Fantasy Newspapers

[Demarest]

The one thing I'm wondering is if everyone in these cities (with newspapers) are literate. For those of you who do have newspapers in your campaigns or are thinking about it, regardless of the movable-type issue, how do you explain the market for a newspaper to do well in a medieval city? Are the commoners literate and willing to read it? Or are these papers, which are more like journals, designed exclusively for the wealthy? Another thing to keep in mind, is that if they are for the wealthy, the vocabulary used will be different as the target audience would change.

I think a newspaper is a neat idea, but while working out the mechanics, keep in mind the target audience. Most medieval folk were illiterate.

 

[Grymar]

I write one up now and then for my Eberron game. Between moveable type (fully possible in Eberron), amanuensis, and other small magic I have no problem with the technological side of it.

I try to do one every two to three sessions, or as the pace of the adventuring dictates. There are clearly issues that go by without me doing one, but we just assume there is little of interest to the party there.

It is great for opening up new plots or showing how their actions have effected the area at large.

<edit> I thought I should add that I use Publisher to make the paper (newsletter style, 4 pages) and it generally takes 4-8 hours for an issue.

 

[MaxKaladin]

I did one for an old Forgotten Realms game I ran in college. I'm pretty sure the existance of the paper was actually stated in the game material somewhere, so that's how I justified it. I think I ended up producing about 8 or 10 issues of the "Waterdeep Daily Trumpet". One got handed out per session the party was in Waterdeep. It was single page with three columns and I used a font I found on the net that was made to look like an old typewriter to suggest primative printing. Content varied. Sometimes I had a story about what the PCs did previously. Sometimes I actually drew on previous campaigns and wrote about events in those (both campaigns took place at the same time in the game world, just different locations).

A big chunk was taken up by an "ad" section where I sprinkled various plot hooks for the party to follow. A couple of the unfollowed hooks turned into little running stories/gags told in ad-form. What started out as a classic "seeking adventurers to rescue woman from dragon" ad took on a life of it's own as the ads became increasingly desperate sounding and offered larger and larger rewards. Later, notices from the city government appeared warning of the high numbers of disappearences connected with the whole thing and advising people to stay away. The players liked the story but wouldn't touch it with a standard-issue 10' pole.

The players really liked the paper but it could be a pain to produce.

In a more recent game, I took the Roman approach. There was a "newspaper" of sorts that was posted on a bulletin board in the forum (Roman setting). Each day, rich people would send scribes or literate slaves to the forum to copy down the paper early in the morning and bring it home for them to read (or have read to them) over breakfast. In larger cities, there would be someone reading the paper off for the various scribes to copy down (since they couldn't all get close enough to the posted copies otherwise) and for the illiterate people to hear. It never really came up in the game though and I never produced a paper.

 

[prosfilaes]

I think a newspaper is a neat idea, but while working out the mechanics, keep in mind the target audience. Most medieval folk were illiterate.

Most medieval folk were illiterate because print was expensive. In any society with a newspaper, print would be common enough and cheap enough that at least the middle class would be mostly literate.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Most medieval folk were illiterate because print was expensive. In any society with a newspaper, print would be common enough and cheap enough that at least the middle class would be mostly literate.

And when there is nothing being produced that you need or want to read then you have no reason to learn to read. A D&D world TENDS to assume a fair degree of literacy with the existence of spells, spellbooks, written scrolls and books of various kinds (but historical information would seem to be a common subject), correspondence, accounting ledgers, and on and on. A move as simple as positing the existence of a newspaper in the first place would be an impetus for citizens who aren't already literate to learn so that they have the same information and entertainment as their neighbors.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think a newspaper is a neat idea, but while working out the mechanics, keep in mind the target audience. Most medieval folk were illiterate.

Most D&D people, though, are literate. So newspapers and dime novels and even magazines and religious pamphlets and comic books are entirely within the realm of believability for a D&D campaign, depending upon how your world treats writing. I wouldn't try it in the barbarian tribes, but in the capital city, sure.

Of course, D&D has a fairly strong link between literacy and magic (spellbooks, for instance), so it's entirely possible that these writings are as regulated and controlled as magical writings are...

 

[jgbrowning]

I love it when real-world issues are solved through elegant in-game fixes.

This is an excellent quote.

joe b.

 

[Shades of Green]

My old campaign world (Renya) had printing presses, though these were usually found in the cities, as Renya was a backward country where the peasant majority was illiterate (unlike most city dwellers). So newspapers and political leaflets were completely possible.

In my next campaign world, I am thinking of an early-Steampunk tech-level as well, including printing presses. I intend to write and print a newspaper (one A4 page) per adventure. Since the game will take place in a remote Dwarven colony, only one paper will be usually available (in addition to a few notes scribbled on the local billboard): The Digger.

 

[The Lost Muse]

I'm on my second Eberron Campaign, and found a newspaper a great way to extend the meta-plot of events taking place. In thge first campaign I wrote one for many of the sessions - I'm 2-3 sessions into the second one, and have just written the first one; however, I liberally borrow from WotC's Sharn Inquisitives. I write them in Word, with two columns, and 12 point font. Takes about an hour if I've been thinking of what I want to write, more if I start from scratch.

You can see a few examples here: http://members.shaw.ca/timaritimus/news.htm

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I had a newspaper in my short-lived Urbis playtest campaign, and I have come to the conclusion that having a newspaper in the campaign is one of the most fun things a DM can do.

There's nothing upsetting the PCs quite as much as seeing their latest "exploits" distorted through the lens of the press...