Selective compendium sharing

Allow us to choose what parts to share with our players from a module/rulebook under compendium settings, its great we can enable and disable sharing, but if we want to share selective content please allow us to do so. Ex: VGTM: let us EXCLUDE our players from being able to access the monsters but ALLOW them to use the race options in charactermancer.  

There is a difference between enabling my players to look things up by providing them the resources and between them looking something up out of their own volition. Those are two separate things. 

Trying to keep my players from information vs supplying the information to them are different things, By owning the books and having them in my game I'm giving them a resource to use to look those things up. Surprisingly not every monsters stat block exists on google. By owning the book and being unable to exclude my players from seeing the stat blocks, while they browse the compendium for other valuable resources provided by the players handbook or magic items etc., is far fetched to me. it's essentially me providing my players with the tools to meta game, and that is not something that should be an option. 

 "the players own it themselves and can use it anyway"

Under game settings I have the option to make that entire module 'unavailable' for anyone in the game, regardless of if they own the content. This suggestion is suggesting that they allow us to be able to exclude only players from accessing specific parts of the modules, not from the entire game in general. This also goes in line with the other threads suggesting they, better, organize the compendium. Being able to categorize things as monsters, races, charactermancer info, items, rules, etc. would also further the organization of the compendium.

I don't understand any reason for them not to implement this change, while it may not seem important to some, being able to select things and enable/disable alternate rulings, race access, magic items, etc is good to keep the mystery of the game for some as well as to make it easier to deal with inexperienced players. this change would organize the compendium into a more usable state, while also giving DM's the tools they want to be able to easily implement tabletop in person elements into their games. 

Edit: combined a later comment with this one as its context was no longer relevant, reworded to match an essay style format.

As a workaround in the short term, you can keep compendium sharing off most of the time, and turn it on only when it is time for the players to gain a level.

Brian C. said:

As a workaround in the short term, you can keep compendium sharing off most of the time, and turn it on only when it is time for the players to gain a level.

I'll do that, I was unsure if turning it off and then on again would mess with their charactermancer when gaining levels. So this is a good work around for the time being

I agree with this suggestion.

Sure, the players in the group I dm aren't interested in meta stuff, and wouldn't suddenly look up the stats of the monster I send at them, they are also kinda new players so they don't even have a lot of previous-knowledge by default of them.

But... I've also made them know that... while I don't want them to look up creatures and items in the books (we haven't started on roll20 yet, I'm setting up the world so we can start soon thou), I've also made it clear that... I do have the right to change, tweak and modify the stats as well, so even if they DID look a monster up, the information they get might not even apply to what they are meeting.

...buuuuuuut, my group is not the only group in the world after all, and there ARE meta players, probably lots of them... So I agree that it should be possible to turn of specific parts of the compendium. Sure I can't stop them from opening a book or checking another online source, but... hopefully they'll be too focused on the game to bother tabbing out from the game, and then it would be helpful to prevent access to certain compendium areas, like creatures, and items, especially magic items, since we play with some variant rules were identification is trickier, so I won't just give them a handout with -all- the rules right away, they'll have to figure them out (or cast Identify, that still works as per official rules). :)

Lady Saga said:

I agree with this suggestion.

Sure, the players in the group I dm aren't interested in meta stuff, and wouldn't suddenly look up the stats of the monster I send at them, they are also kinda new players so they don't even have a lot of previous-knowledge by default of them.

But... I've also made them know that... while I don't want them to look up creatures and items in the books (we haven't started on roll20 yet, I'm setting up the world so we can start soon thou), I've also made it clear that... I do have the right to change, tweak and modify the stats as well, so even if they DID look a monster up, the information they get might not even apply to what they are meeting.

...buuuuuuut, my group is not the only group in the world after all, and there ARE meta players, probably lots of them... So I agree that it should be possible to turn of specific parts of the compendium. Sure I can't stop them from opening a book or checking another online source, but... hopefully they'll be too focused on the game to bother tabbing out from the game, and then it would be helpful to prevent access to certain compendium areas, like creatures, and items, especially magic items, since we play with some variant rules were identification is trickier, so I won't just give them a handout with -all- the rules right away, they'll have to figure them out (or cast Identify, that still works as per official rules). :)

I'm glad you agree with it, if you aren't sure how voting works on roll20 you'll have to click on the triangle next to the original post to vote for the suggestion, sadly the devs don't count comments as votes x.x

i upvoted this because i think u have the right to do this sorta thing as u see fit. But i have an issue with the whole meta gaming line of thinking here because: if my players want to learn what the stat block of a creature is i support that, because one of things we as DM's are hoping for is that our players learn about the world their character exists in. Meta gaming in this instance is that learning exactly. Sure maybe this time they just look at the stat block and say "ah weak to fire" and tailor their attacks that way...but the next time they see that creature in a battle setting, they will remember that stat block...just like their character would in that world...i want that for my players, it adds to their immersion in the game world.

dwain K. said:

i upvoted this because i think u have the right to do this sorta thing as u see fit. But i have an issue with the whole meta gaming line of thinking here because: if my players want to learn what the stat block of a creature is i support that, because one of things we as DM's are hoping for is that our players learn about the world their character exists in. Meta gaming in this instance is that learning exactly. Sure maybe this time they just look at the stat block and say "ah weak to fire" and tailor their attacks that way...but the next time they see that creature in a battle setting, they will remember that stat block...just like their character would in that world...i want that for my players, it adds to their immersion in the game world.

Thanks for the upvote, I understand where you're coming from, in the current system you're able to give players access to a monsters npc sheet, that wouldn't change with this. So this would just remove your players ability to learn things inorganically the first time of an encounter while still giving you the option AFTER the encounter to grant them access to the monsters stat block/npc sheet. This would just remove the ability for your players to inorganically learn weaknesses by looking them up rather than you explaining how their attacks didn't do as much damage as they expected. With this change you would still be able to grant them the access to the statblock at a later time, giving them the feeling of learning.

Thanks for the suggestion!

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