We had a topic on the Talking Points list to go over the extremely cheap cost of acquiring books from Staff. As we had no set rules for books before, just objects that weren’t available on-grid (3 QP), we tended to just drop books under the same cost header, which was admittedly kind of crazy in a setting where books are supposed to be rare and costly.
We also had no policies around people having an IC explanation when acquiring books that aren’t available almost anywhere, such as heretical or magic tomes. They’d just be loaded and handed over for 3 QP, which we acknowledged was pretty problematic.
So! We closed the gaps. Books under 5 pages cost 25 QP per book to have loaded from Staff. Books over 5 pages cost 50 QP per book to have loaded. To get access to a heretical, magical, or otherwise difficult to find book, the player needs to have an IC explanation for how they got access to it.
HELP QUEST POINTS was updated to reflect the solidified costs and policy.
Things that haven’t changed:
It still costs just 1QP for the author of the book to load copies of their own work.
Scribing remains as-is – folks can still choose to spend money and materials to copy books. No Staff required. This should be the go-to method.
Books that are privately owned and not “published” won’t be accessible through Staff via item loads. Teleporting into somebody’s phome to grab a book they wrote for themselves and only gave to a couple friends isn’t something we’re keen on doing. They can still be scribed normally, however, if the player has physical IC access to the book.