How to close a session of gaming from player?

I'm running into an issue; people afking on the site and still in the campaign.  Normally not an issue when I'm setting stuff up on maps they're not on.  The problem is I need to see from a players perspective what my set up looks like. But I can only move the players to a map they can see but obviously that would reveal everything on the map they're not suppose to see yet.  So is there a way to close the game for the players? Kick them out from afking? I don't want to kick them from the game of course and I'm sure I could just tell them to log into the site when it's time and not just afk, but it would be so much easier to just close them out.  If that's not an ability I can do then I guess I can put it in the suggestion forums. 

Just create a blank map page and move the players to that when you're not actually playing. I agree though, it would be nice if you could punt people out of your game world in between game sessions. Or else "close" it so they can't come back in while you're not there.

Yeah a "welcome" page is the best approach. I have one with a bunch of info about the game, character levels, requirements, etc. I keep the Players banner on that page until right when we start a session and move it back to that page as soon as we're done. I trust all my players, we played for years in person before people moved but its just easier and then they can't screw up tokens and stuff on our actual game maps.

That works for just people afking on the game board but when you are a DM and need to look at a map that the players have not seen yet and you want to look at it from their perspective aka rejoin as a player, you don't want them to accidently hop into the gameboard while you are working on it. The OP is asking about a way to be able to view the map as a player without the real players being able to see it also.

Yeah, I see the problem now... Really, when the game session is over, the players should get out of the campaign, to me that's just common courtesy. But since there's no way to force a player to log out, the only thing I can think of is to penalize in-game any players who do it. Maybe put a clause in your campaign rules up front, something like: Players agree to log out of the campaign setting when the game session is over and not log back in until the next scheduled game. Violators may be penalized in-game, repeat offenders risk being banned outright.

How I check a map from the player perspective without my players seeing it is that I copy the campaign without my players and then I check what can be seen. When I am done, I delete the copy. Steps: 1) Go to the Campaign Details page. 2) Click "Copy/Extend Campaign" 3) Remove the "Players and Player Settings" checkmark 4) Click "I'm ceady, Create Campaign!" 5) Play with the copied campaign 6) Delete the copied campaign when done.  Now, with that said, this shouldn't need to be used very often. For lighting issues you can crank the Fog of War/Dynamic Lighting up to maximum opacity to see what players can see using that.  The main thing I would use it for is so that I can see what a campaign looks like from the player perspective without my GM information getting in my way.  - Gauss

Actually it's really easy... 1. Turn on dynamic lighting 2. Add a token only you control 3. Add light source that only you can see. This will prevent them from seeing anything at all. They'll just have a black screen as long as they don't have any tokens with light sources.

Jonathan, I agree that that would work except if there are a number of light sources already on the map. Your method might require modifying quite a number of light sources. But, if there are very few light sources then it would be simple to do. :) - Gauss

Brett E. said: Yeah, I see the problem now... Really, when the game session is over, the players should get out of the campaign, to me that's just common courtesy. But since there's no way to force a player to log out, the only thing I can think of is to penalize in-game any players who do it. Maybe put a clause in your campaign rules up front, something like: Players agree to log out of the campaign setting when the game session is over and not log back in until the next scheduled game. Violators may be penalized in-game, repeat offenders risk being banned outright. I don't agree w/ this b/c I will log in to edit & troubleshoot my macros when it doesn't take up game time.  Granted, I don't go looking around at other stuff, and even what I do notice, I'm good at keeping player knowledge & character knowledge seperate.

Also I would need to be a supporter for the Dynamic Lighting and right now I don't have the $ for that. So the DL isn't an option at all. I trust my players mostly and most of them do log out  I left a message for everyone and they've been good about it (I think it's just some are busy and just leave pages open and honestly just forget about it. Anyway I think a 'Close Session' button would be ideal or something. Thanks for the responses!

<a href="https://app.roll20.net/gift" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/gift</a> See if your players would be willing to chip-in and upgrade your account. :)

Ty M. said: I don't agree w/ this b/c I will log in to edit &amp; troubleshoot my macros when it doesn't take up game time. &nbsp;Granted, I don't go looking around at other stuff, and even what I do notice, I'm good at keeping player knowledge &amp; character knowledge seperate. Well, what I wrote was just a suggestion, a DM can make whatever rules he wants. Since he cannot lock out players, the DM is at least entitled to some private time in between sessions to work on the game.

Eric D. said: Yeah a "welcome" page is the best approach. I have one with a bunch of info about the game, character levels, requirements, etc. I keep the Players banner on that page until right when we start a session and move it back to that page as soon as we're done. I trust all my players, we played for years in person before people moved but its just easier and then they can't screw up tokens and stuff on our actual game maps. This is probably my favourite suggestion so far, and I'll probably make ample use of it. (already been fiddling with a template for the info page actually). Any reason why this would wouldn't be a good solution?