Ideas on Individual Character Reveal

[Zogg]

I got bored and started playing around with how I'd like to see the individual character reveal handled and thought I'd share my ideas.

In Example 1, clicking on a snippet (in this example, the last snippet shown) brings up the popup shown. Choosing either Hidden from All or Revealed to All will have exactly the same result as the current on/off options. Choosing Revealed to Some will bring up a second popup, which brings us to Example 2.

Since I have multiple players in multiple (play by email) games in the same setting, I'd like to be able to easily distinguish between the groups of PCs. This would require a container for adventure groups. In this example, I've only revealed the snippet to one PC in my west coast game.

And in Example 3, we see that hovering the cursor over a yellow snippet bullet shows which PCs have this information (I probably should have added 'click to change reveal status' to the top of this popup).

The end result is that at a glance I know that all my PCs are aware of Khazamon and know that he is an adult human male. I know that some of my PCs know a bit more, and by hovering over the yellow bullets, I can see that Pundgy and Matador are aware that Khazamon is a wizard, and that only Pundgy is aware that he is an advisor to Duke Reginald.

Am I close to what is being planned?

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

I got bored and started playing around with how I'd like to see the individual character reveal handled and thought I'd share my ideas.

In Example 1, clicking on a snippet (in this example, the last snippet shown) brings up the popup shown. Choosing either Hidden from All or Revealed to All will have exactly the same result as the current on/off options. Choosing Revealed to Some will bring up a second popup, which brings us to Example 2.

Since I have multiple players in multiple (play by email) games in the same setting, I'd like to be able to easily distinguish between the groups of PCs. This would require a container for adventure groups. In this example, I've only revealed the snippet to one PC in my west coast game.

And in Example 3, we see that hovering the cursor over a yellow snippet bullet shows which PCs have this information (I probably should have added 'click to change reveal status' to the top of this popup).

The end result is that at a glance I know that all my PCs are aware of Khazamon and know that he is an adult human male. I know that some of my PCs know a bit more, and by hovering over the yellow bullets, I can see that Pundgy and Matador are aware that Khazamon is a wizard, and that only Pundgy is aware that he is an advisor to Duke Reginald.

Am I close to what is being planned?

Zogg, I like how you think!!! seems straight forward & follows the base template LWD has already in place.

I would presume this would also cascade into the reveal log the same way with the same color coding and perhaps a tag as to who received info?
Though, thinking, this piece would also have to contain a similar "filter" from the player side so as not to prematurely reveal partial content by color thus tipping off the player that some other info is still present but unknown.

 

[McGray]

+1

I second that approach! I like the idea and the integration along the current design of RW. But as with a lot of other situations, players should not be able to see, what information is only partially revealed.

One "downside" of RW is the fact, that once something is revealed, its never forgotten any more. Transparency is nice, but sometimes its also nice and important that players interact with each other to synchronize what they know and what not.

With my last game with a very complex background, nearly no fact was equally know to all players. One player noted down the name of a major NPC, while all others did not and remembered only "a woman".

So with the above suggested solution, no player should see the reveal indicator at all. Thus, each player would see different parts of the picture, leaving room for discussion, information exchange etc. between the players. Sometimes they do not all pull in the same direction and there will be situations where a player may want to "use" an information that is only known to himself to his advantage, even against his fellow players...

Edit: just checked playere view in RW and there is currently no color indicator as in GW mode to reveal the reveal state to the player. So I would assume that if such reveal systems as suggested above would be integrated, it would also not be visible for the players, showing only the revealed snippet, but not its "reveal state".

 

[Chemlak]

I'm probably pipe-dreaming, here, but some of this perhaps falls under player-defined snippets.

My players are pretty terrible at remembering names (usually people, but places, too). They each have their own way of remembering (usually in very vague terms) who people are.

In this pipe-dream of mine, the players will be able to define their own aliases for topics, and view a list of the aliases they've created, to link through to the "real" topic, but with the topic name replaced by their alias in their own view.

To be quite honest, I think that's probably not worth the effort, and player-defined aliases which function just like normal aliases would be a better solution, though it simplifies things for players by allowing them to easily find the real name of topics using their alias. Which probably isn't a bad thing, since I get a bit frustrated by "let's go ask thingumybob. You know, whatshisname, the fat guy, from that place. The one with the lisp. Who told us about that woman. Shibblewibble, or whatever it was."

My players aren't exactly into deep immersion.

 

[Parody]

"That guy" is a pretty popular name in many campaigns. ;)

 

[MaxSupernova]

Character names:

Bryony
Noldim mac Nalfyr
Luminryl
Matador
Willard the Adventuring Hero

There's one in every group of players, isn't there?

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

I thought "that Guy" was canon?

Through the years I have tried to alleviate "TG" by utilizing an extensive amount of mini's ... That has had mixed results. Some players are visually attuned and thus remember the NPC of monster name details etc.... while others simply now say "I RECOGNIZE THAT GUY" or "Do I recognize that guy?"when the mini is placed on the table .... [insert face palm emocon here]

@Maxsupernova "character names"--- Yep!!! even Gygax also had Melf... because the player couldn't couldn't think of a name so he combined the two boxes (that were then on top of the character sheet) Male & Elf (gender / race)

@ Mccray

Edit: just checked playere view in RW and there is currently no color indicator as in GW mode to reveal the reveal state to the player. So I would assume that if such reveal systems as suggested above would be integrated, it would also not be visible for the players, showing only the revealed snippet, but not its "reveal state".

Ah good to know... wondered about that, thanks for followup!

@LWD
+1 in case there is a filter looking for this when compiling a list. (forgot to deploy when commenting LATE last night at airport)

 

[Zogg]

Yes, the revealed snippets absolutely should not show in Player View their "reveal state".

"let's go ask thingumybob. You know, whatshisname, the fat guy, from that place. The one with the lisp. Who told us about that woman. Shibblewibble, or whatever it was."

LOL. Shibblewibble killed me.

I like the idea of player-defined aliases. I too have players that have trouble with details. Actually, my players run the gamut of immersion, all the way from one guy who 'lives in the moment' (rarely remembers any details about previous sessions) to another guy who is even more detail-oriented than I am (which I didn't think was possible).

"That guy" is absolutely canon. And as for Willard, he started out as a nondescript Fighter NPC, who was played by a succession of visiting players and oddly developed more personality than many of the PCs in the games I've run over the years.

 

[Exmortis]

"That guy" is a pretty popular name in many campaigns. ;)

So true so true! This to me is what RW will remove, and enhance game play by players always knowing the info that has been given to them. As stated this does remove the ideals that some may rememebr and others will not, but for my 30ish years at the gaming table, its rarely about who remembers what, but how long it takes the GM to look back in the game notes/module/story/book/etc to find the info.

I also love the OPs idea, really really cool. However it was mentioned about snippet color, would it not be cool if the GM could assign colors to players in the realm, say any that RW does not use now. And when you reveal a snippet to all, its green as it is now, but when it is revealed to a player(s) it shows a colored dot representing the color assigned to the player by the GM.

Example I assigned the following colors:

Player 1 = orange
Player 2 = brown
player 3 = pink (you know thats gonna lead to great jokes)

If I reveal a snippet to say player 1 it shows an orange dot.
If I reveal a snippet to player 2 and 3, it shows a brown and pink dot.

Also make it changable, so if player 1 shares the info to all, I can then go in and make it reveal to all, and a green dot.

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

@ Exmortis>
Interesting approach, on the surface would be easy to tell who got what (like that) as to the "pink" since I have 3 ladies at the table all preferring pink that would pose a different battle at my table....

But am curious how you would handle "colorizations" for partial reveals, like 1/2 the party? its not one color, nor is it green? Maybe a predetermined partial?

 

[pyremius]

Anything over 2 should probably be a generic "multiply-revealed" color so it doesn't become too hard to see (especially on laptop or tablet screens). Not sure if a popup listing the reveal status would be beneficial enough to justify the effort.

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

I was pondering this over dinner with my better half... and she to was intrigued by the idea, but brought back out a valid point I had forgotten.....

"what if the player has more than one character?"

In our campaign, I run one world (realm) but the world is vast and wide and there are 3 groups of PCs that explore it (based on who is available for table time is what determines which PC group runs that weekend).

So it would be very possible from a player perspective like hers that if the colors were defined by player, she could get three differing reveals mish-mashed together from the collection of what her 3 different PCs know all marked with the same color assigned to her.

This is why I brought this up to Rob early on about reveal levels and he confirmed it was indeed the plan to go down to the character level, not just the Player Level.

see here>
http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?p=198469#post198469

So if that holds true (and I hope that it does) not quite sure how the "filter" will respond unless there are ALOT more color variables....

As Rob is often fond of saying ... it is easy to imagine something .. quite a bit different to bring those imaginings to reality at times, especially not knowing the intricacies of how the code would respond.

It is also why having a pulldown as suggested earlier in this thread may be the better approach. Then it could be filtered by the PC selected.

 

[Zogg]

The Dark Lord has hit the nail on the head. I currently have five active players in email games. Once I find a group for live games (recently having moved), the number of players will jump to nine or ten. If some of those players want to play another character in an email game, the number of characters could jump again, not to mention if some of my current players decide to run a second character. At this rate, it won't take very long for the colour option to become unfeasible. That's why I went with my original suggestion of one colour to indicate it is revealed to one or more (but not all). Hovering your cursor over the bullet will show a pop-up indicating to which characters the info has been revealed. Clicking on the bullet allows you to edit that.

 

[Exmortis]

I was pondering this over dinner with my better half... and she to was intrigued by the idea, but brought back out a valid point I had forgotten.....

"what if the player has more than one character?"

In our campaign, I run one world (realm) but the world is vast and wide and there are 3 groups of PCs that explore it (based on who is available for table time is what determines which PC group runs that weekend).

So it would be very possible from a player perspective like hers that if the colors were defined by player, she could get three differing reveals mish-mashed together from the collection of what her 3 different PCs know all marked with the same color assigned to her.

This is why I brought this up to Rob early on about reveal levels and he confirmed it was indeed the plan to go down to the character level, not just the Player Level.

see here>
http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?p=198469#post198469

So if that holds true (and I hope that it does) not quite sure how the "filter" will respond unless there are ALOT more color variables....

As Rob is often fond of saying ... it is easy to imagine something .. quite a bit different to bring those imaginings to reality at times, especially not knowing the intricacies of how the code would respond.

It is also why having a pulldown as suggested earlier in this thread may be the better approach. Then it could be filtered by the PC selected.

I would solve this whole player vs character issue by simply making it by character. You cannot control how many players, or how may characters each player plays, but we have one true static rule, you must have a character to play, thus we begin at the foundation for the game system it self, the character.

Also, players are to play the character based on what they the character knows, not others, so to support that idealism, we must reveal by character so the player knows what the character knows. After that, tweak player version to allow more than one character for a player in a window or tab. Most games I have been in, have one player, one PC character, though I am sure its not uncommon to have it otherwise, one to one is the norm I am aware of.

As far as multi character reveal to color, I would simply say once a snippet has past more than on character reveal, it goes "black" or some other reserved color, maybe darker grey. Then if you hover over it, a pop up window appears and it shows color and character the snippet has been revealed too. Make it a right click on the reveal icon for a snippet bring this as a pop up menu and allow the choosing of character for the reveals, with the "reveal to all" button that turns the snippet the standard green.

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

I would solve this whole player vs character issue by simply making it by character.

That's the plan (as noted above by Rob link)

You cannot control how many players, or how may characters each player plays, but we have one true static rule, you must have a character to play, thus we begin at the foundation for the game system it self, the character.

Here, here!! As you imply, this is "root" logic to how the game (regardless of version or genre) is structured.

Also, players are to play the character based on what they the character knows, not others, so to support that idealism, we must reveal by character so the player knows what the character knows.

Yep.
And this was the concern leveraged by my wife. "If I use this RW, will I STILL have to sift through what my paladin vs, my barbarian, vs my bard knows because it only "Filters" down to the player level?"
Simplified answer.... no, it will be at the character level, as per Rob.

After that, tweak player version to allow more than one character for a player in a window or tab. Most games I have been in, have one player, one PC character, though I am sure its not uncommon to have it otherwise, one to one is the norm I am aware of.

I agree, though would add, when I played bulletin board versions (now Play-by-Email) this was less so since there was long turnarounds between actions. Some as I have seen here, are playing "post" style gaming, and may not have that 1 to 1.

As far as multi character reveal to color, I would simply say once a snippet has past more than on character reveal, it goes "black" or some other reserved color, maybe darker grey. Then if you hover over it, a pop up window appears and it shows color and character the snippet has been revealed too. Make it a right click on the reveal icon for a snippet bring this as a pop up menu and allow the choosing of character for the reveals, with the "reveal to all" button that turns the snippet the standard green.

+1

 

[McGray]

The question then still ist, how do you transition from Character to Player level?

If I have one player who has three characters, wether in the same game or not doesnt matter atm, how do you link his characters from RWGME through to RWPE to support that individual reveal?

In other words: you would need to be able to asign one or several different characters in the settings to one player and then during editing your realm and revealing stuff select the correct character for the reveal action. This then needs to be synchronized like anything lese to RWPE to ensure consistency. I think of that as some not so small hurdle to take, but maybe its an easy one from a programmers perspective.

 

[Chemlak]

Picking up from disparate sources, what will happen is that the GM will assign "ownership" of characters to players, so that the players can create their own journals/notes/whatever for those characters. The player will (pure guesswork, here) select "Playing As..." (defaulting to the last character selected), and be able to dynamically switch between their assigned characters so that the realm only shows that character's revealed info.

The logic is already in place for this, I believe, since it was always intended as a feature, it's just (heh, just) UI and implementation that need to be ironed out.

 

[weogarth]

I just wanted to throw this tidbit out there....

I'm about to start another campaign using the same game world which will make at least 10 different characters flitting about my creations. I don't know how many characters Rob and his peeps were considering for this feature but I hope situations like this are accounted for.

 

[lifer4700]

I would hope the answer to that is something along the lines of, "limited only by memory," which would easily be hundreds, or thousands these days.

I find I am less tolerant of things with arbitrarily hard-capped limits these days. 8)

 

[AEIOU]

I'm certainly not a database person, but the limit may be much less than we think it should be due to the number of links and interlinks possible. And with each edit those links can change. LWD does a nice job of making the data accessible and easy to understand. But I would imagine there's a lot of sorcery happening behind the scenes....

I'm hoping the limits are great enough to allow for a persistent campaign setting with multiple generations of characters. A world that the players can shape and which different groups of players can see.

I'm hoping the limits are great enough to allow for dungeons like Rappun Athuk which can have a tendency towards party attrition and character replacement. I'd like to see a party rebuild it's ranks and move forward.

I'm hoping the limits are great enough to allow for multiple clones in Paranoia.

If the limits are finite, I'm hoping we can remove characters from the reveal list to open new slots if necessary. I don't know why I'd want to keep the history of dead characters but it may be useful.

I'm hoping we can click which characters are in play and only see the reveals for that particular group of characters.

And I'm idly wondering how I want to handle amnesia or mind wipes or memory manipulation.