Read/Write Common should be well... common.

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Re: Read/Write Common should be well... common.

Postby Faolann on Wed Sep 07, 2016 3:42 am

Sorry to necro this thread, but this should be a really easy one. While it's true that in Medieval times and well into the Renaissance reading and writing (and math with numbers above the count of one's fingers and toes) were skills virtually unknown to the majority of people, these were also times when the majority of people were peasants. Peasants, as opposed to Knights, Mages, Clerics, etc. Nobody here is RPing an unremarkable member of society's illiterate and innumerate rank and file; everyone has had professional training in their class, which would have to include reading and writing the Common tongue, because every class has a use for it. For mages, it's part and parcel of what they do, they're scholars of the arcane. Clerics obviously know how to read and write, that was true even in medieval times. Warriors, knights, etc. are trained to be a part of a fighting force, which requires communication, which in many cases is most efficiently done through writing.

Systematically, this would be completely cleared up with a single line added to the unranked skills rules: "All characters receive Read/Write (Common) and Read/Write (<native tongue>) for free at level 1. This skill may be declined if you would prefer to play your character as an illiterate."

But beyond an individual's RP choices, let's leave illiteracy to the NPCs, where it belongs.
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Re: Read/Write Common should be well... common.

Postby Kooky on Wed Sep 07, 2016 9:48 am

Since this has been revived.. again... I gotta agree.

The SS sells scrolls, which must be read.
Notices are posted in the Inn.
Fliers are put up around town.
Characters post ads and requests.
Names must be signed for worklogs.
Characters want receipts for things bought.
IG, ISA, House guards and the like make reports.
Characters sign in to ledgers for work.
Characters need to be able to read menus.
This is a text-based game where a lot relies on text.. and a character's ability to read/write. It makes sense that most could pick up on it, given how common it is even without mass printing of things.. granted we do have towers with libraries open to the public, and there have been other books floating around and wasn't there a newspaper once?
It -is- common enough.
I feel it shouldn't cost skill points to read and write in a text game, where in the game itself, it's common and -needed- to actually function for most things. Otherwise a character could never do anything on their own, from signing up for a posted quest or event to buying scrolls to read and level up spells.

I do know that in "olden days" of medieval times, reading/writing was a rarity for the rich and wealthy, but we don't run on that sort of economy in this game. We run on Might Makes Right. To quote an old quote.. "Knowledge is power!" and it's true in many cases for various classes, and the workings of the game. As it is, in those times, we had poor hygiene, chocolate was insanely pricey, we had plagues, and so much more...
We even have the "Clean" spell as a spell folks can learn to make life more easy.
We modify the game for it to make sense, to be simplistic, and include things that we want in it while brushing aside the bad or undesired. There's little reason beyond "because we said so" that writing and reading common couldn't be included.

I feel it should be optional for reading/writing to be included in the start up language pack and/or available to common only, as common is the most used and most frequent in the world.


However.. if it IS "because we said so" or any other reason ruled by OPs and set in stone to never be changed, I do suggest this topic be replied to and locked. Otherwise all of us will keep cycling through it in discussion because many can come up for reasons for it to be changed. I will say that I bet about 70% of chars do not have reading/writing on their char sheets but still do it.
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Re: Read/Write Common should be well... common.

Postby Naomh on Wed Sep 07, 2016 10:28 am

Having read/write be free means that wherever your character is from has a lot of access and education for such. Which for the majority of class/race combinations does not make sense to me, especially with the time-specific issues of paper, ink and just writing in general. Many of the things listed can be worked around and in fact those work arounds would likely be considered more common-place. Remember that many characters tend to be not from Nanthalion, which is one of the major centers where reading and writing would be a little more common.

People in the era the game is in tended to be a chatty lot, there would be criers in the town square giving off news of major events, rumours flooding around. The spell scroll system feels more like a fill-in for me and who says those scrolls exclusively uses words to teach? I've told my clerks that there's magic within the scroll to help the illiterate learn the spells. One can also get new spells and improve current ones with level-up points which represents someone just practicing, or finding a teacher to mimic and point things out to them.

The medium of the game is text-based, yes, and there is a lot we need to record down such as worklogs and similar, plus reports tend to be 'written down' ICly to fill in for gaps in ability to catch players easily due to time zone or availability purposes, but I just don't feel like something like read/write should be a free skill, optional illiteracy for the vast majority of race/class combinations.
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Re: Read/Write Common should be well... common.

Postby Faolann on Wed Sep 07, 2016 11:16 pm

Naomh wrote:Having read/write be free means that wherever your character is from has a lot of access and education for such. Which for the majority of class/race combinations does not make sense to me, especially with the time-specific issues of paper, ink and just writing in general.


The places our characters are from seem to have enough access and education to produce mages, clerics, and bards, which seems to me to be much more challenging than producing literate adults.

Naomh wrote:Many of the things listed can be worked around and in fact those work arounds would likely be considered more common-place. Remember that many characters tend to be not from Nanthalion, which is one of the major centers where reading and writing would be a little more common.


Nanthalion is one of, not the only place where reading and writing would be more common.

Naomh wrote:People in the era the game is in tended to be a chatty lot, there would be criers in the town square giving off news of major events, rumours flooding around. The spell scroll system feels more like a fill-in for me and who says those scrolls exclusively uses words to teach? I've told my clerks that there's magic within the scroll to help the illiterate learn the spells. One can also get new spells and improve current ones with level-up points which represents someone just practicing, or finding a teacher to mimic and point things out to them.


Or we could skip all that frankly boring RP and just assume that our characters, again being special enough to be knights and mages, are literate.

Naomh wrote:The medium of the game is text-based, yes, and there is a lot we need to record down such as worklogs and similar, plus reports tend to be 'written down' ICly to fill in for gaps in ability to catch players easily due to time zone or availability purposes, but I just don't feel like something like read/write should be a free skill, optional illiteracy for the vast majority of race/class combinations.


I disagree, I feel it makes sense for the vast majority of race/class combinations, with possible exceptions being Barbarian warriors and rangers and any race of Layman. You want an indication that our characters aren't part of the rank and file of the common people? First of all, there actually is a Layman class in Belariath, and most of us didn't take it. Second, around half of the classes can perform actual magic. And finally, every character created on Belariath starts the game with 200 Mhl. That doesn't seem like much to us as players because we all have our sights set on buying equipment that would make the Knights of the Round Table blush, but 200 coins made of any kind of silver (glowing or otherwise) is way, waaaaaayyyyyy more money than a Medieval or Renaissance peasant would ever see in their lifetime. Peasants were kept poor partly so that they would never be able to afford weaponry, like say, a long sword. Which costs 60 Mhl, let alone 200.

Every member of every class, with the exception of Laymen, in Belariath is well outside the definition of the common person of Europe's Medieval period, whether coming from the common people is part of their background or not. They are changed by their training into something outside of the ordinary, literally extraordinary, and so applying the limitations of the ordinary to them is wrongheaded and unnecessarily limiting.

And apart from all this, I will make two more points. First, making the vast majority of characters illiterate opens up zero interesting RP possibilities. If you don't believe me, go watch any after school special ever in which a secondary character is revealed to be illiterate. Or imagine the entertainment value of being the only literate character in a room full of people wanting you to read their payroll stubs to them. And if a rule isn't helping create fun RP (particularly a controversial rule), then it probably shouldn't be in your RPG. Conversely, making characters... all characters... use our skill points (quite precious at low levels) on avoiding illiteracy feels like an imposition. And second, we've all hung a lot on historical accuracy in these arguments, but this is a game. A game that is in fact not set in Medieval Europe, but rather in a fictional setting that should be streamlined to function better and flow more smoothly as a game than Medieval Europe would. Essentially, if you want a level of realism requiring the vast majority of characters to be illiterate, then a game including mages, faeries, and ogres may not be for you.
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