Here's an idea I'd like. Sorry if it has already come up and rejected. ;)

In one of my games, nearly all ingame action happens in secret threads. Now, with ten players this potentially requires a lot of groups, if each one has a secret threat (requiring its own group) with everyone else.

However, if a single thread would be able to have several access groups, then ten groups would be all it takes, one for each character. With that I can easily pick what characters have access to a particular thread, without the need to create a new group for just one new specific character combination.

Did I manage to make this understandable? Would it be difficult to implement? Does anyone beside me think this is a good idea?
This message was last edited by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 19:50, Tue 30 July 2013.

I guess I don't understand completely. Why not have the players in the same group and just have private/secret communication via secret and/or private messages? If you want to have multiple 'groups of players' then assigning a group number to each 'group of players' makes sense. You can also use the language feature if you want to have just certain players within a group understand a particular message or set of messages without having to use secret/private message functionality.

It has been requested before, I believe.  Unfortunately it isn't possible - threads can only belong to a single group.

Currently there are about thirty Groups available (excluding Groups 0 and Z), and when you take into account private lines (including private lines which can be addressed to groups of people) and private message threads it should be sufficient,

Ah yes, if it's impossible then that's it. Thanks for the answer!

And of course, finding that insufficient, you could run the stuff that is with only a single player in a PM.

I don't know what kind of game you are running, but explore the difference between private and secret! Very cool... it has allowed for some very interesting circumstances in one of my games, and both allow for a single thread to provide different information to individuals, or groups!

Nothing's impossible (within reason), it's just a matter of time and effort (vs reward).  We had a poll about this a while ago and people did prefer the ability to put a thread in multiple groups (rather than just having more groups) but nothing more has been done toward that.  It's a pretty large change so nothing's been done toward it yet as there's higher priority things to be done first, as well as other underlying changes that need to be made before we can look into implementing it.

Short version: it's on the to-do list.  Yay!

Yay :). That's nice to hear. Though admittedly, in all of the games I've played yet at RPOL only one is so separate-plot-heavy that the issue has been, well, an issue. So I understand that it has a low priority.

In answer to the several suggestions made above which are meant as helpful options:

I prefer to not do ingame stuff in PM threads because those tend to get lost in clutter, and it is not possible to change access later on.

PM's inside real threads are certainly an option, but not very sensible when the characters are not even in the same area or world, and won't be for the whole length of a (long) scene. That will just result in lots of posts which are empty to most players.
That applies to all variants of PM groups and secret messages, too, though admittedly I haven't played around with those a lot yet.

Mind you, in most cases I am happy to make those threads public and just trust players to separate player and character knowledge, but that's not suitable for every kind of game. So only games with a) lots of different players, b) lots of different small plot lines, and c) an all around plotting and/or paranoia would be at all in need of such a multiple-acess-groups-for-a-thread feature. It's just a small niche.

Although each thread can only be assigned a single group, players can be assigned to multiple groups and easily added/removed from groups.

I must admit I can't envision the story in which each character is in a different place for long periods, each with its own thread, but then they also need to participate in the story taking place in these other various places. Are they playing NPCs in the other threads or are they in a flashback or alternative reality?

This message was deleted by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 13:52, Thu 01 Aug 2013.

In reply to Lord Owl (msg # 1):

I know this is an old thread, but I wondering about this feature.  I am running a game with about 8 players who are constantly going to different locations in different groups.  I am worried about running our of groups.

It isn't as simple as adding someone to a group then removing them, because they can then go back and read all the messages in the thread before they were added.  MY game does have some of them working against each other so that could be troublesome if they could read conversations between other other because they were added to a group that was used for other people previously.

Just thought I would ask.