a new layo profession?

[Stranzini]

Before the 19th century, only a minority, and at most times and places only a very small minority, could read or write.

I don't know (question for the authorities? and no I dont know my PnP rules like many of you do) if we've formalized a rule for which characters can actually read and write...I should think it might require a high intelligence - I'm thinking like 13 or more maybe just to get the numbers down - PLUS some character background justification of the character actually having gone through schooling (and remember, the majority of people's parents won't have been able to read and write so "learned it at home" isn't that plausible either in 9 cases out of 10). Just high intelligence isn't enough...you could be smart, before the days of mandatory schooling that didn't mean you'd had the opportunity or seen the importance of literacy.

So the majority of our characters OUGHT to be illiterate. And I don't see where "adventurers" would be more likely to be literate on average than say a townfolk of bankers, shopclerks, etc...I'd think it would be more the opposite. "Aw mom, I don't wanna stay home and learn to read, when I grow up I'm gonna go bash goblin heads and find treasure. Dont need book larnin for that!" *Junior takes his little bow and runs out into the woods to shoot birds*

And I know all those halforcs and halfgiants should be even less literate than the others.

So, now that we have this cool writing system, what we could have are professional writers. Players who can write can offer their services to players who can't write. Need to send that message by bird? Need to write a love letter? need to read the letter somebody sent you? Find somebody who can and pay them 5 gold for a routine message, more for a well-composed love letter, lots more for one that actually works... Bards should be good at this, but they are not the only ones and probably too expensive and too flowery in their taste for your ordinary messages...young wizards could earn a few coin this way too, they'd have to be literate. Most clerics should be literate, its part of their profession and they were often the only ones who were in the middle ages. But they might not be good at love letters.

This does lend a whole new reason for bards to exist by the way, especially in those lower levels where they don't feel like they can contribute that much yet. But maybe not all bards are literate either?

Just throwing out the suggestion, although I think if it was going to work we'd all need to crack down in our role playing on who can and can't read and/or write (they could be separable, or there could be some concept of different levels of literacy between basic messages "meet me in Port Velensk" and serious expression) - so that needs some world rules and DM help and all...

[LoganGrimnar]

well.. okay so i cant read.... i walk into town and grab one of the thousands of NPC's that wonder invisably and have them read it for me. You say you might not be able to find a NPC that can read? okay so i walk to a temple a RP it out. Id also like to poit out that avarage int is 10. In RL im about a 10 and i can read. The only times you have a proablem reading and writing is when you have below 10. Read page 37 of the NWN hand book.If its not on the same page as mine, find "Ability Scores" and then read under "intelligence". Here you will find a note that says "An Intelligence score lower than 9 means that your char is unable to speak properly". Now if you can find someone that wants to pay you to read all and write all there business then more power to you, but that chanses are slim that there going to make a set rule that you need int 13+ to read and write.

[SuperMunch]

Heh...

(that is not a sarcastic or satirical "heh", just a short snort laugh, because I'd love it if this was true)

I'd really, really love to receive requests to act as Cyrano for another character - I'd spend my own time writing flowery love letters to anybody that would ask (after asking a few questions about the intended target, of course) and LOVE it just for the oportunity to make Freldo that much more Bard-ier.

However, I'm sure most folks don't even consider of doing it this way because, not as characters, but as players, they can do this by themselves - despite it being very OOC in some cases.

I don't consider it a profession, it would be better RP'd - IF people would remember that.

[miltonyorkcastle]

both the origin and the reply have valid points.  it would be very interesting and fun to see people RP illteracy more (some do already)  and to have those that offer services of writing and such.  however, it's true, by DnD standards, with an Int of 10, anyone can easily learn to read and write, as 10 is average for humans.

[Dorganath]

I'll say I like the idea of writing services for hire insomuch as the parts that deal with a "well written love letter" or the like. Certainly some characters (and players) will not write as nicely or eloquently as others. I don't see any reason why such services could not be offered right now.  
  However. keep in mind a few things with all this:
  1) The adventuring population is far less than 1% of the entire world population. By that fact alone, they are exceptional and stand apart from everyone else just by simple fact of being who and what they are. For the most part, literacy among the adventuring set is not really a problem, nor should it be.
  2) An intelligence of 13 is actually fairly high as a threshold for literacy. It's true that low intelligence has a strong impact on literacy, but now we're down into the 8 or 9 range. Likewise Having an INT of 16 shouldn't automatically mean someone is literate, if said person was never taught.
  3) Layonara is not Earth.
  I'm not sure we want to get into policing the RP of literacy based on a character's INT score....and what about rings and spells that boost ones INT? Does that make them literate? When we're not playing our characters, who's to say they're not bettering themselves by learning to read and write...or learning to read and write better?
  For the most part, I think players already do a good job of RPing intelligence in terms of how well they can speak. Typically, someone (like a low-INT half-giant) who can't speak well isn't going to be able to write well either...or read much more than some common and simple words. I'd personally leave the discretion up to the players to RP appropriately their intelligence and thereby their level of literacy rather than crafting (and enforcing) rules about who can and cannot send hawk messages, use the quil system, etc.
  While the points about 19th centrury Earth are valid and true, this is not Earth. The society is much more akin to modern-day only set into a low-technology setting. If we were to draw more exacting parallels, then disease would be rampant, a stark division between peasants and the ruling class would exist to the point of opression, a singular religious dogma would be enforced as law on a regional basis, those who did not subscribe to said dogma would be summarily executed, a war would be started over such, there would be no "common" and languages would vary as frequently as on a regional basis, elves would likely be either worshiped or shot on sight, etc.
  Lastly remember that we have to keep the "fun factor" in mind. This is a game, and people play to have fun. Telling them they can't read or write is going to take away from that fun.

[steverimmer]

Gotta remember too that some jobs, in the UK at least required its employees to read.  The one I'm mainly thinking of is the Royal Navy were all crewmen had to read 'Daily Orders' every day at risk of being flogged, and the tradition of the command posting 'Daily Orders' everyday on a notice board goes back to Elizabethen times at least

I'm sure that sailors didn't have a higher intelligence than most of the rest of the populuation within their class.

[Faldred]

Dorganath - 3/27/2006  1:05 PM

Typically, someone (like a low-INT half-giant) who can't speak well isn't going to be able to write well either...or read much more than some common and simple words. I'd personally leave the discretion up to the players to RP appropriately their intelligence and thereby their level of literacy rather than crafting (and enforcing) rules about who can and cannot send hawk messages, use the quil system, etc.

Zug, a half-giant with 8 INT, is played as semi-literate.  He can read and write, to an extent, thanks to the kindness of a priest of Vorax.  But his writing is very simple, and fraught with spelling and grammatical errors.  Also, he is likely to misinterpret something he reads if the text is not simple and clear (more so when reading than when in conversation, because even a dumb half-giant can pick up on some non-verbal cues and inflection).

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Pig (Koppig Varken) was played for a while as being mostly illiterate; as suits a Barbarian. In PnP, all of the classes were literate, except barbarians, who had to spend extra skill points on literacy. However, I'd say it's reasonable to assume that anyone with an INT of 9 or higher is LIKELY to be able to read in a civilized society.

Whether or not they read or write on a regular basis, however, is a different matter entirely. However, as has been said, the adventuring population is a very small portion of the population, and can be, for the most part, considered exceptional.

[Pen N Popper]

Pig (a fighter) is still illiterate.  He drags halflings over to do his notice writing.  He even had another PC read a note he had written to be sent by bird (which he mistakenly sent to himself).  I don't know that there is enough writing work to keep a profession like that alive.  Good luck, give it a shot.

[crazedgoblin]

is there a conversion table from IQ to INT?

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Google.

[SuperMunch]

IQ to INT conversion?

Better ask your mother and father what they rolled when you were conceived.  

I speak two languages fluently (portuguese and english are one and the same to me - I dream in both languages, it's uncanny), one I have semi-fluency in (spanish, I don't dream in it) and I scatch two others (italian and french).  By D&D rules, that gives me a +1 INT bonus for speaking two lanugages and - let's just clump spanish, italian and french together, another +1 bonus - so I'm a 14 INT just counting known languages.

Not bad, but if our european friends start posting here, we'll have 18-22 INT scores from some of them.  

Americans... hehehehe... I got heard a joke from my french friend about you guys...

What do you call someone that speaks more than two languages?  Polyglot.
What do you call someone that speaks two languages?  Bilingual.
What do you call someone that speaks just one language?  American.

*ducks and covers*
*hehehehehe*

[Faldred]

crazedgoblin - 3/28/2006  1:44 AM

is there a conversion table from IQ to INT?

I always understood IQ = INT x 10 to be the accepted conversion.  This would fall well in line with INT 10 being average (equal to 100 IQ).  With 140 being the start of "genius" IQs, an INT 14 would be right on the border of that, over 14 would be considered MENSA material, which again sounds reasonable -- if adventurers are roughly 1% of the population, how many of those have an INT of 15?  Most wizards, probably, and some skill-based rogues, but few others.

[Stranzini]

OK, I can see the community really doesn't like this idea and that's OK! I'm not going to advocate doing anything people don't want to do, especially with such an astoundingly fast and unanimous reaction.

But most of you didn't take very long to think about exactly what I said...

So let me flog the dead horse just a minute or two and then we can move on.

I kind of think the reaction is maybe because we are products of our society and aren't thinking outside the box on this one, even though we do on lots of other things?

Illiteracy is almost never linked to IQ. Never mind the middle ages, 1 billion people living on earth today are illiterate, according to UNESCO. 49% of them live in the least developed countries, and in those countries 45% of children between 6 and 11 do not go to school.

The people who live in those countries do not have lower IQs on average than anybody else, and the people in europe in the middle ages didn't either. It wasn't a sudden improvement in IQs in the 19th century that made the majority in europe and america literate today.

Illiteracy is a social problem, not a personal problem. To have a population that is majority literate, kids have to go to school.

So, we just have to say that Layonara has mandatory universal public schooling and then we can all be literate except for the rare cases of seriously sub-level IQs (*waves hi at Pig*).

*modifies Sen's character bio to include public school instead of a crafting apprenticeship*

Personally I think that could maybe be true under the enlightened Queen Allurial but I'm not so sure how it can be true for all of Layo. But OK.

And Dorg - just by the way, I do kinda think Layo has a ruling class(es) and that its ranks are closed, I rather suspects it has peasants too...and that they don't get to grow up to be queen. A famous adventurer would be about the best they could hope for in life, right?

Anyway, please don't get hung up on the IQ/INT thing, it was just a quick way to draw a line somewhere to start with, it's not all I said, and I don't think y'all read what I was saying if you all jumped on just that.

The NWN handbook talks about speaking - thats not the same thing. Illiterate people may be able to express themselves quite well - verbally. Reading and writing requires a separate additional skill. There are many (real world) languages that never even acquired the reading and writing part, or that never had it until missionaries came along and invented it for them in order to make Bibles (all of our many religions on Layo are verbally transmitted aren't they? any holy texts?). And it turns out today that the illiteracy rate is much higher in societies that speak languages that are globally used by less people. The fewer people that speak a language, the less likely there is to be a body of literature, for one thing, or complex commercial exchanges or other reasons to need to write and read, and the more likely the people who speak it are to be illiterate but communicate perfectly well verbally - something worth thinking about for role playing racial or tribal minorities on Layo. Why would Wemics even need to write?

(As a side note, if we personally have kneejerk reactions that illiteracy = stupidity, that makes life in the real world difficult for those who suffer from it, and who suffer from shame about it, and makes solving the problem by getting at the real cause difficult too. And, to get really really far off the subject...apparently 23% of the US population, no jokes please Freldo, thank you, are functionally illiterate too but that is something for discussing another place and another time, but y'all may want to do some googling on the subject.)

And...Freldo, it was a Dutch guy in Finland who told me that joke and they generally have a pretty good claim to be telling it. Although they're way ahead of the Americans, there are plenty of French who would be pushing it just a little themselves if they tried to tell THAT particular joke...none of them have tried to tell it to me, yet...

All this said - I withdraw the proposal, I didnt realize it would be so  much of a downer for everybody if we can't (almost) all be literate.

Hakuna matata!

[SuperMunch]

Stranzini, you're taking things too hard.  I really liked the idea but it's not going to fly, it's to much overhead and requires a level of role playing most would find annoying - it would be great if everybody did as Pen N Popper does it with Pig but it's a very hard thing to ask for.  The solution, for simplicity's sake, is Dorganath's - which is also the rule book's solution.  We can talk about what's valid and what isn't for years but face it, it's way to much trouble to find a solution for a problem that would be better handled through good quality role playing.  I wish I knew Pig well enough to tag along as his official reader, that would be fun - but alas, I'll just stick to poking fun at Cole, Grympint and anybody else that comes along.

[Dorganath]

Eh...I think you misunderstood me a bit, and please don't take any input here too personally.
  I'm approaching this not from the "I want my character to be able to read" angle but from the angle of actually having a personal reader/writer as a profession for hire/retention.
  I'm not at all opposed to the idea of someone hiring out themselves to write things for people who are not as eloquent as they'd like to be. This would indeed be a neat thing, and I say go ahead and make it happen.
  What I am saying, though, is having some form of enforced illiteracy is not going to go over well with the player base in general. Those who should be illiterate already do a good job of RPing it. Further, it gives GMs yet another thing to keep track of during quests and whatever...
  Player: *reads the inscription* GM: It says....Oh wait, do you have your reading gnome with you? Player: Er...no GM: Oh, sorry then...it says, "shiwe sdfhs uwn sdfas yfwei hsdfsydsldfh dfhehsdlfh."
  Remember, it's a game, and people are here to have fun. As interesting and realistic as some proposed systems may be, often times they're either not practical or they detract too much from the enjoyment of the game. What would likely happen is that most characters would write literacy into their character bios.
  Your points about the literacy rates prior to 19th century earth are valid. Your points about modern literacy rates are valid. They might even work well in a PnP type setting. But not here, unfortunately.
  On the class thing...to be clear what I meant...What I was talking about was a class system with such a sharp division between the haves and the have-nots. It's true that no one "grows up to be come king/queen" from the general population. But there are also degrees of wealth throughout Layonara, rather than the dirt poor and filthy rich choices we've had here on Earth in our past.
  Like I said, don't take this so personally.

[Stranzini]

I understood Dorganath, its cool. I had just got to thinking...

[aragwen]

Dorganath - 3/28/2006 4:43 PM   Player: *reads the inscription* GM: It says....Oh wait, do you have your reading gnome with you? Player: Er...no GM: Oh, sorry then...it says, "shiwe sdfhs uwn sdfas yfwei hsdfsydsldfh dfhehsdlfh."

 What did the inscription say? I have tried for hours and cant figure it out.

[darkstorme]

Is it just me, or is the term "reading gnome" incredibly entertaining?

[Pen N Popper]

http://www.layonaraonline.com/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=24982

Where are all the "professional" writers?