Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[PopTart]

Does the writing skill have anything to do with being a good scribe?

Is critical thinking a prerequisite for being a good scholar? Or do they just need to be good at Fluid Dynamics, Astronomy, etc.?

Can poets write?

What I'm getting at: what are the necessary skills for running a good library? The wiki isn't clear on this.

[Nagidal]

I don't know much about the current libraries. I remember having one library years ago in DF version 42.x. I had one scholar who was doing random research and writing random books, but the library was open to any dwarf and they occasionally and pondered topics. (Until then they were getting unhappy thoughts from the lack of absctract thinking). I remember having a craftswdwarf who I compelled to make hundreds bellows for some sort of instrument. He later wrote a book on bellows, although he was not a scholar.

I suggest you just experiment. Have a library with lots of book shelves, unwritten sheets, and see what happens. I usually also place workshops in my library where I bind books, make scrolls, etc. I also have chairs and tables for dwarves to sit down and study, and a small stockpile of food and drinks so they don't have to go far away if they get hungry or thirsty. Also beds I think I had there.

[PopTart]

I never considered that just pondering topics would be beneficial for dwarfs. Glad to know that they might feel inspired to write what they know despite not being scholars. And yeah, I always put lots of love into my libraries. I like to make lots of hexagonal cells like in the Borges story.

[Fleeting Frames]

Scribes copy a thing exactly, no skills matter for output result.

Critical thinker is only used by some subjects; mainly philosophy. Just need to be good at the skills they're using to research fast; seems to be somewhat linear based onrecent research in this forum. If they're crap writer/wordsmith the quality of output will be low, but this only affects books that try to change values.

Only people assigned as scholars write.

[PopTart]

Will any scholar start writing? Or do they need the writing or some other skill?

[martinuzz]

Writing is really rare.
It can take 20 fort years of pondering before a dwarf thinks it a good idea to write a book.
Or they just don't write at all.

[Leonidas]

Writing is really rare.
It can take 20 fort years of pondering before a dwarf thinks it a good idea to write a book.
Or they just don't write at all.

I disagree. This trick with a lever is very effective in getting scholars to write. And it seems to help to get a lot of scholars together to discuss and trade knowledge. With 40 scholars I'm getting 20-30 books a year.

Edit: I should note that I had the benefit of a bug involving unretirement that dumped a lot of excellent scholars into my fortress. So your mileage may vary.

[anewaname]

There is probably a lot of variation based on the personality and the current situation for the dwarf. I had a starting-7 scholar who wrote a book after about 4 years, without using a lever, and many scholars that did not write books.

[PopTart]

I've had lots of success in the past with scholars, it's just that my current setup is in a very young world, very few people are literate, only a few books exist in the world. So I'm having to ask questions I haven't had to before. It's very interesting!