Welcome to Chronica. This section covers getting an account, signing in, and finding your way around. It should take about five minutes.

Chronica is a campaign manager for tabletop roleplaying games. It does not assume a particular rule system — you build your own stats, abilities, currencies and world, so it fits whatever you play, from the best-known systems to something you wrote yourself.

Two ways to get started

Which one applies to you changes what happens next, so it is worth knowing which you are:

Both are covered in 1.1.

You need one account, and it works for every campaign you join or run.

If you were invited

Open the link in your invitation email. This route does more for you than signing up on your own:

• You pick a Username and a Password, confirm the password, and tick the Terms of Use box. Your email is already filled in from the invitation, so there is nothing to type there.
• You are signed in straight away — no separate login step.
• You are added to the campaign you were invited to.
• You and the person who invited you become friends in Chronica.

You land on your User Dashboard with the campaign already waiting for you.

If you already have a Chronica account

The invitation link does not ask you to sign up again. What you see depends on how you are signed in:

• Signed in as the invited address — you get a confirmation page. Click Accept Invitation and you are added to the campaign, with a friendship created at the same time.
• Not signed in, or signed in as someone else — Chronica asks you to log in as the invited address, then open the link from your email again.
• Already accepted it — Chronica tells you so. Nothing is broken; the campaign is already on your dashboard.

If you are joining on your own

Go to the Join page and fill in the four boxes:

• Email — used to sign in, and for anything Chronica needs to send you.
• Username — what other players see. Up to 15 characters, letters, numbers, dashes and underscores, and it has to be one nobody else has taken.
• Password — at least 6 characters.
• Confirm Password — the same password again.

Then tick the box to agree to the Terms of Use. The same box confirms you understand Chronica may send you occasional emails, which you can unsubscribe from at any time. You will also complete a reCAPTCHA check, which keeps automated signups out.

Click Join Now.

Chronica then takes you to the login page with a message confirming you have joined. Sign in with the email and password you just chose — see 1.2.

If something in the form is not accepted, Chronica returns you to the Join page with a message explaining what to change, and keeps your email and username so you do not have to type them again.

If you signed up before using your invitation

No harm done, and you do not need a new invitation. Open the invitation link again while signed in as that address, and click Accept Invitation. You will be added to the campaign then.

Chronica join page

On the Log In page, enter your Email and Password, then click Log In. You land on your User Dashboard, which lists your campaigns and is where you start from each time.

Tick Remember me on this computer to stay signed in between visits. Leave it unticked on a shared or public computer.

If you have forgotten your password

1. Click (Forgot Password), next to the Password label.
2. Enter your email address and submit it.
3. Chronica shows a message saying that if the address is on file, reset instructions are on the way. The message is the same whether or not the address has an account — that is deliberate, so nobody can use the page to find out who has an account.
4. Open the email and follow the link, then choose a new password.

If your email and password do not match an account, the page says so without saying which of the two was wrong.

Chronica login screen

Forgot password screen

Once you are inside Chronica — your dashboard, a campaign, or this guidebook — the same bar sits across the top of every page.

On the left is the Chronica logo, which takes you home. On the right:

• Dice — opens the dice roller. See 1.3.1.
• Help — a menu holding Guidebook (this book), Help / FAQ, Feature Request, Bug Report and Contact Us.
• Your username and picture — a menu holding User Dashboard, Account Settings, Invites & Referrals and Log Out.

Before you sign in, the same bar shows Log In and Join in place of your name.

On a narrow screen, Dice and Help shrink to icons and your username drops away, leaving your picture.

The Charter mark

If you joined Chronica in its first days, a laurel wreath and the word Charter appear in orange beside the logo. It marks you as a Charter Member — a thank-you for being here early. (This icon may be hidden on smaller, mobile screens, but if you're a Charter Member it will still apply!)

The top bar navigation, once logged into Chronica

Click Dice in the top bar to open the dice roller. It opens in a window over whatever page you are on, so you can roll without losing your place, and closes again when you are done.

It covers d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20 and d100. You can set how many of each die to roll, and add or subtract a modifier from the result — so several dice and a modifier in one go, not just one die at a time.

Results build up in a list inside the window, which gives you a running log for as long as the window is open. Reset All clears it.

The roller is available on every page inside Chronica, including when you are logged out on the Log In page. It is not on the public pages such as Join or Pricing.

Dice modal window

Feature Request, under the Help menu, opens a short form where you can tell us what you would like Chronica to do. It opens in a new tab, on the service we use to collect requests.

Please send one idea per request. It makes them far easier to compare, and to come back to later when we are deciding what to build next.

Requests are read by the Chronica team. We cannot promise a reply to each one, and we cannot promise a date for anything, but they shape what gets built — a good deal of what is in Chronica now started as a member's request.

Feature Request button in the Help dropdown

Chronica feature request form

Bug Report, under the Help menu, is for anything in Chronica that is not working as it should. It opens in a new tab, on the service we use to collect reports.

Three things make a report much easier to act on:

• What you were doing — the page you were on and what you clicked.
• What you expected, and what happened instead.
• Whether it happens every time, or happened once.

A screenshot helps more than anything else, especially for something that looks wrong on screen. If you saw an error message, copying its wording exactly is worth more than describing it.

Bug Report button in the Help dropdown

Chronica bug report form

Once you open a campaign, every page is laid out the same way. Learning it once means you can find anything.

The left navigation

Down the left side is everything the campaign holds. At the top, under the campaign's own name, are the pages you will use most: Campaign Overview, Party Info, your Player Dashboard, Player Inventories and Adventure Notes.

Below those, the rest is grouped:

• Session Tools — what you reach for while playing.
• Campaign Tools — the world itself, and the records that outlast a session.
• Admin Settings — the things that shape how the campaign works. Game Masters see this, and so do players their Game Master has given an admin role. If you have one, you see only the sections your role covers.

On a free campaign you will also see a Paid-tier Features group. Those links lead to a description of what each feature does rather than to the feature itself.

If a Game Master does not use some features, they can hide those links. Nothing is lost by hiding them — Game Masters keep a Hidden Links group at the bottom of the navigation, and can show anything again at any time.

The navigation belongs to a campaign, so it appears once you have opened one. On your User Dashboard you will not see it.

The rest of the page

• The bar at the top of the content holds the actions for the page you are on — adding something, editing, opening that feature's own guide.
• The main area shows the content, usually in panels you can read in any order.
• The top bar stays where it is, so Dice, Help and your account are always one click away. See 1.3.

Links are colour-coded across Chronica, so after a short while you can tell what a button does before you read it.

Finding help while you work

Several features link to their own section of this guidebook, either from the bar at the top of the page or from an empty panel — look for Guide or Guidebook. Help / FAQ in the top bar answers shorter, more specific questions, and the full Guidebook is always in the Help menu.

What to do next

If you were invited to a campaign, it is already on your User Dashboard — open it and have a look around.

If you are starting your own, your dashboard's Campaigns box has a green New Campaign button. 4.1 Creating a Campaign covers what to fill in, and 4.0 Campaign Overview explains the page you will spend the most time on.

You do not need to set everything up before you play. Most Game Masters add stats, currencies and NPCs as the game needs them.

Campaign left navigation

Campaign main bar

Campaign main content area