All players pull from single deck, how to mask cards?

Module Design
1

I’ve got a game where all players draw from a single deck (so nobody ‘owns’ the cards). The game involves multiple players choosing a card (or cards) and playing it into an area face down, then revealing one of them.

I was hoping to use the “mask” trait to allow players to mask the card so that they can see what it is (with a black border around the outside to show that it is masked), but other players only see the card back. By using the mask trait and setting it to ‘any side’ instead of any player, this works the way I would like but…

The players need to be able to swap cards without revealing them to the rest of the players. And it appears that once one player ‘masks’ a card, they are the only ones who can unmask it again. Is there some way to change a cards ‘ownership’ when it is placed into a specific location? So if player 1 masks a card in their hand, places it into the trade area, and player 2 drags it to their hand, they can gain ownership and unmask it?

2

Make your specific location an empty deck that the player places the card on - the so called “trade area” - this removes ownership and allows the next player to pickup the card without revealing and gain ownership for themselves

3

Ah, that’s clever! I didn’t realize decks did that. I also found a setting in the global options which allows anyone to mask or unmask cards regardless of ownership (but the cards are still hidden from the everyone but the person who masked it).

4

Is there a way to know (or change) the starting mask state at the beginning of a game?

I have two face-down draw piles (decks) of cards, one for each main side. If I put the “Draw Specific Cards” ability on the decks, then at the beginning of the game if one activates that function, some of the cards will be (apparently randomly) masked and some will not. This is from a “clean start” of the module, not a saved file or scenario. Different times, different cards will be masked.

Ideally I’d like all the cards in the draw pile to start NOT masked by any player, but I’m not sure how to accomplish this.