One of my players commented on my revised rumor rules, and suggested this variation:
PCs can get unlimited rumors, but, duplicates are duplicates. Every PC is guaranteed a single unique rumor.
That means each person gets at least one, but folks with Carousing or Current Affairs might pick up three, five, even seven or eight more rumors . . . but many might be the same things over and over.
It's an interesting variation - it puts in randomness of results twice. You get a number of rumors based on your random roll, but then your rumor table rolls may cut down the useful number by a lot. Essentially you're getting a maximum number of rumors heard, not a fixed number of unique rumors.
I'm not sure I'll do that - we tried the new method and it was fine - but I like the thought behind it.
It depends on your Players. Are they kind to laugh week after week after week that Vryce (for instance) keeps hearing the same rumors (probably from the same set of drunks), or (like mine) begin to feel they're 'getting gyped' on the points they've spent in those rumor generating skills?
ReplyDeleteMy Players would definitely prefer 'quality over quantity'.
It would depend on them, for sure. Vryce's player is the one who suggested this, actually, and he's the one who usually rakes in an obscene amount of rumors.
DeleteAnd they feel like, at some point, quantity is degrading quality. If I'm making up 15 more every session, what are the odds that all 15 are real gems and aren't just crushing the real clues they need under the weight of variations on a theme, falsehoods, random and unessential bits of information, and so on.
I'll point out, just for information purposes, that these skills get you one rumor in DF2. Getting extras is my addition, so really we're arguing about "how big of a bonus?" and not "do I get what I paid for?"
Also, heard rumors get deleted from the list. So they can't hear week to week repeats.
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