Hi all! I'm trying to go through and both find/classify books for covenant libraries. A lot of subjects and authors are not covered anywhere and I think making a library here on the forum could be helpful to new and old players alike.
The Iliad and the Odyssey for instance. Both would be tracti I would assume. Maybe quality 8-9ish, but what is the subject matter? Magical Lore? Faerie Lore? Area Knowledge: Achilles Tent? Persuasion (Specialization: How to make your commander stop being whiny in his tent)?
I jest (a little) but there is a rich history of books I'd like to add from pythagurus' writings to playwrights like Pamphilus de amore. But my knowledge of books from the 1200s and before is limited and I'm sure the subject matter of those books and quality we could ascribe to them would be an interesting topic for discussion.
I thought maybe we could put together a list of real books for in game libraries and work to give them the most reasonable qualities and descriptions we could.
For instance:
Iliad: Tractus Quality 9
Author: Homer c.500 BCE
Description: Tells of the battles and events during the 10 year war against Troy during the weeks of a quarreling between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.
Ability: (Either Folk Ken or Leadership?) I'm going with Folk Ken
Odyssey: Tractus Quality 9
Author: Homer c.500 BCE
Description: Odysseus' 10-year struggle to return home after the Trojan War battling mystical creatures and facing the wrath of the gods. During this time his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus stave off suitors vying for Penelope's hand long enough for Odysseus to return.
Ability: Magic Lore? Fairy Lore?
Hello Imreai. I have been gone from the forums for some time now due to life events. What is this monthly writing project and where can I find them? I'd love to see and archive of what everyone has been writing.
As to me making a book writing post, I am not well versed in medieval or earlier literature and writings. I know a bit about greek mythology, some theology, and some theatre, but even that is quite limited. I was thinking if we could crowd source we could compile a pretty decent list of books from all over Europe.
I think this is a great idea, and it's something I've dabbled with in the past as a way to flesh out covenant libraries.
I have a spreadsheet of books that have been used (or at least exist in Mythic Europe) in my own sagas, many of which are historical. Some of them are collated from 5e sources, others are just my guess at a reasonable subject and quality:
I think the little details like this really help enhance the immersiveness of Mythic Europe. Also for players who are not well versed in what books might have been available in the 13th century sometimes it takes a look through a list of things to realise "oh, I would really like to get a copy of that book" - and there you have a plot hook.
Argentius, this is fantastic! I'd love to do something like this on a much larger scale. Do you mind if I use this as a starting point?
I agree with you, not only does this create more immersion. Having a lost copy of a real book, or even needing a resource from a book that existed makes great plot hooks. Imagine the number of books, or stories about gods and mythical creatures that could come in handy for a story. Wouldn't it be great to write a game where you can point to a real book as a reference? You encounter a Demon and need to figure out how to confront it, and there is a real book to reference. How great would it be to have a whole list of things like that available for our community you could reference and put in your games from mythical creatures, to history, to philosophy from history?
Feel free to use it, a good chunk is borrowed from various places so turn and turn about.
I'm personally a big fan of drawing from first hand sources to develop hooks, but I would also point out that a lot of the published Ars material does just that (the sources aren't spelled out, but the research has been done). Even for things like the books one of the chapters of 'Ancient Magic' is entirely focused around a plot based on Ptolemy's Geographia.
Plus for things like philosophy Art and Academe does a good job of giving the overview of the ideas at the time, which is as much as most people are really going to want (although personally I fall into the 'extreme research' camp of Ars player, it's not for everyone).
Sorry. I should have answered this previously. In November the community usually has several writing projects going on for NaGaDeMon. So people basically tr to make a post every day in November with ideas and material for the game. Examples from the past have been realia collections, apprentices, labs, solomic spells and so on. If you just search for the word November on the forum you'll find most of them
They're all on the Forum - you can search for them using the magnifying glass in the top right corner, here are a few I can find from the last couple of years but there are things going back to 2011 - easiest way I found to get them is to search for November and then restrict the search to "only return posts/topics matching in title only" in the advanced search options on the right hand side of the search page.
Not all that I've found were finished, but they're still cool.
This post has links to those done in November 2017 :
War in peace? You can use it as a treatise on Russian language and maybe lore on war? Alternatively it could at least be a commentary on war and a treatise on Russian language?
Unfortunately War and Peace was published in the 1800's.
If it existed in your games time period however... I would probably list it as a Summa on Russian language, Level 6 quality 8, with a tractatus on Etiquette (Russian Nobility), quality 6.
To respond to OP however, I believe a number of notable books are listed in Art & Academe, you could grab a number from those. One that I don't believe is listed there is Du Rerum Natura, by Lucretius, a poetic explanation of the philosophy of the Epicureans.
I would list it as a tractatus on Philosophiae (Moral Philosophy) 10.
Most apprentices are going to be tutored in Artes Liberales and Latin before anything else.
I think more covenants need Apprentice's First Hermetic Code Violations as a tractatus. And Where's Waldicus, the intro to OoH Lore.