Books in Golarion


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion


Does Golarion have the equivalent of dime store novels? Or even just general prices for fiction or non-fiction books that aren't named with specific benefits?

Especially in places like Absalom or other major cities with multiple printing presses, it feels like you would have books more readily available to the general public, but I can't find anything on just generic book prices and with the "new" PF2 currency values I'm not sure what would be reasonable


1 person marked this as a favorite.

There certainly are bookstores, though only a few named ones. And there's a list of known in-universe published books. I see no reason why you can't have some cheaper fare, both in price and quality - sordid romance novels, song books, political pamphlets, reprints of old plays, and so on. Generally, unless it confers important information or provides a skill bonus it would probably cost in silvers, or I guess coppers for 2e, and for manuals that exist in 1e the currency conversion from 1e to 2e seems to be 1e 10 gp to 2e 1 gp.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

The way I handle it, there's a lot of pamphlets, newspapers, broad sheets, etc floating around but not a lot of books. I do have a series of semi-mysterious romance novels that don't have names or a listed author, so fans of the books refer to them by the art on their covers, another kind of rarity for books of this time period.

In terms of cost, if a blank formula book is 1 gp, you can assume that 1 gp is the retail cost of binding a book. What's interesting, however, is that the basic crafter's book, which is full of formulae, is only 1 sp. I don't know if that's an oversight or not, honestly. I don't know how to justify it from a real-word standpoint.

Pivoting to the Travel Guide, it's written by in-universe authors who do a lot of other writing, both fiction and non-fiction, so I think it's safe to say that yes, Golarion has the equivalent of dime store novels and they're probably priced between 1 sp and 20 gp depending on the quantity of the print run, the quality of the book components, and the skill of the writer crafting the story.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Aren't pathfinder Chronicles of famous pathfinders similar to the dime novels?

Silver Crusade

4 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Allison Kindler novels are one of my favorite little easter eggs to throw in every now and then.

Wayfinders Contributor

2 people marked this as a favorite.

I love making up names of trashy books. Take a place name, add an alliterative adjective and suddenly you have a romance novel:

Naughty in New Thassilon - A time travel romance

Or you can take an in-world NPC, like the beleaguered Nigel Aldain from the Blakros Museum, and try different takes on his memoirs:

Becoming Blakros by Nigel Aldain (serious)
Eaten by a Museum by Nigel Aldain (silly, and yet far more accurate...)

What kind of book titles are you looking for?


3 people marked this as a favorite.

It's worth noting that even in the 1500s, there were popular novels in Europe, with Spanish conquistadors naming California after the setting of one. Golarion doesn't neatly parallel to any historical era, but given that it has big sailing ships and gunpowder, there's definitely real-world precedent thoroughly established by any time period the Inner Sea resembles.


5 people marked this as a favorite.

Hell, the fictional novel goes back a long time. In the east, "The Tale of Genji" by the Japanese female author Murasaki Shikibu dates to the 11th Century, while in the west there's Gaius Petronius Arbiter's "Satyricon" from the mid 1st Century and Lucius Apuleius's "The Golden Ass" from the mid 2nd Century and a number of Byzantine romance novels around the 12th century. It's extremely likely the genre goes much further back to Classical Greece or Mesapotamia, and just hasn't survived except in the later literature it influenced and in scraps of quotation. But in these cases they wouldn't have been bound paper but rather papyrus scrolls, or rolled wooden slats in Japan and China, although that's no reason not to homage them. Osirion still has a thriving papyrus manufacturing industry along the Sphinx River, and papyrus is very hardy in the right climate - we have readable papyrus fragments from over 5000 years ago. Vellum replaced papyrus because it was easier than farm papyrus outside Egypt and more durable in the moist European climate, and paper replaced vellum because it was cheaper.to make and used wood pulp instead of calf hide.

Not that any of that has to apply to Golarion, which despite its superficial appearance doesn't have to play by the same rules as the geographical places and times it's modelled on. You could have paperbacks jostling with papyrus scrolls being hawked in the town markets, and a much higher rate of literacy than historical Earth.

If you wanted some suggestions of random book titles, authors and plot summaries for flavour, I'm sure people would be happy to make some suggestions. In my own game, a lamia gave one of my players a "gift" - the book "No Gods, No Masters" by Rahadoumi atheist polemicist Riuka Wala, which was considered so extreme even by the militantly secular Rahadoumi authorities that it was banned across the Inner Sea since it sees all forms of hierarchy as divinely mandated and calls for the violent overthrow of all governments and tearing down of churches. For the right buyer it might fetch up to 200 gp (1e currency) and a minor bonus to identifying celestials and fiends, and makes you more persuasive to divs and daemons but also more open to their arguments the longer you read it. It'll make entering Tephu, where all books are confiscated to be copied in the Great Library, interesting if the authorities find it on her.

Wayfinders

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Penny dreadfuls go back to the mid-19th century, not to mention all the other aforementioned historical examples - and Golarion is, on average, literate enough that it wouldn't feel out of place, especially in cities.

The aforementioned 1sp-20gp price range feels right to me as well, especially as pure roleplay items.


RiverMesa wrote:

Penny dreadfuls go back to the mid-19th century, not to mention all the other aforementioned historical examples - and Golarion is, on average, literate enough that it wouldn't feel out of place, especially in cities.

The aforementioned 1sp-20gp price range feels right to me as well, especially as pure roleplay items.

Penny dreadfuls were the first thing that came to my mind too. Honestly for something that's meant to be read and thrown away I'd charge much less than a silver, that's half of a typical level 1 worker's daily wage, making it dubious that many people would be buying them, that is outside the general book-buying public, in which case your gp-level book binders would be the way to go.

I'd charge somewhere between one and three cp for them and call them "copper drops" or something for the clink coins make in the collection pan as people grab the pamphlets.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Lost Omens Campaign Setting / General Discussion / Books in Golarion All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in General Discussion