NEW! See the VTT as Specific Players

Our new Player View feature is here, and it lets GMs see exactly what specific players see in-game (in a new tab). It’s really helpful when positioned side by side with your GM view for double-checking campaign setup and troubleshooting mid-game.  Reminder: this is not the existing Ctrl + L (Preview Token Vision) shortcut. It shows a true player experience, including what the player sees in journal, chat, on the map, and all of their permissions/access.  More Details: Switch between players easily, see who’s online/offline and what page everyone is on Preview the game as an approximated view even if your players haven't joined the game Pre-configure macros and pre-explore maps on your players’ behalf, plus verify character assignments.  Along with this update, you’ll find a cleaner interface for all View Controls, including Player View, Preview Token Vision, opacity sliders, Foreground toggle, and Dark/Light Mode.  IT'S FREE! Everyone can use it, regardless of subscription. Check out the blog  and Help Center  for more details, and let us know if you have any questions or feedback! 

Rick - thank you for highlighting this one! This was also brought up by our Forum champs, and we're on top of fixing it! Rick A. said: This is outstanding! I spent a short time experimenting with it and works well. One minor item - On my PC, using both Chrome and Firefox, when I in the journal tab I can't quite scroll down far enough to see the very last item. It's as if the last bit of the view is cut off. This is not the case when I switch back to the original GM view tab. (I did check my browser zoom level).

EgoreSan - would love to hear how you might find "all selected players" useful and in what context? We've primarily catered this feature to help GMs to troubleshoot by letting GMs see exactly what their Player sees. It sounds like you might be hoping to use this in a slightly different context (broadcasting? in-person-play? something else?), and we'd like to understand! If you are looking for a Party View that's consistent with what your players would experience, it might be accomplished through creating a group token and giving all party members control. EgoreSan said: Love the feature, but still would have liked to view as "All Selected Players" or "View as Party".

Tim - apologies, I'm not totally connecting with the end goal. You definitely can set up a player account separate from your own, but you may not need to (depending on what you're trying to achieve). Could you help me better understand what you are aiming for in the end state? It definitely looks like i'm missing some understanding on my ned. Tim M said: Lavi said: EgoreSan - would love to hear how you might find "all selected players" useful and in what context? We've primarily catered this feature to help GMs to troubleshoot by letting GMs see exactly what their Player sees. It sounds like you might be hoping to use this in a slightly different context (broadcasting? in-person-play? something else?), and we'd like to understand! If you are looking for a Party View that's consistent with what your players would experience, it might be accomplished through creating a group token and giving all party members control. EgoreSan said: Love the feature, but still would have liked to view as "All Selected Players" or "View as Party". Would it be possible just to set up a player account separate from your own and then log in as the player? You could quickly add your player account to the controlling player like this screenshot.  Note in this example, it's already All Players (which is what I do) which would include you, anyway.          

Pandarian - any chance this may be happening to you when you have no tokens on the page yet? If yes, we're aware of that and should be working on this very shortly. If you add a token to the board, do you still have trouble existing the Ctrl + L view? Gauss said: Pandarian said: Okay... ummm... this might be a Mac issue.  When I use either Firefox or Chrome and hit CMD+L. It appears to be the Preview Token Vision.  Basically all my GM notes disappear.  So check!  I would expect that.   However, how do I turn it off?  CMD+L doesn't do anything to turn it off.  ESC doesn't do anything.  Am I missing something simple?  Is there another command to go back to GM Vision? Inquiring minds and Mac users would like to know. Unlike Rick A.  I am able to scroll all the way back down on my Journal tab and see everything.  So either my Journal is very short, or Rick A.'s is significantly longer or it's a Mac 'browser' interface with Roll20 pro point. Cheers. Escape should enter your Ctrl+L view. Alternately clicking the Exit Token Vision Preview button at the bottom-center of the screen.  The Journal issue may be browser specific. But basically for Journals that are longer than the browser is tall the "as Player" bar at the top of the VTT is causing an offset that hides the last entry of the Journal. Workarounds are closing the "as Player" bar at the top, or switching your browser to full screen.

They are! Both setting them up and interacting with them as that player! Ulti said: Are macros supposed to work when in Player View?

Ken - thank you for the suggestion! We do agree it would be awesome to show whether the actual player comes online; unfortunately, it's not a super easy upgrade, but we are adding this to our list and taking it back for consideration. Ken S. said: First, I want to say: very nice!  I can see this being quite useful. Now, a couple of observations: 1. If my players are on map A (usually the splash page in between sessions, to keep them from seeing behind the curtain when I'm prepping the next session) if I want to test their vision, I need to move their ribbon to the map I'm building.  This means that if that person happens to launch the game just then, they'll see the in-development page.  It would be good if there was some mechanism to see the player view of map X without moving the player themselves to that map. 2. When you view as player, they show as "online" both in your original game (avatar appears) and in the Player Picker (not grayed out).  It would be nice if there were a way to distinguish from "really online" to "oh that's just me" when testing outside of a normal play session (maybe a "player is online" in the tab's topbar?). 3. There's no apparent way to exit the tab other than simply closing it, as the right sidebar can't select "My Settings" where logout is.  And years of browser use has me conditioned not to simply close tab logged into something.  Perhaps a "close tab" control on the top bar that holds the player's name?  I realize it's not required, but I spent more than a little time looking for a "close" control and I'm sure I won't be the only one. Edit: note that (2) also means that while Player A can't tell that you're spectating them, as noted in the Help Center page, if player A isn't online, but player B is, they will likely be able to figure out that it's you, since the GM cannot see/reply to private messages B sends to A.  I don't see that as a problem, but as a potential source of confusion, particularly just pre-game when players may be joining early and I may be doing some final check-out on the maps pre-session.

It's intentional that there's no additional "close button" since another browser tab opens up, and the intended behavior is to X-out of the tab if you're no longer needing the Player View. The "automatically adding chosen player to the game" portion - I'm interpreting that as  you seeing their avatar? That is also natural to this functionality since the intent is to truly act as that player in game and allow you as the GM to experience exactly what they would. If you have any ideas of what might help as a reminder to GMs to move players back, let us know! Pandarian said: Okay...I think I was mixing CMD+L and Open Player View. Some nice person on Roll20 Discord explained to me what to do. HOWEVER, after playing around with Open Player View, I still don't see a means to exit Player View.  It opens up another page, but other than closing that page, I don't see a means to exit it.  Is that the intended means of egress?    AND it seems to automatically add the chosen player to the game--whether the GM wanted said player there or not.  Is that also the intended result of Open Player View?  I mean, might be a fun way to add someone to the game... but I would hate to forget that they were on a specific page that they haven't officially visited/seen yet...and have them be on it the next time they log in.