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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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BoneyM said:
More of a bounty list than active commissions. Traders will be looking for ways to lock in a known payment after silk prices show some volatility.
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Right, the journey is long, a guaranteed return on investment because theres a big hungry library at the end of the trip means that odds are good that they'd be acquiring a few books whenever they can, since while books aren't cheap, neither are silks and spices, and books are actually more value dense than silks and spices, and any trader making the trip is usually going to be loaded to capacity to maximize profit.

To the right buyer anyways.
ctulhuslp said:
Well, okay, you are technically correct.
Did it help them to magic up hundreds of cannons and thousands of engineers? No, because money without supplies to buy with them aren't worth much.

So yeah, I concede that technically K8P has enough money, lying around uselessly because there are bottlenecks in supply of literally every single thing which can be realistically bought with it.
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Well, bottlenecks vary.
Currently the Karak is mainly bottlenecked on a lot of basic crafts and agriculture, but not on scribes or masons(or at least, not on masons for the next 3 years, after which it goes back to normal build rates). Books aren't bulky enough to throttle the merchant transportation for anything else, as long as there are buyers they will sell.

So as long as you want a library at all, the prosperity of the Karak isn't really hurting the Boon, unless the librarians are like, super duper hungry.
Derpmind said:
Mathilde grew up in a small village with little education. Most people in her homeland will never become literate. Even though the printing press exists, most libraries of the time are private collections or belong to very rare institutions like the University in Altdorf. Mathilde's current library, despite how extensive it is, is still at the top of a mountain and has very few visitors. And Mathilde knows that any proper education is both really useful but also really rare outside most of the named charaters she usually interacts with. A big, public library is basically an effort to would go some lengths to changing that while also doubling as a boost to any scholars and scholarly activities done in the entire Karak.

...on that topic, if we're super ambitious we could have Mathilde float the idea of Public Libraries in general. Try to open many libraries across the Empire and elsewhere. Though that might be even more difficult and expensive.
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Naw, won't need much to. A public library boosts productivity quite enormously, the problem is that it costs a lot of seed money to initiate, which would be a problem for people who don't have a gold budget of Yes, theres not a lot of reason to make a public library if nobody can read and theres not a lot of incentive to spend the time to become literate if you got nothing to read. Catch-22, you need somebody to put the investment in before it becomes useful

That said, IIRC the Empire has a lot of people at semi-literate, because the Sigmarites make it a point to teach enough literacy to understand their holy books. Their vocabulary is likely limited, their grammer is probably doing whatever atrocities that language majors will weep at, but they can read.
BoneyM said:
I won't outright veto the idea, but I feel the need to point out what should be obvious: using the Boon on something with four separate prongs means it will be at best* a quarter of a Boon's worth applied to each. You don't get free stuff by piling more provisos on, you water down your Boon.

*Dwarves thrive when told "GO MAKE THE BEST X THAT EVER WAS", less so when given a more balanced objective.
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A good point, even if a Transcendental Boon is that Belegar would spare no expense making it happen, he only has so many AP.
So the differences:
-Supreme Ultimate Library - Go to maximal extent to collect rare books and the scribes and the translators to copy them for redundancy and accessibility, in perpetuity.
-Supreme Ultimate Research Institute - Go to maximal extent to hire and attract scholars, priests, philosophers and more, with appropriate efforts to meet and exceed their living needs so as to brain drain all the OTHER places.
-Ultimate Research Library - Build a really good library, and attract the people to staff it, but he won't be able to focus on recruiting Big Brain scholars or sending Rangers/Adventurers to acquire books from Druchii collections.
Alratan said:
Network effects are extraordinarily powerful for innovation. A dozen researchers in one place working together with major funding could easily be hundreds or thousands as times as productive as those same researchers scattered across a continent.
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Oh yeah, a lot of research work is a bitch because theres a lot of redundant basic work people are doing. Putting them together lets the ideas circulate, and whats insoluble in one mental paradigm is relatively straightforward if you had a second perspective.
BoneyM said:
A project in Elf territory, under at least partial Elf control, for the benefit of Elves, to look at a Waystone that's been mucked with by Elves. Less than enthused.
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Probably would be more excited to work with the College to repurpose the Waystone output going to Ulthuan into the Empire's use.

...if he trusts the Empire not to blow themselves up with it.
 
veekie said:
So the differences:
-Supreme Ultimate Library - Go to maximal extent to collect rare books and the scribes and the translators to copy them for redundancy and accessibility, in perpetuity.
-Supreme Ultimate Research Institute - Go to maximal extent to hire and attract scholars, priests, philosophers and more, with appropriate efforts to meet and exceed their living needs so as to brain drain all the OTHER places.
-Ultimate Research Library - Build a really good library, and attract the people to staff it, but he won't be able to focus on recruiting Big Brain scholars or sending Rangers/Adventurers to acquire books from Druchii collections.
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Honestly, I kinda want the first more than the second? I mean, a huge ass library alone will attract scholars wanting to read the books.
 
Aranfan said:
Honestly, I kinda want the first more than the second? I mean, a huge ass library alone will attract scholars wanting to read the books.
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I'm good with any of them, I think the difference is mostly that if you focus on a Great Library, Belegar is going to try to get ALL the books, by hook or by crook. Once he fills out the basic collection anyways.
 
Unfortunately, the vote to use the boon now instead of in several years is still 5 votes behind. 80 vs. 75. :(
 
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Adhoc vote count started by Neshuakadal on Feb 14, 2020 at 9:25 PM, finished with 926 posts and 192 votes.
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Here's another idea for the Royal Boon, a Dwarven order of secret keepers. They would go around learning secrets, taking census of what secrets are known, and, if needed to, telling those secrets to the pertinent parties (e.g., runelord secrets to runelords, kingly secrets to kings, priestly secrets to priests) or telling the people they learned those secrets from how much of a secret their secret is.
 
Imugi said:
Here's another idea for the Royal Boon, a Dwarven order of secret keepers. They would go around learning secrets, taking census of what secrets are known, and, if needed to, telling those secrets to the pertinent parties (e.g., runelord secrets to runelords, kingly secrets to kings, priestly secrets to priests) or telling the people they learned those secrets from how much of a secret their secret is.
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How would they convince anyone to share their secrets with them?
 
Aranfan said:
Honestly, I kinda want the first more than the second? I mean, a huge ass library alone will attract scholars wanting to read the books.
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There's a bit of a difference between having Mountain Mystic for intellectuals and actually having a bunch of wizards/scholars/etc. as employees, though. A research institute would allow us to actually use the intellectuals brought to K8P for our own purposes, and given that the various projects the thread's interested in include first-of-its-kind Pure Warpstuff study (AV), an attempt to hybridize divine and arcane magic when that's never been done before, somehow making human High Magic, and killing a god, having a large body of competent people to help us with our research certainly has value.

It's fine if you just want to become a Book Dragon and don't care about the research, but do bear in mind that there is a very large difference between Library and Fantasy DARPA in terms of what intellectual resources they allow us to actually use. The Library does not accomplish what Fantasy DARPA does.
 
kfrar said:
There's a bit of a difference between having Mountain Mystic for intellectuals and actually having a bunch of wizards/scholars/etc. as employees, though. A research institute would allow us to actually use the intellectuals brought to K8P for our own purposes, and given that the various projects the thread's interested in include first-of-its-kind Pure Warpstuff study (AV), an attempt to hybridize divine and arcane magic when that's never been done before, somehow making human High Magic, and killing a god, having a large body of competent people to help us with our research certainly has value.

It's fine if you just want to become a Book Dragon and don't care about the research, but do bear in mind that there is a very large difference between Library and Fantasy DARPA in terms of what intellectual resources they allow us to actually use. The Library does not accomplish what Fantasy DARPA does.
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That is fine for me. I am less interested in directing the research of multiple people and more interested in allowing multiple people access to information that could help them in their research. Mathilde doesn't need to bear the world on her back. Opening the door and allowing other people access to information they previously may not have been able to get will allow for progress to occur that doesn't involve Mathilde anymore than her opening the door.
 
veekie said:
Oh yeah, a lot of research work is a bitch because theres a lot of redundant basic work people are doing. Putting them together lets the ideas circulate, and whats insoluble in one mental paradigm is relatively straightforward if you had a second perspective.
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If we take network effects of the "Ultimate Research Institute" and the backing of an entire scholarly community, scholars, research assistants, assistants to those assistants, Scribes and so on, then presumably, from the quest perspective, the cumulative prospect of a fully developed Research Institute this should result in Mathilde having a higher capacity to take multiple research actions per turn. Basically, as the Royal Society Boon develops over time, Mathilde's research efficiency per AP, from a mechanical perspective increases, which means it becomes increasingly viable for Mathilde to pursue multiple projects, or take multiple actions on the same research topic.

This goes a very long way in allowing us to pursue the multiple research topics we seek to go after, to make use of Avatar and Windherder, and so on and so forth, without having to repeat things like the fight over the Snake Juice turn after turn. The bonuses to Research AP efficiency is taking place as an abstraction of the effect of the network effects brought about by a functioning Royal Society.

Essentially, this boon from our perspective should be to make Mathilde a better researcher. If this Boon is allowed to grow, I can see us for example, having to choose whether to deploy the Boon to boost our capacity to take research actions per turn, to boost a roll in our research action, or to direct the institution to grow in capabilities and therefore strengthen the bonuses that come from the Royal Society, or to focus the agency resource on a project of one of the Society Fellows hat we think is an important game-changer.

Presumably, as the Royal Society grows, both the capacity and the range of options that the Royal Society can take also grows.

The thing is, Mathilde needs the resources, backing and prestige of a state patron in order to realistically employ a bureaucracy to run the Research Institute . As an intuition, it might take 100 AP of action for Mathilde to make one Research Institute feature (such as the best possible Publishing House you can make, or to gain the capacity to plan and mount a research expedition to X), but imagine if there were 20 administrators/scribes/bureaucrats who divide the 100 AP among themselves, with Mathilde generally giving a broad direction and a Julia-equivalent overseeing day to day management.

Basically while Mathilde can choose to play director and gain finer control over the Research Institution, she could also choose to simply play Chairman, set the broader policy directions and let the Research Institute figure out how to make it happen.

To give an illustration of what playing as Chairman is like an adventurous expedition to the Southlands for example for Geomantic Web Lore, for example, might otherwise consume multiple APs for Mathilde on logistics and security arrangements and diplomatic matters, but instead, a Research Institute would have a few people working out the logistics, with Mathilde simply identifying the agenda, goals and destination of said expedition (of course, she has to spend AP to go on expedition, but she doesn't have to, to plan and organize one).

If Mathilde was a Director though, she could go out of her way to manage the finer details of said expedition if she so chooses, but the trade-off is AP expenditure.

That's at least, how I see a Research Institute Boon would work, and how it could help Mathilde. As it grows, Mathilde basically is able to perform more research actions per AP, because alot of the leg-work to organize Experiment X that she has to otherwise do herself is being done by some other Perpetual Apprentice Manager. It is a method for us to increase the number of Research Actions we can take per AP, given many of our projects may well need multiple actions per turn to have a chance of going anywhere.

Basically, I foresee three levels of commitment Mathilde could make to a Royal Society/Research Institute, modeled after the EIC:

1. Silent Partner - Mathilde simply reaps the benefits of the Research Institute as a Silent Partner/Founder. She might be able to declare an agenda, but she has no control over how the agenda is implemented, nor the direction in which the Research Institute works in. This is the 0 AP Option.

2. Chairman - Mathilde acts as a Chairman of the Research Institute. This means Mathilde can commandeer more resources from said Institute than just the passive benefits, declare a more specific agenda, and even have some control over the direction the Research Institute grows in (do we build more labs, improve the quality of our publishers, improve our capacity to mount expeditions, etc) at a "high level". This is the 0.5AP option, and the Duckling Club can be folded into the Research Institute at this level.

3. Director - Mathilde gains the capability to make much more fine-grained decisions about how the Research Institute grows and develops, what actions they should take this turn, which actual sub-projects get more funding priority, and so on and so forth. The Research Institute is essentially Mathilde's fiefdom. This is the 1AP option at a minimum.

I hope that this suggestion on how a Research Institute Boon might work makes sense.

@BoneyM Is this a plausible way of conceiving how a Research Institute might work? As the Research Institute grows in capacity, so too does Mathilde's ability to call on resources, and so to does the network effects of such a community, which means that Mathilde's may eventually be able to use the Boon either to increase the efficiency of research actions per AP, or to provide a roll boost to some research action she is doing per turn because she has an army of admins to avoid certain ways a Research Roll might fail, such as not being able to secure X samples in time.

Basically, it's a very powerful Boon that opens the door to vastly increasing Mathilde's abilities to do Academic Research as the boon grows, at the very minimum (before taking into account other Karak and global level effects a sufficiently successful Research Institute might have). There is a difference between a Waystone Level Moonshot by a woman working out her garage with one or two collaborators, and a Waystone level Moonshot run by Warhammer Fantasy's DAPRA with five or more research teams and Mathilde as Principal Investigator. As Mathilde reflects, the Boon can catapult Mathilde to immense influence and comfort, in this case, applied to her as an Academic.
 
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I've seen comparisons of a Boon used for a giant collection of researchers to both the Royal Society and DARPA at this point. Which is it? Because those are two very different institutions.
 
Imugi said:
I don't really know. Probably by reminding every dwarf about how much knowledge they've lost and by having certain Dwarfs sharing their secrets with the order and stating that they have.
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So how would have those select dwarfs share their secrets? You would need to get a dwarf that is big enough culturally to share their secrets to give anyone else pause and cause them to think about doing likewise. However for dwarfs age is an important part of who is culturally important. As a dwarf ages they get more stubborn. So getting a secret from those stubborn old dwarfs is going to be very very painful. I don't think it could be done really.
 
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