GM only tokens with notes

[Macgreine]

Is it possible to make tokens such as letters or numbers visible to GM only and add notes to the tokens? I seem to remember reading about this somewhere.

[Invictys]

Sadly no. One workaround is to create an npc with whatever notes you want in the statblock and whatever token you want like a letter or whatever. Add them to the combat tracker along with the rest of the monsters but leave it hidden. You'll have to skip past it's initiative turn but this does work and is how I do traps or other hazards that the players can't see but I need to know about.

[Griogre]

You can also use map pins to do this. I typically use Story entries for things like room numbers and story or encounter entries for encounters. When you move the mouse over a pin you get a tool tip of the story, encounter or map entry. Map pins can only be used on images. To get them to show on a map you need to right click the image, then select Layers at 4 o'clock, then Enable Shortcuts at 9 o'clock. This will show any pins on an image and allow you to drag and drop the pins on the map (if you already have pin on a map you can just hold down the Ctrl key to display them). To put a pin on the map just drag and drop the link by a story, encounter, treasure parcel, or map header after you have set Enable Shortcuts. Map pins allow you to run your adventure off the map which works very well for site-based adventures.

https://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m222/Griogre/MapPinExample_zpsf64fbab1.png

In the example above I have my mouse over the 1A encounter area. When I click on the pin it opens the 01A Story entry. You can see the tooltip has the header of the story entry. In this particular adventure I took the time to actually fill out the story entries with text. I often do not bother if I have a hard copy or PDF of the adventure or I don't have the prep time. The story entry has a link to the encounter, which I clicked to to open the encounter. If I was actually running the encounter I would then click the button at bottom of the encounter to load the monsters onto the combat tracker and the monster tokens onto the map.

The minimum entries you need to run things in FG are a map and encounters if you use voice and typically that is all I enter. That's what I did in the encounter below, I directly linked to the encounters in this module because I wasn't using story entries.

https://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m222/Griogre/MapPinExample2_zps7ef670b9.png

[Trenloe]

Is it possible to make tokens such as letters or numbers visible to GM only and add notes to the tokens? I seem to remember reading about this somewhere.
I'm guessing what you're asking for is the pins that Griogre mentions above.

However, if not, you can put a token on a map/image, make it invisible to the players (right-click on the token and select "visibility" -> "always invisible") and then drag text from the chat window and drop it on the token. This text will then appear as a tooltip when you hover the mouse over the token.

There are various disadvantages to this: the text is shown on one long, single line in the tooltip, and you can't edit the text - you can just drag-drop new text.

The pins are by far the most flexible and best solution as you can link all sorts of FG campaign content off the page linked.

[Invictys]

Ahh yes I often forget about pins since they don't seem to export properly when I make modules from my adventures. Thanks for the great tutorial Griogre :D

[Trenloe]

Ahh yes I often forget about pins since they don't seem to export properly when I make modules from my adventures.
These work fine for me - I frequently make adventure modules with pins and they export and work well when activated in a new campaign.

You need to make sure you export all info that is referenced by the links - and try not to have links to other modules as a pin. If you're using extensions like the enhanced image extension then you'll need to have this activated in the campaign you use the module in or the pins won't recognise the layer name.

[Invictys]

Interesting, I haven't played with the pins since shortly after I first got the program so I am assuming I was just exporting incorrectly. Thanks for the heads up because pins really are a nice feature.

[Macgreine]

Thanks guys I am leaning toward the pins and I think thats what I saw used in a video or something one time. Dragging and dropping text onto tokens definetly has its uses though.
Thanks again, Mac