In Campaign Theater, I need to view my players' characters.

[zebulon8]

In Campaign Theater, I need to view my players' characters. When will this be supported?

 

[Koro76]

Seconded, but I'm pretty confident that the team has their eye on this feature.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

You can do this right now but you have to place the PCs onto the Stage.

Once the PCs are on the stage click the single person icon:


Then select the PC you wish to see. Ignore the message the about not being able to view the PC. Finally press the "Load Full Character" button. This looks like a window pane I would say:


Then the full view of the PC will display.

 

[Koro76]

For my comment, I should have been more specific. I've frequently needed to edit chatacters' information, as well as view the character information in the right panel.

 

[rob]

Viewing the information of PCs is a high priority for us, so you should see that in the upcoming weeks. However, EDITING of another player's PC is whole different animal. Many players would object to a GM mucking with their character, so that's where the whole "transfer of control" comes into play. Control can be transferred to you (the GM), you edit the PC, and then control is transferred back. That's akin to the player handing you their character sheet and then you handing it back after modifying it in some way. Something more sophisticated than that model is not on our near-term roadmap.

 

[zebulon8]

You can do this right now but you have to place the PCs onto the Stage.

Hey, ShadowChemosh, thanks for the workaround! I was able to use this successfully to view the party.

 

[Koro76]

Viewing the information of PCs is a high priority for us, so you should see that in the upcoming weeks. However, EDITING of another player's PC is whole different animal. Many players would object to a GM mucking with their character, so that's where the whole "transfer of control" comes into play. Control can be transferred to you (the GM), you edit the PC, and then control is transferred back. That's akin to the player handing you their character sheet and then you handing it back after modifying it in some way. Something more sophisticated than that model is not on our near-term roadmap.

I appreciate the transparency about the roadmap. The reason I was talking about editing players' sheets was due to a conversation I had with my group after a player had to be away from the table for a while. Their character got hit to which the primary response was "just change their hp in HLO, we'll let them know when they get back" and, while a character proxy is active on the stage, you can't transfer control, otherwise we would have had to reroll initiative etc. I can also see other circumstances in which this could be useful, like if a character gets pickpocketed, and they fail their check to notice, depending on your GM style.

 

[rob]

I appreciate the transparency about the roadmap. The reason I was talking about editing players' sheets was due to a conversation I had with my group after a player had to be away from the table for a while. Their character got hit to which the primary response was "just change their hp in HLO, we'll let them know when they get back" and, while a character proxy is active on the stage, you can't transfer control, otherwise we would have had to reroll initiative etc. I can also see other circumstances in which this could be useful, like if a character gets pickpocketed, and they fail their check to notice, depending on your GM style.

That's definitely a situation we WANT to support. The problem is that solving that in a clean manner in actually pretty convoluted. There are some players who would take offense at a GM directly modifying their character without explicit permission. At the other end of the spectrum, there are gaming groups where the GM freely mucks directly with PCs, and even some groups where PCs regularly pickpocket each other. So solving this cleanly means setting up some concept of permissions, where the GM can control what can/can't be done and the players know what to expect going in. Then those permissions need to be properly enforced.

Is it truly hard? Nope.
It is messy to set it all up? Yep.
Is it a lot of time to deal with it all? Yep.
Is it a common situation that groups run into? Nope.

And that's why it's not in the near-term plan. Right now, we're focused on putting things into place that yield the maximum benefit to the broadest number of users. A bit further down the line, we can turn our focus to situations like the one you described above.

 

[Ualaa]

Ideally, I'd think you would have an original copy of the character that the player owns.

But having the character within the game that the DM is running would give them a copy of that character as well.
The GM can apply things like a poison or give a sword that hasn't yet been identified (in Classic you can rename it with a Custom Name to just 'unknown longsword' or whatever).
The GM would have to be able to view and edit the characters within their game.

The player would still have their original, if they didn't want the changes the GM/DM had made to it.

That's my take on it, anyway.

 

[rob]

Ideally, I'd think you would have an original copy of the character that the player owns.

But having the character within the game that the DM is running would give them a copy of that character as well.

The player would still have their original, if they didn't want the changes the GM/DM had made to it.

Which of there two characters is "official"? They are both "in the campaign". The GM says it's the character s/he mucked, and the player says it's the original character. Who's right?

Theoretically, it's the GM that's always right, but there are still lots of players out there that wouldn't take kindly to that. And if we support both, now we have multiple versions of the same character "in the campaign" that must be distinguish. Sometimes even conceptually simple solutions get messy in the details when trying to accommodate the full spectrum of play styles.

Right now, editing access is all-or-nothing. The ideal solution would be restricted access, where certain information is editable by the GM and other information is not - and differing levels of restriction that can be configured for a given campaign. We've already got the foundations of such a model built in to how we handle things under the covers. But there's a hefty chunk of work involved in fully exposing that out to users. So it's on the roadmap.

 

[Ualaa]

I'd read it as the GM's version is correct within the GM's game.

But that the player's version would be correct if they wanted to take it elsewhere or retire it, etc.

 

[rob]

I'd read it as the GM's version is correct within the GM's game.

But that the player's version would be correct if they wanted to take it elsewhere or retire it, etc.

And I'm sure that many others would agree with that interpretation, including myself. However, there is a broad spectrum of users and play styles out there, and a product like HL has to strive to accommodate as many of those styles as possible. That philosophy is at the core of everything HL does, and it has been that way since the very beginning. For example, our use of validation checks instead of strict enforcement of the rules throughout the product embodies that philosophy.

Some players have no problem with a GM saying "hand over your character", then taking it, making changes, and handing it back. Others would take offense and leave the game. And there's a wide swath of "grey" in how GMs can handle that well in a social context. However, if we just gave GMs "free reign" to muck about with a PC, it would take "hand over your character" to an even further extreme, since the player would not necessarily even know about it.

So we need to take everyone into consideration and devise a model that is reasonable and predictable for all involved. That's on the roadmap, and even core to how the underlying code has already been written, but we haven't gotten it into place yet in the UI.

 

[Koro76]

Rob, I really like the idea of what things are able to be edited are governed by the campaign itself, that way, HLO can just have a pop up that players agree to when they join the campaign, and there's no surprises.

 

[rob]

Rob, I really like the idea of what things are able to be edited are governed by the campaign itself, that way, HLO can just have a pop up that players agree to when they join the campaign, and there's no surprises.

That is EXACTLY the plan. Full disclosure for everyone up front. No surprises regarding what to expect. Everybody is happy and GMs can exert as much or as little control over the players as they want.