How to Hide Characters in the Character List - 3.5E...

[HoloGnome]

Hi -

Is there a way to hide characters in the character pop-up?

I had kind of frustrating experience today which was that I had characters that I thought were hidden from a remote client since I had been editing them and had not cleared the owner. They were supposed to be a surprise in an upcoming adventure and, unfortunately, the player could see them when they brought up the characters window.

So, where is the player visibility toggle for character sheets? :confused: I looked around and couldn't find anything.

Thanks!

[Callum]

I don't think there is a visibility toggle for character sheets - the way you did it (taking control of the character using a second instance of FG) is the only way to hide them. It's strange that didn't work, though. You can only see the character name and portrait, though, so you could temporarily change those to something misleading as a workaround.

Incidentally, what are you making characters in advance for?

[HoloGnome]

I am making them in advance, because it's a new adventure and the existing player characters will meet the others along the way and assume control of them. It was supposed to be a surprise. It's frustrating that there isn't a simple character sheet access/visibility toggle - seems like a significant oversight to me. All it would take is another GM-context command on the quirky radial menu to show/hide character. As GM, I should be able to create any character sheets I want in advance - whether for PCs or super-NPCs - and control when the players see them. The NPC list is not helpful.

For that matter, GMs may want to be able to lock the character sheets and prevent any/all changes, or lock various sections, etc.

The character sheet interface would benefit from integration of permissions/access/visibility handling.

[ddavison]

The way to do this today requires a slight workaround. Create the characters in advance and then launch a 2nd copy of FG, Join to "localhost" and take ownership of those characters and then sign back off. When new players connect, they only see characters which they've already taken ownership or which don't have an owner. When you are ready for them to be available, clear the owner as a GM and they will show up for selection.

[Trenloe]

As Doug says, take ownership from a player instance of FG. In the "Character Selection" window, if you don't see a name against "Owned By:" for a character then any player can take ownership. For example:

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/images/f/f6/Character_select.jpg

If there is a name there, then the first player to login using that player name can select the PC, other players won't even see the PC for selection. So, when you use a second instance of FG to block player access to PCs make sure you join game with a player name they your players won't use.

[HoloGnome]

OK - thanks. I can do that. I think the right way to fix this problem is to have a simple visibility toggle on the character or the radial menu. Glad there is a workaround- wish I had known before the cat got out of the bag of holding... :-/

[Trenloe]

OK - thanks. I can do that. I think the right way to fix this problem is to have a simple visibility toggle on the character or the radial menu.
https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/

[HoloGnome]

Yeah, yeah. ^_^ That's why I put it in my sig so that I can find it easily.

[HoloGnome]

I had no trouble hiding them with the local connection. I logged in as user 'GM-Private' and took over the characters, but I noticed related issues with Notes, etc that I will put in a different thread once I do some more checking.