Granular Privacy Settings on Notes or other methods of sharing information

[ffujita]

I'd love to have granular Privacy Settings on Notes, where I could share a note with some but not all party members.

What methods do you use when you want to share information with one or two party members, but not the others?

[Mellock]

I just drag the note on the portrait of the player I want it to have.

[ffujita]

Thanks! It's amazing the things I don't know about this software :)

[damned]

Also - the general guide is that Notes are for players and GMs use Story. There are a few reasons for this but as the GM I wold try to stick to Story entries. :)
And you can unshare it from that person too if they say lost it, had it stolen, gave it away etc...

[Griogre]

This is a general case to share with just a person or two and it works with maps and images too.

[ffujita]

So, GMs should use Story entries and not Notes entries. From my looking at what was around, Notes were for "Walls of Text" while Stories were for linked information, most of which would never be shared with the players (the exception being Chat bubbles).

1) Could you share some of the reasoning behind this division?
2) How does a GM "unshare" information?

Thanks!

[Trenloe]

Use story entries for GM only text, links to other information, text to share with players - either as story bubble or just sharing the whole of an individual story entry with the players.

1) Notes are campaign specific. They can't be exported to a module and used in another campaign. Nor can you catgegorise them using the tab icons as tabs don't exist in the notes list. They were designed for players to keep their own notes, allow them to modify their notes and for the players to share those notes with other players if they wish. They weren't designed to be used by the GMs. Until recently they were plain text only.
2) Click on the (s) icon (selective share) or (p) icon (public share) to the right of the entry in the specific campaign data list (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/wiki/index.php/Campaign_Data#Campaign_Data_List).

[Trenloe]

From my looking at what was around, Notes were for "Walls of Text" while Stories were for linked information, most of which would never be shared with the players (the exception being Chat bubbles).
Look at any of the commercial adventure modules. All textual information is stored in story entries. Nothing at all in notes.

[LordEntrails]

I'll have to rethink my use of notes. I use them as a GM for campaign specific stuff. Some I share with the players (character creation, house rules, campaign summary to date) and others I keep just for myself (campaign status, behind the scenes events like NPCs that escaped and what they did/are doing now etc).

[ffujita]

I use them (notes) as a GM for campaign specific stuff.
That's what I'd thought -- the Story is stuff you'd want to re-use again and again if you had a different group of players, the Notes is stuff that only applies to the particular players playing the particular campaign.

[Trenloe]

Use notes as you wish, in the end they are just a formatted text control with the data being stored in the campaign. But know their limitations - that it is not what they were designed for, and if you want to do campaign reorganisation in future and move them to another campaign or you have so many you want to add category tabs, then you won't be able to do this with notes without manually copy/paste plus reformatting into Story entries or XML editing. Something that seems OK for your requirements now, might not meet those requirements in the future. Story entries have the same GM functionality that notes entries have, plus the advantages of allowing category organisation and export to modules. Notes don't have any GM functionality that story entries don't have.

[LordEntrails]

Thanks Trenloe. I get that now, and I can see why I might want to change how I use them.