Splitting the party with Dynamic Lighting

I had an opening scenario, but I had players who were unable to see the screen due to dynamic lighting and their tokens not being present had the issue of them staring at a black screen instead of seeing what was happening. How do I allow them to see the whole screen without dynamic lighting to watch actions without their tokens being present?

Give them command of a present token with proper vision settings.

The first thing that comes to mind is to create a character sheet with a generic token that has sight, then put it in all the players journals and give them control.  Then you just pull the token onto the tabletop when there are players without tokens present.  The only problem with this is that the players would then have control of the token, and might move it somewhere you don't want them to. EDIT:  Or Franky's solution - he got his in there while I was testing my idea.  I had thought of maybe putting a token that they controlled on the map or GM layer, so it would give them vision, but they couldn't control it, but that didn't work.

Adding to Gozer's idea, you could upload a fully transparent PNG as the generic character's token, give it a GM only viewable aura so you can find it and setup the sees light and whatever else you want before setting it as the default token. Should keep them from easily moving their ghostly self around when you don't want them too.

Thats a brilliant idea, scott.

Heh, I can't take all the credit; as with most things, I saw it on the forums first. I use this same idea for creating room note tokens on the object layer so that I can quickly output a description of a new room to the chat without having to hunt for a journal, switch to the gm layer to use a token's buttons, or flip through my rather massive collection of campaign notes. I also know that many people use this method for invisible enemies so that they can take care of all the action on the object layer instead of flipping layers constantly. My party hasn't run into anything like that yet though (that they know of at least, Mwahahahaha). I've started using it so much in the last week that I made a character called GM token whose only purpose is to allow me to drag out an already aura'd transparent token to then link/do with as I please.

An alternative, to limit 'meta-gaming' is to create a separate "Splash Screen" page with a nice back ground and move the players who are not present to this page while the others go through the action.  It's less boring for the non-active players and prevents them from seeing things you don't want them to see. As a bonus you can use this page to place the players between sessions so they aren't logging in and exploring your maps.  I have a blank one as well that lets me put text messages (like if the game got cancelled at the last moment) up for them to see.

Feadel Morauko said: An alternative, to limit 'meta-gaming' is to create a separate "Splash Screen" page with a nice back ground and move the players who are not present to this page while the others go through the action.  It's less boring for the non-active players and prevents them from seeing things you don't want them to see. As a bonus you can use this page to place the players between sessions so they aren't logging in and exploring your maps.  I have a blank one as well that lets me put text messages (like if the game got cancelled at the last moment) up for them to see. THIS + elevator muzak

I'll also note that like most things, there's a script for this if you want to go pro/if a pro user has this question. <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3227528/script-sharevision-formerly-party-sight" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3227528/script-sharevision-formerly-party-sight</a>