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Writing and drawing on handouts

I'm running a game of King Arthur Pendragon, and if you aren't familiar with it that game has a lot of handouts. especially with the book of battle. I wanted to give each player a form to fill out, which could easily be done by just screenshotting the form I wanted and putting it in a handout as an image which I'd then let the players scribble their notes on as needed. only, no scribbling. You should add the ability to draw and take notes on handout images, like maps and such. My players would note down their manors on our manor map, draw angry faces on the lands that are infested with giants, mark the domains of powerful friends and enemies. you know, if any of those things could be done in roll20. I could solve some of this problem by just making the map a 'page' of our campaign, and I've done that in the past. but if the GM doesn't show the players the page, then they can't draw on it, or even refer to it. Doodleable handouts would be much much better for my purposes because my players wouldn't need me to be the gatekeeper for looking at their own map and character notes.
1411851541
Gauss
Forum Champion
I don't know the game, is there secret (GM) information? If there isn't you could promote the other players to GM and then they can move themselves as needed. Alternately, you could have the sheets set up on the map layer next to your map. Then they can draw on the sheets that way.
If I set the sheets up on the map layer, then they can draw on the sheets, but then if I move them to a different screen they can't see the notes they took. It's not ideal. Like I said in the OP, it's better if they don't need me to be gatekeeper for their own map and character notes. Promoting players to GM can work, but that too has its downsides. I make a ton of NPC sheets and suddenly they have access to all my notes and it becomes irritating for them to find their own character sheets. I could certainly keep my secret notes elsewhere, but frankly I don't want to. It also takes away my power to move players from screen to screen, as moving the players to a different map does not affect the GM. so they won't be on the same page as everyone else. Again I could deal with this and say "ok everyone move to map DRAGON'S LAIR or w/e but that kind of spoils any other maps I have prepared and it's also not as much fun. This isn't the biggest problem in the world and I certainly can (and have) run games without solving it, but it's big enough that I felt I should draw attention to it.
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Edited 1411938039
Gauss
Forum Champion
Perhaps an alternate possibility, have two tabs open. One to a character sheets campaign where everyone is on the same map (with character sheets) and the other to the 'regular campaign'. Note: I am not commenting on the suggestion itself. I am providing assistance to work around the problem.
1412597349
The Aaron
Roll20 Production Team
API Scripter
I could help you with this via the API, a Mentor feature. Here's how I would do it: 1) establish a page that is the player's handouts. Put each there, as suggested above and let the players draw on them. 2) write an API script that allows the players to move their view to that specific page, and back to the current player page. It wouldn't even be all that difficult. You could then add a macro that everyone could add to their macro tool bar, the clicking of which would do the swap. As an added benefit, the load would be quite fast and ad-less as a mentor.