If you were an enslaved furrikin scribe, you'd do your very best not to make mistakes.. but you'd also know that if you didn't copy REALLY quickly, you'd end up beaten. So mistakes would be inevitable. I call that good RP. I'd be sure to add that it -was- copied so that any reader would know that, and I'd perhaps stick in a few ink blotches.. so it wouldn't reflect on you.

Before I forget, there's a few typos in the Library scrolls... things like..



I'm fairly sure I've typo-ed em. Not really that serious either..

Make it so that every time someone checks out, looks at, copies, or even thinks about a book, he's charged some gold which goes to the author.

What? It's like a Lusternian RIAA.

hehe.

Well My though's were that a 25 page book is x ammount to copy, let's say 2500 if that were halved 1250 then a small fee (were talking like a hundred gold) added, it could possibly be 1350 with no magic ink cost at base. Now if the figure is actually right (note: that could be a sign of the apocalypse) then the bookbinder could still make 650 gold or more for a markup or even charge the 2500 it would normally take giving them 1150 gold.

And the author who put the time into the book, who payed for it with their own money gets little to nothing personally (of course this does not include things such as power and culture) without this small royalty. When compared to influencing it may be the reason why it gets less focus, more work less payoff. Of course if I manage to work through this idea (creatures of the first world and it's planes, please tell me it hasn't been done(steal it and i'll... i'll... cry)) I'd be happy to publish even though I wouldn't gain anything but another book for my shelf.

I am heavily opposed to the idea of copy-pasting other people's books, for the sole reason that it then has your name on the book and I know from my experience in other realms just how extremely horrible and frustrating plagarism is, even if it does in fact have your name on the first page, people are more likely to bestow credit on the one that actually wrote the book they are handling.

As for the other ideas, I do like some of them and I shall look into their possiblities. As for editions though, we actually did try to set up a system to support the creation of editions (and actually make it possible for people to collect editions) but the hoardcoded bookcode that we had to work with made this extremely difficult, so we mostly stepped away from this concept.

If someone could post a rundown of prices to do with libraries (I'm admit myself rather frightened by the amounts stated by Tully) I would be a very happy Elder.

I think that Lusternia's library system is the best I've seen anywhere. As such I'm also confused at the lack of interest generally shown in a system that is interesting, rewarding to individuals and lucrative in terms of power. Perhaps it does indeed relate to the cost of books, as has been said.

However, I particularly wanted to comment on the topic of sealed books. As somebody who owns a private library, I was quite disappointed when I discovered that all books are sealed on publication because it does indeed make it difficult to build up a personal collection, a problem that is all the bigger for guilds and orders. It's also a bit of a problem for bookbinders, since a fair number of bookbinding skills are designed to allow the bookbinder to copy or translate books, but there are very few books to copy. Not much in the way of custom there. I understand why it happens, but if there's some way that it could be rearranged to allow books to remain unsealed after publication (unless sealed by the particular desire of the author), this would quite make my week.

Personally I just find writing books to be less interesting than fighting. (Of course, fighting is getting less interesting too these days, but that's another topic...)

Three main things inhibit me from being part of the library system more...

1. writing is mostly done "outside" of lusternia.. so I find I'm less productive if I log into the game, and I find if I don't log in its seems odd to be doing writing.

2. The cost to make books are so high that I want what I'm writting to be really good, which means it needs to be large, which means it needs to cost more. I don't think books should cost 10K to write, 10K to publish and 10K to copy... Sure they should cost the city/commune a lot to publish, but the authors should not have to pay an arm and a leg for the books. Maybe 5K for the most expensive books.

3. The current system of copying books and distribution and making edits to the books, feels a bit too restrictive and I feel its currently easier and cheaper to "copy and paste" a book rather than use the ingame copy method. Especially if you want to write "comments" in them.

Indeed and you're quite welcome to, however, in that case you're not likely to like it any better if we change it, so I am a bit confused as to why you posted here.

So am I, now that I come to think of it, though I guess I was pointing out that the library system just doesn't appeal to some people.

The same can be said for pretty much every aspect of the game, though, so... yeah, that post was pointless.

My criticisms of Libraries and Bookbinding:

Bookbinding:
-- Copying is too high. It's 50% Mythical. There are precious, precious few bookbinders able to copy books. It should be far, far lower in the skillset to make copying simply more feasible. The problems with plagiarism are very valid, and are a result of copying being nigh-impossible to get done.

-- Copies should be able to be made of copies. Simple enough. You shouldn't need the author of the book to come unseal the book to make copies of it, unless the author explicitly wants it that way. Add a new status: magically sealed, which would prevent only copies being made. This would have to be done with the original copy, unsealed by the author, and magically sealed by a bookbinder, making it difficult. Most books should be open to copying at whim.

Libraries:
-- A new browse syntax: BROWSE ALL , which would allow you to see the full browse listing, but organized by subjects (repeating the entry where a book has multiple subjects). At the moment, I think the subjects aren't used very much due to being too limited in scope.

-- Already touched on above, but allow copying of copies.

-- Allow a manse library to have permissions on the librarian powers, the same as manse entry permissions. I should be able to allow other people to act as librarians in my manse if I want to. Rather than having this allotted by individual bookcase, which might be irritating in terms of database size, have it for the manse as a whole and all bookshelves in it.

-- The author of a book should get a kickback from the checkout fees (10-20%). There simply isn't enough personal incentive to write books right now. In the real world, authors can make a living off their work if they are well known and well-read. In Lusternia, this isn't true unless the Librarians pay authors for works (which is done in many cases), but this does not hold true over time. Since library fees are generall 100-200 sovereigns, the kickback would be small and thus wouldn't flood the economy (10-40 sovereigns per checkout), but would help to supplement the authors income over time. For many people, the altruistic benefit of "helping the city/commune" simply doesn't meet with their RP, or fails to benefit them personally.

You mean aside from getting credits/favours/power/honors lines/ect?

Edit:Or maybe some of these things are just things Ialie pushed for in the Serenwilde and you should complain to Mag's Librarian to set some programs up.

I'd like to start by saying I think the idea of the library system is very cool. Being able to write and be creative to help out your organization is neat stuff.

Writing something takes more effort than spending a couple of hours influencing in a village. And as Tully said, it's an expensive undertaking.

Also, the great library system has very little documentation in terms of the intricacies of the system. For example, this prestige system, there's no help file on it! The first time around librarians had to kind of guess how it worked.

There also isn't a lot of immediate gratification as it were. With influencing you go out, do it and win or lose within an hour or two. With libraries, you publish the book and it might be a month before it is actually approved and calculated into your culture score.

It's also just as population based as village influencing. If your organization has a small group of active people, chances are good they are never going to be able to keep up with an organization like the Serenwilde. People might just give up after awhile. Lots of work, little return, little chance of ever "winning". For you to get any culture beyond the basic credibility (assuming you didn't get critiqued to hell), cultural activity, and scholars, you have to "beat" someone else in at least some category. To get a lot of power, you need to be dominant in several categories.

So, technically, there isn't a lot of power to be had. There is a set amount of power that requires that you have a good sized population with several decent writers to access it. In addition to that, you have to be hoping that the people ahead of you are just sitting around not doing anything because if you're behind and the people ahead of you are still working you have no real reasonable chance to catch up.

So it's a situation where someone like the Glomdoring could publish 20 good books in a year. That's a lot of work right? But if Celest publishes 21 and they're already ahead and the other organizations just kind of keep their lead, the Glomdoring is going to get squat. So there is a very real possibility that a lot of effort could result in no gain. Yes, they might win the prestige contest but that is such a subjective thing you can't exactly count on it.

Yes, influencing is like that as well but in terms of time investment and gold investment it is a lot less expensive.

Perhaps some element of the culture score could just give power for number of respected books published based on the point value for wordcount. Also, some sort of power gain for how many successful books published in the prior year. There could still be rewards for who's best in the various areas but at least everyone would see some sort of return on their investment, even if they weren't the winners.

Hmm, this is a bit rambling but I'm sure my point is somewhere in there.

See, I'm not so sure about that, because I've seen quite a few less then average books that are already published. (I'm talking about Serenwilde books I've reviewed) I'd rather not reward people for submitting really long rambling works with little meaning, as long as they've been published.

I do think the rarity of bookbinders, and the expense of certain things discourages some lower level aspiring writers though.

Some research into the subject would certainly help to keep you from sounding like you have no clue what you are talking about. I have been Magnagora's librarian for quite some time (though I resigned it again recently), and was Lusternia's first librarian. I instituted the first policies in the game regarding favours/etc for publications. Let me dispell your notions:

Favours - only applicable up until cr6, which can be earned quite easily if it's 1 cf per publication plus any other work the person is doing on the side. Not everyone cares about their cityrank either.

Credits - the city has a limited number of credits, which exist independently of the library's success or failure. Therefore a correlation between credits and publications is not a financially sound endeavor for any city or commune, unless its credit income is so high as to be feasible in the long term (Magnagora's is not). However, this is otherwise a good reward.

Power - scholarly types have little use for power, and this is the crowd we are trying to cater to by Estarra's own admission.

Honours lines - Recognition of the prestige awards (or Bardic awards, if that is what you're referring to?) and nothing more. Some people like them, some people don't.

It all boils down to the fact that even with all these incentives, many of which are limited in some way, the publications that most places are seeing are very low. This is indicitive that the time/reward ratio is not yet commensurate.

Just because a book might not be Shakespeare doesn't mean it's not worthwhile really. I mean, right now culture is basically based on how many grammatically correct well-formatted words can be strung together. It has nothing to do with quality except for the recent addition of prestige and as I said, that's very subjective.

There really isn't any feasible way to make the books be all that great. I mean honestly, how many "good" writers are there in the world? Not many!

I don't think it is really fair to say any of the books are below average. People put time and effort into these books. I know I have. I think the fact that people take time to actually write something for others to read, especially if it is something informative.. I think they deserve kudos.

Yeah, when I set down to create a work, I dont want it to be some small thing. I also think about what I could add to it in future editions. I like the idea that all copies will be updated when the new edition is crittiqued, but there seems to be no incentive for making a new edition...I remember reading somewhere for intence that you would only get a cityfavor for the first edition and not an updated one....This leads people to just write on a scroll part one of the story or whatever it is and ad other parts on seprate scrolls rather than say updating the orginal work.

I think there should be some sort of reward for updating a work...as I am working on an atlas and know as Lusternia grows...this would have to be updated, I would rather update the original than creating an Atlas book 2....it just makes sense, but I would also like some kind of compensation for the time and effort Im putting into this thing.

(Yeah, sorry if it sounds like rambling)

I am very interested in this aspect of Lusternia. Far more interested in it than in village influencing or any other sort of PvP.

I have two serious books lined up and begging to be written for it.

Neither has happened yet simply because I never have quite dug down that far in my pile of things waiting to be created.

I paint pictures. I paint maps. I'm about 40% of the way through a novel for RL. I've got a web site I'm working on for the Shanthine Pride. I'm building and decorating a palace for the pride. I've got 4 clothing designs to put out each game year. I've got my own little MUD to build and program on. I program databases all day long. I've got zMUD scripts I'm writing.

I hate the frenzied, hectic pace of village influencing, trying to keep track of who's doing what. It's a good part of the game, but not a part to appeal to me personally.

The writing I'm looking forward to, and I'd hate to see it fall by the wayside just because it didn't attract an instant following. I just haven't been able to get to it yet.

As for Serenwilde being the only community to even enter, I didn't really expect that, but I'd been told that only one community to enter, I would have fingered Serenwilde for the job.

Last I knew (being when I mapped the city), Magnagora hadn't even bothered to describe 80% of its shops. They were just sitting there, looking vacant and ready for someone to move in, no matter how much showed up when you typed WARES.

I've mentioned this on other threads, but this particular problem has its roots sunk right down as far as the game's own help files, and the black and white stereotypes they paint of the communities.

When a new player arrives and browses the options, he will have some very clear cut choices based on his own temprament.

Just want to pound on stuff? (Yeah! Magnagora here I come!)

Like to pound on stuff while wearing a white hat? (Woohoo! Celest, Celest, Celest!)

Fancy yourself all Goth and angsty? (Go, Glomdoring!)

None of those three sound like you? Well, Serenwilde's over here. If you want to act all forestal, that's a plus, but really, it's the only one that reads like it'll tolerate you just doing your own thing and having some fun playing a game.

So, Celest and Magnagora are magnets for players who come to fight. Glomdoring's a magnet for a specialized sort of role-player. And Serenwilde winds up being a magnet for every other type of player by default. That includes the lions' share of the creative types.