Today I bring up a topic usually glossed over in worldbuilding for gaming: Literacy. It’s a skill that we take for granted, given that you are reading this column on a website. Literacy wasn’t always historically widespread, however, and a crafty GM can contrive clever situations hinging upon it.
The simplest and most straightforward ploy is of course confronting PCs with a puzzle that requires reading to solve. While it’s not strictly a D20 systems game, the Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing game does in fact account for literacy in its profession systems, and some of the more combat-able careers do not grant the player character literacy. This gives the party a decent reason to keep that scribe around, and of course the player with literacy might not be telling the entire truth with regards to messages they read and translate for the party.
The situation of literacy is often more complex than just a literate/illiterate split. Take, for example, Greek and Latin being used as academic languages. A tradesman would be able to read, write and keep his ledger, but he might not actually be able to read and understand treatises.
Writing systems can also compound the issue of literacy - Mandarin Chinese uses logograms instead of an alphabet or an abjad. Learning to recognize 2000 words places a user at functional literacy, and 3000 characters will allow a user to read a typical newspaper. Scholars may have to memorize up to 10000 characters to be conversant in their fields.
A writing system like this places a high burden upon learners, and the Korean emperor Sejong developed the Hangeul alphabet to improve literacy rates through the lower classes, and designed it so it could be taught with little education required. Hangeul was suppressed by succeeding Joseon-era emperors, and eventually by the Japanese, who colonized Korea in a forced occupation from 1910 to 1946, but it is presently the official writing system of both Koreas.
Other issues may prove an obstacle even for literate characters. Writing systems and spelling change over time, as students of Chaucerian English will no doubt testify. A modern English reader would have difficulty understanding Carolingian miniscule, let alone Merovingian chancery hand. Want to have PCs recreate Gandalf’s search in the Gondorian archives? Let’s hope their resident academic knows historical scripts.
Of course literacy isn’t going to do much if there isn’t anything to read, which brings us to scribes, libraries and printing presses. A pre-print society will have to rely upon scribes or magic to copy texts, which means that book ownership may be rare and dependent on the reader’s income. In this situation a village of literate folk may instead pool their resources and establish a tiny library, with a retired local farmer as a scribe - his sons being employed in running the farm. Such a character is referenced in the novel Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell, as being the last keeper of the King’s Book - the only extant tome written by the King of the North.
A post-print society is going to have rather more accessible reading, but that brings up the issue of control - would the local government be okay with all kinds of texts being circulated? What about seditious pamphlets or criticisms of a monarch? French libelles in the 18th century painted Queen Marie Antoinette as a profligate spender and a promiscuous adulterer, culminating in accusations of lesbianism and incest with her son.
Such texts could be an obstacle for a good-aligned PC party. What would they do if civilians around them, taken in by polemic texts, start refusing them passage through villages and towns? What if the libel was intended to destabilize their patron monarch?
contributed by M.W. Simmes
The simplest and most straightforward ploy is of course confronting PCs with a puzzle that requires reading to solve. While it’s not strictly a D20 systems game, the Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing game does in fact account for literacy in its profession systems, and some of the more combat-able careers do not grant the player character literacy. This gives the party a decent reason to keep that scribe around, and of course the player with literacy might not be telling the entire truth with regards to messages they read and translate for the party.
The situation of literacy is often more complex than just a literate/illiterate split. Take, for example, Greek and Latin being used as academic languages. A tradesman would be able to read, write and keep his ledger, but he might not actually be able to read and understand treatises.
Writing systems can also compound the issue of literacy - Mandarin Chinese uses logograms instead of an alphabet or an abjad. Learning to recognize 2000 words places a user at functional literacy, and 3000 characters will allow a user to read a typical newspaper. Scholars may have to memorize up to 10000 characters to be conversant in their fields.
A writing system like this places a high burden upon learners, and the Korean emperor Sejong developed the Hangeul alphabet to improve literacy rates through the lower classes, and designed it so it could be taught with little education required. Hangeul was suppressed by succeeding Joseon-era emperors, and eventually by the Japanese, who colonized Korea in a forced occupation from 1910 to 1946, but it is presently the official writing system of both Koreas.
Other issues may prove an obstacle even for literate characters. Writing systems and spelling change over time, as students of Chaucerian English will no doubt testify. A modern English reader would have difficulty understanding Carolingian miniscule, let alone Merovingian chancery hand. Want to have PCs recreate Gandalf’s search in the Gondorian archives? Let’s hope their resident academic knows historical scripts.
Of course literacy isn’t going to do much if there isn’t anything to read, which brings us to scribes, libraries and printing presses. A pre-print society will have to rely upon scribes or magic to copy texts, which means that book ownership may be rare and dependent on the reader’s income. In this situation a village of literate folk may instead pool their resources and establish a tiny library, with a retired local farmer as a scribe - his sons being employed in running the farm. Such a character is referenced in the novel Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell, as being the last keeper of the King’s Book - the only extant tome written by the King of the North.
A post-print society is going to have rather more accessible reading, but that brings up the issue of control - would the local government be okay with all kinds of texts being circulated? What about seditious pamphlets or criticisms of a monarch? French libelles in the 18th century painted Queen Marie Antoinette as a profligate spender and a promiscuous adulterer, culminating in accusations of lesbianism and incest with her son.
Such texts could be an obstacle for a good-aligned PC party. What would they do if civilians around them, taken in by polemic texts, start refusing them passage through villages and towns? What if the libel was intended to destabilize their patron monarch?
contributed by M.W. Simmes
