So what am I talking about?

I get players metagaming periodically, or who interact differently when they know someone is an NPC.  Sometimes, they're wicked clever about it and looking at last login dates on the cast list.  I would like to figure out a way to attach characters in such a way that they only update their login date when they post.

So for example, say I run a game and I want to deploy a character named 'Bob.'  I don't necessarily feel like broadcasting that he's an NPC, so I use the existing option to label him as a 'player.'  Right now, every time I login as the GM, his last-login date updates, which is annoying.

Does anyone know how to work around this?

Assign the character to a player that you trust. Then it will only update when they login, and so long as they don't post as that character you can go on posting whenever you want to with it.

Yeah, I'd thought of that, but I don't want to have to rely on a player for that.  What if I'm running a game for just one player?  I know this isn't the most important thing ever, but it would be nice if I had the option as a GM.  Or a game-specific setting where I could disable login information for anyone who isn't the GM.

 If you're running a game for just one person, then by default anything that they are not controlling is a character of yours.

 But as far as logins go, this system already scrambles the login dates for any PCs assigned to GMs. No one should be able to tell from the lock in dates exactly when a GM PC logs in. I should know, I'm extremely anal about trying to figure that out!

It was a hypothetical, not the point ;)



Does it?  I haven't seen that at all, it's what prompted me to post this in the first place.  Every time I log in as GM, it updates all the NPCs (expected) and it seems to do so for the player-tagged characters that I have fashioned as well.  Strong consistency to that, no scrambling that I've ever detected at all.

EDIT: Eh, I suppose this is all way big effort for a really specific gain.  Never mind.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:25, Sun 29 Nov 2015.

Yes, it does.  But as a GM, you always see the correct log in times, which is why you don't see any difference.

Also note that players never see the times that other players have logged in, only the dates.

Edit: Plus you can set a delay timer on a post.  So you're GM controlled "player" might sometimes post at times when your real players know you aren't online.
This message was last edited by the user at 03:33, Mon 30 Nov 2015.