A long time ago, in a blog post, that incidentally shows off how our interface styling has improved, we announced that you could use masks in the forum. As it turns out, this is one of the most useful features for forum roleplay! And one that few (if any) other forums out there support.
We have put a lot of thought into how masks can be used and how the system should support your use of masks. Over time, we streamlined the use of Playable Characters without sheets, allowing you to more easily have multiple characters in your game, without having to stat them all.
Next in the Masks improvements was the upgrade that made NPCs playable in the forums by game masters, and we immediately implemented NPC sharing to be able to have sets of NPCs that can be played by other groups than just game masters.
And all that though, both on how masks should work for the players as well as how they should work technically, pays off by allowing us to add masks to the chat in just under a week of work:
As you can see in the above screenshot, taken from the just-updated RPGpad site, the chat now has the same kind of mask integration as the forum has:
- The use of masks is tracked per room, and the character name is given preference over the player name, to focus on the roleplay.
- Switching masks in the chat is an action in itself, and other players in the room are notified of the switch.
- If you are logged in from multiple places (laptop and tablet, for example), they will, of course, have the same mask selected.
- While not visible in this screenshot, you can also make custom masks per room!
And since the chat uses the same masks as the forum, any masks available to you can be used: your playable characters, as well as any NPCs that you are allowed to play.
We are very happy with the quick addition of masks, and are confident that they will support and improve chat-roleplay in the same way they improved forum-roleplay!
As always, we have a changelog for this week’s changes available for you.