Hearsay — the world your party has only been told about, for RPG Maker MZ

Hearsay draws the part of your world the party has only heard about. It reads which places have been named in dialogue, quests and found documents but never entered, and renders each one the way a cartographer renders a report: a speculative coastline dotted where nobody has sailed it, a place drawn at the size the informant claimed rather than its real size, a hazard set down because somebody warned you about it, and a confidence that you can see.

There is no rumour table to fill in. Every map you gave a display name is a place. Every line of dialogue that names one is an informant. Every Transfer Player command is a route somebody knows. Hearsay reads the project you already have.

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⚠️ Compatibility — the question you actually have

Tested against RPG Maker MZ with the stock scripts unmodified, verified by running the plugin in the real engine rather than only in tests.

Plugin Manager order:

1. HearsayRender.js — Hearsay [1/4] — drawing primitives. A counting context, seeded RNG, colour maths, unit-space path playback and the provisional pen. v1.0.0
2. HearsayBelief.js — Hearsay [2/4] — the belief model. Harvests places the party has been TOLD about from dialogue, quests and documents.
3. HearsayChart.js — Hearsay [3/4] — the speculative chart. Draws paper, coastline, devices and hazards, with confidence carried STRUCTURALLY rather than by opacity.
4. Hearsay.js — Hearsay [4/4] — the chart scene, parameters and commands.

This order reads sensibly in the list and nothing depends on it. Every file resolves its siblings the first time it needs them rather than when it loads, so Hearsay works in whatever order the Plugin Manager gives you. That is tested rather than hoped for: the headless suites, the capture pipeline and the in-engine verification all load the four files alphabetically — which puts the entry file Hearsay.js first, before the belief model, the chart and the drawing kit it reads and draws with — and the in-engine run asserts all four resolved anyway. Hearsay.js is the only one that touches RPG Maker at all. Switch Hearsay.js off and nothing is patched.

Core methods extended — 3 by saved-original prototype extension, none replaced: Game_System.prototype.initialize, Game_Player.prototype.performTransfer, Game_Map.prototype.setup.

Because nothing is clobbered, Hearsay co-exists with other plugins that patch the same seams, including large suites.

Confidence is structural, not an opacity slider

Four grades, each drawn a different way rather than the same picture at a different strength:

• Rumour — one informant. A dotted, open outline, no interior, and the name set in parentheses the way a chart hedges a name it cannot vouch for.
• Report — two or more informants. The line closes into dashes and the interior takes a stipple.
• Charted — a route exists. A committed line, full hachure, and the hazard somebody warned you about.
• Surveyed — the party arrived. The place is redrawn true.

The grade is earned from how many separate informants named the place, so one villager repeating himself is still one rumour.

The ghost

Arriving does not unsay what you were told. When the party reaches a place that was described wrongly, Hearsay redraws it at its true size and strikes the old claim underneath as a ghost, at exactly the scale the informant claimed. A bailiff who tells you his town has twice the houses you would credit leaves a mark on your chart that is still there after you walk in and count them.

It is the most distinctive thing this plugin draws, and it only exists once a place has been both described and reached.

Drawn, never shipped as art

41 distinct drawn marks: 10 coast forms separated by topology rather than by wobble, 12 devices, 10 hazards, 8 informant traditions and a waymark for the places nobody spoke about. No PNG assets ship with this plugin. Every mark is drawn by code, so it is exact at any size, and the coast forms de-collide across the page so a crowded gazetteer never shows you the same shape twice in a row.

The page itself lays out by solving for its own grid: give it four places or twenty and it keeps the largest cell it can rather than overflowing.

What ships

• Four plugin files, raw and uncompressed. Minification is a defect, not a feature.
• Three plugin commands: openChart, markVisited, forgetPlace.
• Six parameters, including the chart title and how many places one page shows.
• No Math.random anywhere in game logic. The same beliefs redraw identically, forever.
• Versioned, lossless saves that round-trip.
• 139 headless assertions, plus verification inside the real engine rather than only in tests.
• Stock MAP001-style names are ignored, so only the maps you actually named become places.

Also from Core Systems Asset Factory

If Hearsay fits your project, these do adjacent work on the same shelf:

• Chorograph — regional maps drawn from your project's own geography.
• Epistolary — letters and documents the game writes as it is played.
• Wanted Posters — printed bills struck for the enemies your players actually meet.
• Cartouche — a message window that does not look like RPG Maker.
• Vista — generated landscape backdrops.