Rumors (tied to world/area events)

[cromcrom]

Rumors could "launch" special events.
Example:
Take an inn, in an area.
then your average "gimme a drink, I will tell you what I know" kind of NPC, for, say, 10 golds.
Then, the NPC can randomly speak on of 5 lines.
1- "Someone told me that there was a zombie apocalypse in the cemetary."
2- "Someone told me that there was a bigfoot near the Big Rock."
3- "Someone told me that there was some severe thunderstorm coming."
4- "Someone told me that there was a forest fire going on."
5- "I heard nothing of interest, my good sir/lady"

each line gives a 20% chance for the event to happen.
The NPC stores every 24/48/ whatever hours up to 4 lines.
The proper lines are stored as variables.
so, for example, line 1 will be stored 2 times, then line 2 one time, and line 5 one time (randomly).
The rumors resets every 24/48/whatever hours.
When the player buys the drink, the NPC as a X% chance to speak the rumor line. In the example above, 50% chance to say line 1, 25% to say line 2, 25% to speak line 5, and 0% chance to speak the other lines.
So that the more the player pays, the better the idea about what might be going on.

THEN

either when the player leaves the conversation, leaves the inn, or whatever, the event has a CHANCE to fire, depending on the number of times it was stored. So, in the example above, the line one event would have a 40% chance to fire, event 2 20% chance to fire, and the other events no chance, or a meager 5% chance to fire.

Once the NPC had been talked to, no chance to fire a new event before rumor reset (to prevent rumor exploit).

Complex to explain, maybe not so complex to add.

Once again, just sharing my thoughts here. I dont really EXPECT anything to show in the game. Just if the idea pleases you, take it and use it as you like.

[Obsyd]

I like this! TES Oblivion did "rumors" pretty neatly.
We talked about ingame rumors with Attila, and we also talked about rumors/deeds that the player can tell to the NPCs!

For example:
The player kills a huge wolf that was the leader of a large pack and has killed many people.
After the player kills the wolf, the player can talk to the locals about this and maybe someone will really appreciate it, or maybe someone will tell the player that that wolf was not the leader..!