(This is a repost from my Tumblr. It is relevant to the next post I’m working on, enjoy!)
Last night, while playing D&D’s Hoard of the Dragon Queen, the players returned from a dungeon crawl with a sizable fortune in treasure. The thing is that the treasure had mostly been stolen by evil cultists from the town they returned too.
Having forgotten that, one of my players went to a jeweler and tried to hock a 900 gp ring.
NPC: Hey, I recognize that ring…
Player: Oh shit…
Me: Gimme a Charisma check.
Player (clatter, clatter): Natural 20
(Of course)
NPC: Oh, you’re such a nice man. I bet you came here to make sure it belonged to the Hillsdale widow before returning it…
Player: That’s…. exactly what I had in mind.
NPC: I knew it! I was just telling my wife the other day that of all your group, you were the one with the strongest moral fibre. You are SUCH a hero.
Rest of group: (Groan)
Player: Yes, I’m on my way to return the ring just now, goodbye!
Player: Guys we need to get the hell out of here.
Later, in a city many leagues away, the character tried to hock the ring and a black dragon egg to a shifty Drow merchant of exotic trinkets.
Drow: Hey, I’ve heard about that ring before. It once broke someone’s heart.
Player: What? How could you?
Drow: Oh, you know, you hear these things.
Player: From whom?
Drow (Slightly confused): You know… from people…
Player: Phil, what the hell is this?
Me: Well, maybe the ring is cursed. Wanna trade it?
Player: Not yet.
And from that point on, I decided that the ring had a low level curse on it. Where people interacting with the characters somehow knew something about an expensive ring.
And thus was the Ring of Rumours born.
If I ever run a game of DnD, I’ll have to think of something like this.