Self keyword for whispers and % macro calls

One thing I've been noticing in roll20 which I think would really help is having the ability to have a keyword that is a placeholder for your name in a whisper or inside of an ability. Currently if you have a macro and you want to send a whisper to yourself you have to type /w <your name> . So for example, one of my macros said /w Samuel . The problem happens when you change your display name. I've had it happen where my display name was Samuel T. but I changed it to Sam to be just a little shorter and easier to see and type. Unfortunately since I had forgotten to change the whisper from /w Samuel to /w Sam , my macro was now broken. My frustration stems from the fact that when we need to whisper the GM all we have to type is /w gm but there is no good keyword for targeting ourselves. Having a self keyword also makes it nice as a GM since I can write a macro that would whisper the results to the person who ran the macro. Without having to hard code the names this opens the macro up to becoming very dynamic. I know that we're supposed to only present one idea in a suggestion thread but this other idea is synonymous with what I just talked about that I believe that it needs to go here. I would love to see the self keyword have a slightly different contextual meaning when used inside of a character specific macro call. Currently you have to type %{characterName|ability} . This is all well and good but unfortunately it doesn't really lend itself to easily copying macros between characters. For each macro you have to go in and manually update the character name which can be a significant task if you've got a lot of different characters who use the type of macro or if you change the name of the character then you have to go in and update all of the macros.

Try the following: /w @{selected|character_name} <message here> Then it will fill in the character sheet name of the token you have selected. When Rugged Reroll comes out in December you can also use @{target|character_name} to whisper to a specific person (by targeting the token that is linked to their character sheet).

Thanks for that tip Gauss. In the documentation @{selected|character_name} says that it pulls the journal name for the selected token so I had no idea that it would resolve itself to be the player name inside of a whisper. However, this fix is merely a stop measure band-aid since this method would fail if the user didn't have an owned token to select. Example, if the user was using a global macro and they had no visible tokens on the current map. I then expanded what you suggested to see if it would work for referencing character abilities, %{@{selected|token_name}|AC-Check}. Unfortunately this fails completely. In the chat box I get an error message that reads "No ability was found for %{@{selected|token_name}" , and my output is the token's name. I did try using %{?{token|name}|AC-Check} just to see if it would work but it also throws the same error. I have verified that the syntax is correct and that I did spell the ability name correctly.

When you whisper to a character the owner of that character receives the whisper. Regarding tokens being unavailable you can just whisper to the character directly and itll go to the person(s) controlling that character. The character name may be more stable than the player name (since the GM is required to change the character name). For referencing character Attributes you want to use: @{selected|insert Attribute name here}. Example: @{selected|Dexterity} For referencing character Abilities you want to use: %{selected|insert Ability name here} Example: %{selected|AC-Check} Note: In the Rugged Reroll you will be able to directly access the Abilities assigned to a character sheet's token when you click on the token (Token Actions). <a href="http://blog.roll20.net/post/65696743157/context-is-key-rugged-reroll-dev-blog-5" rel="nofollow">http://blog.roll20.net/post/65696743157/context-is-key-rugged-reroll-dev-blog-5</a>

Thank you Gauss. I was such an idiot with the ability reference syntax. :) Thank you for setting me straight on that.

No worries. If you need further assistance let me know.

Still, a "self" keyword that referenced whichever character you were currently speaking as (regardless of token), similar to /em, would be incredibly useful for narrative games. I usually don't have a token to select.

Magnus , I do not usually comment on the suggestion itself. My job is to help people use the tools currently available. :)

Magnus, I'm really interested in your idea but I don't know if I understand fully what you are suggesting. Could you please explain it in a slightly different way? What I think you're saying is having the "self" keyword be similar to the /em. For example, it would be /self and instead of using the name you're currently playing "as" it would use the token or character name of where it's located? If that is what you meant then I second this and +1 it wholeheartedly since there have been man times where I've forgotten to change who I'm playing as only to have my emotes look very strange in reference to who is supposedly saying them. How close or far am I from what you were suggesting? Currently the /em will pull the name of the character you've selected in your "playing as" drop down regardless of what you're actively selecting.

Sure. Ramble mode engaged. I'm currently playing in a Dark Heresy game that's entirely narrative. We don't use tokens or maps and instead do everything with "mood images" and chat. We do have characters defined, and these show up in the "Speaking as..." box in the chat - a great feature. Almost every roll in Dark Heresy is a d100 roll against a statistic with some situational bonuses. I've set up a pretty elaborate macro that can do this and calculate our "Degrees of Success" - how much we succeed by. The macro is a little too long and cumbersome to use for illustration, so I'll use a simpler one here, but know that it's a little more problematic to edit the real thing, due to its complexity. All players and all NPCs basically have the same 9 macros, one for each stat. For the sake of argument, here's a pretend macro for Agility: /roll floor((@{MyCharacter|Agility}+?{Modifier|0}-1d100)/10) We have to make 9 of these, with one for each stat (Weapon Skill, Ballistics Skill, Strength, Agility, Toughness, Intelligence, Willpower, Perception and Fellowship), and then we can reuse these for all skills and actions. That's fine. Right now, every one of us has to make those nine macros. We all have to edit the "MyCharacter" bit to have the name of our own character. The GM doesn't really get much use out of this, because he would have to make a different macro for every NPC he controlled. He could put in another ?{Stat} instead of the character variable, but that's hardly ideal. Since we're always speaking in-character (with the "Speaking as..." selector), it would be ideal if we could have a "self" keyword, similar to "selected", that referenced whoever we were speaking as. That would change the macro to: /roll floor((@{self|Agility}+?{Modifier|0}-1d100)/10) That way we could have a single global macro (for each stat) that we could all share. The GM could use it for all of his NPCs, simply by changing who he was speaking as. It would flow very well with narrative games.

Magnus , that is a good explanation of your problem. I think the token @{selected|attribute} solution would still be a good workaround for your GM. Even though you do not use them for map purposes the GM could still click on a token on the GM layer when he wants to use a macro for a specific NPC.

I second the request for a self keyword. I asked if such functionality was available over in this thread: <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/490200/journal-a" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/490200/journal-a</a>... I would love there to be a SELF keyword that works just like the selected keyword, including supporting "character_name" so that it could be used for emoting within macros as the character.