I'm hoping the guys/gals in charge read these posts...

And if they don't, any of you that know them, please pass this along.

Beyond that whole tag thing, a GM should have a basically simple tic box to differentiate between players and NPCs...and expand that tag box.

Having to put NPC in an already limited text box and distinguishing between the 2....

This is what should happen, each character should be given a designation, not even involving tags... a simple check box.

Moved from Technical Discussions as it this is a suggestion for a change to the existing interface.

And yes, jase, the guy in charge, does read the RPoL Development threads when he's working on code changes.   Sometimes an idea will just appeal to him, other times it might make the to-do list if there's sufficient support from other users, so it's up to you to make the pitch.  :>

But in relation to your suggestion ... if I understand you correctly I think the system is doing all that already ?

Player vs NPC access is set at the player level, not the character level. From the FAQ:

There are four levels of access a player may have to a game.

Access	Details
Player	This is the normal access for players in the game.  Players can reply to posts in groups they're in, can send and receive Private Messages, and can use the Dice Roller.  They cannot start new threads, they can only see Private Lines addressed directly to them, and they can only edit or delete their own posts.
Editor	Editors, true to their name, can edit other players' posts; otherwise their permissions are the same as those for a player.  Private lines are hidden when an editor modifies another player's post.
GM	GMs can edit or delete others' posts (except for those of other GMs) and can start new threads.  They can see all threads and Private Messages in the game, regardless of what groups they are assigned to, and they can tell whether rolls on the die roller have been fudged.  They can add or remove players from the game.  The only players they cannot affect are other GMs.
NPC	This is the normal access for the GM's characters in the game.  NPCs can reply to posts in groups they're in, can send and receive Private Messages, and can use the Dice Roller.  They may be used start new threads so long as they are controlled by a GM.

And there's a note under character creation re the tag field that says:

Note 1: A Character tag has no bearing on a player's access to your game, it is for display purposes only.
GMs & editors will have their primary character forced to have the tag the same as their access levels, players can have anything (e.g. 'player', 'team leader', 'coven member').
If you do not enter a tag it will default to 'NPC' for (secondary characters for) GMs and 'player' for all other access levels.

Unless there was something else you were looking for ?  GM customisable pre-defined tag list (though that would be better selected from dropdown than tickboxes) ?

I think what gygax is referring to is when you look at the cast list. In the game's cast list, you need to have "NPC" in the tag in order to keep them in the NPC section - so if you want to title Mr. Charles as "Black Maria Captain" to specify which ship he's the captain of in the tag (or some similarity long tag), there's no room to include NPC, which means that, despite being an NPC, he's now sitting in with the rest of the players in the cast list.

A minor detail of organization, but it would be a neat little feature - to have some way of determining what section of the cast list the character's name appears.

+1 from me, as I have this issue in some of my own games.

There does seem to be a direct link between the Tag and cast list.  one of the Working tags not listed yet is "hidden" which among other thing causes the Character not to show on the cast list and I think disables it's use until given to someone or perhaps unhidden.

I would not be suprised to discover the programing constructing the list uses certain listed tags to place items in GM, and NPC, but simply places anything else in players. by default.

It might be possible if that is true to apend a ":" to the tag NPC which is the part that places it in the cast list, and if ":" is there only print any letters following it.

This might be simpler then changing the whole system in place.. Now, how Hard that might be only Jase knows.
This message was last edited by the user at 00:50, Wed 06 Apr 2016.

Hiding parts of Tags that come before the first colon would be a potentially simple solution for that to allow people to exclude that if they really wanted to.  It sounds pretty reasonable.  Might catch someone who wanted to use a : [don't know if they are presently allowed]  But you could probably solve that by simply starting it with a colon, and allowing subsequent colons and the things before them to be displayed.