So I have a weird one. I had a private message thread involving two of my players (I'm the GM in the game). One of them used a Private Line addressed to me for the result of a roll. My message included a private line to them with the results of that roll, but according to them, they never saw the private line I sent in reply.

Is this normal behavior? Should I advise people to not expect to see private lines addressed to other characters in Private Messages? I admit it's a not very common thing to happen, but it was interesting that this occurred.

don't know how that works  in PMs...but if you have a  group PM..and  you still have to  hide the  Dice roll..you may as well have a separate PM for the player... I do that all the  time...and? Unless you have the Dice roller  set up  for 'secret roll' everyone can see it .

 heck? i do 90% of  my dice  rolls off  board, either in a dead game that i was in, or  real dice  at my desk. Make it  simple.

Well, yeah, that's a solution going forward, but the player was assuming that it worked just like it worked in public threads and I had no reason to think otherwise. The situation was mostly meant as a quick exchange of info the other person involved in that thread wouldn't necessarily be privy to, as part of a mutual discussion on a potential plot point that all the players involved wanted to be a part of, but not necessarily have the same info on. I was being asked what specific information different people might have about the situation.

It wasn't a requirement or anything, just something that came up in the course of the chat.

I'm sure a Mod   will  pop up with   'if it works"  or 'how to make it work"

i have a couple players who might use the  Priv Line  IC...no one ever used it in PMs... every now  and then ( i have players from all over the country/world)..we  may be  on at the same time, and  rattling off both posts  and PMs happen  rather  quickly, I am almost certain the players you have in the group PM, you may already have a  single PM for. heck? you could even open a couple  windows  if you needed that many  'hidden' things.

 But? I bet some  one here  knows  how it works for sure, they'll answers as they can.

Just for clarification, Stray, the player included a Private Line to you, the GM, in a Private Message thread between the player and just one other player? And you, the GM, saw the Private Line they included to you, but they didn't see the Private Line you sent back to them? And the Private Line is definitely there, not an accidental 'I thought I sent this, but didn't' mishap?

I'm going to do some testing, and want to be sure I'm testing the correct things.

I do know that at least on the old site, some things worked differently for players and GMs. For instance, GMs could include language groups in PMs, but players couldn't.

Can you send an rMail to the moderators with a link to the game/PM in question (mention the problem again, in case one of the other mods gets to it before me so they know what it's about), and we'll have a look at it.  :>

Yes. Because I can see my reply to them, but they can't see the specific line. I'm a GM, so I can by default see all the private lines.



Can do.

Oh! Something I found when I was writing that up -- it wasn't originally a 3-player Private thread. It was a two-player thread that I interjected in as a DM because I wanted to use the existing thread between the two rather than start a new one. I don't know if that has any bearing on things, but it might.

I've had a look at the PM, and the syntax for the Private Line looks fine - no extra spaces or special characters in the character name, f'rinstance, so I don't think it's anything you're doing wrong.  Doesn't surprise me that you can see the Players' Private Lines as GM access lets you see all Private Lines (ie there's no checks) whereas Players can only see ones addressed to them, and I think that check is either broken or missing).

I did find a note in the FAQ (under Background FAQ | What are some of RPoL's features? /help/index.cgi?t=faqs&page=backgroundfaq) that suggests that private lines only work in public messages:

     Private Lines: Players and Game Masters can pass private notes to one another inside public messages.

However if private lines aren't available in private messages, then the compose screen shouldn't include the option.

I can't see how it's anything to do with the GM posting in the 2 person thread, as that doesn't cause a new thread to start, as adding a new participant or removing one of the exising ones would, but you never know ...

I'll refer it to jase to have a look at when he gets a spare second.  ;>

Not that I imagine it has anything at all to do with the issue at hand, but just another wonky PM quirk that I know at least used to be the case on the old site (and I have not had the means to test on the new, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was still the case) - if a GM interjects as GM in a PM thread that includes a GMPC among the addresses, but not the GM directly among the addresses, it -WILL- create a new thread.

Or at least it definitely used to.

Well, they're not available when it's just me (the GM) and a particular character one on one, but checking in a game where I'm NOT a GM, I can see an option for private lines in a post where I've only directly addressed another player. I'm testing things by asking the GM to post a reply with a private line to me, to see if I can replicate the bug "from the other side."

Update!

Just tested this as a player in a game. I can see my line to the GM, but cannot see the GM's reply to me. So I've replicated the issue.

Ah !  Thanks for that ... the plot thickens.  Confirmed by looking at a PM between me as GM and another player in one of my games, and yes, the player gets the option to add a private line, but the GM doesn't.

So obviously the GM can manually type the PM duplicating the syntax to generate a private line, but the code doesn't appear to be set up to render that for the player.

I'll pass that on to jase - it looks like it might be intentional, though doesn't seem likely as it means that the GM can't respond in private if a player directs a private line to them.

What type of PM thread was that, Skald?

It seems that neither GM nor player seem have the option to add a private line in an Access thread as far as I can tell from looking at games I play in and games I GM. (Not that they should ever need to, really, since an Access thread is by default one player only, and any extra GMs can read all private lines anyway.)

However...I also have a non-Access PM thread between me as GM and a single player in one of my games, where I -do- have the option to add a private line, so there must be something else afoot if you've found a non-Access thread where you as GM don't have the Private Line drop-down option.

Perhaps the presence of multiple GMs?

I had someone testing this from the other side (They started the PM chain, asked me to send them a private line, then tried to send me one) and I couldn't see it from my end, so we've replicated this again (they could see my private line to them).

It's more of a "oh this is interesting" thing than a problem, at least for most of the games I'm involved with.

Aaand ... that does make a difference - Access thread = no private line controls for GM (even though the player had been accepted waay back), normal PM thread = private line controls are there for GM to use.

Oh yes, not the end of the world, but nobody likes a bug, and I'm sure jase will squash it eventually.  ;>

You know me, I just get all interested by unexplained weirdness! =)

Has the color in private lines been recently tweaked?  Normally, it appears orange on my end (black background for me), but now it appears white.  Threw me and my GM for a loop as they thought the PM in my post could be seen by all.  But I checked and it's still private.

That private line wouldn't happen to be in a thread that's been archived, would it? That's the only time I've seen private lines turn from orange to white (also on a black background, here).

...of course, when that happens, they're no longer private.

Hope.  It's in an active game.

Hm. Okay.

Are all of the private lines you've previously written in that game also displaying as white instead of orange, now, or is it something that's happened only with a more-recent one?

Have you adjusted any of the color settings for a custom theme, or adopted a previously-created theme?

I've not adjusted anything on my end.  It's a recent thing.  My previous private lines were in orange.