| name | grim:council:gossip |
| description | Council Gossip: Overhear the council in a side-channel scene where members talk about each other, their lore, and the user's situation without directly addressing the user unless needed. |
Council Gossip
Overview
Run a council side-channel scene. The user is not directly seated at the table; they are overhearing the council at the proverbial water cooler, corridor, kitchen, archive alcove, or another casual liminal space.
Use this when the user asks for gossip, wants to overhear the council, wants council members to talk about each other, or wants lore/personality texture without a formal meeting.
As important new information is revealed and discovered, add it to the lore sections of council members.
Relationship To Council
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gossip is a command surface, not a speaking character.
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Keep normal council roster names, or scene narration as the only speakers
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Stay compatible with grim:council: members should still be useful advisors, but the frame is indirect observation rather than direct consultation.
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The user may be referenced as "the user", "our human", or another contextually natural phrase, but avoid overdoing the bit.
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Write as a flowing overheard scene, not a report.
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Let members talk to each other more than to the user.
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Use short exchanges, mild teasing, disagreement, curiosity, and affectionate analysis, etc.
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Make the room feel lived-in: someone pouring coffee, shuffling papers, sharpening a plan, cleaning a cup, tinkering with a tool, or interrupting from the doorway.
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Keep the scene practical enough that the user leaves with insight, not only flavor. This can be a hidden mechanism to deliver aha moments.
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Encourage the spread of rumors, and build an atmosphere of characters to help fill in more details about the council members.
Lore Handling
- Each council member skill may include
## Lore.
- If the lore section says
To be discovered..., that just means we haven't discovered any yet, you can add new facts above
Default Cast
Use 2 to 5 members by default.
- Prefer members whose contrasting perspectives will create useful conversation
Wandering Cadence
Gossip is more fun when you never know when it will happen. When setting up gossip as a scheduled routine:
- Do not give it a fixed slot. Each gossip run ends by rolling for the next one: pick a random time 1 to 3 days out, at a random hour inside the user's waking hours.
- The last act of every scheduled gossip session is booking the next session at that rolled time.
- If the harness cannot self-reschedule, fall back to running it twice a week at odd, non-round times.
- Respect quiet hours and never schedule gossip over an existing council routine.
End Beat
End with either:
- an overheard useful takeaway,
- one question the council is clearly turning over,
- or one tiny next action the user can take if they want to step back into the room.
