a player of mine wanted to write up a book of grudges, but he does not have the advanced skill education. i'd not really thought about it before but are dwarfs raised in a karak literate?

i decided in this case that he was illiterate (mainly because there is another dwarf in the party who has education and i didn't want to diminish his skill choice).

the new dwarf is a miner, i decided that he knotted pebbles, stones and rocks into his beard to represent specific grudges. the bigger the transgression the heavier the stone. when the grudge is repaid the miner will unknot the stone and crush it or in the case of a defeated foe leave the stone in the hand, mouth or placed on the eyes of the unconscious or dead foe.

Sounds like a good way to handle it, you never want to devalue what players have spent points/advances on.

Awesome idea! As far as literacy goes for some reason I have always imagined the elder races to be more educated than humans. I guess that's not necessarily correct though, so allowing the actually "educated" character to be literate was the right way to go and you created that really cool beard stones idea because of it.

According to sume Fluff I have read, can't recall which suplement, the dwarfs aren't more literate than humans. I think it is stone and steel at the end.

But most of the dwarfs can Read and understand most runes which describes Things and Situations. But they aren't capable of writing complex textes like a story or a complete grudge in its complete description. But something like the Rune for Orks and a Number, or the Rune of Death is a suitable reminder for him. Also they understand day to day runes or simple textes without the education skill.

So if he is a miner he has at least a list of most runes needed for his craft. So he can make a pictogram note on paper or in a stone.

Glorian Underhill said:

The same can pretty much be said about all races. They recognize some very simple, basic words and concepts "INN" and "SMITH" but usually they'd more or less recognize symbols and images (ie- a sign of a bed or an anvil).

Otherwise the game could become tedious due to anal retentive DMs who insist that the PCs can't read a map because they don't actually have Education acquired.

I allow players with at least an INT of 3 to have a basic/crude understanding of the written word in their native provincial language. They can read road signs, store signs, and read basic See Spot Run sentences. They might even be able to scratch out a few words themselves, but not well and would be horrible. Think of a 6-8 year old. If they were out of their home province I increase the challenge as local slangs and spellings would confuse them further. Education, as described in the book is a broader skill than just reading, but if you have an Education you no longer struggle to read and write.

That said, the concept you came up with for the Dwarf was fantastic and even if he could read that was a far more creative way to deal with his Grudges.

By the way, if you need inspiration for your book of grudges. Here is the one I made for my group:

vierzwergeundeinhund.blogspot.de/2012/01/werkstatt-2-buch-des-grolls-fertig.html