GM & Player Names in MapTool

[geekomancer]

A question about naming players, GM's, and characters.

When I drag a token into my map, sometimes it names the token after my system login name (my real name). I want to have a different identity in MapTool. Is there a way to set my player name and character name (e.g. player name geekomancer, character name DM)?

Also, when I drag an imported token into the map, my MapTool shows a bunch of players that I've never heard of. Obviously, I want to get rid of them.

As a more general question, is there a way to manage player & DM names? If not, feature request!

Again guys, sorry if this is covered in the excellent tutorials. I'm working my way through them, but there's a lot of info and there may be something I haven't reached yet (or missed).

Thanks!

[Azhrei]

Identity management is one area that needs some work.

Generally, if the file you drag-n-drop onto MapTool is in .rptok format, everything in it should be maintained (name, ownership, etc) although there's a bug in b56 that switches the Property Type back to Basic.

The list of players that have owned a token is stored inside the .rptok file so that when it's used again later the ownership will still be there. However, there's no way that I know of to "clean up" XML data that is currently unused; partly because a field that's not used right now could still be used tomorrow, such as the ownership information.

Player names are established when they connect to the server. The only thing the GM can do is boot a player, but they can log back in with the same or different name later.

We've had discussion about some type of "banning" system (probably via IP address), plus a way for the GM to change the name a player used when they connected. (Also, the boot function doesn't remove the player name quickly enough.)

Anyway, if you look around the forums for the word "boot" or "connection panel" you'll probably find the threads that discuss this topic in more detail.

[palmer]

We've had discussion about some type of "banning" system (probably via IP address)

IP bans are very limited in effectiveness though.

Many people can skirt an IP ban just by power cycling their router.

I would go for banning via some unique identifier for each copy of MT.

Which could be generated via planting a "cookie" on the booted machine. When you kickban, it sends a cookie and then disconnects them.

When they try to reconnect, the cookie is sent as part of the handshake, and then the server refuses.

Alternately, make a more robust username system.

[Azhrei]

We've had discussion about some type of "banning" system (probably via IP address)

IP bans are very limited in effectiveness though.

Many people can skirt an IP ban just by power cycling their router.

Well, that depends. But anyone intent on being troublesome would find the password added/changed. Assuming we could change that value after the server was started!

I would go for banning via some unique identifier for each copy of MT.

There might be some way for the JVM to determine a value that is supposed to be unique to the machine...

Alternately, make a more robust username system.

Which is why I said this has been discussed before.

[geekomancer]

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm actually less interested in banning or booting, and more interested in just naming. When I start a session, I'd like to name my "player" self, and my "character" self, and for anyone who joins my session to be able to do the same. That way, we don't have a halfling token with "John Smith" attached to it, and in-game chats can have handles instead of real names.

The software Gametable (which is a lot less advanced and feature-rich than RPTools) actually does have one cool feature where, whenever someone connects to join or host a game, they can input their name and character name. Nice feature, worth stealing.

[CoveredInFish]

You can set names.

For player names you can set a user name in the "start server" or "connect to server"-dialog.

For character names you can impersonate. You can impersonate tokens via context menu and you can impersonate any name via /im chat command. Note that you can of course change token names (try a dblclick).