Organise the information
Prepare rumours by campaign context, area, and the intended audience.
Between games
DQ Rumours
Give characters information they have a reason to hear.
DQ Rumours helps a GM prepare campaign information for the right characters and players. Keep the fiction of a rumour separate from its eligibility and delivery, then review the message before sending it.
What it helps you do
Check who can hear it
Use character skills, ranks, and eligibility rules with clear reasons for the selected information.
Keep character voices distinct
Present information through fictional agents while sending the message to the real player.
Review before dispatch
Draft, preview, approve, and send with delivery history and the responsible actor recorded.
Handle multiple characters
Group delivery for a player while showing which character received which information.
Getting ready
Check the intended season, areas, player contact records, characters, followed regions, and relevant skills or ranks. A seasonal preview is only as reliable as that source data. A player with several characters should still receive clearly separated character-specific information.
Decide what each rumour should say at Apprentice, Journeyman, and Master level. These are the distribution programme’s information tiers, not a replacement for the character’s full DragonQuest sheet. The GM authors the information and its truth or uncertainty; the matching engine decides eligibility rather than inventing the news.
How to use DQ Rumours
Write a structured rumour
Choose the season, area, and related skills, then supply the appropriate tier texts. Review anonymous attribution, future relevance, uncommon knowledge, and hide-from-followers settings. Keep a broadly heard paragraph distinct from what a qualified contact can discern. If an advanced tier is unnecessary, leave it absent rather than writing filler.
Check character and area data
Review whether the intended character follows the area and has a matching normalised skill. An unrelated high-ranked skill does not qualify the character. For a general rumour with no related skills, the follower route uses Apprentice content unless that route is hidden. Correct a bad profile instead of weakening the routing rule to force a match.
Preview one selected season
As the responsible administrator, select the season and request the dispatch preview. Inspect available rumours, player bundles, individual matches, and exclusions. Check both who receives information and why someone does not. The seasonal filter is an explicit workflow choice, so do not assume mixed-season input is always split into correct batches automatically.
Review the selected text and agent
Check the chosen character, agent, area, rank, and exact content. A Master may receive Journeyman or Apprentice text if a higher-tier paragraph was not supplied. The existing renderer uses the selected authored text with its fictional contact context; richer automatic agent-voice rewriting should not be assumed.
Create and approve the intended drafts
Generate the saved player bundles for the selected season and inspect their recipients and messages. Existing ordinary player-and-season drafts are skipped to reduce duplication. Approve only the drafts you have reviewed. Creating a draft and storing an approval are separate stages; merely opening the preview does not send anything.
Send through the configured mode and inspect results
Confirm the production, redirected test, or other configured delivery mode before sending approved records. Review requested and actual recipients, provider acceptance, sent or failed status, and delivery logs. Missing email addresses must be corrected. If an acknowledgment is uncertain, inspect the saved dispatch and provider evidence before repeating an external send.
A game example
Different characters hear different parts of a trade story
For example, write common talk about disrupted river traffic in Apprentice text, more specific cargo information for Journeyman, and the organisation benefiting from it for Master. Attach the relevant area and professional skills. Preview the season and check which of a player’s characters qualifies for each paragraph. Approve the bundle only after confirming that it labels those characters clearly. The message gives the player leads to investigate; it does not establish that every rumour is true.
What you keep
Authored seasonal information
Rumours with areas, skills, tier texts, flags, and retained campaign or source context.
Explainable audience decisions
Matches and exclusions showing the character, eligibility reason, selected rank, content, and fictional agent.
Reviewed delivery records
Saved drafts, approval actor and time, delivery mode, actual recipient, provider result, and send history.
How it fits with the other apps
Common questions
Does the app roll a skill check or ask AI who should receive a rumour?
The matching core is deterministic: it checks area following, follower restrictions, matching skills, and the best available rank tier. It does not use an AI judgment or a random percentage roll to decide eligibility.
Can I treat a failed send as proof that no email was sent?
Not always. External provider acceptance and the later saved log are separate operations. Inspect the provider and dispatch evidence before retrying an uncertain result. The summary does not establish an exactly-once delivery queue or complete automatic recovery for every failure.
Usage guide based on the 7 October 2026 project summary, reviewed 8 October 2026. Examples illustrate possible games. Some connected features require sign-in, GM permissions, or a configured local table.