Rumours - Delivery Methods & A Request for Help

[Hey, finally a post where I actually can sort of talk about something from a position of knowledge (well, sort of; see below) since this has actually been coming up in my games.]

[Alternative title for this post: Why is blogger so horribly American about spelling ey? or What's wrong with a few semi-superfluous 'U's ey?]

You know, I don't see a lot of people talking about Rumours, and how to give them out.

I think this is a shame. If people do talk about this; please let me know.

So I'm going to talk about Rumours, from the perspective of my group, in my game.

BACKGROUND

My group are all 5e dorks. Its what I got so its what I do. They like having a goal it seems; the whole exploring for the sake of exploration and discovery isn't quite enough to motivate them. At least, so it seems to me.

The game itself is set in the Sewer-built Undercity Labyrinth of a great semi-Utopian City; all is as good as it could ever realistically be up on the surface, all the adventure is below. The game itself is somewhere between a megadungeon and a pointcrawl, and it is very much a work-in-progress in terms of how it is even basically structured, even now.

It started off as merely a cool map I did that spread over like, 12 pages of A4 gridded paper.
Now it is a sprawling monstrosity of 100 locations (on the main layer at least, there's a smaller layer underneath, and then something else yet below that), but that's getting ahead of myself.

[Side note; this is what all artists mean when they say that you should start small, and not move on to something else until the first step is completely finished. It helps with scope, and with not being caught with your pants around your ankles when your party decide that they are going to go in a new direction today because although you've prepped like, 20 locations, they went a way you didn't expect.]

But yeah, there's a lot to do and discover; I wanted to stick more towards a sand-box-adjacent philosophy where there's no "set story". There is the undercity, there are the things going on within it, and there is a small inertia to events, but that is it.

In a game like this, Rumours are very important to provide information to your players. Informed choice is key in OSRish games, and if your players have no information, their choices mean less than nothing. This is something that only now (several months into the game) that I am really beginning to properly appreciate.

How does all this lead into rumours? Lets follow the story of my rumour system.

STAGE 0 - INTENT

So what did I want rumours to achieve? In short - I want them to inspire my players to action.

I want someone to go; I've heard X is in the neighbourhood of Y, lets pop down to Z, travel to Y and search for X before popping back home for tea and level ups.

So, in a few quick bullet points:

- They should offer semi-reliable information (such that there is room for exploration)

- There should be loads of them (such that there is room for longevity in the system)

- They should apply to everything within the megadungeon (such that the party are encouraged to actually explore it all)

- They should be relatively easy to get, but not effortless (to reinforce the second point)

And ideally:

- They should be somehow rooted in the game world in a meaningful way

STAGE 1 - RUMOURS BY BACKGROUND

Character backgrounds are one of the nicer features of 5e, and my original system was that there would be a list of rumours, divided up by a list of tags, that would be applied to each background.
Tags would be stuff like, Occult, Artisan, History, etc; and each background would have like, three or four tags, and each tag would have six or so rumours tied thematically to it.

E.g. the sage would hear occult rumours about the Wizardly population of the undercity, whilst the criminal might hear Criminal rumours about its less savoury inhabitants.

It was a nice idea, but fiddly in execution.

I wanted the distribution to be nice and neat, where no tag would be used more or less than other tags, and each tag would have its own unique list of rumours, and it would never work neatly enough. I suspect that this could work quite well if you set out your own list of backgrounds, built from the ground up to support this system; but another problem was that the content of the game itself interfered too. It didn't want to divide neatly either. I couldn't make enough criminal content compared to wizardly content for example, because it didn't quite fit the balance of flavour I wanted for the game.

If you could be a little less anal about it than me it could probably work out just fine tbh. I rate it Potentially Salvageable/10.

In the story of the campaign itself though, this is the system we began play with, and while I think it still sort of might hold up for new characters (not that anyone dies in 5e anyway), it quickly ran into a new problem; getting new rumours through play. Enter...

STAGE 2 - RUMOURS BY TYPE

I came up with kind of archetypes of things my players might like to know about, which I then boiled down to three categories of rumour; Challenges (things to be overcome like monsters and trials), Treasures (things to pillage and steal) and Mysteries (things to be solved or discovered). I divided up the whole megadungeon into these categories (sort of) and made a rough, d100 list of rumours. In the end, I made it up so that there were as many Challenge rumours as there were Mysteries and Treasure rumours, and they were semi-sub-divided again by area of the megadungeon, with larger subareas getting more rumours overall. There were a few spots I had vacant so I filled those up with broadly applicable rumours.

This worked somewhat okay for a while; I still had the issue where the environment somewhat resisted being carved up nicely like the system would have preferred, but I finally could cover just about everything I wanted, and I even had a neat little bit where each class had its own preferences of rumours; e.g. fighters were more likely to hear about challenges, wizards about mysteries, rogues about treasures, bards had no preferences and heard about everything equally, etc.

This bit I actually think works quite well overall, and tentatively recommend as a framework for rumours if it sounds cool. It would be quite easy to add categories and tweak the proportions between each category.

It also made it pretty easy to have lists by type of rumour, and by area of the dungeon. I rate it Just A Little Longer In The Oven, But Just A Little/10.

BUT

Now came my first Big Issue

BIG ISSUE 1 - HOW MUCH INFORMATION IS IN A GOOD RUMOUR?

I'm still kind of noodling through this one, but I think my big lesson is that

TOO MUCH INFORMATION IS PROBABLY NOT A BAD THING.

Well, there's a balance to it of course, but here's the evolution of my rumours actually as written;

- Thing literally exists.

- Thing exists, with a little bit of context, but not quite enough to really be useful.

- Thing exists, with a bit more information, and a name of the place it is, without any context

Obviously, the above don't meet the paradigm of informed choice. Knowing something exists will only prepare you to not be surprised when you meet it. You need more context that that.

Because here's the thing, it is very easy to try and hide information for cool reveals. Its an easy pit to fall into, but I still think its a pitfall. As I said earlier, if the players can't make an informed decision, they aren't actually deciding anything.

Its all well and good that they know that there are 6 patron gods of the sewers, but what use is that information if they don't have the context to apply it in?

What good is it to know that a group of paladins went down into the sewers and were never seen again, if that's literally all you know?

The best reaction you could hope to get out of the above situation is that you bump into the paladins and are like, oh, cool, those are those paladins. That's not cool. That's just, DM masturbation at best and literally nothing at worst.

So yeah, you need to give more information, but you can't give up the whole thing either of course , because uncovering mysteries is an exciting thing to do.

Now, in my next iteration of rumours, I want to really lean into this, and really push how much information I provide. Roughly speaking, in each rumour I want to; explain what the thing is, what the lure about it is, and roughly where it is, in relation to places that are already known, or have partially abstracted directions included.

It is at this point that I realise I have no framework to work off of. I actually have very few books that offer good rumours to reference - if you know any, please let me know!

I feel like of the few books I have, many of the rumours are limited to just 'factoids' about the setting, rather than useful information. Sure, having only interesting information might be a bit much, but I feel like when most of your rumours are pieces of setting information that the players ought to know merely by existing, something isn't quite right.

THUS, I DO DECLARE THERE TO BE THREE TYPES OF RUMOUR - FACTOIDS, SECRETS, AND HOOKS

It should be pretty self-explanatory, but here's roughly what they mean;

Factoids - setting information that has no real effect on play.

Secrets - gameable information about world elements, such as monster weaknesses, or the location of a secret passage

Hooks - rumours that inspire action, through the lure of something the party want, or an event they might want to be a part of

Note, the main difference between a Secret and a Hook is that only the Hook causes party action. At best, a Secret could enable it, but would only ever be applied to something that the party already want to do/solve.

Personally, I think the emphasis should be on the latter two types of rumour.

So, my next big problem, for which I don't have a smooth segue;

BIG PROBLEM 2 - PLAYERS DON'T WANT TO SPEND TIME ON RUMOURS

Now, this is a bit more specific to my campaign, but it is still a reasonably applicable lesson I think.

My Downtime system goes roughly as such; a "full rest" is a week long, and alongside resting you get a daytime action, and an evening action to spend on activities (somewhat analgous to 5e's main and bonus actions in combat). One activity you could spend your time on is "Gathering Rumours". Guess how many times people did that? 

Out of four or five players doing this six or seven times? 

Maybe once. There was just always something better or more exciting. Now, in a regular game, perhaps your system is a bit less chunky, so that players could afford to spend a little time doing this then you'll probably be fine. Here though, I really want my players to have a variety of rumours to chase and follow, but when it comes down to researching new spells, and new rumours; even I'd pick new spells every time. At the very least you could just pick a tunnel and go. You don't need rumours. 

But you sort of do for the best experience.

Here is the lesson I guess; If you want players to have access to something, don't make it cost something that could be used on something more exciting.

Revelationary, I know. I'll accept my Nobel Prize next Friday.

So here's how I solve this; (hopefully, this has yet to be deployed but I think it will at least achieve my goals. Betterment can happen later.) 

Every time the party go back to town to rest, they get a rumour or maybe 2. They can still spend their downtime on extra rumours as before, but they don't have to now.

Here's the catch; rumours also come with a source, that determines how truthful/useful the rumour given might be. Most of the time rumours will be at least mostly useful and truthful. But you never know for sure, unless you spend some of your time verifying the rumour.

That's it.

Now, I do think there might be room for "factoid" type rumours, but they should be a minority, or find-out-able without cost. potentially there could even be Secrets and Hooks disguised as factoids. Not the other way round though I think, what's the point in providing a sign-post to nothing?

Secrets and Hooks should be the most common type of rumour by far, and the ones that you put the majority of effort into, and should probably cost something for more than a basic stipend of Hooks, but hey oh. This post is getting long enough as it is. 

Next time; How do I even make a good rumour 'ey?

[Spoiler: I still don't actually know]

Beneath the City of the Ives: Session 1

Subtitle: In which a rat was hugged, a bird was butchered, and a policeman seriously reconsidered their life choices.

Cast:
D.S. Forge: Human Fighter: A force of justice who has definitely earned their badge and is proving it down in the undercity.
Ratty: Ratman rogue with an awfully heavy crossbow. Very uncomfortable about this whole thing.
Lulu: Human necromancer, and the most damn fancy necromancer you ever did meet too.
Verdigris: Coppery Dragonborn Sorcerer: just wants to pay off their bar tab and damages and get the hell out of this madness.
Quinn: Weird star-elf Warlock: Very fancy, on obscure mission from space (probably) and just in general, a bit off.

Brief Context:
The City of the Ives is the greatest city in this, or any age. Free from crime (mostly), a utopia of perfection (in the good bits) and a bastion of democracy (for the well-dressed and often-bathed).
Beneath the city however, is a different matter.
The Sewer System of the city is overly vast and maddeningly complex. It stretches literal miles, and winds in mysterious and occasionally unknowable ways. In the years since the city council gave up on trying to manage them at all, who knows what kind of creatures could have moved in, and what kinds of treasures they might be hording...
There are at least 3 wizards, and presumably at least 1 dragon. More details are so far un-substantiated.
For this game in particular, a mysterious sealing of one of the larger valves of the sewers has resulted in a build up of waste beneath the central district of the city. This needed to be remedied, and these were the ones they could scrounge together to actually go down and attempt the job...

We got off to a slowish start (compared to my expectations, goes to show I guess), beginning in a chamber just off the edge of the main sewer, scrawled with adventurer graffiti, with two exits; one marked "Main Valve" the other scrawled with "Fuck these Eel Mother-Fuckers".

Interestingly, they chose the later. On the plus side, they quickly discovered one of the control rooms, with a flint spear stuck part-way through a glass window.

On the other hand, they quickly discovered the inception of the grafitti when a few open doors later, they get rushed by Eel-hounds. Imagine a dog, but replace the central trunk and head with a squirming, screaming Lamprey Eel. Yikes.

Verdigris tries to pull the door closed before the beasts reach them, but is only partially successful, deciding to blast them with his dragonborn lightning breath, scorching a couple. A few ranged attacks and a magical exploding ice-knife later, and they repel the beasts, sealing off their avenue of attack with illusory party-hat styled spikes.

With a second, more coordinated approach, the party take another stab at the Eel-Hounds, though one of them takes a chop at D.S. Forge and won't let go. They hear an almighty bird shriek, unearthly and loud through another door, and scrabbling and scratching.

Finishing off the Eel hounds just in time, a huge Raven-Black bird monstrosity like a tiger crossed with a bat and twice as big, partially bursts through the door, spearing Verdigris for all but one of his hit points on its beak.

Through a combination of the Bird Beast being stuck in a tight corridor, Quinn's unearthly fey presence, and D.S. Forge grappling the creature, they keep it stuck enough to variously chop, stab, and shoot it to the brink of death.

Lulu the Necromancer continues to fail to contribute as everything passes the saving throw against her Toll the Dead cantrip.

Finally, Ratty gets a cheeky crit, spearing the creature in the eye with his bolt, and Verdigris and Forge finish it off.

As Forge bandages up Verdigris' wound, Quinn slices open a few of the Eel-Hounds and finds a ring on a partially digested hand, Lulu harvests a bunch of the Bird Beast's feathers, and they open up the two ways forward they have cleared.

They discover the Eel-Hounds slimey lair, and a large cupboard, padlocked shut. With time and effort, Quinn repeatedly freezes the lock until it is brittle enough for Verdigris to shatter with his warhammer.

In the other direction, they open up a large hall festooned with long tables and benches, a few crates of salvage, and the Bird-Beast's nest, from which they recover an Egg.

They enter a room beyond the hall, and enter a room piled high with rotten garbage, and decrepit cooking equipment. As they investigate, a trio of insectoid beasts with (literal) human faces pull themselves free from the muck.

One of them continues to ruin Verdigris' day by slathering him in acidic spital, while another lunges at D.S. Forge, stabbing at him with its limbs and rasping in his ear;
"Why would they do this to us?"
Quite understandably, Forge is somewhat disturbed by this.

The party quickly dispatch them however, with a combination of a sleep spell, a few cantrips, and a couple of well-placed crossbow bolts. During the fight, and confirmed by some post-violence dissection, they discover that there are actual people somehow sealed within and bonded to an insectoid exo-skeleton. It reeks with transmutation and Necromancy when Lulu casts Detect Magic on the Corpses.

Quinn also searches the muck, discovering the key for the lock they already destroyed, and rolls a 1 on his save versus disease. More on that to come, presumably.

To the north, they discover a set of skeletons, too small to be adult humans, and which none of the party (even Lulu with her extensive knowledge of bones) can recognise. Beyond this chamber they come out into the main sewer intersection again, by the smaller, middle valve. While the party arrange furniture to allow them access on top of it, Lulu scouts with her familiar, discovering a group of Troglodytes on one side of it, and what appears to be a skeleton-man camping on the other. The familiar also scouted out briefly the other side-sewer on the far side of the valve.

Their most pressing concern at this point was how to deal with the Troglodytes. Options were considered such as redirecting the poo-water flow into them to wash them away, or alternatively, diplomacy.

These were dismissed, as they decided that next time, they would instead enter the next section;
Research.

Lessons Learned:
- Woah, DnD takes loads longer than I thought it would. I guess I didn't expect them to be able to clear the whole Great Valve Complex in one go, but I expected them to find more than 1 control lever. But that's how it goes, its cool. I may consider thinking about how I can improve the general procedure for exploration if it continues to be an issue. We played for about three hours, and had about three combats that didn't take toooooo long in the scheme of things I think, so I suspect it was the exploration stuff that took the majority of the time, but that remains to be seen and continue to be tested.
- The rumour system I made was crap. No other word for it, I've realised it was terrible. I'm still unsure about how to remedy it yet, but in my considerations, I think there are a few things I need the new rumours to talk about:
> Things players want to find (i.e. fountains of youth, oracles, magic items, etc.)
> Things players want to overcome (i.e. dungeons, dragons, etc.)
> Things players want to discover (i.e. things they find mysterious)
Point is, it needs to become about things players want, and I think it also needs to answer 1 or maybe 2 of the 'W' questions, where, when, why, who, etc. so that players aren't totally in the dark about how to actually find the thing. We'll see.
- My improvised monster stats and notes work, which is nice. Everything in the evening's play was contained on 1 revision card, so that's great considering I've got a whole bunch of them for other locations too...
- Oh, and minimal maps weren't my ally. In a bid to reduce my workload, I made the maps super simple. Should probably put a little more effort into them, as I feet like it meant I had to explain myself more than once on a few things because there was no evidence of them on the map. We'll see how it helps next time.

I aim to post one of these each week for the sessions of this game. We'll see how that goes too.