Olympia PBEM

rumor

Submit an unsigned message to the Olympia Times.

The rumor order may be given by a character or by the player entity. The identity of the submitting entity will not appear with the message; rumor posts are anonymous.

Each player may receive 25 gold per turn as payment for a Times submission. Multiple press and rumor entries may be submitted each turn, but only the first will receive payment. Specify a character to receive the 25 gold as the optional second argument to rumor.

The number of lines in the entry should be given as an argument to rumor, followed by the text of the entry. For example: here is a rumor someone submitted. Payment of the 25 gold is credited to Osswid [501] in the rumor order:

RUMOR 3 501
As whispered from ear to ear in the great hall of the Chateau Olympique:
Q:  Why do so many people take an instant dislike to Oleg the Loudmouth?
A:  Saves time in the long run.

Take care to carefully count the lines of text in the post. If the wrong number of lines is given, your character may end up posting his orders on a sign instead of executing them.

Alternatively, one may specify 0 for the lines of text argument, and terminate the message with the END keyword:

RUMOR 0 501
As whispered from ear to ear in the great hall of the Chateau Olympique:
Q:  Why do so many people take an instant dislike to Oleg the Loudmouth?
A:  Saves time in the long run.
END

Take great care when using the 0 lines/END keyword feature. If you forget the END, or mistype it, none of the orders following the rumor command will execute. Instead, they will be published in the Olympia Times. This is obviously very bad, so if you intend to use the END keyword to avoid having to count lines, please be careful.

Each line of posted text must be less than 78 characters long, or the post will be rejected.

Osswid could have specified another character to receive the 25 gold; payment doesn't have to go to the character who posts the entry. (However, a player entity may not be specified for payment -- it must be a character.) Since only one posting to the Times is credited each turn, the second argument may be omitted from all but one press or rumor entry.

Editorial guidelines for submissions to the Olympia Times:

1. No profanity.
2. No personal insults to other humans (in-character roleplaying insults are fine).
3. No "junk" submissions just to get the 25 gold. Your character is being paid to write something useful or interesting to the other players. It needn't be long or literary; just something half-way reasonable (i.e. don't send in "Blah blah, give me my gold.")