In any game where there is a history to an object, instead of having it as a single text that the player is told / given, instead break up the information about the objects and distribute this around the landscape / through the timeline of the game (Timeline = whether they can find out more at this stage of the game, or have to wait for more plot development or character change to occur before they can find out). This would remove some of the artificial "game" quality of finding out about something all at once, and would add more interest, intrigue and emotion, if they were using a dagger which they knew came from a supposedly benevolent order of monks, but later they might find mentions of something evil having happened at the monastery and find an illustration of the sacrificial daggers used in the ceremony ... the ''magic'' dagger that they were currently in possession of, but then they might hear conflicting rumours...

This sounds like an interesting idea. Maybe you could also apply the same method of spreading to reputation. So for example, if the player commits a crime in one village, if he were quick enough, he could "outrun" his/her reputation for a while.

-Jussi

Ketch - read my first post in the "Answering Landfish''s Question..." topic, from a day or two ago.

Whaddaya think?

- gollumgollum

Although this wasn''t quite about reputations & rumours, more to do with adding to emotional impact & reducing obvious GameMechanisms.

Ie. You go to the cleric, who "identifies" an object, giving you a scroll with the whole (very well-written) story of an object.. ie. Baldur''s Gate, and many other roleplaying games.

So instead, you start to hear rumours and find references to things in different places.

Gollum, it might be good to have some sort of dynamic system like you mention so that if the object had JUST BEEN USED before you got it (in an evil rite?) then you might hear rumours about it spreading across the landscape.


And the chinese wisper effect would make some of the info inaccurate, and even the best only semi-accurate. (prewritten by gamescipters). The "truth" in this sort of game would be like in the X-FILES. Always just out of your grasp.