CoC - Tomes and Times.pdf

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Tomes and Times
Tomes and Times
was designed to help Keepers give more consistent reading times to books in their scenarios, and
in passing ended up touching on the mechanics for successfully understanding the contents. It has three main
components:
•
A system for working out reading times based on the book’s properties (or conversely, designing a book to fit a
reading time).
•
A tweaked system for skill changes due to reading, making incremental changes during ongoing study, rather
than applying them all when the book is finished.
•
A tweaked spell-learning mechanism, making it more predictable.
Reading Times
This system is fairly complex. First off, here are three clunky new terms:
Base reading time:
the time needed to physically read through a specific copy of a book.
Study time:
the time needed to read and comprehend a specific copy of a book. This incorporates the base reading
time.
Personal reading time:
the time it will take a specific investigator to read a specific copy of a book. This incorporates
all attributes of the book, modified by the investigator’s abilities.
Tome Attributes
This system gives a book six attributes, three for the physical book, and three for the content.
The properties of the book determine the
base reading time.
Length:
How many words, symbols, pictures etc. are there to plough through? All copies of a particular book are the
same length, barring damage. However, concise or abridged editions, “introductions to” and so on will be shorter
(but often less informative). Editions “with notes and commentary” or expanded editions will be longer.
Condition:
Is the book intact and unmarked; is it heavily underlined and annotated by an earlier reader; or is it dog-
eared, crumpled, smudged, badly repaired with opaque materials, smoke-damaged, bloodstained and partly burned
with various pages missing? (a book with a lot of missing pages becomes significantly shorter as well!) Condition
varies between individual copies of a book. Problems caused by poor condition can be alleviated by getting copies of
missing or damaged pages, or checking other references to find out what pages said. Of course, readers may also be
able to source alternative copies that are in better condition.
Legibility:
Is the text clear, neat printing with labelled diagrams, or is it illegible, ink-spattered scrawl with many
unexplained abbreviations? Legibility varies between printings; in general, newer printings tend to be clearer and in
more familiar typefaces, while very old copies may be hand-written and hard to decipher. On the other hand, cheap
knockoff reprints by enthusiasts or opportunists may be worse than the original. Some books may begin as a high-
quality limited-circulation work, be banned and destroyed by authorities, and be illicitly reprinted in dubious
workshops across the slums of the continent.
The properties of the content influence the
study time.
They are intrinsic to the text of the book and do not vary
between copies or printings. Only a substantial rewrite (such as a New Revised Edition or a new translation) will
alter these properties.
Madness:
How much sense does the book make? Is the content lucid, clearly-expressed and comprehensible, or is it
the ravings of a lunatic?
A high POW helps readers to keep focused and to work out which elements are relevant.
Difficulty:
How accessible is the book? Is the writing a well-organised development of ideas, or a dense academic fog
of cross-references, assumptions and jargon? Is it a compelling narrative with vivid scenes, memorable characters
and accessible metaphor, or is it a highly allegorical, stream-of-consciousness poem with impenetrable layers of
meaning?
A high EDU helps readers follow the thread of the text.
Complexity:
How technical are the ideas contained in the book? Does the work discuss a few straightforward ideas
and accessible facts; is it a complex tangle of hypotheses of vast and sweeping importance to a whole field; or does it
present an entirely new angle on reality, meaning and the human condition?
A high INT helps readers grasp the ideas inside.
Explaining and Assigning Attributes
Length
is the amount of content in the book, mostly determined by the word count.
•
10 minutes for a pamphlet, brief report, picture book or the text of most speeches.
•
1 hour for a children’s book or introductory work, as well as most plays and the classic slender volume of
poetry.
•
2 hours for a slim novel.
•
About 4 hours for an average novel, school textbook or biography.
•
About 8 hours for a heavy novel or average academic work.
•
About 16 hours for your typical brick-like fantasy novel or large university textbook.
•
About 32 hours for a concise encyclopaedia, comprehensive handbook of metaphysics, or the kind of novel that
you keep on the shelf but can’t quite be bothered to read.
A Suitable Boy
and
War and Peace
clock in over
500,000 words.
•
About 64 hours for the longest individual books, including epic novels, massive scientific works, “complete
works of”, and certain holy books.
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms,
the Bible and
In Search of Lost Time
are
around the million-word mark.
Large multi-volume sets like the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
are outside the scope of this project.
We’ll use two books as examples – the first is (naturally)
The Necronomicon
– using the commonest 17
th
-century
Spanish printing of the Latin version, as held by Miskatonic University. The second is a new Mythos Tome, a
supposed children’s story book entitled
Five Go Mad in Massachusetts.
The Necronomicon
is described as an “immense
compendium” so must, really, go into the highest (64
hour reading time) category.
Five Go Mad in Massachusetts
is longer than most
children’s books so we’ll give it a length of 2 hours.
Condition
and
Legibility
modify this time. That might be because the book needs delicate handling, or because
puzzling out the words gives you a headache. On the other hand, it might be a solid, cunningly-annotated copy that’s
a joy to read. Add these modifiers together, then adjust the reading time of the book accordingly.
Condition
determines how much care is needed to handle the book safely, and whether damage or defacement has
made it hard to study.
•
-20% for exceptional quality, and helpful underlining or marking-up
•
+0% for works in normal condition
•
+20% for damage affecting the text, distracting annotations, or works in generally bad condition
•
+50% for a heavily damaged work where significant content is missing, for frail and delicate works that need
special handling, or those with pages uncut or stuck together
•
+100% if the book is so damaged that most of the words have to be puzzled out
The Necronomicon
is “fair to good” but “fragile”,
which I would expect from a 400-year-old work used
by mad wizards. That gives it at least a +20% for
Condition.
Five Go Mad in Massachusetts
is a recent printing,
albeit without helpful underlining (unless your copy
came from a specialist second-hand outlet), so gets no
modifier for Condition.
Legibility
is simply a matter of how easy it is to make out the words and images.
•
-20% for exceptionally good layout and printing, good text size and clear illustrations
•
+0% for normal quality
•
+20% for small, dense printing or good handwriting
•
+50% for poor quality printing, bad or antiquated handwriting
•
+100% for very poor printing or illegible fonts, confusing illustrations, or archaic handwriting that needs
palaeography to decipher.
The Necronomicon
has “poorer cut” type, and printing
of the 17th century wasn't up to modern standards. I'll
interpret that as +50%.
Five Go Mad in Massachusetts
has exceptionally good
layout and text size, with helpful illustrations, and
deserves a -20% modifier.
The
base reading time
is the length, adjusted by the condition and legibility modifiers. This gives the time needed to
just read through the words, regardless of understanding.
The Necronomicon’s
length of 64 hours, and modifiers
totalling 70%, give us a base reading time of 108.8
hours.
Five Go Mad in Massachusetts’s
length of 2 hours, and
a single -20% modifier, gives a base reading time of
1.6 hours.
Madness, Difficulty
and
Complexity
determine how long it takes to understand what you’re reading. They are
themselves subject to the reader’s capabilities, as explained later.
Madness
is a matter of how rational and reasonable the content appears.
•
-2 for works with unusually clear arguments or plots that come together seamlessly and intuitively.
•
0 for normal works.
•
3 for questionable arguments, implausible plots, or incoherent imagery, which distract the reader and make it
hard to focus.
•
6 for incoherent arguments, nonsensical plots or incomprehensible examples; and for work peppered with
bizarre, unrelated and disturbing elements, as if written by someone half-mad.
•
12 for works of the truly insane, with confounding descriptions and more baffling proclamations than
meaningful content.
“The Necronomicon is encyclopaedic, bafflingly so.
Allusions are definitions, inflections are explanations,
wishes are proofs, and decoration and design are
indistinguishable. The vocabulary is as interior of that
of a dream.” I think that indisputably counts as 'truly
insane' on my list. Madness=12.
Five Go Mad in Massachusetts
has an implausible plot
and incoherent imagery (as you might expect in a tale
involving lashings of ginger beer and Dagon).
Madness=3.
Difficulty
measures the structure of the content, and how accessible it is to the reader.
•
0 for works that are particularly well-structured, with natural and captivating narratives, scintillating poetic
imagery, or arguments that fall perfectly into place.
•
3 for normal works.
•
5 for works that assume considerable background knowledge, require a lot of cross-referencing, use specialised
language, or lean towards symbolism.
•
10 for works designed for professionals, those with many footnotes and references to check, and highly
symbolic or metaphorical works.
•
15 for works written for a very limited audience, the densest academic texts and manuals, and cryptic
allegorical works whose true messages are deeply buried.
The Necronomicon
is undoubtedly one of the most
difficult books ever written, so Difficulty=15.
Five Go Mad in Massachusetts,
when being studied for
its hidden Mythos content, requires some background
knowledge and tends towards symbolism. Difficulty=5
Complexity
measures the technicality of the ideas in the text, and how far they depart from general knowledge.
•
0 for introductory works, straightforward poetry and very familiar narratives.
•
3 for normal works.
•
6 for basic academic works, or stories with points to make.
•
9 for advanced academic works, detailed technical manuals, poetry portraying complex ideas about the world,
or stories with very complex plots.
•
12 for the most specialised textbooks, comprehensive new philosophies, or narratives with radical points to
make about reality and the universe.
I think unveiling large sections of the Mythos probably
falls squarely under “radical points about reality and
the Universe”.
The Necronomicon’s
complexity=12.
Five Go Mad in Massachusetts
is definitely a story with
a point to make (don’t play in the sea). Complexity=6.
To get the
study time,
add together the Madness, Complexity and Difficulty, add 1, and multiply by the
base reading
time.
The +1 avoids having any zero-hour reading times. In other words:
study time = base reading time x (madness + complexity + difficulty +1)
The Necronomicon
has multipliers of 12, 15 and 12
which means the base reading time is multiplied by 40
to give a Study Time of 4,352 hours – just under 26
weeks of non-stop studying. At 8 hours study per day,
it’ll take 544 days to study this immense and insane
tome.
Five Go Mad in Massachusetts
scores 3, 5 and 6,
multiplying 1.6 by 15 to give a Study Time of 24 hours.
Even the dimmest investigator can finish this book in a
weekend if they put their mind to it.
Ability adjustments
The modifiers should be adjusted by the reader’s characteristics. The most focused can pick out meaning amidst
insanity; the scholar is accustomed to academic texts or complex metaphor; and the sharpest intellect can follow
even the most challenging ideas.
Reader
How well do you understand the language it's written in? How good are you at grasping complex or allegorical ideas?
How much experience do you have of reading similar works? How good are you at concentrating, and picking out
meaningful elements from gibberish? For 7th edition divide POW, EDU and INT by five in the following section:
•
Each point of POW above 10 cancels a point of
Madness,
to a minimum of 0.
•
Each point of EDU above 10 cancels a point of
Difficulty,
to a minimum of 0.
•
Each point of INT above 10 cancels a point of
Complexity,
to a minimum of 0.
(Keepers may also wish to penalise ability scores below 10 by
increasing
these values as appropriate)
So an average 6th edition investigator (INT 13, POW 10, EDU 15) cancels out 3 Complexity, 0 Madness and 5
Difficulty (an average 7th edition investigator has EDU 13 and so only cancels out 3 Difficulty).

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