Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
Moderate for its length. Seven short books, six of them about how to study and one about how to read creation. It is a guide, and a guide does not need a great many pages.
Fairly high. It teaches the reader to ask three things of every text, in order: the letter, the plain sense, the meaning. Asked in that order, they take most arguments apart.
High. It was a standard handbook for students for centuries, and the order it teaches still holds: history first, then allegory, then the moral lesson.
High Popularity for a book about reading. It was copied across Europe, and Hugh’s line about creation as a book is still quoted.
Hugh taught at the Abbey of St Victor in Paris in the 1120s and wrote this for his students. It tells them what to read, in what order, and how to keep it in memory. Learn the history first. Then the allegory. Then what it asks of you. Its last book turns from the page to the world: creation is a book too, and a reader who sees only shapes in it has not learned to read.
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Know Thyself | Ethics | Argument | 40 | 100% | 20 |
| 6 | Seek It Humbly | Ethics | Argument | 50 | 100% | 20 |
| 12 | Letter, Sense, Meaning | Exegesis | Argument | 60 | 100% | 15 |
| 18 | First the History | History | Argument | 70 | 100% | 15 |
| 24 | Learn Everything | Exegesis | Argument | 72 | 100% | 15 |
| 30 | Hidden Origin | History | Argument | 78 | 100% | 10 |
| 36 | The Harp | Exegesis | Argument | 82 | 100% | 10 |
| 44 | Four Rivers of Paradise | History | Argument | 85 | 100% | 10 |
| 52 | A Book Written by God’s Finger | Natural Theology | Argument | 90 | 100% | 10 |
| 60 | Every Appetite Finds Its Food | Natural Theology | Argument | 95 | 95% | 5 |
How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.
Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.
“Wisdom enlightens a man so that he may know himself.”
Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon 1.1 (Migne, PL 176:0741C). English: the game’s own translation of the Latin.
In the gameHugh opens his guide to reading before any book is named: of everything worth seeking, wisdom comes first. It shows a person who he is and where he came from, so he stops looking outside himself for what he already has.
“A humble mind, eagerness to inquire, a quiet life, silent searching, poverty, a foreign land: these are accustomed to open some hidden things to the reader.”
Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon 3.13 (Migne, PL 176:0773B), reporting the answer of an unnamed wise man. English: the game’s own translation of the Latin.
In the gameAsked how to learn, a wise man gave six conditions, and Hugh passes them on. He adds a seventh of his own: knowledge that a shameless life has stained earns no praise. The book steadies its own Defend as it argues.
“In these the order is that the letter be sought first, then the sense, then the meaning; when that is done, the exposition is complete.”
Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon 3.9 (Migne, PL 176:0771C). English: the game’s own translation of the Latin.
In the gameHugh splits an explanation into three. The letter is how the words are arranged. The sense is what they plainly say. The meaning is the deeper understanding that only study finds. Ask them in that order, and the explanation is complete.
“Nor do I think you can become perfectly subtle in allegory unless you have first been grounded in history.”
Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon 6.3 (Migne, PL 176:0799B). English: the game’s own translation of the Latin.
In the gameLearn what happened first: the person, the deed, the time and the place. A reader who skips the story to reach the allegory builds on nothing. Hugh’s picture is a house, where the foundation goes in before the walls and the paint goes on last.
“Learn everything; afterwards you will see that nothing is superfluous. Narrow knowledge is not a joy.”
Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon 6.3 (Migne, PL 176:0799C). English: the game’s own translation of the Latin.
In the gameA reader objects that the histories hold many things that seem useless. Hugh agrees, and answers: set each one beside what it joins, and it proves necessary. He says he despised no learning himself, not even the charcoal geometry he drew on a floor as a boy.
“Not everything found in the divine word is to be twisted into this threefold interpretation.”
Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon 5.2 (Migne, PL 176:0789B). English: the game’s own translation of the Latin.
In the gameHugh gives three ways to read Scripture: as history, as allegory, and as a lesson for conduct. Then he warns against forcing all three on every verse. On a harp only the strings sound, though the rest of the frame is there to hold them.
“There are four venerable synods which principally embrace the whole faith, like the Gospels, or the same number of rivers of paradise.”
Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon 4.12 (Migne, PL 176:0785C). English: the game’s own translation of the Latin.
In the gameHugh counts four great councils: Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon. He names each one’s opponent in turn: Arius, Macedonius, Nestorius, and Eutyches. The reader has sat all four, and a twelfth-century teacher can still name them in a breath.
“This whole sensible world is like a book written by the finger of God.”
Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon 7.4 (Migne, PL 176:0813D). English: the game’s own translation of the Latin.
In the gameA reader who cannot read sees an open book and sees only shapes. Hugh says a fool looks at creation the same way. Each creature is a letter set there on purpose, to show the wisdom of what cannot be seen. Paul’s line in Romans 1 stands behind it.
“Every natural appetite finds its fulfilment in things. The hungry find what they may eat; the thirsty, what they may drink; the cold, something to warm them.”
Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon 7.18 (Migne, PL 176:0826A). English: the game’s own translation of the Latin.
In the gameHugh points at hunger. A hungry animal finds something to eat, a thirsty one something to drink, a cold one something warm. That is no accident, he says: whoever made the appetites prepared the food. Augustine, Boethius and Pascal press the same argument further, at the hunger no creature can feed.
