Turn Order panel functionality: allow Players to edit Custom Item init value, or how to persist token turns from Page to Page

Hello! I need to better understand the Turn Order panel, particularly in 2 areas: How TurnOrder acts for Players & GM when the GM switches the Player's Ribbon to other Pages Can "Custom Items" on the TurnOrder become editible (initiative number) by All Players, Non-GM's? For #1, it has come to my attention that Players only see the TurnOrder items of Tokens that they can see ON THE CURRENT PAGE, meaning the Turn Order does not appear to persist if the GM moved the Players to a tokenless page. That's been sensible when I ran D&D Dungeons. For #2, it's cool that Custom Items DO seem to persist from Page to Page in TurnOrder (as they aren't tied to a Token's precense). My Use Case for 2d20 games tracking the party's Points Pool(s) allowing all players to edit the value. Use-case Now (playing Dune RPG Adventures in the Imperium) it is a 2d20-style game, these games have Pools of positive/negative Points that's shared by all the Players. In Dune the points are called Momentum, and Threat.  My method is tracking the Momentum 1-6, and Threat 1-10, on the Turn Order using the initiative field's editable value. There are numerous benefits to tracking M&T this way, the greatest relevant benefit for this discussion is: Any of the Players can edit the M&T number, so all of the PC's can do it and even discuss and help each other spend the M&T points, and this takes one more clicky-tracking task off the GM's hands. Custom Items, I tried Add Custom Item named Momentum and named Threat. The problem was, Players can't edit the "initiative number" field on these custom items?? Only GM and Co-GM could edit the value. Momentum Character Sheet (set to All Players) with "M" Token... Threat Character Sheet (All Players) with "T" Token.... Drag-Drop the M&T tokens onto the Page.  In my case onto the landing page, the splash page, the introduction page, with all the PC tokens.  Great so far! Add-Turn to Turn Order. Great so far! All Players can see the M&T in the TurnOrder, and all players can Edit the "initiative" value. Problem comes up when we switch PAGES to a Non-Token'd page such as illustration or star map.  We're doing verbal RP and don't need/have Tokens handy on this Page, for a short time. We want the TurnOrder to persist with showing M&T values.  GM's can still see the M&T in TurnOrder (oddly? Purposely? Confusingly, I've found out recently). The problem is the Players cannot see the M&T in Turn Order when we're on the tokenless Star Maps page.  This ruins our Momentum & Threat tracking method. The only workaround  has been adding M&T tokens back onto the margins of every page (star maps, etc).  It's just cumbersome, and especially hard to remember since the GM continues to see the M&T from the Splash Page, not remembering that it will have disappeared to Player's eyes. Currently my top ideas, and why I decided to ask on Forum: If I can use API, settings, or some other way to allow Custom Items in TurnOrder to have Player-editable initiative value? If I can cause M&T "All Players" Token to persist in Turn Order from Page-To-Page regardless of the presence/absence of those 2 Tokens, on the current Page of Player's Ribbon? Educational question when switching Pages, What happens when you Copy-Paste the missing Tokens, back onto the Page that Player's Ribbon has moved to? Will the TurnOrder suddenly repopulate with that Token in TurnOrder for the Player's view? Or do you have to Add Turn again? Thanks in Advance, Roll20 Community. See you all soon for Roll20CON.  I am preparing some Dune adventures to offer on here. Gold

Hmm, maybe keeping track of M&T in attributes on a dummy character sheet and creating a macro/ability accessible to all players that prints the current values to chat? You also could create a chat menu that uses the ChatSetAttr script to increment/decrement the values to make it easier on the players to change.

When you copy paste a token, it gets a new token id.  The Turn Order tracks tokens by that token id, so pasting on a new page won't change the state of the turn order. Making a script to adjust Custom Turn Order entries is super easy, I can probably whip one out for you tonight, just give me some requirements. A low-tech solution for this could be to use a deck of cards for each, and designate a player who will manage them by drawing and discarding.  Might also be able to work something out via stealing and giving cards that lets them manipulate how many the GM has, I'd have to check.

Might call for the custom API script-whip-up. I'll get back to you if I choose that (probably best option), Arcane Scriptomancer.  Only reason I wouldn't choose that is, I'm seeking a teachable-shareable method for all Dune RPG's using Roll20, Free or Plus or Pro. I'm super into wide accessibility, and being able to pass the method around to others. David yes I can track M&T on a Character Sheet's attributes; or on a Token's Bars; and yes we could adjust those numbers Very Easily with a macro button once that macro is coded-up and added to All Players permission + Token Actions.  And prints it to chat. Not a bad idea. As a downside there wouldn't be a Persistent Display of the M&T pools, you'd have to click the Macro (or look on the Char Sheet, or look on the Token) every time you want to recall the current latest M&T.  The M&T changes fluctuates so frequently it's really difficult for me to hold the Latest number in mind. It's like asking to remember what your latest Speedometer reading was exactly without looking.  The Turn Order (I realized upon analysis of this issue), the TO panel is persistent when you scroll around the Map page, change zoom, and I really like that feature.  It's like a HUD feature (Heads Up Display). The Aaron, I explored the Deck Of Cards method (other Dune GM's are using that). It does have the Persistent feature (both for scrolling AND for Page switching!), I like that. Problem is mainly that M&T are full-party stats, not individual.  If the Player who has the Cards leaves the game table, DOH! The party lost their M&T numbers. Thus I found the Turn Order GUI to be preferable for this. It stays showing even when everyone is logged out and just 1 person re-Launches Game. Before I ask for The Aaron to write an API snippit that works mainly just for my group, or other Dune Pro GM's... Any other thoughts or feedback at this point? Love to hear from keithcurtis as well. Thanks for the replies.

Hey Gold, if you want a non-API solution this is actually possible with a Custom Roll Parsing trick - the last example in this post shows how to set up a "heal target" action button on a character sheet. The method of switching active charId in the sandbox on the fly is the important bit - you can have a reserved character sheet name and base a bunch of sheetworkers on that sheet for tracking pretty much anything you want to. Honestly, it doesn't even matter if, by billion-to-one chance, someone makes a sheet with that name at the start of a Campaign. As long as you use dedicated attribute names that aren't used on the actual character sheet, they won't even notice that the group tracking attributes are hanging on to the back of their sheet. Is this Nic B's sheet, or did Nic just start the thread? Either way, if the author is happy to work with that trick (not sure if the functionality is "desirable" from R20's perspective or not), it's not too difficult to implement - throw out a fake, hidden roll to grab the tracking sheet's ID (! @{dune_tracker|character_id}) and grab it with startRoll(), then use the trick linked above to switch to that sheet mid-function, and adjust the desired attributes as per the rules. You'd absolutely want this to be hard-coded to a named sheet, not using a target click, as the sandbox sidesteps firebase security in terms of permissions - any player can change any sheet, regardless of in-game permissions, if the sheetworker allows it. The drawback would be that the tracking sheet would need to be manually created at the start of Campaign creation as the sheet sandbox can't do this AFAIK. It also, obviously, needs the sheet author to implement it.

Ooosh, Eeek, this is now a Created By Roll20, official sheet.  I think Nic has coded it in-his-capcity as Roll20 workforce, perhaps evidently on an assignment timetable that's passed until Roll20 revisits it. Grateful to Nic for what we got, but so far there has not been a Roll20 Response to the various feedback-suggestions for that Character Sheet, since the day it came out and Nic started that thread (2+ months). So I have little hope of a direct Sheet Author response there, besides, I'm already lobbying Nic's thread for Roll20's attention to other Features left-wanting on the Sheet. Still hunting for options! Too bad "Custom Items" in Turn Order don't naturally have the ability to allow Players to change the value in Default roll20.

For anyone following this thread, For now I've decided I'm getting more used-to Dragging the M&T tokens from the Journals onto the Margin / borderlands of the PAGE, and then clicking Add Turn on them.  Every PAGE that we go to. It's getting faster as I've gotten accustomed to remembering that I have to do that. Thanks again The Aaron for offering a snippit.  I'll ask you again later if I want to try that route. For now I'm refining how it can best-be-done in default Roll20.

I can recommend the Tokens from the Journal method. I use it in 13th Age Glorantha for the Chaos Die & Lunar Die, which is the Escalation Die for Chaos foes and Lunar foes. Since I only setup 1 battle map per session, the overhead is small, and only when I include those foes in a battle. 

Andrew R. said: I can recommend the Tokens from the Journal method. I use it in 13th Age Glorantha for the Chaos Die & Lunar Die, which is the Escalation Die for Chaos foes and Lunar foes. Since I only setup 1 battle map per session, the overhead is small, and only when I include those foes in a battle.  Good call. Similar use-case, game example, as you said. My Dune group also doesn't need to change Pages or Battle Maps in a normal situation, but lately I'm running several different Dune groups in the same Roll20 tabletop, and each group has a Page.  It's been confusing but I'm getting more used-to-it (the drag-from-Journals, token, Add Turn, method).

You can't change maps and maintain turn order.  I've tried building into Combat Master.  The Roll20 architecture can't accomodate and I won't go into details.  There's a gap in their design.  Enough said.   No API can overcome the current Roll20 Architecture for switching maps.  Sorry.  The solution is to start combat again with new tokens.  

Thank you for that Victor. I believe you.

Did you all know that Custom Items added to turn order, DO persist from page to page? Quiet, don't tell Roll20, to take that away? Is this intentional behavior? I don't get it. I'm leveraging it though. 90% of what I need is in Custom Items, and those DO persist page to page. The problem (for most games like D&D applies to Character Tokens), for my game only applies to the 2, M&T tokens.... Those don't persist. As everyone in this thread is saying. Unfortunately, for better or worse, Token "initiatives" don't persist.   But custom items do persist. What do you make of that?

@gold, the issue is the lack of information they track in their objects.  You simply can't track back to the original page when moving pages.  It's a major gap in what they track.  Thus, you can't move tokens and keep combat going.   Custom tokens aren't tracked in their objects.  That's why Copy it, and it's still custom.  It's not being tracked.   There's a diff between a custom object and a player/map.  Those are being tracked along with turn order.  These things can't switch There's a campaign object.  A player object.  Nothing for custom object.  That's why

Here is a recent look at our Turn Order panel, lol 10% tokens that I keep needing to drag-drop, Add Turn, on each new Page. So that "All Players" can edit the numeric Value. 90% Custom Items, that persist no matter what page.

I feel your pain.  You have to track their init, and re-add them when they switch maps.  Perhaps we can request an enhancement, but the reality is it is in the poor Roll20 design.  And if I don't get banned for all my anti-Roll20 tonight I'll be really surprised.  Trying to help people navigate this.