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

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Jussi Kenkkilä

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Jussi Kenkkilä

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.

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?