The press is one of the great movers of the new age. If you are going to spread ideas or report on a new discovery or promulgate a new law, printed materials can make this happen.
This includes for player characters. A good way to build a reputation is to print an account of your travels and discoveries - even if people violently disagree, the fact that they have to publicly speak against you (or a pseudonymous figure that everyone in the know can identify) will allow your star to rise.
For TRoAPW's purposes, we will speak of three sizes of publication:
- Pamphlet
- Treatise
- Book
and three types of audience it may be geared to:
- Broad-as-possible
- General
- Specific (and technical)
That's not necessarily low-, middle- and highbrow, but the connection could be made.
We may say that in a city (near the press itself, or on a notable trade route to get them) a fully-fledged book goes for 20 silver pieces, a Treatise 10 and a Pamphlet 2.
Actually getting something printed and on the booksellers' stalls yourself requires one of the following:
- Paying for it yourself
- Convincing a printing house to print it - usually on the basis that there is a way for them to make their money back
- Convincing a wealthy patron to put up the funds
Or, indeed, a combination of the above.
The costs of paying for it yourself are predictable enough: time and money. Getting a printing house involved is likely end up with your work edited or suitably adjusted for the market. Getting a patron involved may distract from your own fame, and indeed yoke you inevitably in the public eye to Lord X or Prefect Y or Arch-Priestess Z - aside from the tie of obligation involved.
Of course, decent quality maps or illustrations will add to the cost of getting a book printed.
It is assumed that if a character lacks the skills or inclination to sit down and write themselves, they may hire a hack to do it for them - usually at a rate a little below the average 'white collar' wage in the city you find them. A more highly placed collaborator can do a better job, but may cost more and absorb some of the resulting fame.
So, what benefit comes from all this?
TRoAPW publishing sits alongside the usual set of carousing rules - but with wider social possibilities. If the Crucible Society want to gain fame from their exploits in the Bronzemount Free State or acclaim for their contributions to the field of Pneumametrics or draw attention to the plight of stranded sailors in the Alamgir Empire, then publishing can accomplish this.
Looking across to The 52 Pages, in terms of hazard and unforeseen consequences, publishing looks more like 'Training' than the various other options.
Unless a player wins the jackpot - the right book at the right time with the right distribution network and the right kind of people recommending it - it is assumed that any profits accumulating to them are fairly low. The roof stays over their heads.
Actually trying to write for that kind of profit is difficult - by the time everyone's aware that they should be paying attention to (again) the plight of stranded sailors in the Alamgir Empire, that section of the market is swamped.
Writing on behalf of a cause or faction - Pneumametrics, say, or in favour of the Jointe in Tsymric - can get you a certain measure of publicity, but a smaller audience than you might hope.
In any case, player characters shouldn't be trying to be professional authors!
There are, of course, two more things to consider.
Firstly, grimoires. It is just about possible to pass on details of a spell without actually having to exactly reproduce a page of a grimoire. Think of an off-the-shelf spell as being like an equation with the final answer not yet given, but all the working shown - and which must then be rewritten for presentation in beautiful calligraphy.
Accordingly, there are extra costs involved (even before you get to the point of dealing with the magical regulations for that jurisdiction). This involves things like specialist printing presses and secure 'behind the counter' retail transactions. Can't have someone else completing the equation!
So, a pamphlet length account of a new spell costs as much as an ordinary treatise, a treatise with (say) half a dozen spells as much as a full book and a full book with a good number of spells inside it - perhaps as much as ten times the cost of a romance.
***
Secondly, censorship.
Nowhere in Calliste has a formal freedom of the press, or of speech*. There may be city quarters where nobody cares what you say, or what you write - but a law may well have been broken all the same.
Let us speak of six levels of censorship.
- Review and adjustment of all printed material
- Review, adjustment of most
- Review, &c of many
- Review, &c of certain targeted works
- Review, &c laser-focussed on certain works
- Absolute minimum review.
This is further complicated by how keen the authorities are to actually carry out their duties. The lax censors of the Margravate of Fuchsunddachs may be commanded to review most material throughly (3.) but don't often manage this - unlike the Duchy of Brocq-et-Tod, whose Public Truth Commissioners carry out targeted censorship far more efficiently and dutifully.
Thus, one pictures something like the below.
1 | Painstaking review of all works | |
2 | Painstaking review of most works | Lax review of all works |
3 | Painstaking review of many works | Lax review of most works |
4 | Painstaking review of targeted works | Lax review of many works |
5 | Painstaking review, laser-focused on certain works | Lax review of targeted works |
6 | Lax review, laser-focused on certain works | |
7 | Absolute minimum review | |
But states don't have the same laws, or the same short-term policy objectives, or be rooted in the same cultures. The Grand Republic of Melesvulpia may have a robust tradition of political debate and broadsheets, but maintain public order via significant controls on what books of magic can be printed.
So we might conceive of something like the below.
Books of Magic | Books of Magical Discussion | Political material | Religious material | Military material | ||||||
1 | Painstaking, all works | Painstaking, all works | Painstaking, all works | Painstaking, all works | Painstaking, all works | |||||
2 | Painstaking, most works | Lax, all works | Painstaking, most works | Lax, all works | Painstaking, most works | Lax, all works | Painstaking, most works | Lax, all works | Painstaking, most works | Lax, all works |
3 | Painstaking, many works | Lax, most works | Painstaking, many works | Lax, most works | Painstaking, many works | Lax, most works | Painstaking, many works | Lax, most works | Painstaking, many works | Lax, most works |
4 | Painstaking, targeted works | Lax, many works | Painstaking, targeted works | Lax, many works | Painstaking, targeted works | Lax, many works | Painstaking, targeted works | Lax, many works | Painstaking, targeted works | Lax, many works |
5 | Painstaking, laser-focused | Lax, targeted works | Painstaking, laser-focused | Lax, targeted works | Painstaking, laser-focused | Lax, targeted works | Painstaking, laser-focused | Lax, targeted works | Painstaking, laser-focused | Lax, targeted works |
6 | Lax laser-focused | Lax laser-focused | Lax laser-focused | Lax laser-focused | Lax laser-focused | |||||
7 | Absolute minimum review | Absolute minimum review | Absolute minimum review | Absolute minimum review | Absolute minimum review | |||||
This is not exactly complete - it leaves out, for instance, pornographic material. 'Targeted' in the above refers to a certain type of (EG) magical work - thus necromancy, mind control and so forth.
You will also note that Books of Magic and Books of Magical Discussion are different categories in Calliste. For reasons discussed above, they are different things (just one spell would be enough to make a theoretical tome into a Book of Magic). It may be assumed that most legal systems would wish to keep a closer eye on Books of Magic than Books of Magical Discussion, but Calliste is a big place with a wealth of little principalities and enclaves!
Of course, it should be noted that states may also wish you to add something to a publication - a seal of approval, for instance. This is aside from states (or state actors) seeking, commissioning or encouraging publishing.
Illegal presses may exist, allowing you to dodge the above but will have their own complications. The price will be at least comparable to a legal press - any costs (in time or coin) you avoid in not going before the censor you accrue in (for time) the necessary discretion an illegal press requires and (for coin) the premium they extract.
***
So as not to end on that note...TRoAPW is portraying a world in which substantial, influential works are being printed and circulated. Difficult to have an Enlightenment without that. Lawmakers are (perhaps) more often curious than censorious. Publishing in Calliste may be difficult, but it is also widespread.
I don't insist on TRoAPW being a 'glass-half-full' setting (things might be going badly wrong!) but the glass definitely isn't empty.
*And, indeed, even places that proclaim both may have various organisations, cultural tendencies, &c. that suppress or discourage a certain kind of book.
