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Add option to hide characters from the "Chat as" menu

In my primary campaign where I am the GM, there are a lot of NPCs. As a result, between them and my seven players' characters, my "Chat as" dropdown currently has 42 names. Forty-two. I couldn't tell you how many times I've accidentally sent messages from the wrong character because there's so many names. Currently, the only way to stop a character from appearing in that dropdown is to "Archive" them, and that makes them inaccessable to players.

Sometimes I want my players to be able to see NPCs, especially recurring NPCs, in their journal regardless of whether or not I need them in the current scene. I want to be able to open the "Chat as" menu and only see the NPCs currently in the scene.

My proposed solution: add a checkbox in the "Journal" tab to determine whether or not that character shows up in the dropdown. A new character shows up in "Chat as" by default, but unchecking their box hides them from "Chat as." Keeping this in the "Journal" allows the GM to quickly shuffle what characters they're using without opening up each individual sheet to switch them on or off.

In case my text explanation doesn't totally make sense, I've drafted a mockup to show what I mean.

Currently, my "Journal" and "Chat as" looks like this:

If the change I'm proposing was to be implemented, it might look something like this:

Of course it might need some refinement (esp. size and location of the checkbox) but I hope that provides a good sense of my idea.

September 05 (3 years ago)

Edited September 05 (3 years ago)

This would be fantastic for those of us who play text-based games.  Text-based chat is already so much slower than voice chat just because of how fast people can type, and because they have to finish typing everything they're saying before anyone else can start reading it.  Roll20's interface adding an extra 5-10 seconds of silence and waiting to find the right character in the list every time I want to type something is just making it even worse.

And this example is actually the best-case scenario - the one where the GM is looking at enemy stat blocks on another website instead of using roll20 for them.

One of my friends uses text-based chat, and also uses the character journal to make interactive character sheets for every enemy when he GMs, to track their HP and status effects, so he has hundreds of creatures in his journal, 99% of whom will never talk.

September 22 (3 years ago)
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