Player Focus

[Carthar]

One thing that I miss from my tabletop days is the ability to direct the players focus. Roll out the battle map and everyone pretty knows what is up. Start speaking and waving your hands and again, people know you need to say something important. You could also tell when someone wasn't paying attention or in the fridge.

So I'm wondering if there is a feature I've yet to find in FG to do that. I know about locking the map view. I also know about the ring bell to "wake" someone up. Both of these are not what I'm looking for.

What I'm looking for is a way to focus their attention from the map to the chat and back again. With FG not having true two monitor support yet (yes you can stretch but that sort of make the matter worse as the chat window is on another monitor) the chat window, combat tracker and the battle map seem for me to be competing for space and player attention.

For example when you want to have a pause in a battle for an evil diatribe before the BBEG unleashes some fiendish monster and then runs off. It would seem my players don't refocus on the chat window and then I get the "where did that come from?" questions. Sigh...

So is there a way to force the clients to resize them or maybe make one flash so I can let them know this is where they should be looking?

Thanks,
Carth

[JohnD]

Have their inattention cost them big in one encounter... that'll learn 'em.

[Dakadin]

One thing you could do is create an image that says something along the lines of "Pay attention to the chat window!". Then just share it during moments where you want to direct their attention to the chat. It won't help if they aren't paying attention to FG but will if they are focused elsewhere.

[Nickademus]

Not a direct answer, but a side thought: the language extension for 3.5/PF causes the players to look at the chat window to see if their character can translate a certain language. It has never failed to wow players in the games I've been in/run. Using that extension and putting a scattering of creatures that use other languages can keep them looking at the chat window for main game information and interact. Then they become more accustomed to looking at it and will do so more readily when there isn't a language translation.

[Carthar]

One thing you could do is create an image that says something along the lines of "Pay attention to the chat window!". Then just share it during moments where you want to direct their attention to the chat. ...

Hmm.. I might go with this. Not the most elegant solution but good enough for right now.

Thanks
Carth

[damned]

Are you running predominantly text based games?
The majority of the games today are probably Voice games or have voice for either In or Out of Character chat.

I can definitely see where in a Chat based game players may get distracted and miss the awesome monologue...

[Carthar]

It is a mix of chat depending on the group.

Even when I have voice, I let the voice be OOC and the text be IC. So I normally have to break up the conversations of what they should do next to note they should look at the chat window. Even then it is common for someone to roll a few dice without thinking about it and off the screen the text goes.