The Omniscient Eye

"How Heavy Is Dense Reading?" Supplemental:
An Oxcart Full of Knowledge

by Nikola Vrtis & Steven Marsh

Answer a couple of questions and determine how many oxcarts of information you'd be toting around if you lived in the medieval age. Then read this week's Omniscient Eye to learn more about medieval information density (and how to work it into your games).

1. How many of each of these do you have?

Input a whole number or decimal fraction in each box. If you have no amount of one or more types, put 0 in the box. Do not use commas or spaces. Use a period (.) for a decimal point. Typing in any character other than a number or a period will result in an error. The text boxes are limited to four characters, or a maximum value of 9999.

2. How dense is the data? 

 Data written equivalent to "normal" (large) illuminated text, with generous margins.
 Pages with smaller text and reduced margins, compared to illuminated manuscripts.
 Text written as densely as possible, of the sort that causes monks to go blind. (If you can read this, you're squinting too much . . .)

 

The approximate number of oxcarts of data that you have (rounded to two decimal places): 

Keep in mind that this conversion program deals entirely in "text" (or computer data); ironically, a comic-book page in Photoshop format could take up an oxcart by itself (dozens of megs) if its raw bytes were transcribed by arthritic monks, but it would only take up one page if left as an illustration.