So a situation that came up yesterday was this. My opponent attacked mu Shameful Display with a dishonored character, and I assigned a defender with no status tokens. I activated the Shameful Display, targeting both characters. I could choose to honor mine and let the dishonor fail, or I could for some reason honor theirs and dishonor mine. The question I had is if I could honor mine and then trigger the Young Rumormonger's interrupt to choose a new target for the dishonor effect.

I believe the answer is Yes, you can - because it is an interrupt ability. This means the ability of Young Rumormonger triggers, and reassigns the dishonor before the dishonor actually attempts to apply to the target.

So you pick your two targets - you then say at once "I honor my character and dishonor theirs." Before the game tries to dishonor theirs Young Rumormonger then interrupts and says "not this character, that one." Then the game resumes and applies "honor my character and dishonor that one instead."

A crucial factor in this is that you aren't targeting, or "choosing" the character to be dishonored. If you had to "target a character and dishonor them" or "choose a character and dishonor them" then it would be blocked by the restriction saying "this can't change the game state, a dishonored character cannot be dishonored." - but because the targeting of Shameful Display doesn't directly imply the dishonor effect - the dishonor effect does get added to the flow of the game for Young Rumormonger to then interrupt.

The official ruling from Nate arrived. Since you cannot dishonor a dishonored character, the Young Rumormonger's interrupt cannot be triggered in this instance.

The first requirement for an interrupt to initiate is for the triggering condition to be imminent. If you were to let the effect fail for the dishonor, then the dishonoring would not be imminent and you could not initiate interrupts to that triggering condition.

Makes sense, thanks for getting the clarification from Nate.

19 hours ago, Daigotsu Bakunin said:

The official ruling from Nate arrived. Since you cannot dishonor a dishonored character, the Young Rumormonger's interrupt cannot be triggered in this instance.

Can you please provide the question and answer?

The question:

In Legend of the Five Rings, during a conflict at my Shameful Display province, say I target one of my characters and one of my opponent's dishonored characters. If I honor my own character, can I trigger the Young Rumormonger's interrupt to dishonor an opponent's character who isn't participating, even though the character originally targeted to dishonor was already dishonored?

Nate's response:

From the Rules Reference, under “Personal Honor” :

“A character with a dishonored status token cannot become dishonored.”

In your example, the opponent’s character is already dishonored. This means that the dishonor part of the Shameful Display effect will fail to resolve on the character. Therefore, that character does not meet the criteria of the Young Rumormonger: “when a character would be dishonored,” and you could not trigger the Rumormonger’s ability in this scenario.