Sending Secret Messages

So I got to thinking about this last night. I need a good way to send secret messages to specific players from time to time and don't really want to restyle it every time. One of the narrative tools I have as GM in Witch Hunter is that I can activate a PC's "sin". This gives them a short term bonus but also a point of damnation and may have immediate in game consequences. Players can either avoid the whole thing by spending a hero point, or spend a hero point at the end of the game session to buy off the damnation point. I'd like a way to do this in R20 that's more descrete than blabbing it out over the voice channel. My first thought was to set these up as handouts. That way the player can easily see the text for the sin and weigh the pros and cons of the situation. But my handouts area is getting a bit cluttered and even with the forthcoming folders feature, it's going to take me out of the game to open a couple of panels to get to the right handout for the right player. Next option would be to do it as a macro. I figure a simple "/w @{selected|token_name}" would do the trick. But that just defers the looking up to the player. So I'm wondering if a combination wouldn't be best. Is there a way to direct a handout to a player from the chat window? Also, can I keep the macro generic, with prompts to direct the right handout to the right player? Something like: "/w @{selected|token_name}..." "show @{selected|token_name} ?{sin} handout" Or is there a way to nest a series of macros to do this? Im sure this could be done with the API somehow, but I'm more comfortable working in macros. Thoughts?

I would personally do this with an API script, but you can do it with macros in at least one way: Create Handouts for each character example: David's Sin Create a Master Sin handout with a link to each of the other sin handouts: [David's Sin] Save the Master Sin handout, right click and copy the link. Create a macro to send the link to David's player. They can click the link in the chat to pop up the handout. If you're on the Dev server (or reading this after the Update of Holding goes live!), you can make this look really nice with the Markdown syntax: /w Protodavid I've given you a point of sin: [Your Sin](<a href="http://journal.roll20.net/handout/-J_y5sV9rHrAZHdmXUZY" rel="nofollow">http://journal.roll20.net/handout/-J_y5sV9rHrAZHdmXUZY</a>)

Yeah, looking around it doesn't seem like there is a easier way to send a handout from the chat window, or a macro, which is a shame. Another idea: Could you insert a hyperlink in a character journal to a handout? Like in the bio area? That would cut down on some of the flipping. Then you could go back to a simple macro prompt and not worry about players having to sort through a bunch of handouts. Out of curiosity, Aaron, is there an existing API script that I could use to do this?

You can definitely put a link in their character's bio on the journal. Just put the handout name in [ ] to make the link. The link will show up, but only work if they have access to the handout. I use this technique for linking animal companions/familiars/henchmen from their main character. I have a Message of the Day script ( <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1460717/script-m" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1460717/script-m</a>... ) that sends the contents of a Handout to players as they log in, via whisper in chat. You might find it handy as a reference for dealing with handouts in the API or you might modify it to send custom content by player (it already has a facility for subbing in the player name). I'm not aware of any scripts that precisely do what you're asking for, but it would probably be pretty simple, particularly if you made some assumptions, like the name of the handout is "Sin: "+character.name or such. I'd be happy to help knock one together. =D

Hmmm...I may just take you up on that. But I think I'll go with simplicity first. It was never my intention to stay at Mentor level support forever, and so I don't want to become too dependent on the API. Let's see how cumbersome this plan is and if I find it results in too much delay, I'll talk to you about an API solution. Because the way I picture it, it would be just as simple as what you've described.

Now worries! The way I've described it above actually wouldn't be too bad once you have it set up. You'd have a few macros hanging about but that would probably be the case in either solution. One bit of food for thought: you can still link to archived handouts, so once you've made that master handout, you could archive all the others and just use it to get to them. I'm not certain how that would behave with the player's journal tab, but if you're adding links for them to use in their character's bio, they should be able to similarly navigate to them when necessary without the link in chat.