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This is a player comment:

Rumors would be more fun and less spiteful if it was a rule that made up rumors or slander that your character didnt' see or hear directlymust be ICly linked to the character spreading the rumor so that it couldn't just be bogus. This would prevent rumors from turning into spiteful hate fests with no accountability.

Please discuss? Is there anything else that should be changed for rumors to be more fun, fair, etc?

The line between "made up" and "truthful" is thin enough I don't think this is really enforceable.

I'm more annoyed by the sense I've gotten that rumors are getting spammily added for purposes of self-aggrandizement. I might be wrong; I can't see who adds rumors or anything. But could we have a limit of adding 2 new rumors a week per character or account?

This might lessen our number of rumors, true, but we haven't had a shortage at any point. I think it would cut down on some of the endless repetition of the same things.

Perhaps we non-Troubs could spend IP to find out who the source of a rumour is? And who is spending IP to promote or suppress? It would keep some level of anonymity, but not to an unlimited degree. It would be reflective of how things are in real life. I dunno.

To be frank, a rumor mill is supposed to be spiteful. That's the way rumors always are in my experience.

I've personally had some very, very unfortunate things said about my chars and people directly involved with my chars come up in rumors, things that were not flattering or true. It's a rumor system, though, and I had to deal with it.

Frankly, if chars have mean rumors showing up about them left and right, they've probably done some things to deserve it. I know that when Annalesa had them coming up about her, she deserved it. I didn't like it, but ICly, it was well deserved.

I agree with Dice, though, about putting some kind of limit about rumor submissions or something. 2 or 3 sounds about right to me.

I agree with the limiting.

But as previously stated above, they are meant to be sort of crossed between spiteful/praising. That's why its a rumor. Rumor is not always truth, but also could be. Its the mystery of a rumor.

It also gives people something to talk about other than... "Hi, my foot scratches. How are you?", etc.

Plus, when you think about it, it sort of helps mold your character into development. For example - How are they going to react? Will they prove the rumor true? Will they shrug it off and not let them affect them? Stuff like that.

Just my opinion.

As a player myself, I personally think that the misinformation and inability to really trust the rumors is good for RP and good for the system. I think it spurs things on without itself being able to be a sole news source.

However, I think that being able to go back to the sources on things is also good for RP because it causes confrontations. Unfortunately right now, there's no reason to leave yourself ICly as the source of a rumor unless you want that confrontation to occur. I think the system might be better off if there was reinforcements within the system for those who do claim rumors.

Anonymous is great and it has a purpose, and I don't want to get rid of it or hurt people for doing it. But I think that that purpose is when someone wants to start a rumor about their own characters, or to add something in that spurs RP, that their own character wouldn't say. I do not think that purpose is to harass someone with untruths that can't come back to you. If ICly, your character would want it to be said, ICly, they should be the one saying it.

I would suggest that rumors should be able to be anonymous as currently, but if your character is not set as the source, it starts out weaker. If other people take an interest in it, it will still take off, but if no one likes it, there's no one behind it, and it's easy to quash or goes away quickly. You can still use influence to strengthen rumors you don't want to be as a source on for whatever reason. This makes it harder for the system to get rumors in which will work against people without being the source, unless they capture the interest of others. Along with this, I'd support promote and quash should not be anonymous by default, but should have an extra anonymous option that still gets your amusing message in, but doesn't affect the strength of the rumor as strongly - if you want to put your full force behind the rumor going in either direction, you get to claim what you say.

To go with these, I'd suggest a change in policy that being the source on something doesn't necessarily mean that those are your words. Due to the nature of rumors, things get changed as they get repeated, and it would be altered slightly. Being the source of something would just mean claiming the central message of the piece. So you could word it as random peasant ramblings, using phrasings that your character wouldn't use, because you think they're more fun for the rumor system, but if someone wants to RP a scene about it, they have someone to bring it back to.

I would suggest rumors still don't show any source information for rumors or promotes/quashes by defaults. I think that this should either be a command that uses IPs or some sort of RPA. I'd rather it be an IP system, so that people can use it freely, but I don't mind taking on the work myself, and Az has a huge load.

I like Temi's suggestion a lot.

It could just be that I'm tired, but I didn't really understand Temi's suggestion in full. I'll chat with her about it though.

In general, I feel if we take anonymity away in any regard, players will stop using the system. Full stop. If nothing else, I get "My character would never actually gossip." Otherwise, people just wouldn't do it out of fear.

Temi can correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think her suggestion is that you should have the option of posting rumous (and influencing them) anonymously, but rumours that are done anonymously would have a harder time taking root and spreading than those that aren't. So being anonymous would still be an option... it just wouldn't work as well.

Geras is correct, though in the interest of inspiring people to not freak out at the anonymity, I'd phrase it differently.

First: renormalize rumor values so that standard rumors are a bit lower. This is the new standard and would apply to starting rumors anonymously or anonymous quashes/promotes, as we currently have.

Then: add a bonus to strength if you claim a rumor or quash/promote as your character being involved. If you're willing to put your name behind it, you have a greater effect.

In other words, framed as a bonus for claiming rumors rather than a penalty for using anonymity. The normalization would just be because people have already remarked that rumors are really lasting too long, and an additional bonus on top of that would exacerbate the problem.