Rumor Tables

I'm prepping for an upcoming campaign, and the first session involves collecting rumors. So, I figure I'd better write rules for rumor tables - something I've done before, but wanted to take another crack at.

My last ruleset had players roll 1d6 while I flipped a coin, asking the player to call it but not telling them what it wound up as. What they rolled determined which general rumor they would hear about, while what I flipped determined whether or not the details were true or false. For example:

GENERAL: Rumor has it that the government of a city far to the north known as Nothokari, capital of the Coatbysk, has discovered an ancient magical artifact that was thought lost.
TRUE: The artifact, known as the Witchcrown, was confiscated by the city's current king- though some attempts to steal it have been made already.
FALSE: The current king, known to be a Lightclaimer sympathizer, is currently negotiating a selling price with Subjugator Garrel.

While that system is perfectly functional, I wanted to tweak it. My goals were:

• remove the secret coin flip - it's better if players aren't necessarily aware that they can find false information.
• ease the amount of work I, as a DM, have to do. rumor tables shouldn't take more than a few minutes to throw together.
• incorporate Charisma into the roll, so that some characters are better at collecting rumors than others.

So, that in mind, here's my new system:

Whenever a player wishes to collect rumors, they must pick a specific region or topic to gather rumors on. Then, they roll a d6.

Each rumor table will have at least one true rumor on it. Additionally, the DM will add a number of additional true rumors to it equal to the player character's Charisma modifier. So, at +5 Charisma, the table will be entirely true rumors.

Every other rumor on the table will be, in some way, untrue. It might be a partial lie, or entirely made up. Ideally, even fake rumors point the party in the direction of something interesting. Sure, there might not be buried treasure at the destination they were given - but there is a tiny village home to sprites.

So, as an example, here's a rumor table for Selka. My process for writing these was to do the true rumors first, and then copy and paste the finished rumors to the false section, changing them slightly. Then, I would write an expansion upon the rumor in the spot it left on the true table. This leads to the "false" rumors mostly just being outdated or undetailed, which I like.

However, each table does have at least one true rumor independent from any on the other table. For the True table, this is the omnipresent true rumor that each character has a chance of finding regardless of Charisma. For the False table, it's just something completely made up and not even partially true.

TRUE RUMORS:

1. Recently, a fungal infection has inflicted heavy damage on this year's war-snail population, damaging trade with other nations. An emissary from Ghr'quoz, a Selkian underwater city, is visiting the surface to investigate, and will pay handsomely for anyone who can help. (stagnant true rumor)
2. Mining operations for a substance that will burn even underwater in northeastern Selka have halted due to a cave-in, which some say was caused intentionally.
3. An ancient, immortal warrior from the Obsidian Tide is supposedly being hidden in a large barn somewhere in central Selka, with a visiting Dobarkoli anthropologist attempting to translate the giant's mutterings.
4. An arctic druid roused the slumbering water spirit within a Selkian glacier, attempting to use it as a weapon of war - which the water spirit wants nothing to do with. It's attempting to run, but that mainly means slowly sliding through eastern Selka.
5. A mad wizard living in the Brimstone Marsh has been searching for an apprentice as of late, but has been attacked at all the rural villages he's visited - causing him to destroy many of them, mainly in self defense that's gone a little too far.
6. A number of Selkian exiles have discovered a potent hallucinogen that allows for the development of psionic powers, which they've circulated along with more mundane narcotics - blaming the whole thing on the Rikolese Empire.

FALSE RUMORS:

1. A visiting Raahilan gunsmith has developed guns for the Selkian military that will function underwater. The factory for them is located along the country's northeastern coast.
2. A seal rancher recently uncovered what appears to be the crypt of a Giantine warrior while looking for grazing sites.
3. A glacier that has stayed stagnant for centuries, and is also part of an important religious ritual for pilgrims from Sharsvud, has recently begun to move southward for no apparent reason.
4. A horrific beast from the Brimstone March has begun to devastate the rural communities of western Selka.
5. The neighboring Rikolese empire has been smuggling experimental alchemical drugs over the border to attempt to create a dependency among the Selkian surface-borne population.
6. In southern Selka, there are rumors of a revolution among the Nautilid population, who have long wanted to establish their own nation.

Malachai (Cha +3) and Wrex (Cha -1) both roll to gather rumors about Selka.

Malachai rolls a 5, just over their threshold for a true rumor, and learns about the drug trading going on along the Rikolese border - but doesn't hear about the true party behind it.

Wrex rolls a 1, luckily hearing about the truthful rumor about the fungal infection among Selkian war-snails. 

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Okay, well after writing this I would actually say it takes longer than my previous system. But it is a lot of fun, and I think a little more streamlined for actual play. It's also a good way to get the gears turning on questlines. I think I'll try this system out in my next campaign, and maybe report back on if it works or not.

Session -1

So, the concept of a "Session 0" is well-known. Establishing what kind of setting your players are gonna be working through, helping with character creation, stuff like that. It's a step of the process and of establishing communication between the DM and the players. That's an important thing to do, for multiple reasons.

But last night I did something similar, which I'm deeming a "Session -1." I'm gonna do a proper Session 0 later where I actually talk about the setting they'll be in and help them make characters. So what, then, is a Session -1?

Basically, it's for establishing player and DM expectations. In mine I focused very little on the setting itself, and more on finding out what kind of setting my players wanted to exist in (Loom is large and diverse enough to where I felt like I could accommodate any sort of time period). I mainly did this because I'm playing with (mostly) new people I wanted to make sure they knew what they were getting into. And I think making sure everyone is on the same page about things like how lethal a game they're playing and what sort of adventure they're on is important.

So, I'm gonna post the general questions I asked my players here. If any other DMs see it, I figure it may be useful for them. And even if they don't, having it here will help me refine it later on, probably.

GAMEPLAY EXPECTATIONS

1. How much experience does this group have with tabletop roleplay, and if any, with what systems?
2. What balance of combat, exploration, and roleplay does the group want?
3. What power level would you like your characters to have?
4. How much lethality are you comfortable with?
5. How much homebrew are you comfortable with?
6. What amount of gore is okay, or are there any subjects that should be avoided during gameplay?
7. Would you prefer your actions to have more consequences on your character sheet, or on the game's story?

SETTING EXPECTATIONS

1. How big of a physical area do you want your adventures to cover?
2. What sort of technology level do you want the setting to be at? A real-world frame of reference would be helpful.

STORY EXPECTATIONS

1. What sort of "scope" do you want your adventures to cover? Personal goals, or saving the world?
2. How deep are you planning on going in terms of character backstory?
3. Do you want the personal character arcs of your characters to be integrated into the campaign, or just a natural consequence of their adventuring?
4. What races are you interested in playing or knowing about? (A lot of my races differ heavily from their portrayal in "vanilla" D&D, which is why I ask this)

After my questions were done, I let them ask their own. And, of course, if they needed stuff clarified about any questions I made sure to.

Overall I would say it was pretty helpful. As it turns out, what my players wanted is pretty damn different from what I was planning. And I tend to build things around the whims of my players, so knowing some of them from the get-go helps a lot.

They wound up wanting a world in its early Renaissance era, on the brink of industrialization. They like the idea of starting with a small-scale story and moving into a larger one, both in terms of physical and narrative scope. They want weak characters starting out who scale up into relatively powerful individuals - maybe with some hidden powers, to boot.

That's pretty different from my past experiences, and it's exciting to be pushed in a new direction. I think I'm gonna start doing this with all my groups from now on.