Disturbing Rumors

[JoeGKushner]

I didn’t know what to expect from A Dozen Disturbing Rumors. The copy I have is very unlike most of the books from Ronin Arts. It’s not in full color; it’s not in a different printing format. It’s short, very short, clocking in at seven pages. It’s art free.

The book introduces rumors for the GM to use in his campaign. The rumors are broken down with the title of the rumor, “The Bells Were Stolen”, the DC (DC10), what happens on a failed gather information check, what happens on a successful check, the source of the rumor, and the follow up.

To me, the rumors were dross. I couldn’t see myself using them as anything other than campaign background. What I thought strange was that in one case, they don’t rely on game stats, even when discussing things not found in any of the core books. “Terrible Creatures in Hats Stalk the Streets At Night.” Involves huggermuggers, a small humanoid found in the Tome of Horrors II. Without providing the stats, it’s completely useless. It’s like starting a rumor that the dreaded Devil-Angel has been seen by the dock side lately and discovering that yes indeed, it is there and spoiling for a fight. Now where are those stats?

There are some positive things though. For one, it’s a short product. If you’re just looking to add some ambiance to the campaign, these are perfect. Nothing like a little rumor mongering to keep the campaign moving. For another, some of the rumors have a little meat to them and can lead to adventures. Take the bounty that the king offers on the drow. Here the characters get a bounty on bringing drow into the king. It’s not much, but it’s something, an old bounty hunter bit. The third thing is that it’s very inexpensive.

For starting GM’s, the product can probably help generate some good ideas. For the cost, it’s not a terrible thing. For more experienced GMs, you might want to bust out the Mother of All Encounter Tables and take a couple of rolls on that for inspiration.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

In this 7-page PDF, written by Philip Reed, DMs can find twelve rumors to be dropped into any fantasy campaign. Each one includes an entry for a failed Gather Information check and a successful check, rumor sources, and follow up information for each rumor.

This PDF is designed as a source of story depth and adventure seeds. DMs can either use the rumors to add background noise to a campaign or setup a future adventure.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

A Dozen Disturbing Rumors is a short, 7-page PDF by Philip Reed aimed at giving DMs rumors they can use to flesh out their world. It consists of two main sections: a brief introduction and, then, the rumors. The PDF is easy to read, has a clean layout, and is mostly free of typographical errors. The only two I noticed were the substitution of "quite" for "quiet" and the a missing space between two words -- nothing damning to be sure.

The introduction gives some brief background on the work (the author has a very conversational tone, which makes the work easy to read) and some suggestions on how to handle the rumors presented within. One piece of advice that I found particularly useful was the suggestion that DMs give players both the false and true information if they suceed on a Gather Information check in order to increase opportunity for roleplaying. Although seemingly self-evident now that I've read it, this advice alone made the book useful to me, as it will completely change the way that I handle rumor-hunting in future games.

As for the rumors themselves, which are arranged by Gather Information DC, most of them are potentially useful, although some stand out more than others. Two, in particular, seemed like they could spark an entire leg of a campaign by themselves: "The Water's Been Poisoned" and "Disease is Spreading." Questions that came to my mind included: If the bandits of the first rumor poisoned the water, did it go as planned (that is, did it help them with their criminal enterprises)? Who put them up to it? How far did they intend to go (if people keep on getting blinded long after the necessary diversion, how do the bandits react)? Rumors like these two, or the one about Lady Doreen's assassins and the huggermuggers, present entire situations that can be expanded and developed by the DM or not as the campaign demands. These rumors really help the author achieve his aim of helping a DM flesh out his world.

I do have a couple of minor misgivings about a few things presented. I found the first rumor, about the missing bellringer, to be less than interesting. It didn't give me any ideas or really point to a larger world beyond the PCs (at least not one that they'd necessarily care about). The fact that the main section of the PDF opens with it made me a bit wary about the rest of the content, which I ended up liking a lot. A minor gripe, really. The other thing that came to mind, which I feel is more important, as I was reading it was that I would have found alignments useful for the NPCs presented -- it would be a way to get at how the NPCs would react if accused of giving out misleading information or even lying. As it is, this information would be more useful to me than the NPC's hit points.

Overall, Reed has put together a fine tool for a DM that fits the short-length PDF format perfectly.

Score: 4.25 (rounded down to 4)

 

[Crothian]

Dozen Disturbing Rumors

Every good town is filled with rumor and local gossip. Not all of needs to be adventure bait and not all of needs to be true. But coming uyp with a lot of different rumors for different towns can be difficult. This book presents a dozen of them and while that works nicely with the dozen theme of the series of books more would have been useful.

A Dozen Disturbing Rumors is a PDF by Ronin Arts. Ronin Arts is one of the leasers in the PDF market having hundred and hundreds of different titles in over a dozen categories. One category is the Dozen of category that has twelve items in each of the small PDFs. This book is written by Philip Reed the owner of Ronin Arts and long time RPGB writer having many different titles to his name. The book is only seven pages long with no art and no book marks. It is layed out in a basic two column format making it easy to read and follow. It is a basic no frills book.

The rumors are all pretty big on scale like the moon is falling or a witch has cursed the city. But the rumors are a bit more then that. There are rules for gather information checks and the information varies if the check fails for instance. IT would have been nice though to really flesh the rumors out and just do more with them. IT is a nice starting point for a DM to wet his whistle with some neat ideas, but most of the hard work is still out there for the DM to do.

Each part of the rumor is written as if someone is speaking it and does say who would be telling this bit of information to the players. Each rumor also gives a nice follow up for what will happen in the next few days or weeks and gives some very basic ground work on where the rumor could lead the players. Of course outside that the DM will have to fill in a lot of information but that does have the added advantage of being able to tailor these to the level and setting of any particular campaign. That seems to be one of the few truly positive things about the product.

The book works well for some good and interesting ideas if the DM needs a starting point. The rumors though do not lead the DM that far and soon he will have to flesh out a few things if he would like to turn them into adventures. I think that most could make interesting little side adventures that the players can easily learn about and then choose to explore on their own time. They are simple to start with but any DM should be able to make them more complicated as needed. For the price it is an okay value for anyone looking for some ideas and a ways to implement them into a campaign.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I liked the fact that some of the rumors were full of what makes the grass grow green. Hey, guess what? Sometiimes the guy you meet in the bar is full of it...

The Auld Grump