Players controlling their allies in combat - can they move the tokens?

[Myene]

Hello All,

on saturday I ran our first FG2 - Savage Worlds game. And we had a combat encounter with the following participants:

- Fuchs (player character)
- Marcus Zweihand (player character)
- Soldier #1, Soldier #2 and Soldier #3 (allies of the player characters) (all set to the green friendly symbol)
- 6 orc zombies (set to red)
- 6 skeletons (set to red)

I then placed the tokens on the battle map - that worked well, when I hovered over them it would show me which soldier it was ("Soldier" or "Soldier #2" or "Soldier #3" etc.).
But when we tried to move to the tokens it turned out that:
- I, as the GM could move all the tokens (that's ok)
- but the players could only move their own characters token (Fuchs the "F" and Marcus the "M") but NOT the tokens of their allied soldiers (that's bad)

Is there a way in the ruleset to allow the players to move the tokens of their allies? They play them in battle after all. On saturday the player of Fuchs had to show me with the pointer where he wanted to move his soldiers and I then moved them there for him. But it would have been a lot faster if he would have just been able to move them himself.

Maybe there's an option or something that I haven't noticed yet?

Greetings,

Myene

(Attachment: A picture of the combat tracker as it was on saturday. Sölder = soldier, Ork Zombie = orc zombie ;-) )

[Mask_of_winter]

The only way I've found to do it is to NOT link the tokens.

Just grab the tokens from the token bag and drop them on the map. If you want to identify the tokens. Write "Soldier #1" in the chat box and then drag it onto the token.

Hope that helped.

[Oberoten]

It is actually possible to fix this, but it'd involve changing the basic behaviour of the ruleset and editing some LUA.

In the file combattracker_token.lua
you can comment out line 77 :

ref.setModifiable(false);

to make all tokens moveable by players. If you are feeling more advanced you can set a check in the friend-foe area of the combat tracker to make sure to set all allies to modifiable ONLY and leave the line in as it is instead.

- Obe

[adminwheel3]

So just open the file up with...um...something like Deamweaver? I've been using it to do formatting of txt files for future parsing, but I haven't ever edited a LUA file before.

I'm skerd! HOLD ME!

[phantomwhale]

Notepad for editing will do just fine. Notepad++ if your feeling fancy and want some nice syntax highlighting. But LUA is nice simple text scripts, and if you break it you can always undo the changes (as you DID backup the original script before modifying it, didn't you ?!?)

Is there a obvious patch here for players being able to move ally tokens ? E.g. would people consider this a bug ? Or is this more a matter of personal preference ?

... yes, yes, I'm itching to update the unofficial patches extension again. Keeps me feeling the joy of the release whilst I'm working on bigger savage projects

[Myene]

Ok, I did a backup of combattracker_token.lua, found out how to comment out a line in LUA (my first try was // ... old habits never die I guess) - then I started FG2 (this time successfully) and connected with a localhost-client. It works. The players can now move all the tokens.

For me this is all I need - I have no problem with the fact that they are now able to move their enemies tokens, too. They won't do that anyway.

Thank you all a lot for this hint. And thank you, too Mask_of_winter - I would have followed your advice hadn't the others presented that LUA-code-change option.

---

Is there a obvious patch here for players being able to move ally tokens ? E.g. would people consider this a bug ? Or is this more a matter of personal preference ?

For me this is a bug - as (at least) my version of the Savage Worlds Rulebook cleary states that the players play their allies in combat, not the GM.

Exceptions could be necessary for important Wildcard NPCs, though - but in FG2 you could just set such an important NPC to neutral-yellow in the combat tracker, if you wanted to prevent the players from moving his/her token.

[Oberoten]

I would agree. This is how I have done it in my Ars Magica ruleset.

Green = Movable by players (obvious ally or person under their command)
Yellow = Movable by GM.
Red = Movable by GM only.

- Obe

[Doswelk]

I would agree. This is how I have done it in my Ars Magica ruleset.

Green = Movable by players (obvious ally or person under their command)
Yellow = Movable by GM.
Red = Movable by GM only.

- Obe

Can you give us a code example of how you did that so we can hack our rulesets please?

[Oberoten]

I just hacked it uglily in combattracker_token.lua with changing part of the function acquirereference(dropref)

from

        if window.getType() == "pc" then
            ref.setVisible(true);
        else
            ref.setModifiable(false);
        end

to

        if window.getFoF() == "friend" then
            ref.setVisible(true);
        else
            ref.setModifiable(false);
        end

- Obe

[Uthred]

Awesome - thanks Obe!!! I made this change and it worked like a charm!!

Now I have something that goes in tandem with this - in addition to letting the players move the NPC tokens, also letting them roll for the NPC's. I have found that this can be accomplished by the GM opening the Personality for the NPC and sharing it with the players - but it's very buggy. It seems like only the skills listed on the left side of the sheet work. From the player view, the ability die for the skills on the right side seem to be be on the line for the description for the skills on the left. I think this is what is causing the issue. Has anyone else found this as well, and is there a known fix? I'm looking to the scripting sages on this one.