As a side note to this, I would be more interested to know how the hypothetical level 41 summae can occur. Back when I've read "Covenants" it seemed to me that the advanced level would be based solely on quality, so a book L20/Q21. But that is so over the top from L17 that it just doesn't make much sense I guess.
Where does this leave us? A book L24/Q17 as the supposed "hermetic maximum"? And why that number exactly? Maybe that is the number occurred when an affinity is applied to a level forty Art? I haven't done the calculations but it seems to me about right. Hm...
To write your L24Q17 book he only needs to start with Com +5 and good teacher, and reach an art score of 54, which takes 1485xp. Gaining 10xp/season on average, this only takes a little more than 37 years, not that much for a magus who really wants nothing else out of his life. In fact, if he wants absolutely nothing else, he can go much further, and likely do L40Q14.
No, I don't think such a monomaniac has ever lived for every art, but maybe for one or two.
No, you didn't understand me @loke, I was referring to the theoretical maximum level which was level 40 in the Arts - ergo L20 books as the maximum in the Core book. But when you apply an affinity to that Art level you get exactly a level 49 Art/2 = L24 Book +17Q maximum for a theoretically "perfect" Hermetic zenith L24/Q17 Summae.
I have heard about that maximum score of 40, but I read it as a rule of thumb, certainly not as a theoretical maximum. Consequently, I don't pay that much attention to it. It is useful when I design an NPC archmage in a hurry, but otherwise not.
It doesn't really matter anyway. If the Hermetics were decided to fully utilize their powers without restriction, level 20 Arts would be more than enough.
This is always an interesting discussion. My wandering mind did come up with a question for the more legacy players of Ars Magica:
Do you think the power level of books and libraries is a holdover from previous editions, or were books less powerful in previous versions(3rd and 4th mostly)? I always felt that books were... rather silly in how good they were compared to other non-teaching options.
The current book system is one of the great improvements in 4ed. Books in 3ed were just weird and encouraged some meta-gaming because the pyramid scale was used at char gen but not for advancement. You would gain x levels in an art if the book level was at least x times your current level (score), to a maximum of 3. Measuring in xp, the rate of progression would be weird and discontinuous. This also made books less powerful, with no tractatus for specialisation.
One may argue that 4ed books were more powerful, because Int and Concentration was added to the study total. Dedicated scholars could thus achieve very high study totals even with crap books.
OTOH, 4ed distinguished between different abiity types, and only arts and knowledges could be learnt from books. No books on awareness and polearms. This can get quite silly in 5ed, if the troupe does not apply some common sense.
Another major change in 5ed was the story xp was cut down, capped per season. Slow-paced sagas in 3ed and 4ed would typically give a lot of story xp awarded per session. Although xp could not be used for arts, this had a great impact on some sagas.
You cannot really compare power between the editions. In 5ed we have a rather simple and consistent system, most arts and abilities are treated the same, and with the exception of a few virtues, everybody learn at the same rate. In 4ed learning depended a lot more on the learner and on the subject. It was more complex and allowed more powergaming, I think. Back in 3ed books were quickly exhausted, and studies from vis much more important.
My fault then for not being sufficiently clear.
With "tragedy of the commons effect", one does not necessarily refer to an actual issue about land use.
Instead, we have such an effect wherever there's a collective of n players, each of whom can increase the common wealth by W at a personal cost of 1 -- but increasing the common wealth by W, increases each player's "share" only by W/n. In the absence of some way to make other players remunerate me for improving the common weath, I have an incentive to do so only if W>n, i.e. if my direct personal gain (one share of W) exceeds my personal cost. On the other hand, if I can enter into an enforceable agreement with others to pay me for my work, I have an incentive to improve the common wealth if W exceeds 1, i.e. the total common gain (rather than my direct personal gain -- a huge difference!) exceeds my personal cost. That's because it's worthwhile for everyone else to agree to pay me slightly less than W/n (his share of the common gain from my work), in which case I can collect almost W between my personal gain, and the n-1 payments from the other players.
How does this apply to books and copyright? When I put a book into circulation, the entire Order eventually benefits. Without copyright (i.e. without the right to say "no copies without my agreement) I profit from the intial buyer(s); I have no way to profit from the benefit the rest of the Order eventually derives. That's because as soon as someone else has a copy, we become competing sellers,driving our profit to 0 (to the benefit of the rest of the Order). Sure, I might do something like a "kickstarter"; but the participants are still relatively few compared to those who eventually benefit. With copyright, instead, I have the potential of "extracting" much more of that value, throughout my lifetime (and those of my heirs), because I can enter into a negotiation with everyone who will try to make a copy, not just with my initial buyers. Thus, the incentive to produce books will be greater. The argument above can be extended to "redistribution networks" wherein I make a deal with some other covenants about the redistribution of secondary copies.
Technically what you refer to is exponential, not geometric growth, but never mind the name. The issue here is that something that grows by 0.1% of its current value per year has exponential growth, and something that grows by 0.11% of its initial value has linear growth. Eventually the first quantity eclipses the second (regardless of the level at which they start, as long as it's not zero!). But even if they start at the same (non-zero) level, the first quantity takes somewhere between one and two centuries to surpass the second, and in all that time the difference between the two is always less than 1%, essentially insignificant. What I am trying to say is that, without hard quantities attached to them, issues such as "exponential vs. linear growth" can be meaningless in practice; that's why I was decrying the lack of hard quantities in your argument.
I generally do not ask for additional information to people who have positively demonstrated their ignorance, but one excellent source I've found (and its bibliography has others) is:
Buringh, E., & Van Zanden, J. (2009). Charting the "Rise of the West": Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, a Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries. The Journal of Economic History,69 (2), 409-445.
It focuses mostly on Western Europe, but spends a few words on the rest of the area we consider "Mythic Europe" too.
I was considering only "standard" books, summae and tractatus, on the Arts and the main hermetic abilities (Magic Theory, Finesse etc. as well as Artes Liberales and Philosophiae).
I do agree that lab texts, casting tablets, initiation scripts, books on Mystae Lore etc. are in a class of their own; it's hard to estimate their demand, though I'd eyeball it at no more than the demand for the former, based on how much they are sought out by players in my sagas.
But if we focus on the former, the demand is indeed not that large, assuming (as the Ars Magica line seems to assume) that most magi live only for so long ... and thus can only read so much. Just to simplify matters, let's say that half the books are on the Arts, and half on other abilities (you can change this assumption without significantly changing the result). To bring an Art to 40 based on reading alone, one needs (without affinities etc.) something like 60-100 books, mostly tractatus, plus a few summae that will provide most xp to the majority of readers. Let's say 80 books. 1200 books then covers all the Arts. Note that you don't need every copy of each book in every covenant, as magi might well borrow or trade books after reading them, or visit famed libraries on particular subjects. There are about ... 200 covenants in the Order? About 15 per Tribunal? Let's be generous and say every covenant has a copy of every summa, and there's a copy of each tractatus every ... 5 covenants, 3 per Tribunal, so there's almost always a nearby covenant you can borrow a copy from if needed (and if there's an efficient redcap network, that becomes all the easier) and almost never another magus who would read it at the same time. A quick calculation will show that amounts to about 50 thousand Art books in the Order, or 100 thousand total books of hermetic interest. In practice, I'd say there are significantly fewer -- maybe each Tribunal holds a copy of half of all tractatus ever produced, and 2-3 copies of 20% of them? That's more like 15 thousand Art books, or 30 thousand total books of hermetic interest. You can twiddle those numbers a bit, but the results do not change much, and they remain always a minor to insignificant fraction of all books produced historically during the 12th century alone in Western Europe alone.
That's actually a bit over 200 000 (212 030 is the estimate in the original article). But it's only for Western Europe. It completely disregards the Byzantine empire, and the Muslim lands outside of Iberia (whose combined manuscript production in the 11th century exceeded, probably quite significantly, that of Western Europe). That's why I said half a million, possibly a million.
I somewhat disagree. A lot of books that teach you stuff do get written solely, or mostly, for the profit -- to the point that the author would not write them if he had to give up all royalties. Some summae (primers in particular) are more "Poker for dummies" than "Principia Mathematica". So depriving the authors of royalties, or of a sufficient fraction of the royalties, does reduce the production of books. I do agree that it's not exactly easy to quantify by how much, and that some authors care absolutely nothing for the profit. The point I was making was, however, that copyright helps (perhaps just a little) rather than hinders (as was claimed) book production as a whole.
Ok, this seems to be some mechanic I have missed. Can you quickly recap it? The way I understand it is that every "team" with sufficient skills in scribing, bookbinding and illumination can make a copy of the same quality as the original ... and making such a copy always takes the same time.
I have heard the growth referred to as either geometric or exponential. one being correct does not make the other wrong.
As to your understanding of the tragedy of the commons every system of economic analysis I have ever heard of refers to that as a conflict between personal benefit and community benefit, where the tragedy of the commons refers specifically to the use of a communal finite resources with no economic incentive towards conservation.
Each suffers from similar flaws however- the first is that as long as personal benefit exceeds personal cost (including opportunity cost) the community benefit rarely enters into the equation, except where it does result in additional non-economic benefit such as personal renown. Which of course then touches on the other aspect of the analysis, which is that it disregards non-economic incentives such as social benefit to the author, or in the case of the actual tragedy of the commons, social acceptance by those who curtailed their usage of the community resource to appropriate levels. Social pressure is, realistically, a much larger driving force in a society than either economic or legal forces, but social dynamics of acceptability also has its own structure of evolution that is rarely recognized outside of mating rituals which do intersect with biological evolution and thus draw scientific attention.
This is correct. It's normally named "exponential growth," but it can be called "geometric growth." Meanwhile, the sequences or series are normally called "geometric," which is why that term shows up for the growth sometimes.
Some things are perhaps holdovers from earlier editions, such as the (theoretical) concession that the limit of the Arts is 40 so books were written up to level 20. The ArM writers are consistent on this throughout the editions, at least up to 3rd Ed. which I have the Core rulebooks. Plus, many of the authors for ArM are professors, librarians, historians, etc. So that may have to do something about the love for books
As for the general power level, I think that ArM5 trumps everything else before it. No matter that concentration+INT isn't added to your study total, or that you have to penetrate first now, the multiplication of totals that the triplet of (Puissant+Affinity+Magical Focus) offers - at least in that narrow field - is superior to anything else & it only gains distance the higher it goes. Plus, spell mastery is silly good nowadays.
Regarding power level, I wanted to say that AM5 is not the highest power edition, but that would have been wrong.
Superficially, AM5 seems to offer less power, especially because starting xps and spell levels were reduced. Familiars don't offer the same amount of power, at least not unless a magus tries very hard at it. (Anyone remember the grab bag of familiar goodies from AM2&3?) Gentle Gift is expensive.
On the other hand, penetration is no longer limited by spell level. Affinity with Art is no longer an expensive xp sink but a cheap xp multiplier. Magic Foci are very powerful. Spell mastery is powerful and versatile... and less expensive than ever before. Longevity rituals are cheap and powerful. It takes far more Twilight episodes to kill a magus, and there are more ways to avoid it. It is no longer necessary to study from vis; books can take you as far as you want, though the best books in AM3 are far better than in subsequent editions (A level 30 book can be read in 20 seasons, providing 465xps. Such a book is possible, but quite rare.) Magi get 10 virtue points rather than 7. Story and Personality Flaws provide lots of points, for the low, low cost of getting to have stories and a personality. Most spells do not need to be Aimed.
There's no need even to talk about RoP:M, Faerie Correspondence, the lab rules in Covenants, or similar marginalia.
You can copy a book carefully or quickly (pg 166 of the core rules). Copying a book carefully gives you a book that's the same quality as the original book, wheras doing it quickly reduces the quality by 1 point but is three times as fast.
I think what's being proposed here is that you have access to the only Q14 book, and publish Q13 books. You can copy the Q14 book quickly and get Q13 copies quickly, but everyone else can only copy a Q13 book, either slowly for more Q13 copies or quickly for Q12 copies.
We are of course, both right, and which effect is stronger is hard to judge.
A lot of books are written for profit, but it is a small lot compared to the lot to which Principia Mathematica and a pile of books you haven't heard about, belong.
Copyright both helps and hinders book production. It may mean more books are written. It will also mean that some covenants do not get a copy of the sound tractatus from 1064 because it is no longer practically possible to track down the copyright holder. It may also mean that books are somewhat overpriced, although that's not certain.
At the end of the day, I doubt that the volume in the order of 1220 is such that copyright makes much difference either way.
Seems to me the quality reduction with quick copying is mostly about neatness, as in forgoing the +1 scribal bonus to quality which can merely be added back in with a further copy.
Not by RAW. Copying quickly, you get lower quality than your source. Copying slowly, you get the same quality. No mention of recovering a higher quality from a lower quality source.
I have always assumed that quick copying meant some kind of omission or inaccuracy, which cannot be recovered other than possibly by scholar skilled in the topic of the book.
Anyway, I am going to argue that my interpretation is the best one, not by authenticity but because narrativity. My interpretation gives the original author a potential edge in a world copyright was not invented and cow and calf applies to book leases and not book purchased fair and square.
My preferred setting is one where,
Copyright is unheard of. If you own a copy, you can make new copies and do whatever you want.
Books are leased commonly, and then always under cow and calf.
Library hospitality is common.
Books are commonly traded in kind - that's a win-win - both libraries increase their power.
Books are gifted and traded for political favour when appropriate.
Books copied and sold for vis are almost never the best books around; selling copies of the best books reduces the (relative) power of a library. Weak libraries have little to lose and are likely to sell copies, but they do not have the best books.
Many of the books sold are inferior copies, possibly copied many times, loosing a few random sentences or paragraphs each time. E.g. the root you can buy was probably a sound L8Q22 summa as authored, but after ten generations of copying and some pages lost on the way, it has ended up as L7Q17 which is vain in [Cov] jargon. Maybe you have the root, but one day you discover a better copy worth buying.
I'd like to see the books as unique, where chapters are added or removed from the old texts, but I'll forego this for lack of mechanics.
It is almost impossible to get a complete overview of available books on the market. The redcaps have good records, but they use their knowledge to make a profit.
None of the rules above are universal, or maybe 9 is. Exeptions and variations make the norm.
I think these principles make a more medieval feel, and we avoid anachronistic interpretations of copyright and calves. To make it work, I need to contradict RAW on one point. The book prices in [Cov] must be changed to leasing, possibly long-term, like 70 years, simply to fit with a historic version of Cow and Calf. What [Cov] has down as vain books can be sold though.
The issue around copying quickly is how the rules from the core book interface with the extended book rules from covenants written later. Personally I think they line up nicely that the reduction for going fast and a little sloppy but not incorrect has the same drop in quality as removing the effect of a good scribe.
But even if that’s not the case, especially if that’s not the case, it seems to me an author who wants his important words and all the work he put into them purposefully miscopied to gain some arbitrary game-rules based benefit the character has no concept of to be shockingly against the narrative and wholly a gamist idea to give a mechanical reason the original is better and that library has an advantage. Maybe it is a better situation, I disagree but others mayt see it that way, but it is not a narrative rules following the story but trying to force a particular story with rules.
Given that the extended book rules are explicitly optional, not only implicitly like any other supplemental rule, I tend to disregard them.
You are right, though, that my initial liking of that interpretation is in a sense gamist, but (1) I did not make it, and (2) it makes sense in a historical sense too. Books were not copied accurately. Many of the most famous classical works were only partly written by the original authors. We do not really know what the original works were like. This is a feature I like to see in game, not necessarily perfectly modelled, but one way or another.
But if we make sales an exception and leases under Cow and Calf the rule, we do not necessarily need deteriorating quick copies to regulate book availability, so it is not a big deal.
