Re: Making books in Low-Tech & LT:Companions 1 & 3
 

I'm not going to go through each example, but I should note here that a handscrew press can manage an entire basic library (25,000 pages) in a single man-month. As a skilled scribe makes $800/month, you're looking at a of $1550. Presumably, the other $2k or so is going into binding, upkeep, organization, and so forth.

As I noted upthread, a scribe is probably producing at a faster rate than this by taking a penalty. A document that is 74% to 91% (depending on tool quality) perfectly legible, with the remainder being a slightly-harder-to-decipher scrawl, is likely acceptable compared to one that's 98% perfectly legible but takes over twice as long. The former seems appropriate for a typical library, the latter would be more likely found in a higher-quality one.

Additionally, note that the prices given in LTC3 are explicitly for TL4, not TL3. I already showed how the prices can work out at TL4. If you're wanting to match the assumptions from LTC3, you'll want to start with that.

Well, yeah, a piece of art is going to be a lot more expensive than a utilitarian book. GURPS prices for swords are horribly off if you're assuming they have gilded blades and gem-studded hilts as well.

...

All in all, keep in mind that the LTC3 prices and weights are explicitly noted as rough averages, not absolute numbers. If you'd prefer to go with different values, feel free to do so.

Re: Making books in Low-Tech & LT:Companions 1 & 3
 

OK. Did you see any dependence between page size and lettering size?
In my data the words/page drops with smaller page sizes, but not by half as one would expect as the folios are halved. This may be both because smaller books have smaller writing, but also because they have less illuminations.

I should check some of the manuscript pages available as images online and calculate the metrics from them to account for other (ie. not Bible) texts.

Re: Making books in Low-Tech & LT:Companions 1 & 3
 

I didn't have data on the size of the text, so I didn't analyze that. That said, smaller pages require smaller text, but a cultural tendency towards huge margins means that you don't necessarily get particularly large letters on large pages.

Re: Making books in Low-Tech & LT:Companions 1 & 3
 

I want to base my numbers on what's known of real book manufacture, and the scribing speed seems to be the biggest difference. I'd like to calibrate the values to real life, preferably with simple multipliers so I can use the values in the books without having to recalculate everything.

Also on the speed calculations, I'd rather use the skill level 12 for an journeyman/professional level at the listed wages (I'm using the cost of living rather than the $800 to account for different TLs). As mentioned in LT:C3, masters will have skill level of 14+, but also one higher status (double wages). A master hurrying with -2 to skill will take 80% of the time of a journeyman, producing only 125% as much at 200% of the cost. This way I'll know the average time and cost and can then take into account changes in skill and circumstances.

Re: Making books in Low-Tech & LT:Companions 1 & 3
 

Perfectly understandable, although you'll probably end up just needing to recalculate the prices of all the libraries. Fortunately, as they scale linearly with weight, that means you just need to figure out one of them to get the cost of all the others.

There is a key feature you're missing here. Under "Can You Read It?" it notes that writing legibly is a roll against DX, DX-based Artist Calligraphy +6, or DX-based Professional Skill (Scribe) +6. That +6 means your skill 12 scribe is starting out with functional skill 18. Rereading that section, it doesn't explicitly state you can take a penalty to write more quickly, but as a scribe could presumably get away with having only skill 8 or so if this weren't the case (and my recent analysis shows that Haste is necessary to meet the listed prices), it seems appropriate to allow it.

As an aside, I'm curious about the bolded section. GURPS default doesn't adjust CoL by TL. I've tried to come up with my own schemes that do, but the problem I keep running into is adjusting wages without screwing up the LTC3 rules for labor costs. How have you resolved this?

Re: Making books in Low-Tech & LT:Companions 1 & 3
 

The interesting question here is how rare scribal ability is.

Out in the mundane medieval world, it was quite rare, and so scribal work was expensive. Very few townsfolk were literate and able to do decent caligraphy, and so they could demand high wages, well above the cost of materials, mainly parchment and ink.

But in the monasteries, you had a significant minority of monks (a majority in some monasteries, or at least close to it) who could perform this work, and all you had to do was to feed, clothe and roof them, and cheaply at that, since they were supposed to live austere lives. They didn't always, but even in luxury monasteries, their upkeep still wasn't very expensive.

Also, to the OP: Are you familiar with an early online work by S.John Ross, titled GURPS Books or GURPS Libraries or something? I think it is still somewhere on his The Blue Room web page, or if not then you may have to try to find it via the Wayback Machine.

Re: Making books in Low-Tech & LT:Companions 1 & 3
 

The Ars Magica RPG consistently insists that books that are not "illuminated" are much less useful than books that are. Given how well researched it tends to be, and how well versed its line editor is in matters medieval, I'm inclined to just accept that position as being fact.

Re: Making books in Low-Tech & LT:Companions 1 & 3
 

The lower legibility would be something that is taken into account on the quality modifier for the book price. So unless the assumption is that only fine-quality books are easy to read, I would keep the speed at 98% legible level.

For TL4 movable type printing the ca. $2000 is rather close to the library value given.

For the same TL cursive manuscript the total is $113k. (Actually more expensive than TL 3 if we take into account the increase in labor productivity. If not, the higher price of early paper will make TL3 more expensive than TL4).

If we use the same number of pages for that too (not multiplying by 4 for hand-writing), the scribe-work will cost $27.5k, for a total of $30.5k. As this is close to the value given for hand-written library, maybe the increase in page count was forgotten in the estimation of the price multiplier. So for a cursive manuscript library, we would multiply the prices given by 40 instead of 10.

As for the cursive vs. calligraphy issue, we could think of the cursive as the cheaper, less legible method of book production.

For a daily speed of 32 pages for cursive, 10 for calligraphy and 2 for illumination we could approximate those to quality levels: cursive for "good", calligraphy for "fine" and fully illuminated for "very fine".

Maybe say that "fine" books are fully legible and the "good" rate will only produce (skill 12+6-8=10) 50% legible text in 20% of the time it takes to copy a book with calligraphy. "Cheap" would take the maximum reduction, for 37.5% legible text in 10% of the time. This would mean that the real price of cheap and good libraries would be the extra effort in reading them. This way the quality wouldn't only be about resale value and prestige.

With these quality levels a cheap hand-copied basic library on TL 3 paper would cost $36800, which is close enough, although for pre-paper societies some other cheap material like leaves would be used.

Even with these modifications the high cost of parchment will push the prices of better libraries up. Because paper had a long time stigma in Europe as a poor substitute for parchment, it wasn't used in better books. The choice of materials should be taken into account on calculating the total costs for libraries of different qualities.

Re: Making books in Low-Tech & LT:Companions 1 & 3
 

Oh, it's in the Basic Set: Campaigns, pages 516-517. Basically, the cost of living is equal to the monthly wage rate for that status level. Here I used it as is (even though there is a separate TL1 wage in LT:C3). For more accuracy I would do like I did with G:Traveller and just adjust wages by difference in cost-of living at different TLs.

Re: Making books in Low-Tech & LT:Companions 1 & 3
 

This would also mean that the extra cost of illumination affects the utility of the book. So except for gilding and other extravagance, the price of a book should be tied to it's utility. Maybe give it an equipment modifier that affects reading speed, learning from books, research and data search rolls.

This would also nicely keep the value of the book independent of the actual information within. As in manuscript cultures the value comes from the manufacturing, information has almost zero value (once you copy a book you can keep on copying without having to pay for the content).