Rumors

[Folie]

Have you or a friend ever had the opportunity to spread an interesting rumor or bit of gossip about your character, or about other's characters? What kind of effects did this information end up having?

As an example of rumors getting out of control, our Hadozee PC made quite a stir in this one port city the party went to (and subsequently burned down a huge portion of - but that's another story). The townspeople were so amazed by his exotic appearance and ability to glide that a growing messianic cult is building up around him.

[RandomNPC]

it's not exactly a rumor but it's close enough.

so the evil party member with the hand of vecna (didn't think he would put it on!) takes leadership and recruits a cleric as his main henchperson. so he has her, being all evil and able to drop spells for inflicts, prepare nothing but healing spells. then he gives her a ring of invisibility and tells her to follow him around, but if she sees an ally of his in need of healing rush over and heal them.

well, three rounds of bull rushes on the edge of a volcano with some dragon worshiping barbarians, and a death slad shows up, demanding the hand of vecna. Lady cleric shouts out in a language only one character understands (the slad gets the message too) she screams "leave my husband alone!"

well, he went out and found her, she's his faveorate out of all his henchfolk (the rest stayed behind in a claimed castle.) he wants her near him at all times, and he presented her with a verry expensive ring, what was she supposed to think?

[Aximili]

Our party once caught a noble woman... I'm gonna say: expressing her love to a creepy bard who was always around the graveyard (dirgesinger). The woman's father was a strong enemy of ours, so our handy bard made sure to spread the rumor, with intent of giving the family a bit of bad fame.

The only problem was when the barbarian decided he wanted to spread it too, and dropped in a comment that there might have been chains and leather involved. Than the ranger stepped in and took it even a bit further.

Next thing we know, there's word on the streets that the countess had been initiated into sinful acts involving devils =P.

In the end we just got to piss off our enemy noble, disgrace a young lady who turned out to be quite nice, and get an inocent's man legs broken (poor dirgesinger, he never saw it coming =/).

[Collin152]

it's not exactly a rumor but it's close enough.

so the evil party member with the hand of vecna (didn't think he would put it on!) takes leadership and recruits a cleric as his main henchperson. so he has her, being all evil and able to drop spells for inflicts, prepare nothing but healing spells. then he gives her a ring of invisibility and tells her to follow him around, but if she sees an ally of his in need of healing rush over and heal them.

well, three rounds of bull rushes on the edge of a volcano with some dragon worshiping barbarians, and a death slad shows up, demanding the hand of vecna. Lady cleric shouts out in a language only one character understands (the slad gets the message too) she screams "leave my husband alone!"

well, he went out and found her, she's his faveorate out of all his henchfolk (the rest stayed behind in a claimed castle.) he wants her near him at all times, and he presented her with a verry expensive ring, what was she supposed to think?

Heh. How did that turn out?

[BlueWizard]

I had an evil illusionist that caused all sorts of mischief, before the party chased him off.

[Maxymiuk]

Through my tendency to overuse the Thieves Guild in various plots, one of my players' characters became a terror of the underworld. This or that organization would attempt to capture her, only to have its members maimed or killed, and their headquarters burned to the ground. In the group it quickly became the running joke (and after that an in game fact) that the Guild circulated descriptions of her character with the note attached "For the love of all that's holy, don't start any trouble with her!"

[valadil]

I once played a mischievous/evil halfling rogue (okay, so the word 'once' is a lie). One of the other party members was somewhere between tiefling and half fiend. He wouldn't let me be leader, so every time we got to a new town I ratted him out to whatever religious group had the most paladins. The best part was that I ratted him out in the form of a confessional, explaining that I had worked with this person and felt guilty about it, blah blah blah, embellishing his demonic traits and evil acts a little more each time.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

I worked with my DM when building the backstory to my most favorite character on many things. One of them was the idea that my character had actually been adventuring for most of his life, usually under aliases and sometimes while wearing a wide variety of costumes.

So the other players would very often hear about some flamboyant local legend, and the DM would give me a wink shortly thereafter to tell me that it was my character, and thus I should start bluffing and spreading rumors to cover my tracks again.