Campaigns share everything

[viresanimi]

Just recently, my campaigns have started to act strangely. Something is seriously wrong with sharing images / stories. And it is across multiple rulesets. Just now I loaded up my vampire campaign, and every single story & image (and probably other stuff I didn't noticed) was set to "public". Including stuff that I have never ever shared with my players, which would be the individual stories I've made over the last year. I don't share my GM notes with players that is for sure!

I've scanned it for a virus, but nothing. Everything looks normal. Except sharing has gone complete bonkers.

I wish I could point to a specific thing and say: It started here, but now it just shares pretty much anything now.


Vires Animi

[Zacchaeus]

I don't know whether this post (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-27851.html) will help. The way links were shared was changed but it's been some time now; so unless you haven't been working with FG for some time it's unlikely to be historical. I assume also that you can't simple do the right click and unshare the links?

[Moon Wizard]

If you are running using a ruleset based on CoreRPG, then try making a backup of your campaign folder, and using /flushdb in the chat entry box while your campaign is running.
(Otherwise, you will need to make a backup of your campaign, and then edit the db.xml file directly and replace "<public />" with "".)

My guess is that something got shared publicly from a high level in your database, and it cascaded down to the child data.

Regards,
JPG

[viresanimi]

Here's a few things I remember:

As mentioned, I started up my vampire campaign today. Without having done anything, every story element was "public". And flushdb doesn't work in that ruleset for some strange reason.

In another campaign. Just CoreRPG, I used for a Star Trek campaign, I found that if I shared one specific story element (it was a list of a ships crew), everything was suddenly shared. Everything. The links in the list were not shared by me manually and things that have NO links to it became shared. Furthermore, story elements that is not linked to anything what so ever, became public.

I have no clue what is going on, and I have never seen anything like this in my 5+ years of use. I am utterly perplexed, to be honest. I will try a reinstall of FG some time tomorrow and see if it improves and will try to hunt down more tangible things to write about, if the problem persists. As it is I don't have the time to do it today.


Much respect for always taking time to respond.


Vires Animi


EDIT: I missed the link in Zachaeus' post. Will try to purge my cache. Thanks.

[viresanimi]

Been doing a bit of testing. To reiterate the problem: When I loaded my vampire campaign (this is the one I focus on, but it is NOT the only campaign to have issues all of a sudden), every story element, image, npc, etc was shared. All of it. And to be precise, everything was set to "public" ie, the little "P" was visible in the lists.

Purged my cache. That didn't do anything.
Reinstalled FG. No change.
Ran FG as administrator. Nope.
Made sure every folder was not "read only". No help there.
I tried to press the "P" to unshare things and /save. That didn't work on reload.
Ran campaign without any extensions. Problem persisted.

Now. I think I have found a way to "purge" the problem. As I run a campaign centered around a city, I do have a lot of links shared with my players. But certainly not all my stuff. I discovered, that if I started to unshare the links in story elements, that players should have access to, I could make sure that stuff actually became unshared. I am just totally at a loss why the campaign would suddenly share stuff, that I am absolutely sure I've never shared with my players. It is clearly a bug somewhere in my mind.

Anyhoo... long story short. Links shared in story elements (the one's you shift click on) seems to have a mind of their own at a certain point. Is there a limit to how many links there can be in a campaign or something that I don't know about?

I will keep at it, and see if I can narrow this weird thing down even further.


Vires Animi



EDIT: I am wondering here: Does it matter if a story is "unlocked" or not when you shift click to share links in story elements?

[Zacchaeus]

It matters not whether the story entry is locked or unlocked and as fas as I know there's no link limit. If there is it is massive since modules like Curse of Strahd have hundreds of them.

I've tried to reproduce your problem without success. I'm almost certain that at one point if you shared 'all links' on a story then if there was a link in the story that was shared it too would be shared and so on down the line. Depending on how the module was set up if you shared one link you could effectively share every link. That's no longer the case though.

In that post that I linked for you the user backed up his campaign folder, reinstalled FG and then opened his backup in a new campaign and that fixed his problem. It may be that you need to do that. Or do as MW suggests and edit the db.xml directly.

[viresanimi]

I'm almost certain that at one point if you shared 'all links' on a story then if there was a link in the story that was shared it too would be shared and so on down the line.

I would agree with you totally if not for the fact, that some things were public, that was never linked to anything at all. For instance, I sometimes make a quick little note, to remind me to do some stuff inbetween sessions, etc. These are not linked to anything, as they are very temporary. Now, I think I've fixed the problems by redoing all the links, but I had already tried that before posting here and nothing happened. Call it a gut feeling, but running FG as an administrator or making sure that all the data folders that FG uses are not "read only" and then redoing the internal links was the solution.

So far I think I've cracked it, but something strange happened for sure, and I can't help but think it was something outside what I was doing inside FG. Nothing I've done is new, and I've seen people have issues with 3.1.7. I think it is this version that has some kinks somewhere. Can't say for sure, but it feels like that.

Oh well.


Vires Animi

[viresanimi]

A little further on this whole thing.

So far it still seems to work, now that I redid my linking after running FG as administrator or made the data folder not "read only". However, I did find one instance where the campaign became instantly borked when I had a player log on and test it. And by process of elimination I found out what made it all go very very wrong.

In a pure CoreRPG campaign, I use for Star Trek, I had a list of a ships crew. Sharing that with someone logged on, instantly made all links public. Strangely it also made the decal activate, even though it was definately turned off. Yes, I can really made strange things happen. What I found was the player's character description was part of the list. Essentially a link from the character sheet was on the list of the crew. Sharing that list, with something connected to the charactersheet directly was the issue (in that particular campaign).

So... making links to stuff on the charactersheets public. Bad idea! And it had never happened before, because previously I had used notes for that sort of thing, but I got the idea, that keeping it on the character sheet was smarter.... rrright.


Vires Animi

[Moon Wizard]

It is odd that Zacchaeus and I can't recreate, but we are probably doing things differently than you are.

Nothing in v3.1.7 has changed, though 3.1.3 introduced shareable vs. private links on images and formatted text fields and 3.1.6 allowed public sharing to propagate through shareable links. However, the default behavior for links is that they are private unless specifically set to shareable. (Ctrl + Click or radial menu to change).

Now, in the CoreRPG ruleset, the following master nodes are automatically set public at initialization. (Options, Party Sheet, Calendar, Combat Tracker, Campaign Modifiers, Campaign Effects)

My guess is that somewhere along the line, the vampire ruleset was set up to have shareable links in the calendar (or one of the other areas, but seems less likely).

Are the links getting reset to Public every time you load? If so, I can take a look at your campaign directory to see what the linkage is. (Just send to [email protected])

Regards,
JPG

[viresanimi]

They were reset to public in the Vampire campaign when I started up. But as stated, I could fix the issue after starting up as administrator / made the folders not "read only". Its working now, as it should be, so its all good. It just looked weird for a moment there.

I did experiment with using the calendar to keep track of things in a Dark Ages campaign, and yes I used links in it. I ultimately decided against it, but now I wonder if that made FG loose its digital mind. It is certainly around that time, the issues started. At least I know, that I shouldn't be doing such silly things in the future. Good to know. Perhaps linking in the calendar shouldn't be an option? I don't know... perhaps?

Anyhoo... its working now, so all is good. Thanks for the replies; both of you. They certainly helped me fix things. Much appreciated.


Vires Animi