Roll20 uses cookies to improve your experience on our site. Cookies enable you to enjoy certain features, social sharing functionality, and tailor message and display ads to your interests on our site and others. They also help us understand how our site is being used. By continuing to use our site, you consent to our use of cookies. Update your cookie preferences .
×
Create a free account
This post has been closed. You can still view previous posts, but you can't post any new replies.

Make it easier to tell which handouts are assigned to which players

I have just been assigning the initial handouts in my upcoming beta-testers' game to players (since assigning them to characters is not yet possible). Each player gets one character, one token, one character sheet, and one equipment list, all individual. Each player gets one summary of the resolution rules and one summary of the combat rules, all the same. Each player gets one situation report: one character gets a different sitrep to all the others'. There are five player characters. To assign a handout, I had to read through the handouts list to find it, click on it, click "edit", scroll to the bottom of the window, choose the player(s) it was assigned to from a drop-down menu, click "save", click "close". That process is too slow and cumbersome. To assign a character I had to double click on it, click edit, scroll to the bottom, choose from two drop-down menus, click "save"…. That's a bit cumbersome, too. Why isn't the most important datum about a player character—who is playing it—at the top ? I'd like to be able to drag and drop handouts to characters (or players). Things got really bad when I tried to check my work and make sure that I hadn't got anything wrong or overlooked anything. • There is no way to look at a list of what handouts a player has been assigned, or if there is it isn't obvious enough. Can't just look at something to tell that Kage, playing Naiooka, has all and only the handouts he needs. • There is no way to look at a list of handouts and tell which characters or players have them. You have to open each handout individually, open its edit page , scroll to the bottom, and then make a note with a pencil on a piece of paper. I guess it is too much to ask that I should have a table of assignments of handouts. But I would like to have clolour-coded dots beside the handout names in the handouts list that show me who has what handout. And I would like to be able to click on a character (or players) and see what handouts he or she has. And the name of the player ought to be prominent on the page of a player-character.
All good suggestions, thanks. I am planning on hopefully attacking the players listing at some point soon, and I think a lot of these suggestions will be good to keep in mind during that process.
Sorry, but I feel compelled to bump this. When you are playing at a table it is easy to issue and manage handouts, to tell what is where. In Roll20 it is too hard. I've played RPGs for over thirty years without fog-of-war, dynamic lighting, or a machine to count results and re-roll dice for me, without text chat, and without macros. Sometimes even without a map or counters. But I've always used handouts.
Bumping this again. Organisation and management of handouts is awful! The task of assigning multiple handouts to different players is way too fiddly and time-consuming, especially when it comes to checking that you have got everything right (which you won't have, because it is so damned fiddly). And you can't even start until the players have joined the game. When time comes to hand out a prepared handout during the game it takes ages just to find the damned thing in the unsorted list. This sucks! 1) The GM needs to be able to organise handouts so that he or she can find the damned one he or she wants when time comes to hand it out. Listing handouts alphabetically by title is the minimum acceptable standard of organisation. 2) Handouts need to attach to characters, not to players, so that a GM can distribute handouts before players join the game. 3) The GM needs to be able to look at a character (or player, if you insist) and see a complete list of the handouts attached to it, so that he can check, character by character, that every character has all and only the handouts that it out to have. 4) Ideally, the GM ought to be able to look at the list of handouts and see who has what. But if that isn't practical, he or she really has to be able to check a handout to see which characters have it without having to open it, click its "edit" button, scroll to the bottom of the edit window, and click two close boxes when he or she is done. 5) The GM should not have to burrow down into the edit window of a handout to hand it out. That should be handled at the highest level, without even having to open its read window.
I'd also like to see folders for handouts. I guess this goes along with organization, but I used handouts for monster cards as well. By the time I was done with the dozens of monsters, my handout tab was a mess. I like the feature, just need to be able to organize it better.
Ability to order handouts and to have handout directories.