Well... from the standpoint of space, just thinking hypothetically here and speculating that we *might* be able to have different GM and Player Cast List modes.

There are three columns currently, besides character name: Groups, Tag(s), and # of Posts
Under the mouseover dropdown, there are two rows:
 Last Game Login: <date/time>  Last Post: <date>
 Send: rMail | Private Msg | View: Description

If the columns besides character name were swapped to (for GMs): Last Login, Tag(s), and maybe Last Post (as I can see that being pertinent if you're wanting to quick-skim to see if one particular person has responded to something at a glance, having thought about this a bit more) then that's still just three columns so it doesn't seem like much more space would be utilized. In a hypothetical two-mode system, players would just get Tag(s) and Last Post, so that's one less column.

Then, you could put (for GMs) under the dropdown:
 Posts: <number>  Groups: <ABCDEF>
 Send: rMail | Private Msg | View: Description

Players could see under their dropdown:
 Posts: <number>
 Send: rMail | Private Msg | View: Description

(edited because I realized I'd been redundant pre-coffee <.< )

@jase: True, removing player access to Last Login does make it easier to deal with obfuscation! =)
There would be no need to code in that fix to have PMs trip the Last Login for GMPCs, as well as eliminating the current guessing game of 'Has my GMPC logged in today?' (since GMs can only see THEIR last login time on the cast list, which isn't what players see for GMPCs), and helping players by not making it as obvious when they're controlling more than one PC. Not to mention that it would cut down on the doom-and-gloom comments from players of 'Oh, I see we've lost so-and-so...' when they notice that someone else hasn't logged in for a week.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:14, Sat 05 Dec 2020.

From a player standpoint I find having the last login to be helpful as well.

Generally for the same reasons as evileeyore.

It's also useful when evaluating existing games you're thinking about trying to join because it's a better gauge for judging how active a game's player base is than "last post", and figuring out generally which characters are still around.

As a GM I have to disagree with you @nauthiz. I find last post and post count to be a more effective tool, as I have had players constantly log in, and not post. At that point they are doing little more than clearing red.

Happy to shuffle it around however we like, the issue with having last logon and last post is they're pretty long so can consume a fair bit of width.

On the theory floated by SunRuanEr I've made GMs see name, groups, last post & last logon.  Players see name, tag, last post and last logon.  Hovering over reveals the missing information (tag or groups, number of posts).

I've reduced the year (where it's shown) to be just "'19" (etc) to reclaim a tiny bit of space.  I could reclaim more width by having the dates only for everyone, the hover expansion could show the hour and minute if it's still desirable (for the GMs!).

The beta site has the new layout.

Jase, that's pretty awesome that you made two versions (yay!) but I have some questions. (I did hop over there onto the beta, but as none of the games I play in are there, I can't check much with regards to cast lists just yet, alas. Gonna work on fixing that!)

Are you currently displaying full timestamps for last login for players, as well as GMs? That was how I read your post, and that definitely seems like too much information to provide to players (since that's even *more* than they get currently and all, and pretty much destroys any chance of keeping multiple characters belonging to the same player obfuscated).

Would it be possible to make the Last Login for *players* display only in the mouseover dropdown? If the consensus is that people want players to have access to Last Login, it would at least help hide simultaneous logins if players could only see one person's login at a time instead of everything at a glance. (That is both the best, and worst, thing about the current responsive cast list - it's *fantastic* that players can't easily see all logins at a glance, but a pain that GMs can't, either.)

Edit: Still disagree with players having the ability to see Groups at all, though, even on dropdown.
This message was last edited by the user at 03:05, Sun 06 Dec 2020.

As GM - Last Login/Post should show date and time - actually date first THEN time following ... first thing I look at is the date, so much easier if that's the first thing listed in the string ... then if it's today the time is relevant too: if someone logged in 5 mins ago I might hold off on an update to give them the chance to post first; if it was 12 hours ago I'd know not to wait on the off chance they're still pondering.

H'mmm ... with that in mind, how about we show date and time under both headings if the player logged in/posted in the last 24 hours ?   If > 24 hours then just need to show the date.


As a player - no, I quite agree with SunRuanEr - I don't want to see other characters groups at all.  I'd like to be able to get at the groups my own characters are in (won't need that often so drop down or on some other screen is fine) but not crucial.

In the player view on my mobile device the "Last Logon"/"Last Post" text is wrapping into two lines for some dates (but not others).  Visually this looks a bit messy with some things wrapped and some not despite the strings being all the same character length.


In the GM view it's less of an issue because the time stamp in addition to the date (if there is one vs "today") make pretty much everything wrap.


Overall if there is text wrap it might be nice to have the cells on the same row as the wrapped text align with the top line of the wrapped text rather than the bottom.


Beyond that I think the reshuffling of information for better prioritization as presented is overall a positive step forward.

The two dates are too wide on a phone in  portrait mode (360 px) . The information become unclear when the last logon is this year and the last post isn't. That appears as if the year part is about the last logon and not the last post.
From the beta: link to another game
my screenshot: https://drive.google.com/file/...Vy/view?usp=drivesdk



When I check a new game, I feel that last post date and number of posts give a good idea of how much everyone is "publicly" active. (public as in not in private messages; any/all gm-approved lurkers would see the posts.) Information that can be seen/calculated if everything is in group 0 (or by lurkers).
Tags are useful to see when they are used. So definitely a nice addition to the unfold section.


As a player, I've used the last logon the same way as evileeyore do.


For the gm, if there's only one date outside of the fold, could the choice of logon/post be a game preference / option of the game? Because I wonder if the split between those that would want one or the other would be near 50%/50%.

I'm team last logon, as my games are small enough that I see the last posts directly in the thread I'm checking anyway.


For the group information, as a player, the most useful part is shared groups. So I'm not surprised if a character show up in a particular thread.

It might be interesting to know which characters are in the "limbo" that is group Z though. I would suggest in a separate list, fold by default under the npc list.


edit to add:

I feel that it would only be "security by obscurity". In the sense that if someone is looking for a specific pair, the cost of unfolding two isn't much higher than the cost of just one.

In the case of not having everything at a glance, to spot a random pair, well... I've definitively broke that already. I've made a greasemonkey script so I don't have to unfold anything.
And even without the script, the everything at a glance is only a click or two away anyway (source code of the page, or a simple copy-paste).
This message was last edited by the user at 07:39, Sun 06 Dec 2020.

I love the new look in the beta site.  Also, it's funny that my old games from 2011 are still there.

https://codepen.io/woof72/pen/PpQGOE has a demo for the "time on hover" I was talking about.  Only for "Narrator", the rest are as the current beta site has it.  That's the GM view -- players don't see the time, only the date.

Years are only shown when it's not this year.  It adapts.  "Today", "yesterday", no year and then with year.

With the space saving from removing the time plus 2 digits less for the year we can probably squeeze in another column, so four in total.  As there's five (name, # posts, groups, tag, last logon, last post) then we've got to figure out which one gets relegated to the on-hover section (can be different for GMs and players, can't let SunRuanEr down!).

Edit:  The editor section now has an extra posts column, just to see how well it all fits.  Also has all the nice little hover bits.
This message was last edited by the user at 09:35, Sun 06 Dec 2020.

As a GM, I rarely use 'No of Posts' - I am much more interested in details of the last login and post.  'Groups' is much more important to me than 'Tag' (I  know the status of my players and NPCs)

Awesome jase, I'm relieved to know that the timestamp is only for GMs no matter what, and that we're looking at keeping two-mode cast lists (yay!). I'm also okay with Tag(s) only being in the dropdown menu, since it seems my games must be one of the very few that actually use that for anything - it would be *better* (for us) if it was displayed in the list, but I could live with it in the dropdown, as long as it's viewable somewhere.

With regards to last login, though...

MalaeDezeld mentioned above that having it in the dropdown list for players only creates "security by obscurity" - that is 100% true. It's not secure. But it's better than having it all out there in the open for people to easily spot trends. The only way to make it secure would be to remove last login from players' view entirely, and I'll admit that I have never been more excited about a development potential than I was when jase mentioned yesterday morning that he wasn't sure if players needed last login information because it does eliminate a lot of hassle with regards to obscuring character control.

Currently, if you are a player, all of your characters (PC or NPC) login every time you refresh a game site. If you are a GM, every character you control that isn't your GM alias (NPC, or PC) logs in randomly as far as what players see on their Cast List. Posting in a public thread (PMs don't work, but fixing that is on jase's To-Do List) will force-update a GM character's last login to 'Today', but that's the only way to control it. After that point, they'll float between 'Today' and 'Yesterday' (sometimes they'll stay there for a few days, changing each night at midnight to 'Yesterday' again, which is really amusing) and then they'll eventually start to fall off after a few days to 2 weeks of that and cease keeping up at all...until the next time they make a public post.

The problem there is that the GM *can't* see that. On the GM's side of things, it looks like every character that belongs to them logs in every time they log in, which creates a serious disparity particularly in the case of GM PCs - "Bobby doesn't look like he's logged in for weeks, GM. Is he okay?" "What are you talking about, he logged in Today?" It's shockingly difficult to manage if you don't have someone like a spouse in your game that has non-GM status to check and see what the actual player cast list shows so that you know what your players are seeing. If players couldn't see last login at all, that would be entirely eliminated.

So, I figured I'd list some Pros and Cons of having Last Login visible for players - if the consensus still remains that players *need* to be able to see that, so be it, the 'security through obscurity' dropdown option of making it harder for them to see it is better than nothing - but I was so excited about the prospect of it being completely removed yesterday morning that I have to try.

Pros of having Last Login information be GM only:
1. Jase can strike 'Fix PMs to force-update GM-controlled characters last login' off his To-Do list. =)
2. GMs won't see different Last Login information than their players do with regards to GM-controlled characters, eliminating the possibility of them accidentally outing themselves in conversation.
3. GMPCs that haven't posted in a while won't make the cast list look like it has inactive people on it to players. Remember that the GM can't see the same GMPCs' last login information that players do, so they often have no idea a PC looks inactive from the player side.
4. No more gloom-and-doom posts from players of 'Did we lose Bobby?' or 'Looks like Betty's quit' just because those characters haven't logged in for a week or two. (This is shockingly common, and really irritating.)
5. GMs will be able to post for players that *are* absent without other players realizing that it's the GM posting for them. Currently, when a GM puppets a player character, Last Post is updated, but Last Login isn't, making it pretty obvious it was a puppet post. (It can be nice to know that even if you have to tell your GM you lost your job & internet/have to go to the hospital/whatever, it doesn't become everyone else's business too.)
6. Players that control multiple PCs (or NPCs) will have zero fear that someone will notice login trends that are outside of their control.

Cons of having Last Login information GM only:
1. Players can't check other players' login activity.

If you're using logging in as an indication of player activity in a game you're thinking about joining, I think you're doing it wrong. In my experience, if people are logging in every day and never posting, they're just clearing red. If you're an actual player looking to see if another player has seen a post, there's an easy workaround for that. If it's been a few days/week/whatever and you've been waiting for Betty to post, and she hasn't - PM your GM and ask 'Hey, I was waiting for Betty. Has she seen the last post? Is it cool if I go ahead and go again?'

There is *a* workaround for GMs with regards to tripping logins for their characters even when they don't have something to legitimately post in a public thread, but it's a massive pain in the behind to utilize. It involves putting all of the GM-controlled characters into a Group, and making BS posts with all of them on a regular basis to trip their last logins - and even that doesn't work well when Groups are visible to players, because more than once an astute player has said 'Hey, why is Betty in <random unused Group>?' Which means the workaround when Groups are visible to players involves putting the GM-controlled characters into a Group long enough to make a post and then removing them right away, and hoping no one noticed. It's doable (we have to do it every time a GMPC needs to respond to a PM, currently) but man, is it a pain. Not to mention that it requires GMs to remember to do it regularly. Unfortunately, even that won't help obfuscate multiple characters for players, since their problem isn't *not* logging in.
This message was last edited by the user at 14:46, Sun 06 Dec 2020.

While that was a very eloquent argument for taking the last login information (day only) away from players, I'd be very upset to see it go.
So I feel compelled to offer a counter point.

I should note, I am in favour of the two different views, if that helps.
And would not be against a more 'zoomed out' version for players (maybe last logon of 'within the last week' or 'longer than a week', if coding doesn't make that a crazy suggestion) as a middle ground.

So:

Pros of having Last Login information be GM only:

1. Jase can strike 'Fix PMs to force-update GM-controlled characters last login' off his To-Do list. =)
Can't argue with this. Although we're also adding 'code a way for players and GMs to see two totally different cast lists' which may not be less work and may be a pro for leaving last logon visible to players.

2. GMs won't see different Last Login information than their players do with regards to GM-controlled characters, eliminating the possibility of them accidentally outing themselves in conversation.
I've never been in a discussion where there would be a risk of this. Unless the GM is regularly quoting logon dates and times I don't see why a quick proof read to check they're not providing unnecessary information doesn't also prevent this. If your players are asking 'when did so and so last logon' direct them to the cast list. If that doesn't work, the problem sounds like the player not the information in the cast list.

3. GMPCs that haven't posted in a while won't make the cast list look like it has inactive people on it to players. Remember that the GM can't see the same GMPCs' last login information that players do, so they often have no idea a PC looks inactive from the player side.
If I'm a prospective player, I check the cast list to see if there are some active players. If some characters look inactive, that's fine (and, honestly, expected). If I'm in the game, I'm going to want to check characters I'm posting with. Who, presumably, if they're GMPCs, will be posting, so also not a problem.

4. No more gloom-and-doom posts from players of 'Did we lose Bobby?' or 'Looks like Betty's quit' just because those characters haven't logged in for a week or two. (This is shockingly common, and really irritating.)
An engaged player base who care about the people they're playing with is a problem? If this is really irritating to you, and you want to maintain the illusion that an additional character (belonging to GM or a player) is a unique character, then make the occasional OOC post. Eliminates the problem of people worrying about their absence, and builds the illusion that they're a separate entity.

5. GMs will be able to post for players that *are* absent without other players realizing that it's the GM posting for them. Currently, when a GM puppets a player character, Last Post is updated, but Last Login isn't, making it pretty obvious it was a puppet post. (It can be nice to know that even if you have to tell your GM you lost your job & internet/have to go to the hospital/whatever, it doesn't become everyone else's business too.)
This is fair, and I can't argue with it. If a player is absent for RL reasons they wish to keep private, and the GM is posting on their behalf to enable that, then yeah, the cast list may make it clear it was the GM not the player posting. A work around would be a generic 'AFK' post from the player giving no details. I'd also say, most times, the stylistic differences in the writing would give away that someone else wrote the post.

6. Players that control multiple PCs (or NPCs) will have zero fear that someone will notice login trends that are outside of their control.
Ok, but how much fear is there about this? Honest question. I don't care, and will be honest about who I'm playing unless there's a reason not to be. And I've been in a small game, where there was a reason not to be, and where my timezone was distinctly different. I managed to successfully 'stealth' as an additional character for a month or two, when the stealth character died (as planned) and I could reveal all OOC. There are usually far more obvious tells than the logon on the cast list. Writing style, punctuation/formatting quirks, posting times, OOC posts, and probably others I can't think of right now. I'll accept that the cast list is the only one of those the player doesn't have some sort of control over, but in my experience it as also very minor compared to the others. And, unless you happen to refresh the cast list at the exact time another player is logging on it's a long way from conclusive. If you've got players obsessively refreshing to catch the moment someone else logs in, again, the problem is the player not the cast list.

Cons of having Last Login information GM only:

1. Players can't check other players' login activity.
Well yeah. And the above list can be summarised as 'it makes some things more difficult for GMs, and for players with secret characters.
So I'm going to expand on what this means means for me:

- I'm a prospective player in your game. I want to check my compatibility with the current players to make sure I'd be a good fit for the game and it'd be a good fit for me.
With last logon information I can look at the characters who have logged in over the last week, for example. Read the descriptions. See how I feel about the characters I'd potentially be playing with.
Without it, I pick a few and guess. Or read the whole cast list, which in some games is a lot of characters. And I hope that if I join the characters I was excited to write with are active and the ones that raised red flags are either inactive or greatly outnumbered by the ones I liked.

- I'm a new player in a game and I need to jump in somewhere. Having an idea of who has logged on in the last few days, and who hasn't logged on for months gives me an idea of who to approach (IC or via PM) as I figure things out. If the GM thinks a GMPC who isn't showing as active would be perfect for this, then they can approach me as that GMPC, or suggest as GM 'hey, what about whoever'.

- I'm a player in a game. My scene partner has gone silent. Was my last post terrible? Or am I being impatient? If the cast list says they haven't logged on for a few days, I need to cool my jets. If they're logging on daily but not saying anything, it might be time for a polite and friendly PM asking if everything's ok and if I can do anything to help them post.
Yeah, without the information I can PM the GM to give me the information the cast list currently provides. But, if players asking if other players are ok is irritating, players asking 'what would the cast list say if the information hadn't been removed' will get far more irritating.

- I'm a player in a group scene. A character has been quiet. Do I post again or do I wait? As above, and other people have covered this.
The OOC is a good place to check this, but if someone isn't posting IC or OOC it's hard to check in with them. The cast list let's me know if they're clearing red, or if they've not had a chance to log on. I can use that information to inform my response.

While I see the pros and cons to both sides, I play more than I GM. So I want the cast list to be useful to me, a player.
I find the cast list really useful, and would be very sad to lose 'last login'.
I run the old version of the site on my phone so I can still see last logon at a glance if I need to.

From Jase's list of the five bits of information the cast list currently shows, I'd order them (from most to least important to me, as a player):
Name - the rest of the information is meaningless without this
Last Logon - for the reasons outlined above
Last Post - potentially gives a bit more information about activity. But not vital
Tag/Group - I've never been in a game where, as a player, this mattered. Reading this thread, some people have, and I'd have no objection to prioritising one/both of these over Last Post
# Posts - Other than letting me know who is brand new and has never posted, this tells me nothing without further context. And that further context tells me more than this number.
Obviously this is my list, my opinion, and it's totally subjective :)

The "time on hover" feature looks like a good idea generally.

Though we still get this bit here on mobile

https://i.imgur.com/dHMhxPB.jpg

The content of the GM area doesn't vertically align, and the extra column in the Editor area really squishes things together.  This doesn't affect functionality at all (or at least maybe not much), mostly just aesthetics.




Like Low Key, I'm pro Last Logon for everyone (even if it's only revealed on tap/click/hover/etc).


Based on opinion and anecdote.

I don't think I've ever been in a game where players are watching/checking the cast list intently.

The only time I think it's come up is when someone's gone AFK.  Then you do get the posts about "Did so and so quit?" or more often "have you heard from so and so?" but that's generally been due to people being in a scene with "so and so" and them needing to make a decision (or have the GM do it) about how to proceed either moving things forward, or knowing when to expect things to move forward.

Most of that is solvable through GMs having an absenteeism policy and enforcing it, so everyone knows if a player hasn't posted in X days what the next step should be/will be.

The other time it's been useful as far as people going AFK is when the GM does it.  A GM that's logging in but not posting hits differently than a GM that just stopped logging in with regards to whether a game is temporarily in the doldrums, or statistically more likely to join the pile of games that die off without explanation.


As someone joining a game in progress, it's helpful to know who's around.  There is a difference between someone checking a game and not posting vs not checking a game.  When a game is in a holding pattern due to mid-game recruitment, GM being busy, etc there's plenty of times people check the game to see what was posted but have no reason to reply.  In that case they're usually just waiting for the game to actively resume.

Yes that might be a red flag, but it's much less of one to me as a prospective player than looking into a game that's recruiting and only having "last posted 4 weeks ago" to make some judgements as to the health of said game vs "Last logged on yesterday, last posted 4 weeks ago".


As a player I've also used "last logon" many times when GMs are looking for players to pick up characters that have had their players dropped or at least giving that as an option.  Not every GM is good about communicating all the information needed for that decision (which is instructive about the GM, but that's another matter) and popping into a game, and checking the cast list to suss out what characters the GM was talking about is much easier via Last Logon than Last Post.


Maybe I don't play in enough games that have "secret players"/"Secret GMPCs" but I've never really had that come up in such a way that it needs to be obfuscated more than it already is.  This gets back to my experience with people not really tracking the cast list very intently, or at least rarely offering comment or evidence that they're doing so.  Of the few times I know there's been "secret players" for second characters (because it was me) nobody ever commented or took any actions that made it seem like they were aware or that it otherwise seemed to effect the game.  In one specific instance a player actually stepped up and took over a game as GM and then there was a bit of confusion because they had had no idea as a player I was running what looked like 2 separate PCs, and the way the info on the GM side looked it wasn't very clear either.


Likewise, unless a character has gone quiet and I'm waiting on them, I don't think I've ever noticed that a GM has stepped in to run a character in such a way that they were trying to keep that action a secret.  Which may mean it's never happened, or may mean as a player I didn't notice because I'm not actively looking for such things.

While I appreciate the voracity and volume of your replies (and haven't had a chance to fully digest them) there's one thing I will remind you all... if adding or removing a feature is contentious then I won't do it unless there's an overwhelming vote to do so (or it's just otherwise unavoidable).

So we'll be sticking with last logon available, I'll just have to tweak so last post (which affects obfuscation calculations) includes private messages.

Just a thought re the note on the top of the page:

Hover over a row (or click on touch devices) for additional information.

Could we tweak the terminology to:

Hover mouse over a row (or tap on touchscreens) for additional information.


:>

Thank you Jase! :)

Understood, jase, but I had to try! =)

With that in mind, however, I would like to request two compromises that I don't think anyone will disagree with (if you can make them happen).

One, since we have a player view and a GM view cast list, can we keep the Last Login information in the part that requires you to mouseover to view it on the player view? That's not a removal of anything, since that's how the responsive cast list works right now for everyone. You'd just be *adding* the non-mouseover view for GMs.

Two, can we agree to remove the groups from the player view? (At least for characters other than your own.) No one seemed to have a problem with that, and it would help take care of handling last-post-tripping via hidden groups in the meantime while you work on getting PMs to work. Not to mention that it's pretty handy for other purposes, anyway, like letting parties split to handle secret side quests/missions without everyone knowing they're going on/who's involved, etc.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:11, Mon 07 Dec 2020.

I do  :)

You said it was important to you as GM, JohnB. I'm not suggesting removing it from GM view. =)

Yep.  But I also use it as a player to monitor who is in the same group as me  :)

@JohnB, you can do that in other ways, like posting a response in a thread and checking the check boxes below the formatting, which will list every character (PC or NPC) that has access to that thread and thus that group.

I'll preface this by saying I've not been a player in a game on rpol for about three years, the few games I've put a character in dying before play started. I have been an active GM for several games for the last seven years though, and that has been my primary participation on the site for the last three. So my needs/desires/perception is all wrapped up in the GM side.

As a GM, I find its been much like teaching a classroom, which is the job I participate in outside of rpol. My second job as it were. It is a balancing act of placating here, firm lines here, massaging egos there, and boosting confidence to that other side. I've found groups to be a great tool in helping to weave the stories my players create together, such as when the evil characters in my D&D game went off to rob as a side quest, they were able to do so secretly.

Because players, even the best players, have a hard time divorcing themselves of their out of character and in character knowledge, and rather than run into the issue of characters being treated differently I like to keep some things close to the chest. However, I have also had players go nuts over knowing that x characters were in a group they weren't, and how I must be playing favorites.

Now sure, someone could say just remove the player who had the fit, or don't keep things secret, but my experience is that warm bodies who post and remain with a game are rare and that people can't keep what they know from being what their character knows or acts on.

In conclusion, and as a final point, you already can't see a post that is in a group you are not in, why should a player have access to knowing who is in a group they are not?

Why not?

*Shrug* I have  played and DMed here for the last 20 years or so, and have also spent a large chunk of my life as a teacher -  I currently train apprentices in Digital Marketing.

I have always been a very 'Student Centred' teacher, full involving all of my students in all of my classes -  and being very honest with them all the way through their courses.  I do the same in my games.  A game belongs as much to the players as it does the GM -  without the players, there isn't a game, they have a right to have an input into all aspects of the game.  In my game, rules and settings change according to input from players.  I am just working out how to run a mini arena (something that I personally dislike intensely) because that is something my players want.

I wonder is, as you haven't participated as a player for a while, you might be somewhat divorced from the way that players feel and see games?  As a player, I have had good GMs and bad GMs.  Some games I  have remained in for years, others I have left quite quickly.  I have had DMs that post quickly, others who post to a schedule and some who seem to struggle to post at all.  I like to have some element of control / involvement in games I join.  I suspect there are quite a few players like that, who don't get involved in this board.  TBH, I am only here at the moment, because one of my players noticed a specific problem in the way languages were display
led.  Otherwise, I would he completely oblivious of this discussion.

In my own game, I move characters between parties and groups.  I leave players in groups that they don't participate in actively (because they want to refer to old threads that they did participate in) and I have a couple of players who like to 'monitor' everything that goes on in-game.  I don't have a problem with that.  After all, they should all know the basics of what happened in the other threads when they get back to town, and they listen to the general gossip.  And I believe that Players are entitled to know who is 'lurking' in their threads

*shrugs* it is a communal / group game - even though I am in charge and the main creator.

But, why the need to get rid of the Groups  field, when (as you point out) there are other ways to find out that information?

I don't think that's what Locke was saying, JohnB. You were stating that you liked, as a player, to be able to see the people that were in *your* groups. Locke was pointing out (correctly) that there's a way to see who is in *your* groups without having Groups listed on the cast list - open a post in a thread for one of your groups, and you'll see every character that has access to that group at the bottom under the 'Make this post private' option.

So, yes, there is another way to find out what people are in *YOUR* groups.

What there isn't, without having it listed in the cast list, is a way to find out what people are in groups that you *AREN'T* in.

I can't see posts made to threads that are in groups that I don't have a character in, right? By the same token, what need is there to be able to tell that other characters can see posts that I can't? I can tell that you're a reasonable person, as most people that wind up in Development are, so I'm sure you're saying to yourself 'What does it matter?' because you - as a reasonable person - wouldn't abuse that knowledge.

Not every person is that reasonable. Not everyone is content to know that other characters might be doing something on the side that they aren't, or to not see that characters X, Y, and Z are all in the same group, and start looking for a reason why/try to figure out what those characters have in common that explains why they're all in the same group. People metagame, it's a sad fact of RPoL. Why make it easier?

Moreover, there's precedent already for hiding group information - see the Language Groups, or even just the game menu itself. There's nothing at all that lets me determine who has access to *my* language groups, not even a series of checkboxes at the bottom of the post page, much less seeing who has languages that I *don't* have. By the same token, someone that isn't in Group X won't see threads set in that Group on their game list at all, they have no idea it exists...until they see 'X' next to another character's name on the cast list and start wondering 'What's going on in Group X that I can't see?'

...so, what Locke asked, and I'll ask again is - what *need* is there for a player to know whether or not other characters might be in groups that said player *isn't* in?
This message was last edited by the user at 20:12, Mon 07 Dec 2020.

Imagine running a Mafia game, where you have one group that is the Mafia group.  It's rather important that the people who are not in that group can't tell who is in it.

Hmm.  Maybe I'll run a Mafia game here on RPoL.