Temporarily Restricting Player Access

Hi. Sorry if this has been answered before, but I don't have any idea of how I might find old responses without a search function... Is there anyway to temporarily disallow players from signing into the campaign until I allow it? I'd like to not have players suddenly be able to enter the game while I'm working on set up or start chatting with me.

No. The best you can do is have a between-sessions splash page (a good idea anyway, so they can work on their macros and whatnot between sessions), so if they login they can't see what you're working on, and then politely request that they not login during $Specified_Time.

Another idea, if you are willing to upgrade to mentor (highly recommended for any GM) is to have a second campaign purely for building content which you can then transfer over using the vault or transmogrifier... ideal since you can test things here without anything you want keeping secret showing up in the chat log :)

I do what Ziechael recommends as well. I build all my encounter maps, etc. on a "template campaign", then when I am finished I use the transmogrifier to copy the map over to the live campaign. This lets me preserve the original setup for later recycling into a new campaign, while the players in the current campaign are free to interact with the copy on the live campaign. But I also still do what GenKitty suggests, I typically move the player tab over to a Splash Page between game sessions. If you wanted to, you could even have multiple splash pages, split the players up and put each one on their own page.

If you have a splash page where the ribbon resides, they can't see what you are doing, they can come in and look at handouts and work on their character, a simple "I am working here please stay out of chat" request should do it. If they persist, explain that every hour of game time take two to four hours of prep time and if they derail your train of thought, you might not be ready for the next session should help. otherwise you can say "I really hope I didn't just erase all of the treasure when you interrupted, because I am not rolling it again..."

I have created a splash page with a saying on it "Please do not disturb otherwise the monsters during the next session while be more than normally cranky".

I park the player's in a tavern with nice music and crackling fire. I added a practice dummy(thanks GenKitty) and I'll often leave notes and things lying around that players can use the zoom function on to read. I don't really care about the chat archive since we keep a running journal of the adventure, so I often delete that chat archive to erase any of my upcoming "experiments".

My splash page is typically a backdrop showing their last known location (a town, tavern, camp or dungeon etc) but coupled with that i usually copy and paste some of the more recent campaign notes text into a 'speech bubble' to help keep them reminded of the most recent activities... also a good place to put talking points or tasks for them to complete before the next session.

My between-sessions page looks like a clubhouse :> PCs at the table, temporary NPC companions along the top, and Nul & Target Dummy for macro purposes. I built the clubhouse in Roll20, took a screenshot and then used the screenshot for my map.

Nice GenKitty, when my campaign first started my players were all new to roll20 (since i introduced them to it that isn't surprising) so my splash page was a training dungeon so allow them to play around with the combat/movement mechanics... i'd occasionally mess with them too by randomly inserting a dragon into a previously empty room just to see the panicked messages in the chat when i next logged in: "OMFG, there's a bloody great dragon in here!"

Oh my, that is a GREAT idea!!!! Hee!!! (Sorry for derailing this thread, Carl T)

Hey thanks everyone for clearing this up. I forgot about the different pages thing since I've just been toying with some tokens and macros so far.

Credit for the backdrop of the tavern image to Anthony Avon on deviant art.