Books, scrolls and scribes

Will it be possible to add in Books and scrolls to read? And not just stat boosting items like in Warband, real books scrolls with flippable pages and content to read, to loot, burn and sell.

This will make the game feel more alive and is a good place to add more worldbuilding and lore to the world.

Books could be randomly generated, using a data base from free book sources like Project Guenberg or Libgen to fill scrolls and books that have no special qualities, but could be used for roleplaying or when you want to take a break from rape and pillage and want to read on your throne.

Self help books could function like Warband, but somewhat differently. For each paragraph you read you will gain stats that relate to the paragrah you read.

For example, if you buy a book from Sun Tzu and reead this

"“EARTH comprises distances, great and small; danger and security; open ground and narrow passes; the chances of life and death.”

Then you will gain +1 point in Tactics.

Another interesting feature to have is Scribes, who will help record history between the kingdoms, and record epic battles. They will write on scrolls or such and it could function similarly to something like Dwarf fortress legends, where you could read an entire timeline of all significant events that happened in your generated world, with an exception that it only record what the scribe was recording.

Heres how books will effect gameplay;

-Filler books will be a sold good item similar to velvet and other sellable items in demand, to make the ingame economy more unpredictable

-Stat boosting books could be read by you and your companions for stat boosts, and gifted to other lords or your children as a family heirloom to raise stats and relationship.

-Historical books written by scribes will grow in value over time as more events are written and copied, giving it more value and could be used as a family heirloom to pass down to children

-Personal attachments and fights could break out over books, and targets to destroy, for example if you burn down the Emperor's libary you will give his children reduced stats because of lost and forgotten knowledge, further hurting the Empire

I know I am probably asking for alot right beofre it is released, and I don't expect it by EA, but I hope this is considered and potentially added as a future mod or in a DLC.

I think readable books are the best and easiest to implement of your suggestions, it's one of my favorite features from the Elder Scrolls series and really adds ALOT to the lore and immersion, i like the book system from warband and always wanted to read their contents.

Imagine how awesome would it be to be able to read the books and learn more about the history and peoples of Calradia, this would be a mark point on the M&B series for me since this same feature is basically what originated the amazing and huge lore-community of the TES series, if those games didn't had those awesome books and lore bits here and there i doubt the gameplay alone would have made it such a success.

I would LOVE a system where you could sit down and read books yourself like kingdom come deliverance style.

Perhaps having scribes writing books will increase your renown, and therefore having such destroyed will decrease such dramatically.

Based on the forumites taste, the game should fill the books with random Wikipedia articles 

FBohler said:

Based on the forumites taste, the game should fill the books with random Wikipedia articles 

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I expect some Yaoi between Yagorlek and Harlaus

FBohler said:

Based on the forumites taste, the game should fill the books with random Wikipedia articles 

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No, with erotic stories from the court.

Messire said:

FBohler said:

Based on the forumites taste, the game should fill the books with random Wikipedia articles 

Click to expand...

No, with erotic stories from the court.

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Oh goodness!

Great idea, I had mentioned something within these lines ages ago, basically hoping books would still be a thing in Bannerlord.
Also, crafting skill could have a scribing branch tree, allowing you to copy/translate books and let you consult them while you have it in your inventory (like the +1 surgery book), or sell them for a profit.

Iberian Wolf said:

Great idea, I had mentioned something within these lines ages ago, basically hoping books would still be a thing in Bannerlord.
Also, crafting skill could have a scribing branch tree, allowing you to copy/translate books and let you consult them while you have it in your inventory (like the +1 surgery book), or sell them for a profit.

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Ooo! I like the idea of actually using your literacy to write things and make a profit from them! Perhaps needing to buy paper and a quill and some ink.. perhaps velvet or something like that for the cover of the book!

It would be awesome if literacy was a skill you can acquire, as it is in VC. You could then use this skill to produce a chronicle of your adventures that would track your exploits and then generate a fragment of flavor text, something along the lines of:
"Decimus Maximus stood with his men in a stalwart shieldwall in defence of the village of Tuluns, beating back the Battanian savages, slaying 47. Heavens were praised and offerings given in thanks for the victory."

Also since poetry was a big part of noble culture, it would be cool to combine lireracy with intelligence and compose a poem, which would then go into circulation and earn either praise or ridicule from other lords and ladies.

All good suggestions.

I would definitely like to have a scribe.

By the time a castle assault is over, I, at best, remember just three of my vassals that helped me take it. If I had a scribe jotting down who helped me in each battle (the fatalities, wounded, and POW's would be nice for less easy to apply reasons), then I would feel more just in my distribution of castles and cities. I don't want to give out castles because a vassal's name stands out more than his actions warrant.

Where it might be more challenging to program: Mount & Blade does a good job on not letting you not know about battles not in your vicinity till you hear that your vassal has been captured (or escaped). While I want that feature to not be endangered, it would be nice, after a certain amount of time goes by (perhaps after the war is over) to be able to read up on the various battles your vassals were involved in. Attacks on villages (the slaughter of travelling villagers may not be necessary to list) should be marked differently than battles between warriors.

What I would find "useful" would be an automated "scribe" function that took basic notes on major events happening to the player character: a few basic statistics about battles against other kingdoms (the name(s) of the opposing Lord or Lords, the sizes of the forces involved, the outcome and the casualties, and the possible death or capture of a Lord), as well as keeping notes about the acquisition of fiefs, and perhaps the hiring and firing of Companions.  It would then be up to the player to edit the simple log of events into a proper journal, poetry, or whatever best suits the RP side of the campaign.  The ideal situation would be options as to what to log or not log, so you could choose to track trade deals as a trader, battles as a military commander, political deals as a statesman, none of the above, or all.

Getting news about distant sieges, battles, and other events outside of the player character's own actions, which could be saved and viewed in more detail if you chose within the next 24 hours, rather than a one-line summary appearing on screen in the middle of whatever you're doing and then fading away before you can read it, would be helpful.  Too often, I see something appear on the screen and scroll annoyingly while I'm trying to read it, then fade away before I can make sense of it against the jumbled background, or while I'm being distracted by a chase on the world map.

If the event log is appended to a basic text file, editing could be done outside of the game, although being able to pen or edit your documents from the camp menu (with a flickering candle to illuminate the document, and an ink bottle for your quill beside it), would be a little more immersive, but the important part for me would be to allow access to read the document from within the game.  At least the basic facts would be there and in order; whether you choose to do more with it is up to you, and you wouldn't have to undo some funky attempt at AI literary composition.  I'm reminded of the clunky and awkward journal of events in Paradox's Europa Universalis series, or various other games, where it makes a bunch of twisted pseudo-sentences that end up being less informative than a simple log of events, yet are repetitive and immersion-breaking to attempt to read.

b

Honved said:

What I would find "useful" would be an automated "scribe" function that took basic notes on major events happening to the player character: a few basic statistics about battles against other kingdoms (the name(s) of the opposing Lord or Lords, the sizes of the forces involved, the outcome and the casualties, and the possible death or capture of a Lord), as well as keeping notes about the acquisition of fiefs, and perhaps the hiring and firing of Companions.  It would then be up to the player to edit the simple log of events into a proper journal, poetry, or whatever best suits the RP side of the campaign.  The ideal situation would be options as to what to log or not log, so you could choose to track trade deals as a trader, battles as a military commander, political deals as a statesman, none of the above, or all.

Getting news about distant sieges, battles, and other events outside of the player character's own actions, which could be saved and viewed in more detail if you chose within the next 24 hours, rather than a one-line summary appearing on screen in the middle of whatever you're doing and then fading away before you can read it, would be helpful.  Too often, I see something appear on the screen and scroll annoyingly while I'm trying to read it, then fade away before I can make sense of it against the jumbled background, or while I'm being distracted by a chase on the world map.

If the event log is appended to a basic text file, editing could be done outside of the game, although being able to pen or edit your documents from the camp menu (with a flickering candle to illuminate the document, and an ink bottle for your quill beside it), would be a little more immersive, but the important part for me would be to allow access to read the document from within the game.  At least the basic facts would be there and in order; whether you choose to do more with it is up to you, and you wouldn't have to undo some funky attempt at AI literary composition.  I'm reminded of the clunky and awkward journal of events in Paradox's Europa Universalis series, or various other games, where it makes a bunch of twisted pseudo-sentences that end up being less informative than a simple log of events, yet are repetitive and immersion-breaking to attempt to read.

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Wow, I love this idea! I wished I would have thought of it myself  . I think 24 hours is a little too soon to find out what your vassals are doing.

Have you thought about if the player was fighting two wars at once? All I can think of if he fights two factions in one battle is to add something like "As the Battanians were also there, the battle is also recorded in the book of the Third War Against Battania."

I'd love to see one or two stories from each nation on their folklore - You can always infer a lot from a nations folktales.

The book system would be an outstanding way to add to the lore- maybe even a famous library in the Empire to find such tomes within that you could decide the fate of? (Nudge nudge TW).

I think what'll also be amazing is, because you can turn on several mods at once... we could get small mods purely dedicated to lore and cool stories which will just give the game more flavour. Very exciting!

A Redanian Called Boris said:

I'd love to see one or two stories from each nation on their folklore - You can always infer a lot from a nations folktales.

The book system would be an outstanding way to add to the lore- maybe even a famous library in the Empire to find such tomes within that you could decide the fate of? (Nudge nudge TW).

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Yes please to both of those! We don't need Skyrim levels of readable books, but some folklore and maybe  some biased history would be a nice addition that's relatively easy to add. I'd particularly love having conflicting accounts of past events that a still creating tensions between groups, but maybe that's just the history buff speaking.
A Great Library could also have quests linked to it, like procuring/stealing/recovering valuable scrolls and books, or even destroying knowledge that someone deems dangerous/heretical.

Oxtocoatl said:

Yes please to both of those! We don't need Skyrim levels of readable books, but some folklore and maybe  some biased history would be a nice addition that's relatively easy to add. I'd particularly love having conflicting accounts of past events that a still creating tensions between groups, but maybe that's just the history buff speaking.
A Great Library could also have quests linked to it, like procuring/stealing/recovering valuable scrolls and books, or even destroying knowledge that someone deems dangerous/heretical.

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Historical bias from the Empire's point of view would be great, such a good idea! The Calradian equivalent of Livy on the Gauls and a questline would be sublime, especially for people wanting to play a scholarly figure or well educated warlord!

Bump