Books within the libraries within your campaigns?

[Ulrick]

When Players Really Want to Know the Titles of Books...

 

[Treebore]

All good ideas, and yes, even a DM runs out of ideas. I think you can see I don't want just titles, I want authors, what they physically look like, a good idea of what kind of information can be found, by category as well as with a bit of descriptive text.

Some books in Expeditious Retreats "Tome of Tomes" PDF touches on is in game mechanical effects as well. Such as giving bonus' to certain checks, cutting down manufacturing times of various items, and so forth.

So I am looking to expand beyond the 100 tomes Joe did in his PDF. So when I can, I am going to take the titles you guys have suggested, and expound upon them using the format I used earlier in this thread, the format Joe uses in his Tome of Tomes.

 

[Grogg of the North]

When it comes to books in libraries, I tend to come up with most of the description on the spot. Though if I'm revealing things like what the villain was using for help in his research, I'll write it out on an index card or on some paper that I fold to make it fancy (which is great for when the PCs get letters from people!).

 

[Treebore]

When it comes to books in libraries, I tend to come up with most of the description on the spot. Though if I'm revealing things like what the villain was using for help in his research, I'll write it out on an index card or on some paper that I fold to make it fancy (which is great for when the PCs get letters from people!).

That is how I have done it in the past, usually ahead of time since I knew what was going on in such labs, etc... and just gave the write up to the players at the appropriate time.

Its just that every time I always had a quick thought, "I wish there was a formal source of such books."

So now with the big start Joe gave me, and a nice format, I am going to expand upon it until my imagination runs out. Plus I am, and already have, some "standard" books written up, such as for maps, that I can quickly change the title and author of to fit the areas I want specific coverage of. Same goes for sets of spell books, etc...

 

[Janx]

I wonder if some simple computer software and a wiki might help with this.

Using some random book name generators, I could crank out a ton of fake book titles and pages templated as book stat blocks to populate a wiki.

Just load up the wiki with book titles, and then let folks go to down filling in the details (like a summary). Then hook back Enworld's OGRE generator that [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] is working on to roll up those books and hyperlink to their corresponding wiki page.

Instant easy bake library, with easy reference to what each book actually is.

It's probably a weekend's worth of work to get a random generator of the books, based off the table system.

Then another weekend to script the results to feed back into auto-stubbing out wiki pages.

Then spend a little time making the new library generator of "existing" books that are all in the wiki (each one waiting for Enworlders to fluff out).

 

[rkarnes]

Inside the case are three valuable books.
“The Sonnet of Long Lies”, anonymous, worth 550 GP
This book is an original work written by hand in the common language. The author did not sign his name, but it seems to be written in a classical style. The book is a poem about a traveler walking alone through the woods when he encounters a hunter setting up camp for the night. The two agree to share camp, and they each tell one another a story. The hunter’s story is a short and lewd comedy. The traveler’s is a longer and more detailed tragedy about a man who is faith is tested by a god.

“Null Index”, anonymous, worth 375 GP
This strange journal is full of disjointed logic written in sloppy hand-writing. The author frequently invents words and several pages are filled with doodles of what might be tentacles. If someone were to spend time and effort studying it carefully they may realize that the book is actually a list of beings from another plane of existence. The long and confusing sentences are the best possible descriptions of creatures that cannot be described in a way that most people could understand. One such description spans nine pages and begins; “The warbled wheel which demands the back of your mind pay tribute to your front while a bird watches with perverse delight…”

“How to Make Slaves & Enthrall Enemies”, Ryhird, 450 GP
This tome details non-magical ways to use rudimentary techniques of manipulation. It has never provided advice which has helped anyone do anything that the book claims it can. It does, however, effectively sell the idea that people are machines who follow predictable patterns and stereotypes, and encourages the reader to treat people like cattle. Reading this book can only be detrimental.

 

[Janx]

as a side note to [MENTION=6694707]rkarnes[/MENTION]'s examples, some books need a seperation of details for player knowledge and GM knowledge.

What a book appears to be may be different than what the book actually is. Folks are generally looking for a summary to hand to players, and embedding GM knowledge into that description may defeat that.

I would suggest that on misleading books, that the summary section be written as the book appears to be. If there's anything special or devious, add a GM Note: after the summary to explain the devious effect.

 

[Desdichado]

So have you done any write ups about what books your adventurers find in the libraries of your world, public or private?

Know of any good products that provide such write ups for fantasy settings?

I know of XRP's Tome of Tomes PDF. Its what got me started on this.

That hasn't come up very often in my campaign. I've done a very small amount of new books, but they tend to be of the forbidden "Lovecraftian" variety, and are mentioned alongside such infamous tomes as the Pnakotic Manuscripts, the Book of Eibon, Nameless Cults, and <insert my homegrown book title here>. I haven't really otherwise come up with names of "regular" books in the setting, or if I have, its been so off the cuff that I haven't ever bothered making notes or remembering it.

Here's a couple of explicit titles I've come up with:

Prophecies of the Daemon-sultan. By... jann author Abdullah al-Azrad, frequently mis-transliterated into Abdul Alhazred in Terrasan circles. Looking behind the curtain just a little bit, this is hopefully very transparent to Lovecraftian scholars. My Abdullah al-Azrad is a jann from across the ocean, and at least one copy of his book was brought by one of the jann that later became the ruling caste of the new nation of Qizmir. A few copies of it have since made their way throughout the Mezzovian Sea region, to the great sorrow of its inhabitants. He's clearly meant to hark back to the "mad arab" Abdul Alhazred, who wrote Al Azif, the original version of the famous Necronomicon, before it was translated into the Greek. While my own book, Prophecies of the Daemon-sultan isn't meant to be a version of the Necronomicon per se, the Daemon-sultan is a title frequently given to the Blind Idiot God, Azathoth himself.

The Prophecies don't concern the so-called Forbidden Lands, and were written across the ocean in lands with names that have no meaning to Terrasans, and have only little meaning even to the Qizmiri, who originally hailed from those regions many generations ago. Mostly, they concern themselves with places that are either long vanished, and predate humanity completely, or places that have not yet come to be and will postdate humanity by eons. Despite this, many occult scholars have remarked that some of what the Prophecies relate are too similar to accounts of places like Leng and cold Kadath, high in the mountains, and others in the Forbidden Lands to be coincidental, and theorize that whether al-Azrad knew it or not, he was referring to those places too. While the text is rambling and insane, and contradictory and stream of consciousness at times, it recounts relatively clearly one myth passed on for centuries; that of Huudrazai, the Daemon Sultan, the Blind Star-God, the Eye in the Waste, who is prevented from destroying all creation in an orgy of entropy and destruction only by the constant sound of drumming and abhorrent, sibilant flute-sounds produced by inhuman voices which keeps him somnambulant and torpid. Some day, though, "when the stars are right", the piping and drumming will stop, and Huudrazai will startle into full wakefulness, at which point he will destroy all of creation.

Successfully reading the Prophecies will gain you 1d4+1 ranks in Knowledge (Forbidden Lore) and an equal number of Madness points. It will take 4d6 weeks of near constant study, and the DC to do so is 25. The book contains 4d6 incantations.

The Book of the Black Prince, by Heironim Castellata or as it's known in old Terrasan (regional, and possibly incorrect, due to the non-fluency of the writer) Liber Nigeri Principis. Several translations exist to "modern" Terrasan, with slightly differing titles based on the dialect and time period of the translater, including Llibre del Príncip Negre, Il Libro del Principe Nero, and Carte de Prinţul Negru. It's also been translated into Balshatoi: Tsigni Shavi Prints'i, Kurushi: Kitabu cha Mkuu Mweusi and Tarushan: Siyah Prens Kitabi, if you're willing to brave Tarush Noptii to browse a copy.

Castellata was a Terrasan scholar from the Academy at Razina who arranged for an Untash guide and porters up north in the city of Pnakot on the dark shores of Lake Kidin, which at that time was a colonial holding of a powerful Baal Hamazi Empire. With his group he passed through the Lakama Jungle and into the Vale of Pnath, from there with an eye towards exploring and mapping the Forbidden Lands. Seven years later, he stumbled back to the shores of Lake Kidin alone, delirious and permanently broken, clutching to his chest the original of The Book of the Black Prince, written with his own hand, and often using his own blood as ink. He lived for only three months after returning to civilization, before dying under mysterious circumstances, and he had only a few moments of lucidity in those three months. What he described of his journeys in those few moments has never been recorded and the Shazada of Pnakot, the ruler in the name of the Mahe Raja of all Baal Hamazi, ordered everyone (besides himself) who heard Castellata's last words put to death to ensure that they would not survive to plague future generations.

By that point, the Book of the Black Prince itself had been smuggled out of Pnakot (along with expurgated copies of the earlier Pnakotic Manuscript in a fragmentary state; these copies are sometimes referred to as the Pnakotic Fragments because of that.) Copies and translations were circulated amongst occultists, particularly in the South. These were surpressed by the Inquisition, naturally, but some of them survive. Some translations are more "valuable" than others, naturally, but all are dangerous in the right (or wrong) hands.

Original Old Terrasan version: Liber Nigeris Principis: Successfully reading the Liber Nigeris Principis will gain you 1d4+1 ranks in Knowledge (Forbidden Lore) and an equal number of Madness points. It will take 4d6 weeks of near constant study, and the DC to do so is 25. The book contains 4d6 incantations. There are rumored to only have been three copies of this in existance, and the actual original manuscript, in Castellata's own hand, is said to have absorbed more powers still; although it has not been reported seen in over two centuries. How many still exist and where they are is a matter of conjecture to bibliophiles and occultists.

Llibre del Príncip Negre: The first "modern" translation, apparently from the actual original, is now over three hundred years old. It was completed by Dionis Cosme Salavert in Razina at the Academy. Riots accompanied its printing, and many copies were burned in the warehouse, but at least half a dozen are still believed to be in the hands of libraries and collectors from reputable reports. Reading this is easier than the old Terrasan copy, but in making the text more accessible, Salavert inadvertently bastardized some of its content. The DC to study it is 20, and it takes 4d4 weeks of near constant study. You gain 1d4 ranks in Knowledge (Forbidden Lore) and an equal number of madness points. The book contains 4d4 incantations.

Il Libro del Principe Nero: Made by Beneyto Juça from the Llibre, this copy was meant to meet quiet demand. Juça was an opportunist, if not even a con artist, and his quick and dirty copies were published in secret with the intent of being smuggled to collectors as quickly as possible. As such, the modernization of the language was sloppy and often corrupted the original meanings of key passages of text, and large chunks of the text were completely left out. Enough of the original text was preserved, though, that these copies were valuable to those who could get their hands on them. Juça himself never managed to enjoy the fruits of his enterprise, being committed to an asylum even as smugglers and shady black market dealers started bringing in profits from his effort. The text is easier to read, taking 3d4 weeks to study (DC 18) and gives 1d3 ranks in Knowledge (Forbidden Lore) and Madness points. The book contains 2d4 incantations, but at least 50% of them are flawed. Most of these flaws will simply render the incantation impotent, but there is a 10% chance that a flawed incantation will actually have a catastrophic failure. Copies of this version are illegal yet are (relatively) common in occult black markets.

Carte de Prinţul Negru: Mahomat Raffalbes made this copy in the vernacular dialect of the far east. This is sometimes called simply The Eastern Book. The original translation Raffalbes made was from Juça's copy, but suspecting that that copy was flawed, he infiltrated the Academy at Razina and managed to consult Salavert's original copy. To what extent this consultation informed his translation is uncertain, but notable scholars of the book claim it is the best version that is somewhat readily available. However, the regional idiom makes it hard to decipher (DC 25) unless of course you are fluent in that dialect (then it is DC 20). It takes 4d4 weeks of study, grants 1d4 ranks on Knowledge (Forbidden Lore) and contains 3d4 Incantations, with a 5% chance that any given incantation is flawed.

Tsigni Shavi Prints'i and Kitabu cha Mkuu Mweusi: The Balshatoi and Kurushi translations were done by unknown hands, based on Juça's flawed translation, and done even more sloppily than his. In addition, the unknown translator clearly tried to reconcile the concepts in the book to his own beliefs, so many things are changed or expurgated. It is believed that the same translator published both versions of this book, which appeared at more or less the same time and who's text is very similar in content. All of the spells have been removed, but the book still will grant 1d2 ranks in Knowledge (Forbidden Lore) and Madness points after 3d4 weeks of study (DC 18).

Siyah Prens Kitabi: The Tarushan copy is not readily available, and in fact exists in extremely limited supply in the private collections of a handful of Tarushan nobility, which clearly makes their accessibility very limited. Since most scholars do not have access to this version of the book to compare it to the others, very little is known about it. There are apocryphal stories that suggest that Castellata himself did not die mysteriously, but was kidnapped by the vampires of Tarush Noptii from his asylum in Pnakot, converted into one of their foul race, and put to work expanding, correcting, and perfecting the Book of the Black Prince. If this is really true, the Tarushan copies might be the most complete, most foul, and most damning of all the versions, but that story is apocryphal, and few scholars admit publicly to believing it.

 

[Burrahobbit]

The late lamented Kargantane published a list of fan-submitted books that might be found in a Ravenloft library in their Book of Sorrows netbook (available as a .pdf on the site). Though sometimes over the top, and quite specific to Ravenloft, there are some neat ideas there on how to play with what players or characters might know about a setting, or how to reveal it to them in-game.