Dynamic Lighting VTT Scenario

Hi Everybody, Here's my situation. I GM a pathfinder game for a group of players who play in person. I lay an LCD TV on the kitchen table as the virtual table top, and run two laptops (one is the player server - connected to the VTT) and the other is my GM laptop. Since we meet in person, there is no need for multiple player logins. I have 1 GM account, and I created 1 player account for the gaming table to access. So far, so good. Here is where I run into trouble. Each PC token is attached to the controlling player account, which means all of the PC tokens are controlled by the players around the table sharing 1 player account. This works well for our situation, except when it comes to dynamic lighting. If I understand correctly all players see the light radius for tokens they control. Since all PC tokens are controlled by one player account, there is no determining who sees what, because all of the lighting sources are visible to all players (whether I have the 'player's see light' option checked or not). This pretty much ruins the dynamic lighting feature considering everybody is immersed in light as long as one PC has darkvision. Any solutions on fixing this issue? Tying lighting to a token/token selection (regardless of player) would be the obvious fix, but I cant figure out how to do it, or if its even possible. The only other workaround I can think of is somehow having multiple 'local logins' so players who play on the same game space (in person) can log in with their account attached PCs. Any other ideas? Thanks in advance!

If you select a token, you can press CTRL+L to restrict the field of vision to just what that token can see. EDIT: I think this works best if you have line of sight enabled, though. You can leave the token with a 360 degree line of sight if you don't want to restrict their vision.

While Roll20 can be used to play in person like you are that was not it's designed intent. There is really no way you will get Line of Sight to work correctly for one account with multiple players. As Sarah stated, the GM can use Ctrl+L to check what a token can see but that will not help with immersion. Regarding multiple simultaneous logins, that may be problematic within a single browser. Roll20 was not designed for that and you may encounter difficulties.

You could write an API script to set/remove the controlledby option of the player tokens. That would allow you to set up individual lighting/vision for each pc token and would be able to see their view on their turn only.

HoneyBadger said: You could write an API script to set/remove the controlledby option of the player tokens. That would allow you to set up individual lighting/vision for each pc token and would be able to see their view on their turn only. Thanks for the feedback everybody! It sounds like HoneyBadger might have suggested a possible answer to my problem. Alas, I am no programmer and although I can get around in APIs....coding one from scratch is gonna be brutal. Anybody built this one yet? Or would be willing to, if its easy? Thanks again.

I've been off of here for a while, but will be getting back into it. Could be a fun script to write. I also would only use Roll20 for face to face play so this would be useful for my group. If I find the time in the next few days I'll look at it, but I bet you someone else will run with it before I look at it. Could be good to show the lighting/vision for whatever token is selected. But you would have to turn off controlledby like honeybadger suggests. Then the players couldn't select the tokens that have had the controledby changed so might have to be done by the GM which adds more for the GM to be responsible for. I guess after writing the script you could put some macros up that the players could click on that could set the controlledby via the script for each token depending upon which macro you clicked on. Or just a chatbox command line to set it. Then the players could do something like: !sight fighter and it would set the controlledby to only the fighter token. Would need some error checking in there so controlledby doesn't get changed on the GM's tokens. Not a perfect solution yet, but could get better with some refinements. A lot has changed since I was last here so there might even be some other ways of doing it?

Thanks for looking into it, Konrad. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with. I can't imagine switching the controlled by for 6 pcs manually...lol

Gawd, the more I read on these forums the more I am tempted to get a mentor account. I currently lack the time to devote to all of the API learning/programming I would want to do. Is there a way to tie the controlledby to the turn tracker rather than the selected token? You would still need a way for the API to differentiate between PCs and other, so that the controlledby would remain on the last PC who had a turn and wouldn't update until the next PC came up in the turn tracker (otherwise you would hand the controlledby to each creature/NPC that took a turn between the PCs). Other limitations: handling of interrupt actions, and the unseen movement of creatures that a PC whose turn it is not would otherwise be able to see. What I mean by that is that if one PC can see a creature, but another PC cannot (as would happen if the party was split-up, for example), and the most recent PC to have taken a turn is the one that can't see the creature, then when the controlledby shifts back to the first PC (the one that CAN see the monster) the monster will have 'jumped' to a new location suddenly--a problem you wouldn't encounter with all of the PCs having shared vision/control. Just my thought -- I don't have access to the API so I am not sure what it can and cannot do w/ regards to the turn tracker.

This would actually be very simple... since I already have a turn order tracker script... and it would just be a matter of adding a few lines to change the controlledby field.