Out of the Abyss Chapter 1 Question

[RPGamer99]

No spoilers here.

In the first chapter the module suggests that PC's might 'control' some NPC's that may help the party out, and I'm checking out ways to do this, but I'm having a problem.

When I share an NPC to a PC they can see the 'bio' page that has some spoiler background on the NPC.

How can I share just the NPC page with stats and not everything about the NPC? I tried to share just Turvy, but his record is linked to Topsy as well, and you can view everything about both NPC's this way.

Is it not possible to just share the stat page for a PC to help control them? (The Topsy and Turvy wording makes it seem like it is possible. If you know what their story is.)

Thanks for your help.

RP

[damned]

I dont think you can share the stats only. You can drag them into NPCs and then unlock and remove the text and share it to the players at that point. Your module copy will stay the same so you will still have the info.

[Trenloe]

If you share an NPC record you share everything on all of the tabs. As damned says, drag the NPC from the library to the campaign NPC list. Then you can edit the new entry in the campaign NPC list and share that to the players.

[Zacchaeus]

The Topsy and Turvy linkage is an error which I have missed when checking the module out. I'll report it. Meantime just delete the link before sharing with the players, you can delete everything on the 'other' tab if you want.

[RPGamer99]

If I understand this right, I'll basically be making a copy of the record and then I can edit that copy that I can then share. That makes sense, and seems easy enough to do.

Thank you everyone. I will give it a try later tonight at home.

[TASagent]

You are totally, right.

I didn't realize that sharing NPCs shares as public all records they link to. That changes how I'd imagined sharing NPC records in general.

This could be fixed fairly easily if I delete links From the NPCs TO the Bio records. They were a convenience, but probably the least-used crosslinking modality.

[RPGamer99]

Last night I was in two sessions to test it out. One as DM and another as a player with a character.

It surprised me when as the player once I was shared one of the NPCs, I could just click around until I could read the secret info about the NPC. lol

I think I might get tricksy and just remove the really spoilery parts of the bios and leave the rest so it will seem like the PCs don't have anything to worry about from them.

At first I was just hoping it would just share the 'NPC' sheet with stats so the PCs could move them around and swing the swords for them. It was a good thing I tested it before actually sharing one in game. *face meet egg*

Thanks again. This will be fun to implement.

[TASagent]

Yeah, another issue is that the amount of info each DM will want to share with his/her players will vary a lot. Some DMs will want to share the whole spoilery backstory, trusting the players to compartmentalize, while others will be reticent to share the NPCs names. The best route is to facilitate everyone as much as possible, and not pidgeonhole people into playing it a particular way.

It seems to share records recursively, too. Stripping out the links from the NPCs to the Story records for these guys seems to be the best way of preventing over-sharing. I'll prep that and roll it out. In the meantime (or/especially if you've made a lot of modifications and don't want to revert any changes), just make a copy of the NPC record and delete the story link from its info. That copy should share fine.

[Zacchaeus]

This goes to the heart of the matter of link sharing.

[TASagent]

Yeah, I think that's totally fine behavior, as long as you're aware of it. I have prepared a new build of Out of the Abyss that does not have any story links in the Other tab for the companions at the start of the adventure. It's possible DMs may wish to use other NPCs down the line in a similar way, but anticipating which ones is a bit of a fool's errand, and I wouldn't want to remove some of the convenience of having the links for those who want them, so I think the best solution will be to have DMs make safe copies of any other NPCs they want to share in this way. But I totally think it's worth it to prep these initial 10 NPCs for possible sharing.

Hopefully this update can get rolled out to you soon, and hopefully the now-deleted links doesn't too-seriously harm anyone's existing workflow.