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[AceSV]

I understand that Papermaking is going to happen at some point, but I want to put some input into how it happens. 

Papyrus is NOT paper. 

Papyrus is flat and you can write on it, but it isn't actually paper any more than vellum is.  Paper comes from Ancient China, and is made from fiber and cloth (woo, hemp!).  Papyrus was just too hard to come by to create a relevant industry, as it only grows in very particular wet tropical areas, and unless Dwarves have discovered Cave Papyrus, that exact same problem is going to happen in Dwarf Fortress.  That said, this is Dwarf Fortress and I've got nothing against materials like papyrus, parchment or vellum existing alongside paper, but I don't want to see papyrus replace real, historical, better, cheaper, easier paper. 

Also, let us not forget the many interesting uses for paper.  Paper Crafts for your craft workshop.  Paper money could be printed (which would be hilariously worthless due to intrinsic value).  Decorative paintings that you could make with dye and place like statues.  And if you're a fan of the Mythbusters, you've probably heard of the most ingenious use for paper ever:

Paper Armor

Yes.  Not only did it exist, it was apparently very effective, on par with steel lamellar armor of the same period.  If you have time to find and watch the episode, there's a lot of interesting info about why paper armor works, but if you don't have time, it mainly amounts to the fact that Chinese hemp paper was not like modern wood pulp paper, it was a very stiff cloth, and it was folded several times to create a blocky cushion against both sharp and blunt attacks.   If you're familiar with the principle behind composite armors, the thinness of paper acts like many many layers of composite material and diffuses the impact. 

Anyways, if you can make Armor out of paper, it stands to reason that you could also make shields out of paper.  You could probably also make paper clothing, I think I've heard of this but I can't find a good source, and it would probably be better to just make clothes out of the clothe and fibers to begin with, unless you can add some sort of value to paper. 

[Batgirl1]

I understand that Papermaking is going to happen at some point, but I want to put some input into how it happens. 

Papyrus is NOT paper. 

Papyrus is flat and you can write on it, but it isn't actually paper any more than vellum is. 

Now there's a thought: will vellum be in the game, too? 

Obviously, papyrus, paper, and vellum have a lot of overlap in their uses despite being made from different materials.  I can imagine a single workshop having options for working with each, the way the clothier shop has silk/plant/wool.

Ooh, when the lighting gets overhauled, maybe paper lanterns could be implemented?

[SixOfSpades]

IIRC, paper was also used in windows (albeit not as commonly as oilskin), because it was thin enough to let light in while keeping most weather out, and of course it was far more available than panes of glass of equivalent size. Not that dwarves are big into windows, but I just thought I'd mention it.

The process of making paper is also completely different from making papyrus. For papyrus, you just harvest the right type of sedge reeds, cut them into thin strips, weave the strips into a sheet, pound the sheet even flatter, and then let it dry. Making paper, however, requires considerably more processing, and reducing the wood (and/or cloth) down to a liquid.

[Deboche]

Rocks are the dwarves' paper.

[Naryar]

Rocks are the dwarves' paper.

That.

Although if they did parchment, I would assume they would make it out of pig tail. It's their only plant fiber crop after all.

[falcc]

Realistically, paper should be intrinsically valuable to a society since it has so many uses and requires double processing (into paper and then into book/armor/crafts/paintings/other things). Obviously paper money isn't likely to meet the 1400's cut off, but the more literate a society is the more paper should cost since it would need to be hand processed. Even if Dwarves can write on stone tablets, if Toady does decide to make more Dwarf written books (poetry, diaries, plays, shipping manifests, whatever) paper would massively reduce hauling time for however books get used. Any slab large enough to contain an epic poem should retain most of the weight of the stone it was and paper is.. paper. In fact this could make places with access to good plant fiber prized in civs that do a lot of writing, since stone or wood prints might be the standard elsewhere and paper is easier to conceal and transport for all the things it could be used for.

I think allowing as many new materials to be used for different kinds of armors and crafts is good. It encourages diversity for eventual proceduralizing. Paper could compensate for being super useful by requiring a lot of it. Maybe pages work like thread counts?

[Larix]

Rocks are the dwarves' paper.

That.

Although if they did parchment, I would assume they would make it out of pig tail. It's their only plant fiber crop after all.

Parchment? Surely you mean paper - well into the 19th century, all paper was made from repurposed textile fibres (i.e. pulped discarded rags). Dwarfs might try to get wood pulp going, but old clothes should be the default material source.

[taptap]

Parchment would be neat too More uses for the little lambs.

[Baffler]

Rocks are the dwarves' paper.

That.

Although if they did parchment, I would assume they would make it out of pig tail. It's their only plant fiber crop after all.

Parchment? Surely you mean paper - well into the 19th century, all paper was made from repurposed textile fibres (i.e. pulped discarded rags). Dwarfs might try to get wood pulp going, but old clothes should be the default material source.

Any use for the miles of cloth bound up in xXPig Tail Fiber SockXx form in the average fortress is fine by me. It seems wasteful to just let them rot away.

[Charles2531]

There would probably be many more jobs and skills as well. Just can't think of any at the moment. Plus, if the game's technology is cut off after 1400s technology (as falcc said), that means printing presses could potentially find their way into the game at some point. Before printing presses, books could only be produced by copying them word by word by hand, making book production extremely expensive and time consuming. However, printing presses solved this problem and made books easy to produce, cheap, and widespread, allowing better large quantities of information to become available to the general public. Not only would this mean that stories could become widespread (specific stories could even become demanded), but it also means that educational books could exist in the game; dwarves could learn new skills faster from reading books.

Of course, this also brings up another question; would it be possible to have inventions in the game be spread by way of books? It would be interesting to see a dwarf fall into a strange mood, run into a mechanic's workshop, and then emerge with a new piece of technology never before seen in that world. The scholars all write about it, sell their books at enormous profit to traders, spreading the technology. These kinds of inventions might even require a book to be able to be produced, meaning that inventions could be lost to history, only to be reinvented centuries later. Inventions might even require certain knowledge as prerequisites. Perhaps printing presses could even be one of the technologies that needs to be invented, meaning that before its invention, production of books could be far more difficult.

Possible new jobs / skills:
* Paper maker
* Printer
* Author
* Poet
* Writer (not an author, but someone to copy text from book to book. This would be a very time consuming task and would likely require many dwarves if you wanted books or anything similar as any major export)
* Scholar
* Inventor


Maybe this is beyond the scope of the game though.

[therahedwig]

Realistically, paper should be intrinsically valuable to a society since it has so many uses and requires double processing (into paper and then into book/armor/crafts/paintings/other things). Obviously paper money isn't likely to meet the 1400's cut off, but the more literate a society is the more paper should cost since it would need to be hand processed. Even if Dwarves can write on stone tablets, if Toady does decide to make more Dwarf written books (poetry, diaries, plays, shipping manifests, whatever) paper would massively reduce hauling time for however books get used. Any slab large enough to contain an epic poem should retain most of the weight of the stone it was and paper is.. paper. In fact this could make places with access to good plant fiber prized in civs that do a lot of writing, since stone or wood prints might be the standard elsewhere and paper is easier to conceal and transport for all the things it could be used for.

I think allowing as many new materials to be used for different kinds of armors and crafts is good. It encourages diversity for eventual proceduralizing. Paper could compensate for being super useful by requiring a lot of it. Maybe pages work like thread counts?

Well, cut-off for 1400 europe.

China already had a flourishing book printing industry by that that time, as well as paper money if I'm not mistaken.
They also pressed on silk, but replaced that with paper because it was less expensive.

However, China really valued calligraphy and due to their writing system the movable type printing press never took off. Might be something to consider for procedurally generated civilisations

(Also, Calligraphy crafts )

[GoblinCookie]

There would probably be many more jobs and skills as well. Just can't think of any at the moment. Plus, if the game's technology is cut off after 1400s technology (as falcc said), that means printing presses could potentially find their way into the game at some point. Before printing presses, books could only be produced by copying them word by word by hand, making book production extremely expensive and time consuming. However, printing presses solved this problem and made books easy to produce, cheap, and widespread, allowing better large quantities of information to become available to the general public. Not only would this mean that stories could become widespread (specific stories could even become demanded), but it also means that educational books could exist in the game; dwarves could learn new skills faster from reading books.

Of course, this also brings up another question; would it be possible to have inventions in the game be spread by way of books? It would be interesting to see a dwarf fall into a strange mood, run into a mechanic's workshop, and then emerge with a new piece of technology never before seen in that world. The scholars all write about it, sell their books at enormous profit to traders, spreading the technology. These kinds of inventions might even require a book to be able to be produced, meaning that inventions could be lost to history, only to be reinvented centuries later. Inventions might even require certain knowledge as prerequisites. Perhaps printing presses could even be one of the technologies that needs to be invented, meaning that before its invention, production of books could be far more difficult.

Possible new jobs / skills:
* Paper maker
* Printer
* Author
* Poet
* Writer (not an author, but someone to copy text from book to book. This would be a very time consuming task and would likely require many dwarves if you wanted books or anything similar as any major export)
* Scholar
* Inventor


Maybe this is beyond the scope of the game though.

If dwarves start to mass-produce books then why would they remain in technological statis?  If mass-production of books is part of that technological statis then how does it sustain itself? 

[Deboche]

If dwarves start to mass-produce books then why would they remain in technological statis?  If mass-production of books is part of that technological statis then how does it sustain itself?

Well, the Koreans had a printing press 216 years before Guttenberg and it didn't bring a technological revolution for them. Maybe they didn't use it to mass produce books.

[SixOfSpades]

As long as we're discussing papermaking techniques, I'd like to suggest some diversity of use among the underground trees. With the obvious exception of nether-caps, everyone just goes, "Um, they're subterranean, giant, mushroom-type . . . things. Use 'em for wood," and leaves it at that. If the different trees could have different alternate uses, that could make them all a lot more interesting. Tunnel tubes, for example, could be the only source for a very good paper substitute: Cut down a sapling, soak it in a weak acid bath, then cut a shallow groove down the length of the log, and carefully peel away the layers of fiber in one long, unbroken roll. Produces a stack of "tunnel paper", perfect for making scrolls. Other underground trees might be similary given different "flavor".

[GoblinCookie]

Well, the Koreans had a printing press 216 years before Guttenberg and it didn't bring a technological revolution for them. Maybe they didn't use it to mass produce books.

If they had 1050 years?