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Hastur
February 23rd, 2014, 23:08
Hi

I am new here and a noob with FG. Perhaps I haven't found the right buttons or so, but the CoC-rulesets seems not to support very much the investigative part (the main part) of the game. Surely there is a workaround for every problem and this is great as it is, but honestly I miss some features. I am satisfied from a GM-perspective but not from a players-perspective. To deal with handouts, books, hints, clues etc. is more important than combat. But I don't see good support for the players to arrange hints, books, informations put down notes etc. It must be a nightmare for them to play something like "Mask of Nyarly" with its tons of handouts.
Again, perhaps I havent found the right buttons. But at the moment my questions are:
1) Is it possible to have subfolders in the menus "Images&maps", "Personalities", "Items" and "Notes"? The Gm is able to use groups (that interferes with the use of modules, but he can use them), but the players only have one big box to put all the pictures in. No problem in a short Oneshot but if you are planing to play a campaign that must be very hard.
2) Menu "Personalities": Is it possible to put an image on the "appeary"-page (instead of the chaosium-sign?) [EDIT: I found out that you can put a token in that place. Now I only have to understand that token-system and I everything is ok ;-)
3) Menu "Personalities", "Items", "Notes": For example, if you introduce an NPC, the GM has his GM-only information, he has information to share with the players and the players have their own thoughts and they perhaps want to make notes regarding that NPC. As a consequence it would be nice to have on the creatable sheets in the menus "Personalities" (NSC-encounters etc.), "Items" (books, letters etc.) and "Notes" (hints and clues) three textboxes: one with infos the gm wants to give his players about this NPC or item and that could only be changed by the gm, one with background-infos only visible for the gm, one with notes from the players they can add while they are investigating the case. (something similar is made at the calendar)

Sorry for language (english) 4%. Hope I made my points clear. And thanks in advance :-)

Greetings
Hastur

damned
February 24th, 2014, 11:15
Once the GM shares an image the players may access it again later on.
Players may take Notes and share them with each other.
Players dont have (I dont think) access to NPC info - they need to take notes...

Hastur
February 24th, 2014, 18:43
Hi

thanks for the answer.
My main problem is, that there are no options for the players to sort and arrange their gathered information. Surely, you can give them all handouts, maps and portraits as Images, but this is far from comfortable. If you play a campaign like masks with over 40 handouts alone it is impractical to put them simply in one folder with the maps, portraits etc.. This is the reason why I asked for an option for the players to arrange the information in subfolders.
And as for my third question (not as serious a problem as the first one, only a matter of comfortability): In my CoC-games (and I think I am not alone with that), the players met a lot of NPC, visit a lot of locations, receive a lot of handouts like letters, bookexcerpts etc. Why not use the things that are already here like the NSC-items and give the players the oportunity not only to see this items, but to really use them (i.e. make notes on the) while they are investigating. Example: They PC met Prof. Armitage in the Orne-library, talk to him and all went well. He lets them read in a book. But he wants a favour in return. It would be excellent, if the players get an NSC-item with a picture of Armitage and a few information about him and the oportunity to put on that item down some notes like their promised favour for their next met. Then they should become an item for the book, with a short excerpt perhaps, and they can make notes, what this book can be used for, what spells they have found in it etc. finally I would like to share an florplane of Orne-library. I use to give my players all this things on the table to create a lively world.

Greetings
Hastur

d1wright
February 24th, 2014, 19:53
I don't think FG handles what you're really looking for, which is an arrangeable database that allows the integration of shared images and player notes.

The best a player could do at the moment would be to create their own notes using the same title as the shared image so that they knew they were related. Grouping images would be nice (the room, the picture of the book, the three pages from that book, etc), but at the moment, the only way to group would be for the GM to make sure the titles matched (Hastu's Lair, Hastur's Book, Hastur's Book Page 1...). Nothing the players could do on their end.

I usually take a lot of notes in Word in a window that overlaps so that I can type notes while still keeping an eye on the chat window. Then I can cut and past text from Chat and such into Word and format and arrange as I like. It also allows the player to access their notes outside of FG. If they keep all of their notes in FG, they can't access them unless your server is up.

Hastur
February 24th, 2014, 20:41
Thanks for the answer, d1wright. Good to know that grouping images and using subfolders in the menus is not possible for the players. I can now stop searching for that feature. I think I will follow your lead and provide handouts, important images, players contacts etc. outside of fg so they can arrange them in the way they want. It would be nice to do this all inside fg but your hint, that they can't access their notes unless I am in game, is a good argument against my primal wish. [Perhaps I post my request for subfolders in the Images- and Items- and NPC-menus similar to the subfolders in the token menu outside of the CoC-subforum. I don't think its mandatory but it seems to me that it would help me and my players a lot even if we combine fg and non-fg ressources for playing.)

Trenloe
February 24th, 2014, 20:50
You can kind-of do what you're asking - if the notes field was a Fantasy Grounds formatted text control rather than a string control. The formatted text control allows different types of formatting and allows dragging links from other FG lists to a link list (CTRL+5). Commands you can use in a formatted text control are detailed here: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/refdoc/formattedtextcontrol.xcp

I've thrown together a very quick extension that changes the notes field to be a formattedtext control:

6146

Put this in your <FG App Data>\extensions folder and select "Formatted Notes" from the extensions list when loading a campaign.

Note: This will only work with campaigns that don't have notes already as it changes the underlying database node type and so trying to open notes from a campaign without the extension will raise errors.

Here's an example of a note with links to an image, an NPC (personality) and another note:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39085830/Screenshots/Fantasy%20Grounds/Formatted%20Notes.jpg

Hastur
February 25th, 2014, 00:37
Wow I am really impressed. Thank you so much. This is just great. This will make things so much easier for my players.
One itsy-bitsy question: Is it possible to write a note as a GM, hand it over to the players and they are enabled to write in that very note and change it?
But again, thats really not that important because your extansion is really great as it is.

Trenloe
February 25th, 2014, 10:38
One itsy-bitsy question: Is it possible to write a note as a GM, hand it over to the players and they are enabled to write in that very note and change it?
The way Fantasy Grounds works is that only the owning player of an object (note, story, etc.) can edit the contents (the GM can edit the contents as well). By default, the "owner" is the person who created the note - this is shown in the field just under the note title, if "Owner" is empty it means the GM owns the note.

Sharing a note, even just to one player by dragging the note link to the PC portrait, does not change ownership.

It would be possible to modify the extension to change ownership some way, but this could only ever be for 1 player - even if the note was shared with all/made public.

Hastur
February 25th, 2014, 15:49
I understand. Thanks for the answer. I am working right now with your extension. I have made four notes-Sheets (HQ-Contacts [with links to "Personalities"], HQ-Library [links to "items" and "images"], HQ-Locations [links to "items" and "images"] and HQ-Photos [links to "images"]. If I want to share information then I create a link on the proper note-sheet. Not much work for me but good service for the players as they have all their information gathered in the notes-section and don't have to look in the other menus. Additionally I made for every character a note-sheet for the notes, the players want to make.
Now I have to complete the work on the module to give this system a trial.
Thanks again for all your input and especially for the great extension.

Greetings
Hastur

damned
February 26th, 2014, 06:46
will this work with any CoreRPG based rule-sets?

Trenloe
February 26th, 2014, 11:32
will this work with any CoreRPG based rule-sets?
I've made it generic (no ruleset tag) and posted to the CoreRPG extensions list: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?20320-FG-3-0-CoreRPG-Extensions