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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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chocolote12 said:
Proportions don't matter. Objectively, it's more money than many people get to see in their entire lives. It doesn't become reasonable just because we've got a lot of it.

We can have quirks and character traits without throwing literally triple digits of cash at them on a whim.
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Again, triple digits of cash would get Mathilde "one bookshelf" of books.

If that's where you want to draw the line, I personally own at least three times that many recreational books. If "proportions don't matter", then you need to realize that in absolute terms, it isn't that many books.
 
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Assuming we do put together a public library (which I think would be great as it would both promote literacy and improve skills/education of the populace), would people object to a very large purchase of recreational reading, which just so happened to have a lot of romance books?
 
chocolote12 said:
Proportions don't matter. Objectively, it's more money than many people get to see in their entire lives. It doesn't become reasonable just because we've got a lot of it.
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Objectively, a 150 dollars is more money than the vast majority of people in my country see in an entire year of work. Many won't see a tenth of that.

Does that mean anybody who spends more than that on luxuries in America is a greedy, selfish monster who would donate everything they have if they possessed even a single speck of conscience or compassion?

After all, pretty much all of them are in jobs that have minuscule, if any, altruistic benefit to the world and yet they feel justified in chugging down their sodas and binging on Netflix, even though that money could feed the people here for an entire month.
 
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Redshirt Army said:
Again, triple digits of cash would get Mathilde "one bookshelf" of books.
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If that's the case, then the underground romance novel trade of Karak Eight Peaks is dealing in units of value greater than bars of gold.

Which, I mean, it would be in-theme with the dwarves, but something tells me that that might be a bit unreasonable.
runeblue360 said:
Does that mean anybody who spends more than that on luxuries in America is a greedy, selfish monster who would donate everything they have if they possessed even a single speck of conscience or compassion?
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It's not about morality, it's about frugality. You're not evil if you overspend, I just don't like it.
 
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We are making about 140 gc per turn (before accounting for the tower). I'd like it if we could dedicate one library purchase per turn to a luxury subject that we don't plan on having any mechanical effects.
 
Neshuakadal said:
Another big problem I have with him is that as a Magister he refused to work with a fellow gold journeyman in an active warzone. Maybe he was afraid of getting caught. Maybe he didn't want to show his hand and reveal he knew far more than he should. But the fact he was unwilling to put his fellow gold wizard above his "mission" tells me a lot about his character.
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You're actually misremembering this. Maximillian refused to work with Johann, not the other way around.

Redshirt Army said:
Again, triple digits of cash would get Mathilde "one bookshelf" of books.

If that's where you want to draw the line, I personally own at least three times that many recreational books. If "proportions don't matter", then you need to realize that in absolute terms, it isn't that many books.
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Okay, I do not believe that the same standards that apply to serious academic books apply to cheaply produced romance books, which are probably much shorter and mass printed so far as the technology allows. Academic books don't receive the same production runs because they don't have as high a demand, and individual volumes have correspondingly higher prices. It's the same dynamic that books have always had. Therefore one "non-expansive" purchase of romance books will get you a lot more than the same purchase of academic texts.

As evidence, I point out that Mathilde's whole habit of reading romance books in the first place has always been financed on a "loose change" level beneath the notice of the money we actually track for her.
 
wrecksalot said:
I gotta say, Being a Warhammer human and refusing to acknoledge this new sapient as anything other than a meat shield seems a bit hypocritical.
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Quite hypocritical indeed, since these spiders probably evolved naturally while humans were literally made to be weapons by the Old Ones. Humans are people and deserve to be treated as such, and same goes with the We.
 
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chocolote12 said:
It's not about morality, it's about frugality. You're not evil if you overspend, I just don't like it.
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If it's not about morality, then overspending is entirely relative. The billionaire who spends a thousand dollars on a TV is shockingly frugal compared to the white collar worker who spends a fifth on the same thing. Any sane budgeting is based on proportions, not absolute values. Financial planners tell people not to spend more than 30% of their income on luxuries. I imagine they'd consider Mathilde some sort of superhuman if she restricted herself to less than 1%.
 
chocolote12 said:
Proportions don't matter. Objectively, it's more money than many people get to see in their entire lives. It doesn't become reasonable just because we've got a lot of it.

We can have quirks and character traits without throwing literally triple digits of cash at them on a whim.
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our library currently consists entirely of non-fiction books. Adding a recreational section could be good for morale when we open it up to the public, and why not start with our preferred genre. In addition, part of the reason we have this money in the first place is because of our Romance novel trades with Edda, so reinvesting in that area seems sensible and should make one of our fellow councillors happy as well. also most people can't afford wizard towers, but I don't see anyone seriously arguing that that as wasteful when we could get double the rooms for half the price by digging down.
 
Briefvoice said:
Okay, I do not believe that the same standards that apply to serious academic books apply to cheaply produced romance books, which are probably much shorter and mass printed so far as the technology allows.
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If that's the case, then an "extensive" romance collection wouldn't even cost "triple digits of gold", so the whole objection goes up in smoke.

The vote plan didn't have price tags attached, after all.
 
wrecksalot said:
our library currently consists entirely of non-fiction books. Adding a recreational section could be good for morale when we open it up to the public, and why not start with our preferred genre. In addition, part of the reason we have this money in the first place is because of our Romance novel trades with Edda, so reinvesting in that area seems sensible and should make one of our fellow councillors happy as well. also most people can't afford wizard towers, but I don't see anyone seriously arguing that that as wasteful when we could get double the rooms for half the price by digging down.
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If this is the case, we should present it as a way to work towards a Public Library for Karag Nar, starting with the genre we are most familiar with and have an exchange network in place - as a means of projecting influence over the Undumgi. That is more likely to win the thread support needed to get that vote over the line - it came close the last time round, even when it was presented as it was.

Also, I'm sure the Towers are reserved for things such as the Clean Research Lab and the Ulgu Room, and maybe an enchantment workshop. You could probably win the digging down vote next turn, if you made the case for us to use those two rooms to make a sparring/training room and a secure vault, or maybe a printing press room, for example- things that I don't think the Tower provides any benefits for. You'd have to contend with those who want to set up our Ulgu enchantment/manipulation lab though, and that's something alot of the thread wants in addition to the clean room planned this turn.
 
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Dame Mathilde Weber (M. Grey), Patron of the Arts and Scientific Inquiries
en.wikipedia.org

History of libraries - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

"One example is the library at the Ducal Palace in Urbino, Italy. The collection of the Ducal Palace library of Urbino is evidence of two different economies of collecting: luxury and intellectual. The older library served to collect texts which served primarily to memorialize the history of the Duke of Urbino's relations and show his magnificence, while the new library served primarily as an information retrieval system for contemporary scholars to research with and discuss.[69] In addition to manuscripts and information based texts, the Ducal library also housed what we would consider now as archival materials. This included a collection of Renaissance newsletter manuscripts, diplomatic, engineering, military, and other political and moral documents."

Max better get to work on our hagiography.
 
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Redshirt Army said:
If that's the case, then an "extensive" romance collection wouldn't even cost "triple digits of gold", so the whole objection goes up in smoke.

The vote plan didn't have price tags attached, after all.
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Well, then there's an easy way to resolve this, isn't there?

@BoneyM, roughly how many romance novels would each category of purchasing get us? Both for quantity and quality (normal versus extensive, and the different rarity levels)? Are they any different from academic book purchases?
 
Why would we build a Public Library?

Mathilde is a complex and fascinating individual with strong morals, this does not mean she is personally altruistic enough to fund something like a public Library out of her own pocket.

Edit: Nevermind.
 
w4terghost said:
Why would we build a Public Library?

Mathilde is a complex and fascinating individual with strong morals, this does not mean she is personally altruistic enough to fund something like a public Library out of her own pocket.
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Letting other people borrow some books from the massive pile of books she has bought and will continue to buy seems reasonable, especially since she is already involved with a book sharing network
 
Speaking of books, where do we go from here? We've already covered a bunch of topics from the dwarves and empire. While we can buy a few more things, we'll be running out of topics soon enough. For a more comprehensive library, we may want to expand to buying books from other cultures. We can mostly read breton and it should have some interesting topics for us like swordmanship. Books from Ulthuan are also valuable but hard to procure.

It might be worth spending some time trying to learn Tilean/Estalian for a more comprehensive library or just getting a translator to translate the books for us. What do people think?
 
Re: Book Buying. I'm coming from the 2e rpg, so all these book prices have always seemed downright reasonable, haha. Thankfully the economy isn't a 1:1 thing! :D

Paper: 5 silver a sheet (20 silver to a gold.)
A Printed Book is 100gc. Hand scribed books don't actually get a price called out, but the fall under the same description, so functionally the same cost.
An illuminated book (pictures/color) goes for 350gc.
A non-specific magic grimoire runs 500gc, and I pity the wizard in my current game who is gonna have to find 12 of those suckers to progress up to being a Wizard Lord. :V

Books have been the bane of many of my character's existences... Dang money sinks.
 
Spending hundreds of crowns on completely unnecessary luxuries in one go is a good way to show the college we can't be trusted with large sums of money. I will certainly support a modest purchase the next turn, and a policy of slowly growing our collection if it's ever mentioned that we've read through them all. Otherwise, let's try to keep in the same postal code of our vow of poverty.

Also we should not create a lending library, that's how you lose hard to find and expensive texts.

Quest said:
It might be worth spending some time trying to learn Tilean/Estalian for a more comprehensive library or just getting a translator to translate the books for us. What do people think?
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Not worth the time compared to everything else we could be doing.
 
Quest said:
Speaking of books, where do we go from here? We've already covered a bunch of topics from the dwarves and empire. While we can buy a few more things, we'll be running out of topics soon enough. For a more comprehensive library, we may want to expand to buying books from other cultures. We can mostly read breton and it should have some interesting topics for us like swordmanship. Books from Ulthuan are also valuable but hard to procure.

It might be worth spending some time trying to learn Tilean/Estalian for a more comprehensive library or just getting a translator to translate the books for us. What do people think?
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I'm actually pretty satisfied with it right now as it currently stands since it covers the K8P and Empire topics I can think of off the top of my head. I'd personally just leave off the academic stuff, purchase a package or two more of Bretonnian and Tilean romance books for entertainment, memes and learning those languages and I'd be quite satisfied with that.

That's just my take on it.
 
Mr Apollo said:
Also we should not create a lending library, that's how you lose hard to find and expensive texts.
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Yeah... remember when we wanted a copy of Light and it's Properties from the College Library?
We couldn't just borrow it, we had to pay to have a copy made.

So, a 'more-or-less, subject-to-upcoming-vote Public' Reference Library seems more likely.
 
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Personally, my objection to buying the romance novels wasn't so much the price but the underlying goal and the way the vote was framed. From what I remember, the purchase of an extensive romance collection in multiple languages (some that we couldn't even read) was to "get rid of our wealth" as fast as possible by spending on frivolities we didn't need. That was just financially irresponsible and was just something I couldn't agree with out of principle.

However, if its a one time purchase of something Mathilde legitimately cares about and has a personal interest in then its a justifiable expenditure. After all, people often spend upwards of 66% of their monthly income on things like laptops or vacations.
 
If our library ever becomes big enough, I wouldn't mind making it public. However, I'd definitely want library guards or something to stab anybody who tries to bring in their tomato sandwiches, or whatever. And I really would never want a single one to walk through our doors, because that's how people make off with them and never return.

I hear there's a goddess who might be willing to lend out some priests for the task, but while Verana, goddess of law and justice, apparently dislikes tyranny and is amenable to magic, she is also the exact opposite of friendly with Ranald, god of thieves, because his worshipers use him as an excuse for their crimes, so that sounds like a bust.

On the other hand, though, she is the mother of Shallya. Reasons for us wanting to improve Ranald and Shallya's relationship intensify.
 
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