Creating Interactive Map Icons in Roll20 (Revised) 

The ability to link together a map token with an automatic pull of a handout and a whispered description is awesome and I think I will be using this for my Tomb of Annihilation game.

Works wonderfully! This is a great tool for my players who can get a bit overwhelmed with always trying to go into the Journal to find NPC's that I'm talking about. Now I can put bosses on the board and they can click on them to remind themselves. Thanks!

This SO SO great. I’d been using Tool Tips and Token actions to do something similar. I felt super clever -but this is sheer brilliance

Nick, my players are gonna love this. Thanks mate!

I've been looking for a way to make my handouts far more accesable to my players, this is an absolute life saver!

Hey buddy thanks a whole bunch I think I figured it out man, thanks by the way for all your great videos and help and for giving!

These are the videos I've been looking for. Great work!

Excellent! Tried it in my modern domain of dread map and it works a charm. Thank you for updating this :D

I'm having some fun with this in main game play. By allowing only certain players access to some of the notes, you can allow things like rangers being able to track without the GM essentially telling everyone what only the individual character would know. I love anything that feeds information directly to individual PC because it puts the narrative in their hands so that they get to tell the party what they found rather than either me telling everyone, or me telling them then them telling the party. I'd been doing that manually with pre-typed whispers, but this allows me to do that without having to go in and run the whisper myself. That might not sound like much of a time saver, but it really is!

Hey Nick thanks I think I got it figured out man, and thanks for your help and all your great videos, and for giving as well😊

This is super amazing!

this was absolutely game changing

I suggest putting two arrows >> before the [Click Here... part. It makes the words stand out a bit better in the chat box.

Slick! I'll definitely be looking into this in the future

A workaround to declaring the player that I used before my pro days: create a dummy account enrolled in the game named Self. That way, you can go "/w Self [insert macro]". Since your outgoing whispers show up for you as well, it effectively whispers into the void, allowing players to see the output but not clog up any other real players' chats.

Thank you very much. It was driving me nuts trying to figure it out myself

Great video, gonna used it sometime soon. thanks :)

Awesome, exactly what I needed!!!

Thanks Nick, amazing tutorial.

This is very cool. I'll have to keep this in mind. I realize though that this could allow players to see the names of things that you might not want them to know yet.

An alternative to whisper only to the player that has selected the information, without using API and without asking for it (avoiding cases in which troll players will span messages for other players) would be, instead of creating a public macro, to create a token macro. So, all players will see the macro button on the top of the screen, but only when this token was selected. This way, we can whisper a message only for the player controlling the selected token, with a macro similar to this one: /w @{selected|character_name} &{template:traits} {{name=@{target|Select a location|token_name}}} {{description=@{target|Select a location|bar1}}} Of course, for this approach to be useful, the player's token should be on the map, which I don't think would be a problem is most cases.

Great job Nick. I've watched your old video, this revised one and some other channals. I've also read it's comments and some forum. Anyways it is to much to keep tracking off for the credits. I just wanted share some problems I faced and how I overcame it... 1) Restrict its use to the map you DM wants and also makes whisper esyer. Add a new Character and call it “Map”. Let all players control and edit it but do not allow it to be seen in the player’s journals. Upload a token of a magnifier to it or any other token you want. Add a new ABILITIES “/w map &{template:default} {{name=@{target|token_name}}} {{[image](@{target|bar1})}} {{@{target|bar2}}} {{[(Learn More)](@{target|bar3})}}” call it “details”,”info” or whatever and check “show as token action” box. Keep making your token locations as in the older video you did with image, description and link to handouts. Put them into “objects & tokens” layer if you wanna your players to interact with it. This way players will be able to use it only on the maps you drag your character “Map” into. And it will have a nice and intuitive symbol of a magnifier. Coz the macro will appear to the players only when they select its token. Obs. After draging the “map” character to the map, right click it and select “is a drawing” and go to token options (double click) to remove all players permission. At the end, lock it to where you find better, close to the map’s lable for example. 2) I just forgot whatelse I was planning to say Anyways, sorry for this long comment and I hope it could somehow added up a bit. Thanks for your videos

awesome

Nick. My man.

Maybe it's not possible, but if you're worried about your player's spamming each other, you could always make a macro that specifically is visible to just them (individually and hence one macro per player) and only allows them to whisper themselves, no? More work, but an option. Unless I'm off...

Ive been using this extensively and I appreciate your explanation so much! I do just have one question though. Is it possible to make it so that the whispered location blurb text is aligned left rather than to the right?

Brilliant! Thanks for this.

Nick: Hi everyone, I’m Nick Olivo. Me getting my pad and paper. And nick is awesome 😎

Hey there! I know this is an older video, but I'm wondering if there's any way to restrict this macro to run only on the map page, instead of being in the macro bar on all pages?

This is awesome! Question, is there a playlist for things that can be done WITHOUT API? Thanks! just discovered your channel

I've been trying for the whole week and even tho I'm not the best, I wanted to give my players the best experience possible. I came out with a problem: i like how you did everything, but i wanted also the image like in the old version(kinda like a banner?). But i just... made messes lol how to fix it?

Hey, you can also select lock in position so players can't move the token around!

Hey Nick can you help me figure out how to download those icons I found the wiki but I've never used a vici before, I've only read some😊

This is an awesome tutorial, Nick! I've found that in order for the hyperlinks to display the handouts, they have to be shared with the players already, which unfortunately, kind of defeats the purpose. Is there a workaround for this? Thanks!

Love this so much. I am definitely going to use it for my next game! However I noticed something else of interest in your Macro's tab. Does the Macro 'Sendplayerstobreakscreen' move the player flag from a map to another designated map? If so can you explain this because I would love this functionality. I'm a Pro subscriber so I have API access too.

The Skyrim link is cutting out the ")" at the end. We can add it manually to make the link work but there might be a youtube formatting thing to ignore the close bracket which is ending the URL prematurely.

This is great. I already have a "wiki" made with hyperlinks, but I've been looking for ways to make the map interactive. Is there an API that allows you to turn any token into a hyperlink to bypass the whisper entirely?

I made a small modification by putting the "More Info" link on a new line and wrapping it in back ticks so the text stands out more. !me &{template:default} {{name=@{target|Select a Location|token_name}}} {{@{target|Select a Location|bar1} [``More Info``](@{target|Select a Location|bar1|max})}}

Just thought of another idea - You could give each of the map icon tokens an ability that knows how to output information about itself. Then it can either use the API (!me) or the whisper technique to send information to a player without them needing to "target one of the locations". Why target something if you can just select it and press buttons? I find selecting a token and pressing abilities to be appropriate when information about the token itself matters. Using targeting is only needed if you care about the selected token AND the target (like for spell casting).

This is great, ive been sharing with all the other GMs i know! Unfortunately it has stopped working since yesterday, and i have no idea why :( I set up the master handout and a test handout, but when i created all the other handouts, and was happily going through creating the links in the "max" field. Logged in today and its stopped working on all of them for some reason. I use the VTTES plug in, not sure if that would interfere?

"Hopefully your players are better than that?" 🤣🤣🤣

Do I need to share/show the handout with the players beforehand? @Nick Olivo I have the script working was testing with a friend and the handout was not opening up.

I followed the directions and put map tokens all over my map they worked I could click on them and it would go to the connected handout. But now it’s not displaying anything in chat anymore

Great tool my players will love but have a bit of a hick up! Whenever I log in as a player to test it; whenever I click on "Click Here To Learn More" the handout doesn't pull up. When opening in a new tab it says site can't be reached. Any idea what I could be doing wrong?

This is great! Question, from the original video, how would we modify this new macro so that it still displays images in the whisper, like the original macro? Let's say we move the image link to bar 2, the syntax should be {{[image](@{selected|bar2})}} So, to input this into the macro, does the following make sense? or did I miss a curly boi somewhere? !me &{template:default} {{name=@{target|Select a Location|token_name}}} {{@{target|Select a Location|bar1} [Click Here To Learn More](@{target|Select a Location|bar1|max})} {{[image](@{selected|bar2})}}} Is that right? Cheers!

Hey Nick,how do i download those icons,? (

How do you actually download the map icons and make them usable, able to be put on the map? I cannot get SVG files to work in Roll20 and don't know how to trim and cut the icons, when I save them they barely take up a small corner of a large white box which makes them unusable.

Is there a way to do this where the item you're player is clicking doesn't appear in their journal until after they've interacted? Like if I wanted to have a hidden thing that them stumbled across, how could I do that?

Hey Nick, I'm in the middle of trying this for a new game I'm setting up and the 'drawing token' I've selected isn't showing as clickable. Any advice how to troubleshoot?

Hi Nick. Forgive my ignorance in advance. It seems there's a lot of API, macros, scripting, etc, stuff that happens before all this? I'm not unfamiliar with scoding, but I don't seem to be able to just throw an image on a map and make all of this work. Do you have any videos that start from square one of setting all this stuff up. I haven't done any scripting/api stuff with my roll20 at all, or ever before. Does that make sense?

The latest update to roll20 has added a tooltip option to tokens

Does this method still work as of 11/8/23? I followed the guide including the API script and I set up the macro successfully for myself. But when my players log in, they don't see the Macro option even if they have the Quickbar enabled.

Is there a way to stop players from using this macro on a mob or NPC? I set it up and tested it and it works perfectly for locations on my interactive map, but if I do it on a battle map and select an enemy token, it shows the monsters health, and then if I click on "Click Here To Learn More" it shows an error and takes me out of Roll20. other than that concern, this is amazing.

I'm curious if you can link a handout map with clickable locations...

I created the table but whenever I click to make the token it is un mutable. I cannot alter the size, nor can I double click it to edit it...

I thought I had it figured out but I cannot find the pack I was downloading one at a time?? Sorry for texting and such a late hour. :(thank you

Hmmm. Getting SyntaxError: Unexpected number when trying to run the script. Anyone else run into this?

It works but the players when they click want to learn more nothing pops up. but if I click it it does , what am I missing?

Você pode por Whisper para um Personagem, caso o(s) jogador(es) tenha acesso a ele, ele receberá como se fosse um Whisper direcionado. Isso permite que você coloque a Macro em Tokens/Fichas. Dentro da Ficha: /w ?{Who?|@{character_name}:|GM} &{template:default} ... A partir do Token: /w ?{Who?|@{selected|character_name}:|GM} &{template:default} ... ou se possuir um Attribute específico, direto na ficha: /w ?{Who?|@{player_name}|GM} &{template:default} ... ou do Token: /w ?{Who?|@{selected|player_name}|GM} &{template:default} ... Note que você sempre pode criar um Personagem "Grupo" que representa o Grupo e dar o Controle do personagem para Todos, eles podem ter várias Macros direcionadas a esse Personagem "Grupo". Mesmo que todos recebam a Mensagem no final, como o Histórico de Mensagem, você consegue ocultar os "Whispers" o que torna útil filtrar ou procurar por informações no chat posteriormente, bastando ocultar as mensagens direcionadas para o Grupo/Sistema.

i copied the script from above but the name is not appearing in the purple box

Cant I lock the tokens on the map?

Does this work for anyone? My handouts don't get the hyperlink when I use the [ ] in the handouts EDIT: Nevermind, I just had to type it in without anything more to create it, solved it.

Couldn't you also just use the "/me" command to send a message to just that player?

i put the /w @{selected|token_name} to whisper to player -it works, but having a second targeted bar link crashes roll20 ^ sends to error page

So I'm getting a duplicate output. like it requests the information twice: using this code: !me &{template:default} {{name=@{target|Select a Location|token_name}}} {{@{target|Select a Location|bar1} [``More Info``](@{target|Select a Location|bar1|max})}}