The BoK&L lists several books on the family luck table that grant a bonus to a certain skill if a certain roll (usually read) is made. Are these books normal versions of those texts or are they special and/or magical versions? Would it be possible to have a scribe make copies and give them as (potentially very useful) gifts to others?

The BoK&L lists several books on the family luck table that grant a bonus to a certain skill if a certain roll (usually read) is made. Are these books normal versions of those texts or are they special and/or magical versions? Would it be possible to have a scribe make copies and give them as (potentially very useful) gifts to others?


My guess is they are mundane versions, but magical tomes could be introduced depending on the level of magic the GM is running in his campaign. Pendragon is, by design, a pretty low-magic setting, so I'd expect these kinds of books would be very rare (like 1 in 100 or more, again, according to taste).

Copying books is no small undertaking and it would be very expensive—I would imagine the monks who are capable of such work are in very high demand already, for both ecclesiastical books and more earthly topics (for the noble class, who commission them or buy them up). The market would be in a very few private collections, held in well-defended places.

Any magical books would likely be of a holy (or unholy) nature. I don't see British pagans producing books, as much of their traditions would be oral.

As a side note, most books in the Early periods would be almost exclusively ecclesiastical, so I don't know that you could increase that many skills, other than Religion. You wouldn't see sort of "how-to" books on various topics until very late in the campaign.


My two cents.


T.

The BoK&L lists several books on the family luck table that grant a bonus to a certain skill if a certain roll (usually read) is made. Are these books normal versions of those texts or are they special and/or magical versions?

Normal


Would it be possible to have a scribe make copies and give them as (potentially very useful) gifts to others?

Yes, as long as the fee for the scribe has been paid

Books don't have to be magical to give you skill-plusses. Remember, most people do not have reference materials, so the ability to look up something that you only sort of remember still gives you quite an edge.

Yes, as long as the fee for the scribe has been paid

How much would that cost? I'm thinking 1D6+1 £, although I'm sure my players will complain if they have to pay a scribe £7 for a book.

Well, on page 165 of the 5.1 Pendragon Rulebook it says that it's 5d. a page to copy a book, and 25 d. a page to copy and illuminate a book.

I'm going to imagine that if it's the kind of book that gives you a skill bonus you'd want it to be the fancier kind, and you can decide how many pages there are in it, but I'd wager at least 100 pages, which would be about £10 at least, unless books back in this period were significantly shorter than nowadays?

Well, if we assume that the Bible is 1000 pages long an illuminated version would cost £104!

There are long medieval books. Sir Thomas Mallory's Le Morte de Arthur is a fat bastard of book in modern and rather small print ... The Niebelunglied is also quite long. My (Swedish) copy of Njal's Saga is 399 pages long. Written by poor Icelanders! So book could be very long.

Yes, as long as the fee for the scribe has been paid

How much would that cost? I'm thinking 1D6+1 £, although I'm sure my players will complain if they have to pay a scribe £7 for a book.

They ought to consider that a cheap price!
Both in-game, as books are very very rare
and out of game, as it's a cheap price to pay for an unusual and rare bonus!

Yes, as long as the fee for the scribe has been paid

How much would that cost? I'm thinking 1D6+1 £, although I'm sure my players will complain if they have to pay a scribe £7 for a book.

They ought to consider that a cheap price!
Both in-game, as books are very very rare
and out of game, as it's a cheap price to pay for an unusual and rare bonus!


So if £7 is cheap what's appropriate if they have a copy to begin with? What if they need to find one?

Yes, as long as the fee for the scribe has been paid

How much would that cost? I'm thinking 1D6+1 £, although I'm sure my players will complain if they have to pay a scribe £7 for a book.

They ought to consider that a cheap price!
Both in-game, as books are very very rare
and out of game, as it's a cheap price to pay for an unusual and rare bonus!

So if £7 is cheap what's appropriate if they have a copy to begin with?


An appropriate price to have it copied? Oh, at least a year of work by a professional copyist that they have hired

What if they need to find one?

need to find a book?
I'd say about 5 years of looking around in places that they are probably not welcome
I cannot stress the rarity of those things!

And to cause more trouble, if they borrow a book I refer you to look up the story around the quotation "As the calf to the cow, so the copy to the book."

And to cause more trouble, if they borrow a book I refer you to look up the story around the quotation "As the calf to the cow, so the copy to the book."


Interesting story of the calf and the cow. In fact it begs to be incorporated into a Pendragon adventure...