Visibility of visibility?

[Magnimost]

Just bought the Ultimate version along with CoC ruleset after testing FG works through my double NAT with Hamachi. Took a while but figured it out with a friend's help. Just hoping installing Hamachi won't be a stumbling block for the rest of the group.

After running a test encounter as a GM, it is unclear to me how can I tell what do the players actually see? I know about the eye icon in the corners, but sometimes I need to click on that, sometimes I need to paint on a map to make parts of it visible, and sometimes I need to open/share books in the Library. It's quite confusing.

Is there an easy way to tell which items are visible to the player so I don't spoil handouts, maps or NPCs?

[Mask_of_winter]

You can start a second instance of FG and join game as player. Use "localhost" without the quotes as the server address.

[Zacchaeus]

Fantasy Grounds doesn't have dynamic lighting - yet; it's possibly one of the things which will appear when it switches to the Unity engine. So in a map situation you would normall start with the map masked so that the players see nothing and gradually reveal parts of the map as the players explore.

NPCs start as invisible to the players when you first place them on the Combat Encounter and as you say you reveal them by clicking on the eye icon. If an NPC is under the mask on the map then the PCs can't see that NPC even if it is visible on the Combat Tracker. You can move NPC tokens in and out of the mask and that will reveal or conceal them.

In the case of library modules you control what the players have access to. Normally all that the players should have access to would be things like the Player's Handbook, or any reference material which they would need to create characters. You would not share adventure modules, Monster Manuals or other such GM only material. You can share pages from such manuals with your players (by right click and share from the radial menu) and of course you can share maps etc too.

When something is shared with players you will see a small icon next to their name (in the NPCs, maps, story lists). An 's' shows that the item has been shared with all players; a 'p' with one or more but less than all of them.

I don't really know whether this is answering your question or not, but do post back if it doesn't.

[Magnimost]

Thanks, both, that's very helpful! I'll open a second window to ensure I'm safe.

[Griogre]

Generally Monster tokens on the combat tracker start hidden. Generally, other GM assets not shared are hidden - but shared assets are not hidden (duh, but important to remember with maps). For a map make sure you mask it manually before you share or preload the map if you don't want them to see the map. If you can get a chance, ask someone to sit in on a game where you can observe and you'll get a good idea of the player's visibly.