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Author Topic: Allow children to read books  (Read 4333 times)

GandalfTheGreyt3791

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Re: Allow children to read books
« Reply #15 on: July 25, 2020, 05:32:48 pm »

(I know that's Hams's replying to the OP, but to follow up Hams myself...)

I was pretty much a bookworm from a very early age. When in Junior school (whatever that is in K-12+ notation, but 8, 9, 10-ish in age, give or take Summer Baby adjustment) I was also not the only one to 'run out' of the grade-appropriate reading serieses and 'ironically' go back to picking up the books from the bookshelves in the Infants (immediate years post-K) area of the school. But I think I was the only one to spend playtimes rearranging the limited reference shelving back to Dewey Decimal rather than whatever other order they were in.

This continued into Secondary school (I spent a fair few lunchtimes in the old book store off to the side of the rarely used but significant library in that school, and probably arranged to take home a few of the more out-of-date ones, I recall a pre-moonshot book on space exploration, barely more accurate than Tintin In Space, I suppose) and I devoured the public library stocks as well.

But I know a few of my peers were probably bibliophobes to the day they quit school at 17-or-so. And some were probably barred from unaccompanied wandering in any library, for good reason[1].

Yeah I sat around reading lotr in 2nd grade and that boosted me to getting in to the advanced classes in secondary school.


In short, I don't think it's a bad suggestion, but you need a preference (or need?) mechanic to vary things. And just because I could check out more than half a dozen+ books from the public library, then return them read before the week is out to pick up another ½d+ again, I'm sure that this was not the normal allowance for a child's ticket.  Some unpredictability needs to be built in as to whether books are read or merely relocated (half way down the stairwell to the magma furnaces?) during pre-maturity, and that should definitely continue (or be reinforced, or maybe reversed) in adulthood.


@Uth: That too. Mix it up as to what it mean, of course.

[1] Remembering one such individual, with a particularly distinctive name, I just looked 'him' up. Assuming he's not the 90yo who has the obituary in California, the other example is listed at Companies House as a director of a firm, but has a birthdate two years prior to mine. I mean, if they actually held pupils back a year, in our system, I can believe they held my guy back two, but I'm not sure he'd have been there if he no longer had to be.
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ArrowheadArcher

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Re: Allow children to read books
« Reply #16 on: August 04, 2020, 09:26:34 am »

An education mechanic would be even better. Education would be handle by a location by a dwarf who well educates other dwarves first to read and write and to job train his highest skill to the skill level of competent.
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TheLifeOfRyanB

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Re: Allow children to read books
« Reply #17 on: August 16, 2020, 04:01:17 am »

Ah the Roundworld series, subdivided as it is into several themes. The necromancer who can't raise the dead because the biggest secret of life and death squeezed out all the other spells, who is followed around by a chest of the finest craftdwarfship decorated with animated feet of its defeated foes. The city watch, including the sheriff who marries a dragon trainer, a dwarf who thinks he's a human who is actually the king, a dwarf who cross dresses as an elf, and a troll hammerer. The three female necromancers, one of whom ai'nt dead and can defeat any enemy by staring at them and making them feel sorry, one who dreams of raising a family and that dream was realised many many times, and has a cat with more kills than any other entity, and one who accidentally became Queen after marrying a performer who turned out to be the King's son. But the best is a one off story about a dwarf prophet and his pet tortoise.

All dwarf children should be sent down to work the mines.
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BugbearSpearFighter

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Re: Allow children to read books
« Reply #18 on: August 18, 2020, 10:14:12 pm »

I see somebody else wants to indoctrinate the next generation into their necromantic death cult
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Starver

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Re: Allow children to read books
« Reply #19 on: August 19, 2020, 04:55:30 am »

That's the "AnthropoNanomorphic Personification of Losing" Cult, I think you'll find.
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GandalfTheGreyt3791

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Re: Allow children to read books
« Reply #20 on: September 05, 2020, 10:20:01 am »

adding a education mechanic would mean that children do something with their lives instead of just guzzling booze for 12 years, and maybe a rare chance (1 in 1000) that they continue to get a education and become a ledgendary in the profession they want, like them going to college
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betaking

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Re: Allow children to read books
« Reply #21 on: September 28, 2020, 02:05:06 am »

nah, them going to college is basically becoming a "noble", doctor, alchemist, magic-user, astronomer, librarian.

engineering is a profession/trade in this era and largely one that would involve intense apprenticeship.
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