good catch. they were left unnamed and ungendered on purpose. i felt like if, for example, the ranger was a lady she'd quickly be "motherly" or something else easily labeled. i wanted the game master to have a chance to rorschach their own favorite tropes there. i'm not entirely sure why dick and jane got names, and i think you're right to pick at that inconsistency.
that poem was almost the first thing i came up with. it squatted in my notes for so long. staring. so i hid it on the back page so i wouldn't try to reword it over and over and over. that trick almost worked, too.
i can't agree more. i was trying to be minimalist and cover hexes in the rumors, but they really deserve to breathe on their own.
thanks for that. i felt a little thin there but it emphasized what i wanted it to: a way to steer an adventure through emphasizing certain encounters. maybe you never meet the priest but the ranger comes up a lot. maybe sinkholes are common so the road construction is going poorly and tensions between factions rise. heck, i'd be entirely please if some people kept running into only frogs until they started collecting them, claiming them as pets, and using them to snatch cockatrices out of the air.