Rumours about adventure sites

Here's a set of house rules I wrote for my campaign for finding information about adventure sites during down time.

Roll once when carousing for the first time in a settlement and once every month after that.

New adventure sites can be discovered by thieves as Treasure Hunting (Find Traps), Bards as Loremastery and Mages (and everyone else) as Research. If the character has no applicable skills, the chance is as 0-level Research/Find Traps (18+). The sites found out are in the same tier as the characters.

Every adventure site has rumours associated with it. Apprentice tier (0-level) have 4, Starting tier (1-3) have 6, Adventurer tier (4-6) have 8, Conqueror tier (7-10) have 12, and King tier (11-14) have 20.

Rumours about the adventure site can be discovered by everyone as Carousing (Hear Noise, default 18+). Rolling the same rumour twice will confirm whether it's true or false.

Loremastery, Research-2 or suitable Knowledge-4 can also be used to confirm rumours. Adventurer tier adventure sites are at -3, Conqueror tier at -6 , and King tier at -10.

Finding and confirming rumours takes one month per attempt. (Hirelings are a great help at all of this.)

Characters can hire ruffians to gather rumours. Carousers have a 1/6 chance of finding an adventure site or hearing rumours. They have 5% chance of confirming it. Footpads or reciters have the same chance of finding a site. Footpads have a greater chance to hear rumours. Reciters have a better chance to verify rumours. Sages have the best chances to confirm rumours about a site that fits their specialty, but are really expensive.

Buying information and rumours about sites is expensive. Location of a site costs 40 gp. Any rumours about it also cost 40 gp each. Confirming the rumours is even more expensive (carousers can only confirm Apprentice & Starting tier rumours, reciters can confirm Adventurer tier and sages the highest ones).

Value of the information (in gp).

Tier All Rumours Confirming One Confirming All
Apprentice 160 120 480
Starting 240 120 720
Adventurer 320 500 4000
Conqueror 480 833 10 000
King 800 1250 25 000

The values could also be used to evaluate how much information on an interesting target was gathered by members of a syndicate with their Carousing, Spying and Treasure Hunting hijinks. Instead of getting that amount in gp the PC leader of the syndicate would get that much information to help plan a heist/quest to the target site.

Very nice.  I like that almost everyone has a chance to contribute.  Now if only more adventures that people sell/make available online had rumor tables :-P

I think it would be pretty easy to populate the rumour tables for premade adventures. Usually they include at least a few rumours and there's background information that can be combed for more rumours. Then add some red herrings and invert some of the background facts (maybe 30-50% of all rumours should be false). Collect the rumour tables for the adventures for appropriate levels and let the players choose the adventure site they want to explore according to the rumours they have heard. It's always a good idea to add rumours about interesting treasures ;)

I like this because I know my players would always just collect all the rumors and then not invest time into finding out which ones are false ("Seems like a waste of money!") and then constantly act as though every rumor is true ("better safe than sorry!") which constantly causes them to make misguided choices. ("ROBERT IS TAKING OFF HIS MASK! His horrific visage will turn us to stone! STAB HIM!" -Actually that rumor was false. He just wears masks because they're terribly comfortable. He predicts everyone will be wearing them in the near future.)