Scriptoria & Scribes

[LibraryLass]

It's pretty stock, but I wouldn't hew TOO closely to another interpretation, this is our chance to break ground on something relatively undeveloped.

[MedievalMan]

Is true. But BF is so plain (in a good "do with it what you will" sort of way) that its hard to make judgements on how exactly the races act. What sort of interpretation of them are we going for anyway? You guys might like the "humans in funny hats" presentation, while I may like the "mysterious inhuman" presentation. Not saying that's the case, but its hard to nail down this sort of stuff without a setting to ground it. Its like me describing the cuisine of Barovia without explaining the lands history or ethnic groups. Its information floating in the ether.

tl;dr
Its going to be hard to come up with specific information for demi-humans.

[LibraryLass]

Its like me describing the cuisine of Barovia without explaining the lands history or ethnic groups.

Well, I'd imagine their haute cuisine involves a fair amount of blood.

[Sir Bedivere]

I'll take a look at Warhammer. It'll be interesting to see what someone else did with the topic. On the other hand, our thoughts might be different, and maybe even better.

Maybe we'll want to make specific recommendations on elves, etc., but maybe not. Maybe we'll just want to keep it speculative: If the dwarves in your world have a university system, what would it be like? We could cover things by offering multiple options (dwarven universities would be like this; a dwarven apprentice system would be like that; etc.).

Still, I'd like to start w/ the historical record, then consider how the fantasy setting would affect things. I'm not really ready to think about elven universities until I have a clear idea of what real medieval universities were like.

[Sir Bedivere]

Its like me describing the cuisine of Barovia without explaining the lands history or ethnic groups.

Well, I'd imagine their haute cuisine involves a fair amount of blood.

[Sir Bedivere]

Maybe our work should focus more on the cultural / social causes that produce different kinds of information systems. E.g., if we look at the reasons universities started in Europe, maybe we could give GMs ideas for whether or not their campaign worlds would have universities.

So, instead of us saying, "Dwarves have universities, but elves don't," we would say, "Cultures with these characteristics would probably develop universities."

[MedievalMan]

Maybe we could present three systems per race? Like for humans we could have a sample monastic system, guild system, and university system? Also I think the question should be raised, how much of this tuff is going to be gameable material?

[LibraryLass]

Maybe we could present three systems per race? Like for humans we could have a sample monastic system, guild system, and university system? Also I think the question should be raised, how much of this tuff is going to be gameable material?

That's good thinking!

As to the question... that's rather harder to say. It's possible that stuff like this could provide modifiers to things like magical research, I suppose...

[Sir Bedivere]

Three systems per race seems like a lot of work, if I understand you correctly.

I thought we'd just outline a simplified form of how it really worked in the medieval period, and why, and use that as a baseline. Then we'd have a section of suggestions for how the fantasy setting (PC races, NPC creatures, magic, etc.) could change things.

Of course, over time we could take this all as far as we want. I just think we should first shoot for the minimum useful release and then add material incrementally with later releases.

As for "gameable material", what do you mean, exactly?

[MedievalMan]

Gameable material = How can I use this in game, right now. Its one of my pet-peeves about a lot of RPG material that most information presented is nearly worthless to me as a GM. Sure you can tell me all about how different scribes worked during the time period, and what sort of tools they used, etc. How can I use that in game, right now? Its like my crack about cuisine in Barovia, who cares what the people eat while I'm storming the vampires castle? Having a random table of encounters that can occur in the local village beats any 10 page discussion of their habits and lifestyle.