your rack, even if you are Senior Mighty Brain-Man of House Fancypants and you need to have things written down by your noble, try getting the human on the other end of the terminal to listen to you for four hours while you give your weekly report.  It might work once, maybe twice.  Every week?  I doubt it.

In the end, the problem has yet to be resolved and I see nothing lost by automating this process and nothing gained by not automating the process.  PC populations and playing times are very diverse and to seriously expect YOU to listen to ME while I dictate a book to you is absurd.

[Anonymous]

Writing and reading are both scarce on the face of Zalanthas.  More than that, writing a book is a laborious task both in-character and for the player.  A story worthy of a book needs to be special that's why I'm with Marko/Teleri on this one.

Saying it hasn't worked so far is not taking into account that something like this may just have never been tried to the same degree.

There's also the very real danger that an NPC scribe would essentially become an in-game sekrit-knowladge message board.  With just a quick trip to the scribes your new noble can get back in touch with all the secrets your old one left behind.

[Teleri]

1.  From your original post, it was not very clear to me that this is the case.  I took it all to mean that this scholar would be publicly available as a sort of noble newspaper, to be picked up in the bazaar by anybody who could read.

2.  If some noble PC wants to hire another trustworthy commoner PC to be the scribe, then they should go right ahead.  To create an NPC for this would be taking away a potentially valuable opportunity to other PCs, like if we had automated assassins or all NPC guards.

3.  If the immortal or PC being sent the email is not reading it or responding to it, there may be a reason for their response that they are not telling you about.  If they are ignoring the emails, or just not taking the time to read them, then it is doubtful that they will be willing to go to an NPC scribe that will do essentially the same thing.

I'm not really sure what is is that is not working.  If it is the library thing that is not working, then it should.  It should not be too hard to write up a bunch of book objects (at least no harder than it is to write up objects), and store them all in some building.  The idea of building a library is great, although I don't believe it should be stocked with any old story related by a commoner and it certainly won't have delicate reports in it.  The idea of having some commoner stories put into books is good, but these tales would have to be exceptionally important, and few in number.

I've briefly occupied a "high" position in such an organization, and I have never had a report last for four RL hours.  In fact, I don't believe it's taken anymore than one or two.  If the report can't be made interesting through say emotes and the character reporting isn't interesting, then it's only IC that my noble be bored as hell.  When somebody has something important to report IC, then maybe they should either make it brief or they should make it interesting.  Just like IRL, people lose interest.

The idea of such an automated message system is good, and it has been suggested before, although I don't believe it totally fits with the game.  This sounds like essentially the same thing as an mail service, only IC.  If a player cannot be reached for some time, perhaps then it is necessary to relay the info to the clan immortal.  One must then trust in them to give the info to the player, or at least notify them of what time the other PC can give the report.  I have been told that this is an acceptable practice, when something is very important and the PC is not online at the time to recieve the data.  After all, the character itself is still in the game, but virtual.

I apologize if what I have just described is not an acceptable practice, although I believe I have done it before.

[spawnloser]

Okay, having played a noble, I'll say a couple things...

I never had to 'practice' my read skill.

I wrote books.

Scribes?  Who needs a stupid commoner (or Tek/Muk forbid, a slave) to do what I can do better?

I'm fine with the way it is.

[moab]

Maybe there is a fundemental misunderstanding on my part what a book is?
I figured a book was 20 or so pages of a word document.  A book that size would take a great deal of time to dictate to a waiting noble or scribe.

If we're only talking about a title of a "book object" so you can emote with it, that's different.

I suppose the next question would be - what is a book?

[spawnloser]

Books can be read and written in IG (the former assuming that it has already been written in, the latter assuming there is still an empty page).  It doesn't change the sdesc or ldesc of the book.  You'll be lucky if you see one in game, though, for obvious reasons.

[Teleri]

Books, I believe, can be of any length.  Unless, of course, it is simply too much data to reasonably keep on the MUD in a single object.  

By "book", I assumed that this was indeed an IC book object, which functioned similarly to a scroll or any other readable object in the game.  One could emote with it, read it, and do anything that the object would be coded to do.  I believe that nobles and the like can even ICly write their own books, as I've done something like it before.

20 or more pages of Word documentation would, indeed, be something that would take a LONG time to do.  But why, exactly, would a report from an underling be written in one?  As with any report, I assume it would be written on a scroll or more, or even on loose-leaf paper.  That much writing in Word translates to MUCH more on a book object in the game, I believe, and it would take some time to read.  If you have a 20-page document like that, that's pretty damn good and would keep some noble busy for a while.  As long, of course, as their character responded to it.  

I, personally, see the book project initiated by the immortals as an excellent opportunity to enrich the game.  After all, with these books created by just anybody who writes acceptably, nobles could debate on them, discuss them with each other, investigate further into the claims made in them, and just have fun reading them.  I just don't think that many reports from commoners to specific nobles would make it into any sort of accessible place like a library.

So, a book is probably a scroll-like object in the game which can be read/written in.  No big secret there, I hope.

[moab]

Well, that's my point!
If a book object is a substational bit of real work perhaps 10-20 pages long rather than artificially having a user create the object and send it in, wouldn't a historian character be writing the current histories?

Since most can't write, there needs someone to receive the dictation.  Since you aren't going to sit there while I dictate the histories of House Moab for three hours a day it would be useful to have an NPC scribe stand there while I dictate to him.  

And then, if the PC dies, there is a partial history of House Moab out there.

Further, I would suggest that militiary and other reports shoulud make up the bulk of library documents and from them one would get a glimps of history and a historian would be able to gather this information together to give an over view of "history."

I don't see many folks sitting round outside the game writing twenty page documents.  I don't see most of them taking the time to write those documents on individual bits of scroll paper.

Having an NPC do it and auto-create the book object with the twenty pages of text accumulated over several sessions of play is doable and only assists playability.

The general arguement "let the pcs handle it" hasn't been effective in the past and I fail to see why anyone believes it will be effective in the future.  Has something changed?

[Marauder Moe]

My objections to this idea are RP-related.

A commoner couldn't possibly comprehend what goes into making a complete book.  No noble is going to want to read something (other than messages and finance/inventory records) essentially written by a commoner.

Wouldn't you be annoyed if you were doing research in the library and had to check each book to make sure it wasn't written by a 4th grader?

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I'd like to see this idea, but only in a NPC enclosed in a Noble's manor, where the Noble dictates who can and can't speak to it. I agree that PCs should write as well, but sometimes, that is just not that player's forte. In these cases, I endorse the idea of a controlled NPC scribe.

[Vettrock]

I you are a noble and can write, what is really gained by dicating to a scribe?  If you have information, write it down yourself.  Yeah perhaps you could just use the say command rather than writing in the funky arm editor, but I don't see the benifits outweighing the cost in this case.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

...sometimes, that is just not that player's forte. In these cases, I endorse the idea of a controlled NPC scribe.

I was referring to other PCs telling the scribe, not the noble. Some players do not want to write books. THey want to sit around and scheme on elves or silk drawers or something. So, if that noble lets the other PC in to see the scribe, I like this idea.

[Xan]

It isnt the place of commoners to write things down.  It isnt the place of anything to be written down that isnt of interest to the nobility to write down.  Things can be written virtually (as in emails).  Or recorded in game by anyone with the skill.

ICly commoners -dont- have access to writing, end of story.  It would be a massive change to the game to have any open "scribe" type employee that openly flaunts the ability to write for commoners.

Theres no need for this.  If you feel something deserves to be written up for posterity write it up and submit an email where a virtual templar/noble/scribe or whoever could do this all.  But I worry that with a system like that itd become too common and really, what noble wants to read the crap an illiterate, unknowledgeable commoner has to write?

[jstorrie]

If anyone access to a scribe would already know how to read and write themselves, why not write codedly on the object yourself, and then attribute the work to a VNPC scribe?

[marko]

In response to the amount of time it would take to get info and then copy it into a book.  If there is a time constraint - just email it to the noble (CCing the House imms) and voila.  It's done.  IE, start a session and 'fade it' while emailing the full report.

The noble can then enter it as they see fit, making whatever notes and / or modifications the character would make.

There are such things as scribe slaves in Allanak but, to the best of my knowledge, almost all know cavilish (for book keeping).  There may be one or two that know sirihish but that gets a little tricksy since sirihish is illegal to know how to write.  Of course, argueably a slave is a possession and how can an object break the law, but.... it's still a grey area.

As such - I suggest doing it all in the game.  If there is a subject you feel should be written into a book then email it in and yes I'm sure the imms will have a method whereby it was made available (virtual scribes as you stated).

---

As for why do there seem to be so few books in the game?  I believe it is because the nobles that are working on books keep them in their inventory.  When the noble dies or retires - that book is now vanished.  Therefore very few books survive the passage of time and I rather like that.