[CGMZ] Party Manager (Patreon)

Manage your parties (including alternate / reserve parties) and add more party-based mechanics.

! SEE BOTTOM OF POST FOR UPDATES !

Hi all, introducing [CGMZ] Party Manager!

This plugin adds party mechanics beyond what RPG Maker provides, or makes party management easier to handle for you.

Formation & Battle Locking

By default, your player can move any actor around the party using the Formation command in the main menu. This might not be ideal, for example if you have a main actor that you want to always be in the first slot. To help give more control over this, this plugin allows you to lock actors in two ways: formation and battle lock.

Formation Lock means that the actor will not be able to be changed at all using the Formation menu command, if they are in the first or the third or any other position in the party, the player will not be able to move them.

Battle Lock means that the actor will not be able to be moved outside of the battle slots, which by default are the first four party members. They can be freely moved around within the battle slots. This can come in handy if you want to make sure an actor is in battle, but want to allow your player to move them around within battle.

Battle Members

This plugin assigns a variable to change the maximum actors that can take part in battle, allowing you to easily change how many actors can participate in a battle on the fly. Maybe your game starts out only allowing for one party member to battle, and over time the player gains the ability to use more actors in battle.

Note that while this plugin does allow you to add any number of actors to battle, it does not change battle UI. By default, more than 4 battlers did seem to work in my tests, but might be a bit hard to navigate for your players. If allowing more than 4 battlers, I would recommend to also pair this with a battle UI plugin that can accommodate more than 4 battlers.

Alternate Parties

In many RPGs, the party might split up or you might want to follow different stories during your game. This plugin allows you to create alternate parties that can then be swapped to by id. The basic flow is to 1) create alternate party, 2) swap to party by id, 3) swap back to main party (or other alternate party) as needed.

Plugin commands exist to add or remove actors from alternate parties even while they are not the main party. Swapping party determines which party members will be in the party, but does not affect other parts that you may associate with the party such as inventory. To change inventory, you can use [CGMZ] Multiple Inventories or other similar plugins. Future updates will make this integration more automatic.

Quick Facts

✅ RPG Maker MZ✅ No obfuscation✅ No AI used at any point in the creation of this plugin

Support

Casper Gaming provides quick support to any user who needs it. You can leave a comment below with your question or issue, I try to check my Patreon at least once a day. For even quicker support, you can come into the Casper Gaming Discord and ask for help in the #support channel.

Roadmap

This plugin was initially created as a small monthly plugin, though of course there are tons of party mechanics that can be added so it will be expanded upon greatly in the future. Below are planned updates, in no particular order:

Plugin Commands to move actor positions in the party

Further control over alternate parties and integration with inventory management plugins

Casper Gaming plugins are made better through community suggestions. I am always happy to hear any features you'd like to see added that I may not have thought of already. Please leave any suggestions you have in the comments below, or in the #suggestions channel of the Casper Gaming Discord. I add all suggestions to my to-do list.

Happy RPG Making!

This version adds a scene where your player can swap party members between parties. You can specify the reserve party the actors are swapped with. You can also choose the min and max size to allow for the current party so the player can't just swap everyone in. Note that min/max does not prevent canceling out of the scene if the party is not within those parameters to begin with (before the scene is called).

This scene also obeys formation lock. If there is an actor who is formation locked (such as locking your first actor to the party lead slot), they will not be able to be swapped. You can optionally override this formation lock.

See below gif for how the scene can look: