We like it so much that we're willing to take not getting the types of benefits other people get. Like, I like Glomdoring enough to be a part of it, but the general consensus seems to point to it not being "as good as" other orgs and there have been persistent rumors of deletion and the gods not being terribly enthused with it.

If I'm out of line, I apologize, but I don't know that "the intangible benefit of people getting what they like" really counts as something that makes up for the fact that it's objectively "less good."

I dunno. I just find the idea that because people enjoy submitting book designs, and they'll get the tradeskill because of considerations like that, being a reason not to change bookbinding to be better and more useful, bothersome.

For the first point, that's part of it. Some skills are certainly more profitable than others (as the various flow charts show). Bookbinding will never be a "profitable" skill, and I accept that. Bookbinding wasn't designed for profit, it was designed for other things. But I don't think it is living up that those designs either.

For the second point, there is very little actually convenient about bookbinding. The ability to make your own books is nothing spectacular, as the books are so expensive for everyone whether you make them or not. Languages are convenient, on the rare occasion they are used. The only point that is convenient is if you like submitting book binding designs, in which case, bookbinding is what you need.

While I don't think that bookbinding is as bad as Riding was, as Bookbinding is still used, I do think that it does not fulfill it's purpose because of its own self-limitations.

Riding was pretty much an obsolete skill, unless you wanted a Legendary pet and wanted to ride it. Jousting never happened, although there are masterwork lances in the Forging designs.

Bookbinding really should be revamped like Riding was, not necessarily to make it more profitable, but to enhance the skill. Give Bookbinders a wider variety of book-related things to make. Have languages play a larger role (although I don't know how). Fix up the gold outlay, maybe make it free if the book is made for the Bookbinder themselves (they have it 'in' with the Press).

Riding was only obsolete because few people used it. There was nothing stopping you from using it if you wanted to and liked the RP, or if you wanted to joust someone. As things stop getting used, they get replaced. I saw people every once in a while use riding, because they liked it. But even though they liked it, it was finally decided that the skillset just didn't work like it was intended to and needed to be redone. While I don't feel bookbinding is quite so bad, I think it (as well as forging) should be pretty close on the list of next things to relook at.

I really liked the idea of having influencing get a buff if you influenced in the native language of the mob.

Yeah, that's a nifty idea.

Whoa, this thread took off much faster than I expected! Thanks to everyone for contributing so constructively!

In response to Fain's point about the diversity of reasons that tradeskills are enticing, I certainly agree with the sentiment, but I have reservations. One counter-example that comes to mind immediately is that with every other craft-based skillset, you can fill a shop with your designs and gain the satisfaction of tangibly offering your own work. I own a shop, yet the only things that I can put into it from my tradeskill are the four basic combat scrolls - unless something has changed while I was away, nothing I can customize can be sold in a shop environment. Now that's not to say I can't advertise on market and sell my customized wares directly to individuals, but that's quite a substantial drawback to not be able to automate it through the Lusternian wares system.

I'm a bookbinder myself because I like the concept of scholarly works, and making books for myself is convenient and personal, but realistically I don't see Bookbinding as offering anywhere near the same potential creatively or mechanically that all other tradeskills (with the exception of poor poisons) does. It's a wonderful idea, and definitely implemented with care and attention, but it just doesn't have the depth necessary to cover a whole tradeskill.

If you compare the types of items that the other craft tradeskills allow you to design:
Artisan - Stools/Chairs, Swings, Boxes, Kegs, Small Tables, Wall Features, Baskets, Couches, Benches, Rugs, Pipes, Drapes, Chests, Tapestries, Tents, Large Tables, Rocking Chairs, Desks, Cabinets, Racks, Fighting Rings, Beds, Hammocks, Instruments, Bookshelves, Chandeliers, Thrones
Cooking - Baking, Brews, Soup, Dishes, Pastries, Spirits, Cakes, Wine, Cuisine, Delicacies/Gourmet
Forging - Clubs, Blades, Leather, Bludgeons, Shields, Axes, Scale, Swords, Scabbards, Chain, Kata, Polearms, Plate, Great Helms, Great Shields
Jewelry - Trinkets/Baubles, Chains, Studs, Rings, Bracelets, Necklaces, Wedding Bands, Heirloom, Wands, Crowns
Tailoring - Accessories, Coats & Cloaks, Dresses, Greatrobes, Hats, High Fashion, Lingerie, Pants, Shirts, Shoes, Splendor, Tunics, Underwear

and then Bookbinding - Scrolls/Pamphlets, Books (of different depth measurement but all the same basic object)

I don't think Bookbinding needs to be scrapped, I only suggest condensing the various book sizes into one or two skills so it is not quite as expensive to make large books and the skillset is not artificially expanded as it is now. Then, it's up to us to come up with replacement skills that, as Gwylifar suggests, address both the needs of the game as well as the concept of the skillset.

How about these:

Lorebook
This would be a designable item that can be wielded in one hand, and while influencing, gives a 7% chance on every attack that double and a 3% chance that triple damage will be done. It would also have a 5% chance to be destroyed on this activation. The item would have normal dropped/examined/short descriptions, but might also have a customized 'argument' message.

For example:

Keeping up a non-stop patter, you keep wheedling a lucidian astrologer to give up his worldly goods
to you in a dizzying display of circuitous logic.
A lucidian astrologer's face drops and he looks a little guilty, but shakes his head at you.

You have recovered equilibrium.

Explaining your abject poverty, you humbly request a little help from a lucidian astrologer.
You note a particularly poignant passage in an archaic runic lorebook and quote it
with passion, leaving a lucidian astrologer speechless as he struggles to understand.
A lucidian astrologer's face drops and he looks a little guilty, but shakes his head at you.

You have recovered equilibrium.


I'm still trying to come up with more... I like the idea of a heraldic motto that bookbinders can craft and then is added to clothing, causing protective effects depending on the language in which it is written as there are some classes that are extremely vulnerable to certain tactics. Maybe also an explorer's diary or prayerbook that allows you to siphon a tiny portion of your experience/essence gain or maybe lessons into stories of your adventures, which could then be sold to others. As another option, a warchant may be inscribed onto a scrip of text that could be read in combat to halve the recovery time of your next skill.

Maybe even just allowing Healing/Curses/Disruption/Protection scrolls to be customized might be interesting.

Edit: Maybe the skill even needs to be renamed to something that can include a bit more diverse creations? Had a random thought:

WishLantern
These would be crafted out of paper and could be written on once like a letter, with the user's dream or wish. Provided you had a tinderbox, you could light it and either wield it (which would modify your entry/exit description to have a glow) or ask an artisan to mount it on the wall. (Fluff, perhaps, but I'm really reaching trying to think of non-book/page objects that fit the concept of a 'Bookbinder')

Someone suggested at some point, in a different thread, I think, that one be able to bind a book without naming the author at the time. So, you could sell blank books in shops and the author would not be set until the person wrote in the book, but once they wrote anything in the book, that's their book.

So, Bookbinder Bob binds up 10 books and sells them to Shopkeeper Sam who stocks them in his shop. Then Author Annie comes along and buys one and writes a poem about birds or something. Giftshopper Gary comes along and buys one and gives it to his protege Novice Nick who uses it to do one of his guild advancement tasks.

That sort of thing. That'd be awesome.

One thing that I constantly found, as a bookbinder and one of the first binders to take up the profession, was that designing books and making them are two different things. At first, Estarra did say that all trade skills would be getting a good "looking to" and seeing if anything could be added or taken away when Bookbinding first came out.

As time progressed, however, I got the feeling that Bookbinding was going to become obsolete after or year or so due to its huge pricing per commodities. Wood, in and of itself, can get really pricey, depending on what social entity you come from. On top of that, the actual cost to use the printing press only adds to the overall saddening state of existence that makes up bookbinding.

For a small journal, I can spend up about 3000+, depending on the type of journal, its commodities, et cetera. Magicink also is extremely pricey (last I saw, it was at 2800 or so a pop). Do keep in mind that I haven't been in game for more than five or so minutes to speak with the Night Coven when summoned in the past three or so months.

To counter that, though, is the fact that books are a much-needed and highly prized item to have. They show status, wealth, et cetera. It is similar to having Transed Arts. It isn't a NEEDED thing to have, but it does give that little boost of "e-peen", as Arix once put it on a clan channel.

My question to the admins would be along the lines of what are you going to do to make this trade skill more usable and desirable for your players? Overall, we are the clients. Consider this a commercialism question, if you will. There are several very well thought out ideas and many good ideas just thrown out onto the table by your players here.

While I agree that profit is not a good criterion (let alone the definitive one), that just brings up the question what the criterion should be. But whatever it is, I think it must involve whether a non-trivial number of people feel that the tradeskill contributes something to the game. And I think that's where Bookbinding fails. My character writes as much as nearly anyone and even I don't feel Bookbinding's ability to make scrolls, books, tomes, etc. is enough to justify an entire tradeskill; it's essentially one repeated skill. It's like if all of artisan were just chairs and benches of various sizes. A nice start, but nowhere near enough to be a tradeskill, just like how paintings aren't enough to justify a tradeskill (and thus are just part of Arts). If you took any of the other tradeskills out, a bunch of people (not just the traders, I mean, but their customers) would be impacted; but if you took out Bookbinding, there'd barely be a ripple. That's a far better criterion than profit.


Footlights only got through a few issues before it died due to an inability to get contributors, and its intended sister publication Bookmarks never got off the ground, unfortunately.

When talking about profitability no one makes the necessary distinction between "total money made" and "money made per time invested". Herbs seems to win the chance to make the most overall money, but takes tons of time; alchemy makes more money per time invested.

I think actually the percentage of Artisan things that can go in a shop is about proportional to the percentage of Bookbinding things that can go in a shop. Admittedly though those are not designed items for Bookbinders.

That's a good point - only instruments, pipes and... baskets? Still they are customizable, while magic scrolls are not. I imagine Artisan-crafted objects are much harder to work out how they can go into shops as well.

Maybe something like an IKEA-pack, where you get the elements with instructions and try to put it together yourself?

And boxes.

I love the idea of Artisan Ikea! But I suspect it's as unlikely to happen as the bookbinder unstamped goods in a shop idea -- that is, it's probably the way it is for technical reasons, or it would have been done that way in the first place.

(Look at it this way. You don't have to follow strangers into monolithed, locked-door-filled manses to do your craft. I've been sure plenty of times I was walking into a deathtrap. And more than a few times, I was trapped in someone's manse listening to them drone on and on and on and on while I waited for them to let me out, while I slowly calculated how much it would cost to heartstop...)

And I understand the difficulty in the mechanics, but maybe there are ways of implementing that might be easier?

For instance, a Bookbound "Instructional Kit" object that allows the artisan to CONSTRUCT PARTS IN , and modifies the short description to be ' (kit)', such as 'a beautiful hardwood chair (kit)' and examined description with a preceding sentence: 'An illustration on the attached instructions reveals the finished object. '. This would consume resources and create an object just like any other tradeskill. And then the only unusual part would be that any other player could CONSTRUCT in a room which would call the same functions as Artisan building but would only be able to fit up to 60% space (and optionally, the user would start to bleed for 100 health, muahaha). The finished item would still bear the name of the Artisan that constructed the kit rather than the purchaser.

And half the parts don't fit right, and the other half are missing.

Oh, and you really gouged yourself on that poorly cut bit of wood. And the cat/dog/wyrm/salamander/Shuyin runs off with the instructions. And then the damn thing just collapses 25% of the time when you set your coffee mug on it. Then you have to buy a new one.



I would like a few tie ins to other tradeskills. I really don't know how it'd work, but a few more items like foodbaskets (Artisan-Cooking) and such that help tie various tradeskills together and generate a little bit of mixing would be nice.

Also, shopdecay of items inside of items needs fixed.

A random idea for Bookbinding. Golems!

You know about the Jewish concept of golems, the one where you place scrolls with magic incantations inscribed on it into an inanimate object to animate it? Yup, how about adding that to Bookbinding?

There can be two ways to go about it. One is to have Artisans to design them and activate them by using MagicScrolls.

So, for example:

Appearance:
A shapeless hunk of clay

Dropped:
Dull and grey, a misshapen chunk of clay lies here

Examined:
This glob of clay is unappealing and grey. It is about the size of a large fruit and appears to have been handled without care, as it does not take any recognisable shape. Despite that, a cylindrical indentation can be seen on one of the sides.


So, for people without Bookbinding, they would buy a MagicScroll, and PUT MAGICSCROLL INTO TEMPLATE

You unfurl the magic scroll and see an undecipherable incantation. Tracing the mysterious glyphs, you quickly roll it up and place it into the template.

And for Bookinders:

You unfurl the magic scroll and see a powerful incantation. Muttering the incantation, you trace the words and quickly roll and thrust the scroll into the template.

Animation:
As the magic scroll is placed into the indentation, a slight rumbling sound can heard. The glob of clay begins to shift and squirm, as though something is trying to break through. Within moments, the chunk of clay is no longer misshapen or small, but a fully formed clay golem.

Appearance:
A misshapen clay golem

Look:
A misshapen clay golem rumbles about here.

Description:
Rough and barely humanoid in form, this golem appears to have been moulded by inexperienced hands. Inexplicably, the golem has been animated and is moving freely, albeit in a shambling manner. You observe that the golem has a glowing scroll in what passes for its mouth.


Or, if you feel that it should be restricted to just for Bookbinders or if Artisans making designs for them is strange, then make it location specific.

For example, doing it in tainted areas:

THRUST SCROLL HERE

Muttering a powerful incantation, you thrust the magic scroll down.

As you plunge the scroll into the tainted soil, loud rumbling sounds echo around you. As you watch, the rocks and earth begins to rise, slowly taking a humanoid form. The newly-animated tainted golem looks around and releases a loud moan.



As for what the golems would do... I ran out of ideas at that point. :jigan:



Oh, incomplete idea here as well. In addition to the above, bookbinders can enscribe empowering glyphs on the golems. Again, as to what they'll actually empower...

I had Golems made from statues in my Aesthetics skillset that were somewhat similar.

What about allowing bookbinders to speak or write a few words in Ae? Could be used on various objects from other trades making bookbinding better.

What is Ae again?