Hey everyone, it’s Lavi & Fran again! In April, we announced the upcoming View as Player feature. Since then, we’ve been heads-down refining the project’s direction and incorporating additional input from the community.
Today, we’re sharing our progress and walking through some early designs of the feature and a new View Control menu!
Unlocking More GM Power
Our goal with this feature is straightforward: enable GMs to verify a player experience by giving them a way to see exactly what their players see side by side with their GM screen (without using workarounds or registering separate test accounts).
As we dug deeper into what our goal actually meant in practice, three clear needs arose:
- Real-time preview of player experience. GMs need to know exactly what each specific player will see in-game while they’re preparing. This includes exact permissions, character sheet/handout access, map view, and more.
- Fix issues without losing the room. GMs need to be able to step into a player’s view mid-session to quickly diagnose and resolve issues without breaking the flow of the game.
- Learn faster by seeing both sides of the table. One of the fastest ways to truly understand how Roll20 works is to see the difference in GM and player views side by side.
And, if you’re thinking, “Doesn’t Ctrl+L” already do this? – not quite. That shortcut shows token line of sight, but doesn’t show a player’s view or hide GM-only elements. “Rejoin as Player” is also incomplete: the GM is still themselves, not their player, so visibility, token access, and sheet controls won’t reflect what the player will actually see based on their permissions.
Nailing the View as Player feature opens the door to even more exciting developments down the road, such as Spectator Mode to support game observation and streaming, and Broadcasting to external monitors or TVs, which can be used for in-person play.
An Early Look at What We’re Building
Here’s where we are with designs, keeping in mind that things can still shift as we move into development:
- A player select menu lets GMs choose a specific player to view the game as or approximate a generic player view if your game doesn’t have players assigned yet.
- A secondary tab opens as that player, reflecting their exact view of the Tabletop, chat, and journal, while the GM screen stays exactly as it was. (see image below)
- A clear indicator in the secondary tab showing which player view is being previewed.
The existing Ctrl+L functionality is going to stay as a complementary tool for line-of-sight checks, and we’re going to be very clear on working on clarifying the difference between the two, so GMs will know which tool to use and when.
Update: New View Controls menu
Alongside this project, we’re making related tools easier to find and use.
We’re introducing a new View Control menu, which will group all features that affect a player or GM’s view of the VTT, including the incoming View as Player feature.
The View Control menu will also relocate some of the menu options previously found in the GM Hamburger menu to make them more discoverable:
- Opacity sliders
- The foreground toggle
- Dark/Light Mode
- Ctrl + L
What’s Next?
Research: Expanding GM/Player Controls
In addition to expanding GM visibility, we’re researching whether taking actions on a player’s behalf might be possible in the future. (Example: creating player macros without the player needing to be present. Think of it like when a tech support professional takes control of a user’s machine to troubleshoot or solve a problem, instead of merely trying to describe over the phone how to do it themselves.)
This functionality, although not directly requested, is one potential solution to address the frustration reported when GMs cannot fully set up and verify a player’s full experience ahead of game time. We believe it could make an already useful feature genuinely delightful, so we’re digging into whether we can make it happen. More to come!
Development
We’re moving into active development now and will be back on the blog soon with more updates. In the meantime, our team continues to review the Roll20 forums, social, and community channels. We’re looking forward to continuing to build with the community, for the community.
Check out The MAD Cartographer and Adela Quiles on the marketplace, who provided a map for our blog image.