Town Gossip

I was standing in the local tavern, wondering what mischief other avatars were up to, when an idea occurred to me. What busy places need is a local gossip NPC. Someone who, if bribed with a drink, will respond to the keyword overhear or overheard with a randomly selected statement from the last five that it heard.

Something like
"I overheard Womby say 'watch out the town gossip is over there'"

 

Interesting! Maybe you could even "hire" NPCs to spread a little gossip for you.

"Well, Womby, for 100 gold pieces, I will tell any Outlander I see about your fine new wheel of cheese."

 

An excellent idea!

 

Thou hast lost an eighth!

 

This has been proposed before... sadly, despite being a neat idea, it's VERY open to abuse.

 

I think it sounds fun, but sure probably open to abuse. I love the idea of having smarter NPCs where they remember you after you have introduced yourself. Also I am not sure how it will work if you have a low virtue rating. Will they say something like " Hmmph, I can't be seen talking to the likes of you", or send you off to church perhaps.

 

Hmm, well, maybe the gossip could be gathered in less abusive ways? What if it uses some of the leaderboard data, or tracks vendor sales within the city and mentions to you who is selling certain items the cheapest today? or tracks who has completed a quest within the city, and mentions 'I heard 'so&so' just 'quest name here'! Maybe they will gossip about 'important people' if they are currently in the city (like reds) saying they were spotted in 'district of city'. Maybe one gossiper likes chickens, and will gossip whenever anyone kills a chicken, saying 'I heard (so&so) likes to kill poor defenseless poultry, that sod!'.. Or tracking all deaths within the city, either in PvP combat or in a duel, so they will mention, 'I heard outlander (so&so) just bit the dust, probably tripped and fell off a rock!' or 'so&so' proved his might over 'notsomuch' today in a mighty duel to the death! quite the spectacle!'

 

If that is the case, maybe tie all of that data up into a dynamic town crier NPC instead of random NPCs?

 

but the fun is in gathering the information organically through conversation, and drinking! just going to the town crier for everything you need to know about a town is a bit on the boring side for me.

 

Hey Lum! I'm sure you'd knew I'd end up here

Yes, this is (one small part of) SmackTalk that I proposed many moons ago. And to mitigate the abuse, you can only spread gossip / news / leave messages with the bartender / etc, for people on your friends list, in your guild, have permissions to your home, make-up-some-other-social-connection, etc....and only those folks can read / hear those messages / gossip.

That would make this a consensual thing, where both parties agree to this sort of mechanic. To say that this would be abused is I think a bit of FUD, as right now, anyone can grief any other player without any limits simply by yelling racist obscenities at them...and that's really rampant in this game, with this community, right?

Again, limit the mechanic to your social connections and the abuse part largely goes away. And if it happens, no GM intervention is necessary...players can simply remove the friend or ignore them.

 

This is a neat idea. I can see the exploit potential if the text overheard/repeated comes from within close proximity of the local gossip NPC. But what if it was drawn randomly from text in other locations father away, where the player base could not predict that what was said would be picked up and repeated? Granted, it might still need filtering....

 

Abuse?! Psha. We are a community of mature, responsible adults. -whispers- That Crease...I hear he wears lady's underwear under his chainmail.

 

Hmm, I can see that:/

I think it could work for

1) Leaving a message for people who friended you and you friended them on a bartender. Makes taverns much more visited places.

2) Gossip about the recent interactions of players with NPCs. Player X helped Myra... Player Y sold dozen of swords to the blacksmith... Player Z bought all the flour from the poor baker.

 

A town could have some regular contest each month and winners could be recognized in gossip until next contest
... made a delicious strawberry cake.
... makes really good ...

 

I hear that Goblins are good sources for gossip. They repeat and do what is told, they are also untrustworthy and kind of ugly but useful. Perhaps might I suggest creatures of intellect that report lies, that seems like way more fun and less work, you know like you say Jareth to them and they might respond, "We heard stories of Jareth, fear him" or "Jareth is a Codfish", or say "Winfield" and they might respond "Winfield wishes for fish" then again they might respond, "Winfield eats brains", it might be true or untrue, but any name would show up next to different random sayings. So basically like fortune cookies you have a list of "Gossip" and any name you say to said creature, it mimics the name back and puts it next to random "gossip".
I think it would be fun.
Jareth
So, the Labyrinth is a piece of cake, is it? Well, let's see how you deal with this little slice...

 

You don't need NPCs for gossip but I'm reminded of a similar idea similar to this..

I'm all for something like this. What we're basically talking about here is fame and/or event related knowledge Leaderboard data is a good source to draw from since the data is being tracked anyway. So there's no extra work in that regard.

 

Something along these lines would be so much fun. I especially like the idea of NPCs that point you in the direction of good prices or give messages. Now I just need to find some more Avatar friends to gossip about/with so I'm ready to rock if this happens!

 

Love the enthusiasm as much as I love the gossip concept!

 

I like the idea of the Town Crier. I think this has been done in several online games. One of the first mmo's I played would have the town crier's dialogue change with each patch and it would give hints as to new things that arrived in the update. It was a really interesting way to tie the changes into the game lore actually.

I think the gossip npc would be really cool but I can definitely see how that can easily get abused. I wonder if there was a way it could be done as rather a true npc and more of a vendor type character that you could purchase and put on your property. Maybe only characters who are on your friends list could interact with said vendor.