Currently, the major events in CF is not widely known IC. Example include some legendary hero has passed away, never to return. The Emperor is overthrown etc. An immortal has gone dormant. The flow of the wars between the cabals.

Have some gossip mongers, town-criers placed in cities, the Inn etc. to spread these news.

Pros
1. More current in game knowledge can be discovered in game.
2. Create a more lively environment in the cities.
3. Have talking points among players.

Cons
1. More work for Immortals. To code and update the news etc.
2. Too noisy in cities?

Extension 1: Inn Power
Heralds have power over the gossipers' stories in the Inn. They can spread stories, news, falsehood and rumours with this power.

Pros
1. Create more interaction and conflicts between Heralds and other Cabals.

Cons
1. May be against the philosophy of the Heralds to spread rumours and falsehood?
2. Lead to abuse of the power?

Extension 2: Appeal to the EGO.
Each cabal has some power level. The point represents the current power level of the cabal. The more power a cabal has, the more town-criers it can influence. For example, when the Village is strong, the town-criers at Galadon and Hamsah will hurl insults at magic users. When the Outlander is powerful, the Arkham guards will grumble about the fires in towns and chaos etc.

The power level is determined by how far each Cabal has achieved its objectives? E.g. number of enemies murdered, number of successful raids, number of successful defense, fires started, criminals apprehended etc.

Pros
1. Cabal wars have actual impact on game. i.e. Cabals can brag about their success or laments about their failures.
2. Avoid the strong get stronger, weak get weaker problem. The stronger cabals do not get any real benefits other than bragging rights. The weaker cabals do not lose power, just "face".

Cons
1. Time and effort for little real impact in game-play.

Thanks for reading.

Firstly, town criers aren't gossip mongers, they are personnel hired by the town to announce news. So let's keep these two separate.

So, a town crier would announce the official news given to him by city officials and in possibly in protected cities Blood Tribunal leaders. Also, possible advertisements from city merchants can be considered if they pay the city adminstration for it.

These announcements could be either yelled at noon in the city or told at request. I think town criers would give more feel of the city adminstration handling things in the city.


Now, the second part, gossiping. Innkeepers have been known to tell stories they hear from adventurers to entertain their patrons. By adding gossiping to Inns, maybe the Innkeeper would repeat things that he overheard(problem of filtering out the useless info is faced here), or something an adventurer gossiped to him. Or alternatively, tell forward only things heard from Heralds. This is the kind of gossip from adventurers stuff a respectable town crier wouldn't announce just because he overheard it(unless the city adminstration tells him to announce it).

So, I'd say it's a good idea if we keep the two separate, as both can add depth to the world in their own fields.

But I think you have one hell of an awsome idea. I would even think it cool for the criers to cite individuals they may see as well. For instance if a player does a lot of fighting in a certain area mobs in the area might grow acustomed to hearing the air filled with screams of their name.

I like the whole idea of fame as a reward and I could see a lot of people really striving to become famous in such a manner. This idea would work really cool with kastellyn's religion as well I think.

The fame affect could potentially play into the anti-paladin demand skill and goodie and woodland requesting.

Extension 3: Personalised reaction

I'm not too sure if this is not already implemented. Mobs will react to successful and not so successful characters differently. For example, some selected mobs will grovel at the knees of the Emperor. Others will salute the Provost Magistrate. Some may be trembled with fear in the presence of a particularly murderous character (determined by number of PKs?). And some will jeer those characters who always outnumber their enemies by 3-to-1.

Pros
1. Create a more interactive atmosphere. Your actions and positions in game will result in responses from the mobs.

Cons
1. Too much spam? This can be managed to some level. For example, city guards will only salute Provost Magistrate during certain hours of the day etc.

Extension 4: POLL at the Inn

Heralds can conduct poll at the Inn through some mob(s), maybe Olin? They can instruct him to ask some poll questions. Olin will then at random spew out the questions. If a player choose to answer it, the answer will increase the count for that particular answer. At other time, Olin will just say the current result of the polls.

For example, the Herald polls, "What is your favourite food?". Then Olin will at random, asks the question. The character can answer his favourite food as "Cheese and bread." or "Chicken pie.". If enough characters answer "Cheese and bread." as their favourite food, it will become the current leader in the poll and Olin will at random, say something along the line. "Ah notice many eating cheese and bread these days. Bah."

Poll counts may be weighted by levels and other factors etc.

Pro:
1. In game opinions/experience can be disseminated easily. E.g. "Who is the ugliest orc?".
2. Create small-talk topics among characters.
3. Make the Inn more interactive and lively.

Con:
1. Mis-use or abuse of the system to deframe or promote certain characters etc. May not be a bad thing if the deframation is consistent with the deframer's role.

>Extension 3: Personalised reaction

Very cool.

Pro:
1)It might give some people alternate motives for being badass other then claiming high PK counts once their PBF shows up.
2)It would be self-gratifying to not have to wait for another PC to let you know your kickarse. Flip side, it'd be depressing for me to hear, "get lost chump, you aint worth the fine leathers slumped over your scarred and beaten frame".
3) Even if its buggy it might make things even more funny.

Con:
2) What is the metric for being "successful"?
1) it might make for a very tedious babysitting job for the poor coder involved.

>Extension 4: POLL at the Inn

Pro:
1) I definitely, definitely want some friggen good ALE to buy in the gosh darn INN!
CON:
2) Again, sounds like some data management problem that could get out of hand for the poor imm cursed with the task.

Can we.. kill these criers? Because I'd really, really want to kill one of those bastards for filling my screen with all that yellow and blue text.

I like the idea of spreading more news IC. That is a good thing. But I detest any type of spam flying across my screen when I'm trying to do other things. I've seen this sort of thing on other muds, and, frankly, it gets extremely annoying once the initial "oh, that's pretty cool" factor wears off after five minutes.

But again, I like the idea just can we propose something without criers?

Thanks.

I believe almost every mob can be killed in CF? So I do not see why the criers should be the exception. If it is within your character's role to kill any mob which irritates him, please multi-kill the criers.

The amount of spam can be managed in the following ways:
1. The mobs only "yell" really important news. For gossips and rumours, they will just "say/whisper/emote".

2. The frequency should not too be too high. 3 times a day?

3. Not every town/city should have a crier. Perhaps not Udgaard.

And, there are of course other ways/ideas to spread news and rumours across Thera, just feel that town criers are a good example to illustrate the idea. Some other gossipy/newsy mobs, include inn keepers, inn patrons, guild guards, guild masters, cabals' mobs etc.

How about a central location where you can go to say, one predefined room, analogous to a real-life coffee house or movie theatre where the <mob> will be on stage announcing these things. You could have several centrally located to relevant areas if it works. I like the mob thing, because it's "cooler" then just reading a note or something.

An announcement board might give times of readings, announcements, etc, and you can choose to show up and hear at your own leisure. And again, cool factor for bonus CF dynamic world community points. I think we have enough people who care about this game to pull off something really spiffy.

Maybe the High herald or some appointees can submit things for him/her to read which might serve to: A) give heralds something to do, and, B) save the IMMs tedious work when they could be doing something less menial. Never been a herald, but have met some really really cool ones whose character's goal was to chronical events- and they seem to really have no outlet for their findings other then via bard missive. And those feel like emails to me and I get enough of those at work so I usually skip them. Heralds need something more to do then <that thing they're infamously know for>.

Point is, I don't like having to necessarily check forums and boards to know who's Emperor or who's Anathema'd or who's the new Chancellor or who died (for good) or what certain beastly character is cutting a swath through any character who opposes them... to know what's going on. And this is a very cool, slick game that has room to grow in this area, methinks.

I find this idea intriguing, because, there's a phenomenon with something such as what a mud like CF possesses, which is, between the time you log off, and the time you log back on, you miss 99% of what goes on- because it's ALWAYS going.

And again, I like the idea of creating more of a Theran-world-community for what it might be worth.

"Always naysaying!....you create something.. like inward singing!"

2. The frequency should not too be too high. 3 times a day?

How about every day at noon? Want to hear the news? Be there then. Helps it to become a part of the daily routine instead of ####ing annoying repetition.

The only modification I would make would be to allow the criers to be entirely under the influence of Heralds and Immortals. A few new commands open to Heralds and Immortals might be
- crierlist: to see a list of what stories a particular crier knows, so the Herald doesn't repeat himself. Stories/news is particular to each crier, so that one function of Heralds would be to travel from crier to crier updating news.

- crierstory: write the short news flash the crier publicizes.

- criersource: to wrest the name of the Herald who taught the story to the crier for a few stiff drinks.

- criercreate: Does a Herald think it fitting that a bard out in the sticks might have a story to share? Sit down with the mob over a mug of ale and teach him a story or two! The number of character-created criers would be level dependent and would, of course, be temporary.

The duration the crier knows the story could be influenced by the number of stories the crier has in its queue, the Herald's charisma and the Herald's rank. Herald rank would determine how long the story could be (maybe one 80 character line per ten levels).

Done in this fashion, Heralds could construct information-based quests and become quietly involved in the politics of Thera, for only Immortals and other Heralds would know who told a story to a crier. New areas, skills, and powers could be advertised this way, too, which would allow Heralds to wage (mis)information compaigns against each other with the rest of the playerbase caught in the middle.

Thanks.

Some clarifications: By "influence" of cabals, I do not mean that the cabals have full control of what the mobs will say/yell/whisper. Rather, the cabal "power level" will have impact on the things the mobs are likely to say.

For example, fortess at power level 1, the guards at Voralia will sing praises of the Marans, at power level 10, the Udgaard patrollers at North Road will grumble about how the Marans are ruining their fun etc.

Again, like I pointed out in the cons, this extension may be too tedious to be worth the effort.