When do the Redcaps bring the Colentes Folio by our covenant? /this should be every 7 years and we will hopefully have enough scribes by the next visit to copy a significant amount of the information which is being made available. Also is there any way to get a list of what the contents will be?
Lucas will be very interested in this plan, and will talk to Adan at length about how the covenant library can be augmented.
Given discussions elsewhere, I think it might be a good idea to see what kind of relationship we can establish between the Mercere library and the Andorran Library. They are likely to have quite the collection of texts on academic or non-arcane subjects...
I'm very curious to hear what kind of a library the Mercere guildhouse has on site.
But that aside, maybe it's time for Lucas to take a trip to Harco to see what kind of a book trade deal we can make.
I'm afraid fightmaster had most of the information gathered about scribes and what they were doing. I don't know that he posted that anywhere. Does anyone know if that data exists in written form in the forum or do we just have to fudge it the best we can?
actually, I compiled that here
we decided that scribal quality does not add to text quality, I don't know that we ever decided how craft quality of a scribe did apply...
I also have no idea which books Fightmaster had decided who would copy when...
That was the information that I was talking about. With Marko's approval, I suspect we're just going to have to backtrack some years and retroactively say what they were working on.
Also, Lucas has two scribes in Mallorca of unknown skill. fightmaster and I asked Marko, but there was an answer, I never saw it.
for my recruits- I am making the following ssumptions, let me know if anyone has any issues with them:
- each level of stat represents one standard deviation. 50% will be at level 0, 25% will be at level 1 or higher, 12.5% at level 2 or higher, etc. Actual numbers gives this:
0.125 Com:1
0.0625 Com:2
0.03125 Com:3
0.015625 Com:4
0.0078125 Com:5
then assuming a population of 2000 with 25% participation gives the following numbers:
63 Com:1
31 Com:2
16 Com:3
8 Com:4
4 Com:5
assuming 5% of this group has good teacher, this distribution would be:
3.15 Com:1
1.55 Com:2
0.8 Com:3
0.4 Com:4
0.2 Com:5
assuming this means 3 people with com:1 and good teacher, 1 person with com:2 and good teacher, and random distribution of the remaining 2, figuring .6 probability remains at com:2, rolling a d10 and counting percentiles upwards (simple dice): first roll is a 10, which means one at com:3 with .4 remaining on com:3, second roll is an 8, which places the last on a com:5
assuming the contest selected the 30 best applicants this would give us:
1 com:5 good teacher (tractus Quality:14)
1 com:3 good teacher (tractus quality:12)
3 com 5 (tractus quality 11)
1 com:2 good teacher (tractus quality:11)
8 com:4 (tractus quality:10)
3 com:1 good teacher (tractus quality:10)
13 com:3 (tractus quality:9)
giving a first run distribution of 1 SQ:14 tractus, 1 SQ:12 tractus, 4 SQ:11 tracti, 11 SQ:10 tracti and 13 SQ:9 tracti
If we only keep the top 10 writing after this first set that will give us 1 SQ:14, 1 SQ:12, 4 SQ:11 and 4 SQ:10 per iteration, for a total of 120 xp per 'round' of tracti
do these numbers work for everyone?
Mm...wouldn't people at the higher end of the spectrum already have respectable jobs putting those skills to work? In general I mean. That probably cuts down on the number of applicants in that regard. I also don't know what sort of literacy rates we're looking at. I presume we're planning to train them up in Latin and such? If that's already been done though, disregard me.
What are our rules for limits of non-Gifted people in writing/copying books on the Arts?
No restrictions I believe. Covenants suggests that many books are drafted by notaries (with the mage dictating to them); then the draft notes are professionally written-up by a scribe, etc. Beyond the initial draft, a mage doesn't need to be present for any part of the book creation process.
My two pennies:
Multiple problems. First the participation rate is really high. Advertising isn't easy if you can't post fliers. Of the people you reach most will not come to you since they aren't looking for a new job in an area they have no skill in. Then many won't be available to work because they have other obligations such as being a serf*, a guild contract, their husband, etc. Even the interested people who can work for you might not want to when they learn the details, especially if it requires moving away from everyone they know to a knew area when they are already content.
The second issue is the ability to magically pick out the best ones. Prospective employees will try to appear worthwhile and identifying their communication and determining if they have Good Teacher isn't trivial. Especially since the best applicants are such a small percentage of the group you are likely to also get people with high Guile or people who "explode their roll" when they interview.
Third, desirable candidates willing to work probably have a higher tendency to end up getting pulled out into the priesthood or Cathedral schooling or the like, which will remove them from the population.
Fourth I would say the population with Good Teacher is a little high, but YMMV. Also a few of those will likely have undesirable virtues/flaws/traits. Especially since the sort of people willing to up and leave for a promise of a life as a scribe probably have a higher incidence of undesirable virtues/flaws/traits. Notably we want people who won't up and leave after we've taught them what they need to know! Worse, a campaign to recruit a bunch of people we don't know is asking for someone with ulterior motives to sneak in with the group. And a large group of people who are all trained together and given the same job and pulled into a crazy magic castle will form their own in-group, which is extremely unhealthy for loyalty.
Now Hermetic Magi can overcome all these problems if they put forth the effort. A spell to determine talent. Or a spell to make said talent. Spells to convince them to join up. Spells to "rescue" the ones who can't leave of their own free will etc. Then applying all those spells. But that stuff requires both boring seasons of work and adventures in the application.
*Okay, I'm not sure how popular serfdom is at this time/place combo.
In summary, I feel like getting the message out to 500 people, scouring them for talent and dealing with potential trouble caused by them shouldn't be handwaved away, but instead generate adventure time!
The plan, from earlier in the thread, was to recruit 30 children from Arans via a competition. The competition took place already, I'm trying to get an idea what we would have gotten. Those who won have already been in training provided by the covenant. I would think for most serfs having their children be given free education and a guarantee of a white collar life would be something worth pursuing with an afternoon competition.
There are no sers in Andorra. It is a free country. Tradition sonce Charlemagne.
I also think the numbers are wonky, and I suggest the laws of statistical calculus do not apply to the paradigm of Mythic Europe.
I also want to tone down on Good Teachers. We have a few already. We can add another latter on if I can think of a good story for it.
Mundanes need a Magic Theory score to copy books on Arts. They cannot learn or write upon Arts or Parma.
I need to reread that part. Put a hold on that.
I think God Teacher should be split in two. Just as Good Teacher, it adds +5 to direct teaching. For writing, it lets you write up to 2/3 your level in a summa, write up to 2/3 level in Ability Tractatae and 1/3 level for Arts.
A different Virtue, Strong Writer, adds +3 to all books and +1 to writing/copy speed
or something
Master Vocis has several projects and goals. Four spring to mind.
- He wants a General Library open to Covenfolk and Visitors. Mainly Lore and General Abilities, maybe some low end Academic and Arcane.
- For the Covenant Library he wants a Quality 15 Level 15 or better Summa in every Art. He will settle for 12 until we get them all above 11. He wants at least Q10/L5 in every Ability of Hermetic Interest.
- He wants a vast Lab Text collection. Every spell in the core book. Enchanted Items. Copies of the grimoires of every magus that has ever been a member of Andorra.
- He wants a Master's Library, where we can set aside dangerous or valuable texts. He wants it full of Q11 Tractati wen times on every Art.
And a hospital with casting tablets
Not having serfs is a good thing. But I seriously doubt a one day competition will effectively sort writing ability of children. From a "fluff" stand point a single well designed and thought through test doesn't sort teaching ability very well. In fact a whole college career of learning to teach and all those tests only gives a rough idea. I'm sure this is known in Mythic Europe as well. Mechanically, if the kid has exploding roll, a stray faith point from Mass hanging around, somehow ended up with the self-confident virtue or so forth the results would get thrown off.
Also I can't find were the competition was talked about in this thread originally... can I have a link to the post?
And is Good Teacher officially split up? Because then I need to give Cecilio the version for increasing quality. 
P.S. Statistics really can't NOT apply. Distributions might be different from what silveroak assumed, but all of math still works. Its logic and I'm not sure why it would conflict with paradigm anyway.
I wouldn't split the virtue. If only because there are so many virtues in Ars already that we don't need to balloon the list further!
Saying that, making its assumed prevalence lower is perhaps wise. I don't really know how virtues get acquired in-setting, but for Frederika, I assumed she got it from her parens - that being mentored (for years!) by someone else who was not only a good teacher, but had a passion for teaching and knowledge passed the virtue down to her. I never imagined it was something she had simply because she had a natural talent for it. I mean, maybe she still does have a talent like that. Just that actually ending up with the virtue itself was the result of a(n almost) life long, and very close teacher-student relationship.
Nit-picky, I know. But tractatus is a fourth declension noun. The nominative plural of tractatus is tractatus. 
I disagree. I don't see a need to take what currently can be done with one Minor Virtue and make it take two. An alternative would be to have Good Teacher do basically what it does now, but have a Good Teacher/Teaching and a Good Teaching/Writing track. The "Teaching Track" could let you add +6 or +7 to direct teaching, but you can only write up to 1/2 your level in a Summa or Ability Tractatus and 1/4 level for Arts. A "Writing Track", on the other hand, could have you add +3 to direct teaching and let you write up to 3/4 your level in a summa or Ability tractatus and 1/2 level in Arts.
Or (my preference) we could just let it be, and not make things more complicated than they already are. 
No Virtue splitting. Just an idea I had long ago. But Cannonball has a point. We do not need to baloon Virtues or HR's further.
Anyway, I think the idea is to groom potentia teachers and writers for the next generation. I am okay with that, I just dont want it to be an instant automatic.
Let us make an annual tradition of this contest. Sponsor a grammar school in the vilage. One time it wi result in a story that yields a god teacher or an apprentice.
Post number one in the thread, I have already had teachers working for the past year on starting to educate the students, and now you want to revise the entire plan? This was already approved at the beginning of 1236. Admittedly I did not specify a contest but the idea was certainly to recruit the best of Aran's youth for this project.
I took the 5% number from a thread in the general discussion forum. If someone has a better suggestion for distribution of scores and virtues I am certainly interested in discussing that, the assumptions I found elsewhere in similar discussions had more scores at higher numbers.