Copying Books In-Game

A Facebook discussion inspired this post.  As such, it is not play-tested, but looks to be entertaining.

Sometimes, a PC wants to make a copy of a discovered or purchased book, and instead of hiring an expert, they want to copy the book themselves.  Which is fine, albeit not what I consider adventurous.  

Those of us that have copied lots of pages by hand can tell you, it is a tedious task, at best - the anathema of adventure, really.  DnDish styled games set in a pseudo-Medieval European setting would only have a more difficult time, as this article about Medieval Manuscripts (complete with a video) shows.  Go watch that video!

Still, while copying a text could be folded under Downtime Activities, abstractly trading gold and time for a perfect copy, it may be more fun and gamelike to create a table to determine just how accurate the new copy is. I say may, but truly believe it is.

Note that according to Wikipedia (I know...)

Scribes were only able to work in daylight, due to the expense of candles and rather poor lighting they provided, monastic scribes were still able to produce three to four pages of work per day.  The average scribe could copy two books per year. They were expected to make at least one mistake per page.

Emphasis is mine.  Mistakes are expected and the whole process is slow in the best of conditions.  

(Story time - in the Army, I was on operations staff, and several of us were in tasked to make multiple copies - by hand - of map overlays.  Due to the amount needed, bad handwriting and tools, and time crunch, no two overlays were exactly the same and the latter ones included names not in the actual orders, as hurried T's became C's and worse.  Anecdotal, but it happens.)

Involving magic sounds like a plan, but my casual search reveals that the only spells involving copying are for copying spells into spellbooks, not pages of mundane information.  Interesting.  

Time for an enterprising wizard to develop a spell (leading to magic items) that can scribe quickly and efficiently.  Because burning a wish seems a bit ... much.  

That said, such items can probably be found in a GURPS or Ars Magica supplement.  Or perhaps in an indie game - GLOG, maybe.  Any readers wanna point me in the right direction?

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Anyhow, roll percentile dice and apply bonuses and maluses based on the below chart.  The final number is how accurate the new copy is.  If you have chart additions, let me know in the comments.

Mistakes can range from terrible grammar and vocabulary all the way to entirely different outcomes, depending on how bad the mistakes are.  Copying a book of True Names and getting some wrong will get someone killed, or worse.

So have fun with the results of the bad copy.

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In the name of research, I looked at how Ars Magica and Call of Cthulhu handles copying books.  I chose these games, because books are part of gameplay in both systems.

Ars Magica - For those familiar with its rules, AM has some in-depth rules on writing books.  In addition, its Covenants book provides even more rules for book-crafting, as well as implied magical items, called resonances, for use when scribing books: inkwells, quills, inks, and such.  These resonances might count as masterwork items in the above table, or as pertinent magic items - its a player-GM discussion.

As found on page 87 of Covenants

As an aside, if you're planning to run a game based around a mages' guild or college or the like, pick up a copy of Covenants, even if you have no intention of using Ars Magica as your ruleset.  It is that inspirational; the base Ars Magica 5e - and lots of the sourcebooks, regardless of edition - are as well.

Call of Cthulhu doesn't seem to have any hard and fast rules about writing books.  Reading them, yes - based on languages known and loss of sanity.  Nothing about writing or copying them, though.