Embiggen Your Gamemaster Style With Rumors
By: John Teehan
Tags: Rpg, Dungeons And Dragons, Advice, Games, How To

Normally, I’m not one to go about spreading rumors.

Well, almost.

There is a time and a place for that, and my time and place of choice are in whatever game or campaign I happen to be running.

Rumors add a dimension to all sorts of NPC, player characters, or even monsters and lead to a more fleshed our gaming experience. In this piece, I focus mostly on player characters and how to bring out more to the character than just a bunch of numbers and lists of equipment and spells on a sheet.

Peto, Bardolph and Gadshill at left; Falstaff in the centre; Hal and Poins at right in the Boar’s Head Tavern. Illustration to Henry IV, Part 1, Act 2, scene 4. Unknown artist, c.1840. (source: Wikimedia Commons)

Using rumors can add flavor to a game

Whether these rumors are shared in taverns, overheard in marketplaces, or whispered somewhere in the dark, they can reveal motivations, hints, insights, or misinformation regarding the adventure, the town, and various NPCs. This has been a pretty long-established practice.

But what about the rumors focusing on the player characters?

A GM can use rumors and gossip to enhance the players’ roleplaying experience both individually and as a group.

Many (many) years ago, I had a DM who used rumors she collected from the players about their characters to help flesh out the relationships between the player characters, the party, and the world overall. Since then, I’ve used her technique in my own games myself — and not just in D&D, but other RPG games such as Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Boot Hill, and Fantasy AGE.

How does it work?

Making use of player character rumors does require some pre-game communication and preparation. When I first encountered the practice, the Internet was not nearly as widely used, so it meant meeting up with players (or at least calling them via landline) before actual game time.

Nowadays it’s as simple as messaging on a smartphone or sending a couple of emails back and forth. You could also do this in person during a session zero, but it’s a lot more fun and effective if you can talk about player character rumors privately with individual players.

Ask of your players, at the creation or introduction to a new character, for:

Two or three rumors that are true

Two or three rumors that are false.

Of those rumors, at least one rumor should be a very good rumor.

“Boris the Bloody secretly gives half his share of the treasure to charity under an assumed name.”

Likewise, at least one rumor should be more negative

“Glinda the Good has a string of ex-partners who have all died from mysterious circumstances.”

The other rumors could be simply for color.

“Boris can’t consume dairy. Glenda secretly collects tiny spoons.”

At least one rumor should be patently false. Or two. Or, hey…maybe all.

“Boris’s mother was a pirate who was hung shortly after Boris was born.” (No, she wasn’t. She was a lovely lady who walked Boris to school every day.)

“Glinda single-handedly destroyed the tower of the mad wizard Folderoll when she was but eighteen years old.” (No, she didn’t. That was Glenda — an entirely different person. Taller, too.)

Tavern Scene by David Teniers the Younger, 1658. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Some rumors don’t have to be completely false. They could just be misleading or incomplete. Boris can consume dairy, but he has a fear of cows. Glenda really does secretly collect tiny spoons — but only ones taken off of defeated enemies.

Coming up with rumors

Not all players are going to be able to come up with interesting or usable rumors right off the bat. That’s why it’s good to talk with your player early on and, if necessary, brainstorm together.

Good starting points for coming up with good player character rumors could include:

Childhood

Pre-campaign training period

Lineage

Health

Phobias

Obsessions

Personal quirks

Remind your player that not all rumors are meant to be true, so if they’re particularly protective of their character’s legacy, remind them that just because the mayor of the village thinks he saw the player character send her shadow to do her evil bidding doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.

Managing the rumor mill

Don’t feel that you have to use all of the player character rumors provided — at least all at once. It’s better to have a range to choose from at the beginning and maybe hold one or two back for revealing later in your campaign. And avoid revealing the same number of rumors per player character all at once. That comes across as too formulaic.

A good rumor should be revealed organically.

When the party enters the temple to see if they can remove the curse laid upon poor Glinda, the priests there are hesitant because they heard she scoops out peoples’ eyes with her collection of tiny spoons.

As Boris walks through the market, Filchy Lightfingers overhears a shop owner mention Boris’s mother.

Speaking of Filchy, the castle guards have been circulating a rumor that he has, somewhere on his person, a jewel worth more than the entire kingdom itself! Gosh, wouldn’t that be something to get a hold of?

Collecting rumors from your players works best during new character creation at the start of a campaign, but don’t completely reject any late-to-the-game rumors you or your players might come up with.

Be flexible, but don’t let things get out of hand. You’re the GM.

If you’re running a more drop-in style game, you might want to take any new players aside for a few minutes and just get one or two morsels, if you can, before starting the game session.

You may not always get a chance to integrate any new rumors into that day’s game, but the process gets the player thinking of their player character as something a little more defined than simply a character sheet.

Did you hear…?

Upon entering the tavern, Filchy, with his elf eyes, notices the tavern keeper discreetly hiding the spoons. Boris notices a pair of off-duty guards eyeing Filchy curiously. Glinda orders an ale.

The setting of rumors can be something you and the player can use to enhance certain role-playing scenarios, and it gives the GM some further elements to weave into an adventure or campaign.

I’ve used a fantasy setting for the above examples, but rumors can be employed in nearly any game.

The Free Trader Beowulf’s new astrogator is said to have been drummed out of the Navy for gross incompetence. (False)

When Susan worked as a librarian at Miskatonic University, she once saved a freshman from drowning in her own library. The details are both confusing and disturbing. (True)

The droid MC-5 was custom built on the Outer Rim by the Hutt Syndicate and tasked with hunting down deadbeats who owe the Hutt money. (Actually tasked to spy on rival syndicates.)

That new sheriff in town? She used to be a secret service agent and was on duty the night Lincoln was shot. (True, but she was in Atlanta at the time of the assassination investigating a different sort of plot against the President. She received a commendation for her work.)

Artwork of David Revoy for the DVD Open Movie workshop ‘Blend&Paint’ published in 2011 by the Blender Foundation under a CC-By license.

Rumors are meant to add flavor to a game, but they can sometimes be used to help characters with good reputations or hurt those with bad.

While not intended to become adventure hooks, an enterprising GM playing in an open sandbox sort of world could always take what seemed like a mere seedling of an idea and turn it into something much grander.

Hey, why not?

Have fun!