I am not sure if this is the right place to report it, but I think we have found a problem with the way that language groups are processed.

I posted a message in a group restricted thread, in the game I GM and used the language groups to post some text in Sylvan.

• One character (Andalon) is in the general group (Group 1) but is not in the Sylvan language group.
• A second character (Florin) run by the same player, is not in group 1, but is in the Sylvan language thread.
• The player was able to read the Sylvan text, even though the character he was running in that groups  shouldn't have been able to.

I wonder if, somehow, the Language groups system is using the Player to decide who should be able to read the text - instead of using the character and group information?

I can confirm that it uses the player, not the character, and that's not unique to the new site or a new thing. It's been that way for years.

In a game with multiple languages, I can read any language group that any of my characters happens to be in, whether they are in the thread group the post happens to be in or not. It's pretty much down to the player to remember/keep track of which characters can and can't legitimately understand the language in question.

Edit: I don't actually see that as a problem, really. Anyone that's playing multiple characters in a game is probably trusted enough by the GM for it to not be an issue, and already able to keep their OOC knowledge distinct from their IC knowledge.
This message was last edited by the user at 16:41, Thu 27 Aug 2020.

Can confirm it's based on the player's access.  It's going to get very messy very quickly to have to figure out visibility based on character rather than player but it is possible.  Happy to invest the time into it if it's widely sought after.

Thanks jase.

It  might be a bit of a problem in my game, as it has something like 60 characters that are run by players  :(

Most are player run NPCs  (Yeah, I know.  But it is fun) and some Players have four or five Characters (Including NPCs to their name)

I will think about restricting NPC access to language groups - But there are still cohorts, squires etc, that are an active part of adventuring groups.
This message was last edited by the user at 10:27, Fri 28 Aug 2020.

jase, rather than base it on character, would it be easier just to limit the visibility to characters in that particular posting group ?  Eg if Andalon is in Group 1 but Florin isn't.

Or is that so much worse ... ;P

Like, if the Private to line checked for Character Group Access first, and then checked for Language Group access on that particular character, and only rendered the translation viewable to the player if the answer to both queries was Yes?

*someone makes a Private to Language Group Latin OR a Language Group Latin post in Group A*

Code would then check for 'Is Character in Group A?', and then 'Is Character in Language Group Latin?' and then determine whether or not to display the Private to Language Group line scrambled or not based on whether or not both answers were Yes?

Edit: Of course, this still doesn't solve the problem of incidents where a player may legitimately have a character in Group A that is also in Language Group Latin, but it's not the character in the scene that's taking place where Language Group Latin is being used, so players with multiple characters will still wind up having to keep track of what each character can and can't speak IC.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:06, Fri 28 Aug 2020.

One complication, in JohnB's original example, would be if Andalon (who doesn't speak Sylvan) and Florin (who does speak Sylvan) were both in the same group. (Florin is basically a henchman / follower / cohort of Andalon's and is run by the same player, so it can happen that they are both active in the same thread.) The code would have to work out if either of them was in Group 1 and if either of them was in language group Sylvan, then allow the player to see that unscrambled language text. But even then, it relies on the player to remember which of his characters can understand that language.

In JohnB's case (where Andalon was seeing unscrambled Sylvan language text he shouldn't be able to understand), one work-around would be to temporarily turn off Florin's access to language group Sylvan. That's a tedious bit of extra work for the GM (and a pain to have to remember to turn it back on again a few months later when that language group access is no longer an issue in the game) but doesn't require any recoding now.

This is all starting to sound very convoluted and confusing.  Why don't I just make visibility dependent on the individual characters.

 For me, that would be  a great solution.