So, I'm going to throw some walls of text up here. Be warned. It's about the method of instruction, and how summae and tractatus are used in the saga. These bits came to me when I was reading Art and Academe in depth, and how I couldn't reconcile certain things together.
As what I'm posting here is the basis of the saga, they aren't negotiable, per se, but they can be tweaked, certainly.
Teaching in the medieval paradigm
I’ve always been bothered by teaching within the medieval paradigm. It is easy to represent sequential learning by assuming a character learns X for one season, but it doesn’t represent learning about a broad range of subjects. A broad range of subjects isn’t necessary for the Educated person or the Baccalaureus. But relying upon Art and Academy for a framework, and assuming the modern idea of semesters, there are 6 terms in a baccalaureus program, because it takes 3 years to complete and the character receives 90 xp.
So I began experimenting with how that 90 xp is earned over each term (each term gives 15 xp). One of the things I did was to deemphasize the instructor a bit, and bring the text into the teaching process, which is why I changed how summae and tractatus function. Certain assumptions are in effect and are represented in how we'll do teaching in this saga. We use the modern semester process, where a semester is about three months or a season long. Students need to return home in the summer to perform chores, and one season is free (holidays, breaks and the like), as is common under the mythic paradigm in Ars. Maybe the terms are 4.5 months long due to weather, and including the breaks, but that still leaves 2 seasons of teaching and one season free over those 9 months. A student’s job is to learn, and I have no problem with them earning more XP in the seasons where they are being a student, especially as the time period is limited. So the challenge came to be how to represent a student learning 90xp over the course of 6 semesters, I ignored the free season and the season going back home to work on the farm. For characters under development they are represented by the 15 xp earned for each year of age, anyway. Getting a SQ of 15 per semester is tough. Pulling out the standard or base bonus of 3, you have 12 points of quality necessary from the teacher. 12 isn’t absurdly high, especially if you can teach in a small single student or two student setting, but that probably wasn’t happening, so now what you have is needing to get a SQ of 12, in a combination of Teaching, Communication and Good Teacher. Even if you have Good Teacher your Teaching AND Communication need to total 7. It’s a bit of a stretch, so something is missing. Enter the summa.
Summa
Summae continue to be described by two factors, level and quality. Quality is still calculated as it was before, but the meaning of the quality score changes in this saga. Summae were considered textbooks, and as textbooks they are densely packed with information. One can learn from a textbook, but one learns best from a textbook when taught by a teacher. This is the purpose of the summa, to be a primary resource for teachers to prepare lessons on a subject.
The source quality for a summa depends upon how it is used. If it is used by a teacher in a classroom environment, the summa adds to his source quality as a full addition of the quality bonus. If used individually, without the benefit of a teacher, the quality bonus is divided by 5 and always rounded per the house rule, but always provides at least 1 point of quality.
Examplia Gratia: Maga Sue teaches magus Steve from a summa, the SQ of the summa is 10. Sue’s standard source quality from teaching in a single setting is 12. Her total SQ when teaching from the summa becomes 22. Were Steve to learn directly from the summa, without the benefit of a teacher, his effective SQ would be 2.
Tractatus
Tractatus change a bit, too. Tractatus are primarily useful to those who have an underlying bit of knowledge about what they are reading. There are two similarly but slightly different rules for Arts and Abilities.
Tractatus, with respect to Arts only, can be used by anyone, but require a basic understanding in the Art and Magic Theory to be useful. In order to receive the full quality bonus of a tractatus, the magus reading it must have a combination of Magic Theory + Art of 10 or greater. For every point less than that they subtract 1 from the SQ. Tractatus read this way can be read again at a later time to recoup the remaining experience points. Any partially read tractatus should be noted on the character sheet.
Examplia Gratia: Steve has a score of 1 in the Art of Herbam, but he wants to learn more about it. His Magic Theory score is 5. He retrieves a Herbam tractatus from his covenant’s library with a quality of 10. He reads it and gets 6 xp in Herbam (MT 5 + Herbam 1=4; 10-4=6)
Tractatus for Abilities are treated similarly, but focus only on the ability score. An ability score of 3 is necessary to read a tractatus without a quality penalty, the quality penalty is 3 – present ability score. A Q10 ability tractatus read by someone with no ability score yields 7 xp, with a score of 2 results in 9 xp. Like Arts tractatus one can revisit the tractatus to recoup the missing XP, and these partially read tractatus should be marked on the character sheet, if the character has a desire to chase the few xp available.
Practice, Exposure and using Vis
These remain unchanged.
Teaching multiple subjects at a time
Going back to the baccalaureus we need to teach 90 xp worth of stuff. Presuming an average student in Latin and Artes Liberales that means scores need to be Latin 5 (75xp) and Artes Liberales 2 (15xp). How this happens is largely up to the student, but if we presume that it’s evenly distributed it looks like 12.5 xp per semester of Latin and 2.5 xp per semester of Artes Liberales. I can live with that, and it seems reasonable.
With respect to the Arts, multiple Arts can be taught at a time, but they are taught within thematic areas. Flora and Fauna, Mind and Body, The Elements and the Techniques are all easily grouped. Vim and Imaginem are less easily combined and so are not taught to first years. They can pick up Imaginem with extracurricular activities and Vim will show up in the second year. As outlined earlier and to be posted again, students place the XP based on the total SQ provided by the class and their interests.
Within the cosmology of this setting, most covenants have 1 or 2 good quality summa, and will trade them with other covenants so that they can get a good coverage of the Arts when magi are training apprentices. High quality low level summa are almost useless now, and are considered vain books and rarely used unless the teacher has a horrible com score and needs the extra boost such a book can provide, or their student is in need of remedial work. The school, however, will have sound summae in all Arts.
I like what you did with the Tractatus.
We could have some obscene totals with Summa + teaching. All depends on the bonus, if any.
With 6 courses per day, take all totals and divide by 6. So a SQ of 38 becomes...6.
One of the things I'm looking to tweak is to align the level of the summa to the instructor, that if the summa is too high level compared to the instructor's scores, it will remove some quality. I may use a variation of the tractatus mechanic.
I know you were were looking for something that prevented those with lower scores from writing Tractatus that could be of good benefit to those with high scores. Instead, I wanted to keep the element of the naive or inexperienced can see something so clearly when others much more established in their fields cannot. Carl Sagan said that they laughed at Einstein, the Wright brothers and Bozo the Clown (paraphrased). At the very least reading a tractatus by someone with less experience could create opportunities for the more experienced magus to do his own thought experiments, and the process of reading the tractatus made that all possible.
I'm not liking the change to summae as compulsory- it really makes it difficult for one learned mage to learn from another learned mage's writings. Having a 'teaching aid' option as well as the standard books would work, perhaps with somewhat different mechanics for writing a teaching aid.
I'm not liking your comment. It offers no constructive tweak, merely states your opinion. I was absolutely explicit about this was going to be a heavily house ruled saga. I even forbade, as part of your build points, bringing high level and high quality summae with you, so that no player would feel "cheated" by the change, I change I knew was coming, but wasn't sure exactly how it would work. The change has cost no character anything during development.
Summae are broken, especially as compared to sound tractatus.
Was/is there a type of book or body of works that could be used in conjunction with a Summa, for a person that is studying alone? So, they're using a Summa/textbook, but then also have reference material that goes with it in lieu of the professor (but maybe still at a reduction in Quality, just less of a reduction than studying the Summa alone). There's a name for those in Covenants, but I think they are written about Tracti, I'm not sure.
If this could be incorporated in some fashion it allows for the lonely scholar at the cost of needing a lot more books to really get the use out of the meaty Summae texts.
Sounds closest to realia, but not quite. In short, no. Tractatus are widely and easily acquired.
-
you set this up for discussion and asked for our opinions. I gave mine. I did offer a suggestion, the fact you do not consider it usable does not mean I see it that way.
-
What about allowing books to also be used when studying from vis to boost the source quality?
I asked for tweaks. I didn't think I needed to explain that I wanted specific examples of those tweaks. First you complained about it, and then you provided some nebulous idea of an aid to improving the quality without a specific example or how it might possibly work. You've brought up a problem (as you see it, and I disagree with there even being a problem) without providing a real solution. Essentially you are asking for me to solve a problem that you have, that I don't see is a problem.
Now, this sounds better. So how does this work?
Rereading this, it sounds like you're talking about Commentaries...
If you read a text while experimenting with vis you add the quality of the book to the source quality of studying from vis alone, then divide by two (as your time is divided), but the vis cost is also divided by 2. Essentially the textbook acts as a reference to what you are studying.
Could a students notes be used as lab notes with a summae, in order to get full benefit from it? Obviously the quality of the student's experience would limit how effective that could be...
Well, your time isn't divided, not really. When you study from vis, it's like a Significato, you use/consume the vis, and spend the season in contemplation. I have no problem with using the summa as a study aid to the process. My inclination is that it adds the same bonus as when you read it, so a Q15 summa adds +3. This makes it like the Free Study virtue, although Free Studies can still use their bonus and include the summa bonus. The division thing does little more than to reduce the vis cost from studying. Assume a Q10 summa, which is the bulk of the texts at the school, and an average roll to study from vis of 6, and the aura is 4, the SQ of the season is 10, 10+10/2=10. The book hasn't actually provided a benefit, it's a hedge against the low rolls and a limiting factor on the high rolls. If that's all it is, adding the quality bonus from reading is more than sufficient, and actually opens up the high roll possibilities, which I'm fine with. I like it when characters gamble.
Regardless of the final method, you'll never divide the vis cost without the full consent of the rest of the troupe (meaning they have to override my veto on that issue).
Not by a teacher. But by another student of roughly the same caliber (say both are within 5 points of each other on Art scores), I suppose. Probably does require a penalty to the quality though, I remember copying other people's notes when I missed a class, and wow...
On the other hand, if a teacher has a score of 0 in an art, they could use hose notes the same as any other student with a 0 in the art, without having to sit in class with the other students... I don't know if there are any teachers with a zero, but the notes could also be copied and distributed outside the school... or in the past have been copied from one on one instruction to similar ends...