Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Game Master Text Displayed Above Characters

One feature that I believe would help immersion is a simple button that would open up a chat window where you could type a message that would then be displayed above your character.

As the GM you could create individual dialogue on the fly by possessing a character, popping up the window, and displaying the dialogue above the NPC. Hopefully it would have some minor formatting to allow for the GM to italicize expressions or actions. Walking around the world and seeing a character standing there with something like an "Eyes you suspiciously" would allow for a nice rhythm for interactions. You could also easily distinguish between in-game dialogue and events and metagame discussion as well. Any other thoughts? I am trying to find a simple, elegant system that could work for dialogue and possibly even be a stand in for the lack of executable animations.

+1 to this.

I think the GM mode is a fantastic tool, however I was disappointed that this feature was missing.

Some arguments for why this would be a great feature to have:

- Helps with immersion, most people aren't professional voice actors and so personalities of characters can sometimes come across as a little stiff, someones own imagination can be a powerful tool in itself.

- May help increase the amount of public GM games to join, if GMs are a little nervous about having to act out characters with their own voice (I am also not one to voice act and narrate to random people online) they might feel more comfortable with a system like this.

- I don't know if this is just me but I find my improvisation to be a lot more efficient when I can type someones dialog, feels more like writing a story than standing on a stage trying to come up with something really quickly.

Now I realise this sort of thing could technically be done in the chat window, but then the GM has to keep prefixing speech with "CharacterName: Bla bla bla", plus it reminds players that they're just using a fancy chat room, breaks immersion.

Also if the GM could type chat for the Narrator so that it comes up in a more global looking message, that would be awesome.

Fully agree with this. I'm quite confident with my friends but less so with randoms. Having this would let me jump into GMing for public games. If I then start to feel more comfortable, I can switch to a more standard style of vocal GMing.

[quote=Zebadee]Also if the GM could type chat for the Narrator so that it comes up in a more global looking message, that would be awesome.[/quote]

This would be great. Even if you use it as an overlay to pause interaction, that would work nicely. I can see myself using it as a mid-level vignette that doesn't obscure the entire screen.

Yup. In game dialogue would go leaps and bounds toward making games better. Vignettes are fine for setting a scene, but they're super annoying for doing dialogue.

This is absolutely needed for a full RP DnD game

Request this in the mod section.

My specific suggestion would be to see if anyone can script an item that will display the items description above the wielder's head (there are scripts that do something similar when you interact with an item - i.e. the wheelbarrow "I'm not going to use THAT but I may be able to move it...")

I'm not a scripter so I dunno if an item worn or in inventory can do that or not (nor how to script it)

My thought process is the GM can have items in his inventory that he gives possessed characters and just needs to change their description to change the output over the head so you can get that illusion of speech or mood such as the OPs suggestion: "<eyes the players suspiciously>"

Seems *possible* but again I can't say if it will work or not since I don't have specific knowledge on the limitations of scripting in this engine.

I do think the idea is a valid and useful one though so best of luck