Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Old Fezziwig" data-source="post: 2011648" data-attributes="member: 59">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)</blockquote>

Verification