I'd like to be able to view my gm posts as the players see it. I am curious what the spacing looks like.

You can do that by looking at your game while not logged in to the site.

Unless of course the post in question is not in a public or group0 thread...

However this has been suggested many times and I'm sure Jase is working on it.

I'm not, actually.  (c;

This has been requested several times.  I'm curious; is it requested due to an inability to visualise what it would look like for player x, or because people don't trust the system to do what it claims it will do?

For the former; I'd think people on a RP site would be able to imagine such things very well.

For the latter; you're asking for the system to pretend you're player x to prove that it's doing the right thing?  Which would imply lack of faith in the system, which would mean it's proving nothing (if you don't trust it to do the right thing, then how can you trust it to show you the right thing?).

   Actually I think often new GMs arn't sure what the system is supposed to be doing.  Not that it isn't doing what it is supposed to.  Being able to look at it's results would speed up the learning curve.  ;^)

Actually, I'd like it because I have a few sticky threads in my game where I update hit points and XP etc, and they include a significant number of Private lines, each one quite often several lines long.  It would be nice to be able to preview it as a player to make sure I haven't accidentally shown them more than they should see.

Incidentally, whilst on the subject of private lines, I would love the ability to be able to force the text colour within a private line to black...

At the moment, you can do a private line and colour the text within it to anything you want - apart from black.  I tend to use orange to distinguish OOC comments and different colours for speech.  Private lines then get mixed up with OOC comments.

hmmm...

It could also be a check that you didn't mix in [] with things.

Used to use [location] markers until we found out the hardway that if  [] inside a private line prematurely ends the private line.

[ private line start
smurf

[location]

secret gargamel

/private line end]

Would show to everyone

secret gargamel

/private line end]


I have to point out when scanning how a player would see it you would have to have a way of deciding how >each< player might see it.

There is also already a "prview" function which can do much of what is being asked for.

In reply to matthewfenn (msg #6):

People using the Black color scheme wouldn't really be able to read a text forced to black.  Since black is such a definitive color (it's either #000000 or it isn't black), it would be weird to then provide a "black" (which isn't really black at all) in those color schemes where black wouldn't be readable.  It'd seem a simple solution is "don't use orange to distinguish your OOC".
This message was last edited by a moderator at 15:37, Sat 18 Dec 2010.

For PLs - Hover over the text, a tool tip will popup with "Private Message." if that section of text is private.  The colouring also gives it away (and if you're mixing and matching the orange colour with it (which I wouldn't recommend), if you pay close attention you'll notice it's a different colour).

Hadn't thought of new GMs though (obviously), good point.  Would like to hear from someone who would like the feature if that's the reason why.


Off topic:  Black (or white) text definitely cannot be done.

(On the color issue: there is a Gray color on the beta site that I stuck in a while ago which might be close to what you're looking for; there are a few other additional colors, too, that will come in with the next site update.)

Not sure if I count as a new GM, but, yes, metoo! I would have liked this earlier even more than now. How else are we supposed to know what "the right thing" is if we can't see what the system does? And don't say "Read the  manual" now. Seeing is believing. ;)

I'm one of those people who live in constant fear of revealing something that was supposed to be private. A "preview as" feature would let me rest more easily ;)
This message was last edited by a moderator at 18:24, Sat 18 Dec 2010.

If I can't force a colour to black, then perhaps an option within the Private Message that can force it to stop using orange (or its subtle variation on orange!)

Yes, I have to add, being able to preview as a particular player would be very useful.

As an example, I have been able to tell at times in a game with reasonable certainty that there was a PM, embedded in a posts, that I couldn't see because of the line spacing. Showed that something had to be missing, as the spacing was obviously different than usual.  Do such 'reveal' ruin the game, no, not for me, but it might throw some intended suspense out, averting an effect that was intended.  I've always been careful to compose such PLs carefully, but it can be difficult.

And yes, dealing with computers a lot, I wouldn't question the computer/system doing what it is supposed to do, but rather people realizing they may not have properly told the system what they had intended to tell it.  :)

I agree.  I'm never quite sure if I made my spacing right to be consistant with the rest of the paragraph when I'm insterting Private Lines.  I'm less interested in making sure the system is working right (which it obviously will) than in making sure I'm working right.

I would have liked this feature when I was just starting out, and I think it could still help me with a lot of things. Especially as has been said with the issue of coding large numbers of private lines.

I'm by no means a new GM, but there are sometimes occasions where I would like to preview as a player. It's rare enough not to care one way or another whether this is implemented, but it still does happen.

<edit> view → preview
This message was last edited by the user at 05:50, Sun 19 Dec 2010.

Note there's a difference between preview and view, both terms have been used in this thread.  One's a lot easier to contemplate implementing than the other.

I'm guessing maybe "Preview as Player" is the easier one?  That could be useful, I think, though I'm not sure whether it would be worth it to go all the way to "Preview as Specific Player".

And I think the preview option would solve most GMs' problems without resorting to a whole "view as player mode" for the entire game.

I would say preview would be fine.  And as a further clarification, I'd think it would be fine to have it having a drop-down to display as a specific 'character'.  Granted this would mean that if a player had 2 characters, they would see a combination of PLs for both characters, and that wouldn't be reflected.

Otherwise the drop-down would probably have to list players, and maybe their characters, and that probably gets more complicated.  My thoughts being, if a GM is carefully insuring that each character is getting the right information presented correctly independently, that when one player gets their information for 2 characters, it should look right, if the GM checked both the Characters independently.

I'm assuming that the preview would function/option for both original posts and edits?  [if there is an actual difference]

I think such a feature would help new GMs a lot, but might also be used by even veteran GMs in certain cases when there is a lot of PL's going on.

I could even imagine the usefulness of it for players composing PLs, but then the drop down would definitely have to be by character, as you don't want to give away if two characters are played by the same player.

Oh, as an example of why the edit preview might be useful, I know of some instances in the past where due to a name change in a character.  Some historical PLs weren't showing up as intended/expected by a GM.  I also have heard of people manually typing out/editing PL text/addressing and mistyping the character names thereby missing the actually character/player intended seeing the PL.

In reply to LoreGuard (msg #13):

This is the major reason I would want to see feature like this. I'm not sure if it's important enough to implement, though.

You can jump to that conclusion if you like.  (c;

Having thought about it a bit more, they're probably not that dissimilar in difficulty to implement.

I'm not sure how the system is build, but wouldn't it be possible to just let the GM choose one of the players from the character menu, and while he does that, looses his GM powers, and sees everything like that player would?

In reply to Shaili (msg #22):

Possibly, but there is the problem that if you lose your GM powers then you don't have permission to impersonate another person or character.  If I un-GM them and just set them to be exactly player x/character y, then I might be able to view the thread/message ok, but the ability to do anything with it afterwards might be cut off.

RPoL is (I hope) fairly secure.  For example, permissions are checked when viewing the thread list, when viewing the thread, when editing an existing message or composing a new one, and also when updating/posting said message.  It does not assume at any stage that you have permissions.  A GM can change a persons profile at any time, and people can edit URLs or compose local versions of the forms that RPoL uses to try and bypass security.

Err, I digress.  To do what is requested we (probably, I haven't looked into it indepth) have to change how the GM views a thread/message without interferring with the GM permissions.

For example, when figuring whether to display private lines, one of the first checks is "IsGM".  If this is true then all PLs are displayed.  This will now have to be changed to "IsGM AND NOT impersonating a character".

Further down that same PL section there is an "IsCharacter" check (which checks if the controls controls the charcter), similarly that will now have to be changed to "IsCharacter OR IsGM impersonating this character".


This all gets more (or less) complicated depending upon whether we're talking about impersonating a specific character, a specific player (which might mean more than one character), or just "character in group x".

Whether it's "previewing a message as" or "viewing a thread as" is also still to be determined.  The latter seems to be better to me, but then again I don't really see much need for all this.  (c;

That's over my head but thank you for taking part of your limited time to look into how to code this.

Have a whole tray of Digi-Cookies, and a Digi-Drink to wash them down.