Are there any real-world languages with 17 conjugations, or did you just pull that number from the rear ticker dispenser?

Well, people paid for that, buying books, movies and games. I feel called out.

There are a lot of languages with many distinct verb forms. My aunt lives in Finnland and after 35 years she still makes mistakes ... Depending on what you count it has more than 30 distant forms and more than 8 infinitives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_conjugation (Why is there a need for such a thing?)
There is even a computer program for printing out verb conjugation tables: https://www.verbix.com/languages/finnish (click on a random verb to see ... )

There are reasons why English was good enough for most people on the globe; otherwise Esperanto or some other artificial language would have had more success.

And yes, I have a bookshelf filled to the brim too ...

(BTW: How did you enter smilies and quotes?)

Quotes are done with [quote][/quote] As for smilies, the old UI view will give you a complete list on the comments' sidebar.