Feature Request: Character-based "Signature" field

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Dec 6, 2016 4:36 pm
Let me first preface with "I have no clue how difficult this would be to have created or anything of that nature". Secondly, I apologize if this was already requested and rejected. :)

There, that's out of the way.

My thought is a section on the character sheet that is the same rich-text enabled field like a post is. It would be titled something like "Signature" or the like. Players could put information in there that they would like to have present on every post from that character.

When a character posts, this information would be appended below a line break, possibly in an expandable manner (though that isn't strictly necessary ;) ) This would make it part of the post.

Possible uses:
Prepared casters could include their currently prepared spell lists
Running data (current health, inspiration, active buffs, etc etc, AC)
Dice Pools (I'm looking at you, Star Wars FFG)

Some way that people could have quick access to stuff while in the thread (especially GMs, not having to toggle back and forth between a bunch of areas).
Dec 6, 2016 4:47 pm
This is something I've been considering, but not quite in the way you've mentioned. The problem is the idea I've had, I haven't figured out the interface for. Much the same as you've mentioned, I want to add temporal data, stuff that just exists at the time. Dice pools in FFGSW was my first example, Savage Worlds has your chips, etc. The first thing that will be added will be a space the GM has on the game details page to just have a floating section that outlines some details. I don't like the UI ideas I have for that right now though, and doing it player-by-player is ideal, but I can't figure out how to implement that either. The code is straight forward, but it needs to recognize over time, because you may want to go back to an old post and see a status, which could be a dice pool in a previous combat, rather than seeing the dice pool you have up now. Does that make sense?

TLDR: I'm not good with interfaces, but I want to implement this idea.
Dec 6, 2016 4:55 pm
It makes perfect sense. What my thought was (and this is all coming from an Excel/Access VBA type background) is that the property would exist on the character's sheet (not sure how you have the various elements stored on the sheet). Instead of being a reference that changes over time, my thought would be that whatever the player has entered in that field (img tags, text formatting, etc), that entire block of text is concatenated onto the post prior to committing. So you would have:

PostBody = [blah blah blah, text and bbcode and such]
SelectedCharacterSigField = [blah blah blah, text and such from CharSheet of selected character]

When the user clicks Post, the logic would run something like:

If SelectedCharacterSigField != Null Then
PostBody = PostBody & [line/break] & SelectedCharacterSigField
Else
PostBody = PostBody
End If.

Again, I'm looking at this from the way I would do this in an Access type setting (which is wildly inappropriate and not really congruous with the way the web works and such. :) ).

The strength there being that it's added to the post proper, meaning the old posts would have the data as posted at that time, regardless of what you changed it to.

The weaknesses that I could see would be if someone posts and then goes in to edit, that information would be available to edit.
Last edited December 6, 2016 4:55 pm
Dec 6, 2016 5:06 pm
Ok, I see what you're saying; append it to the post itself. That's reasonable. I have to consider if that works in congruence with my idea, or if it's better than what I'm thinking right now. Either way, a variation of it is planned.
Dec 7, 2016 4:29 am
For now I've been doing this by posting notes to the player with their info or editing player posts to include this. It's a pain though. I'd love to have something less cumbersome.

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