Chronica is free to use, but subscriptions unlock a few features and allow you to have additional players involved.

Who can manage one

Only the Game Owner — the person who created the campaign can manage the subscription. This is the one thing a Game Master cannot do: the role's own description says a GM "has complete access to everything except subscription settings." Nobody else can view the subscription page, change the tier, or see what is being paid.

The card on file belongs to you, though, not to a campaign. One payment method covers every subscription you own — add a card once and it is used for all of your campaigns.

The five tiers

Peasant (free), then Squire, Knight, Monarch, and Deity. Each step up raises the number of players your campaign can seat and how much file storage it has, and the first two steps unlock features. Section 3.1 covers what changes where.

Peasant is a real tier, not a trial. A free campaign keeps its data forever and has no time limit — it simply seats fewer players, stores fewer files, shows ads, and leaves some features locked.

Finding your subscription

From your User Dashboard, click the orange Manage Subscriptions button. That opens the Campaign Subscriptions page — listed as All Campaigns in the left-hand navigation — which shows every campaign you own with its tier, billing interval, and next payment date. From there, Edit Subscription opens that campaign's own subscription page, or you can pick the campaign by name in the left-hand navigation to go straight there.

What the subscription page shows

The Subscription Info card is the summary:

• Subscription Tier — your current tier, and either when it renews or, in red, when it expires if you have downgraded.
• Billed Monthly or Billed Annually — the amount and interval, or Free on Peasant.
• Payment Method — the last four digits of your card and its expiry, with a link through to Edit Payment Method.
• Coupon or Promo — shown only if one is applied.
• Next Payment — when the next charge lands, or a red note if the subscription is winding down.

Below it, Recent Payment History shows your most recent invoices with a Full History button through to the complete list, and Change Subscription Tier holds the pricing table and the buttons that move you between tiers.

Three things change as you move up the tiers: how many players your campaign can hold, how much file storage it has, and which features are available. The player and storage numbers are listed on the pricing table on your subscription page, which is always up to date, so they are not repeated here. The features are explained below, because they are usually what decides the choice.

What every tier includes

Most of Chronica is available on the free tier. Characters, quests, adventure notes, maps, kinships, domains, family trees, the calendar, events and attendance, currencies and wealth, items and inventories, the codex, developments and the dice roller are all included on Peasant.

What Squire adds

The first paid tier adds the largest number of new features. Moving to Squire or above:

• Removes ads. Ads appear only on free campaigns.
• Unlocks Places — the location records your maps and encounters link to.
• Unlocks Encounters and Entities — prepared combats and the creatures in them.
• Unlocks Campaign Shops and Kinship caches — shops with tills, and shared wealth for the groups your players belong to.
• Allows more than one Game Master. On the free tier only the Game Owner can run the campaign; from Squire up, the Game Owner can give other players the Game Master role.
• Allows extra character images beyond the main portrait.

If you are comparing the free tier with the first paid tier, Places and Encounters are usually the deciding features. Many parts of Chronica connect to each other through Places.

What Knight adds

Knight and above add the two storage-heavy features:

• The File Hub — upload and keep campaign files (handouts, maps, PDFs, music) in the campaign itself.
• The Image Library — a shared library of images you can attach across the campaign instead of re-uploading.

Monarch and Deity

These tiers do not add new features beyond Knight. They add capacity: many more player places and much more storage. Choose them when your group has grown too large for Knight, not because they unlock something new. Deity is built for very large games. The pricing table describes it as "perfect for large West Marches campaigns."

Monthly or annual

Most tiers offer both, and the annual option costs less over a year. There are two exceptions. Squire is annual only, so there is no monthly Squire plan. Peasant is free, so there is nothing to choose. Knight, Monarch and Deity each offer monthly and annual.

All tier changes are made on a campaign's subscription page, in the Change Subscription Tier card at the bottom. The pricing table has a button under each tier. The text on each button tells you your current position.

Reading the buttons

Making the change

1. Add a payment method first if you have not already — the change form cannot take card details, it links you to Billing Information. See 3.4.
2. Click the button for the plan you want. The panel above the pricing table fills in with Change Subscription Details: the tier, the campaign, and what you will be billed.
3. If you are upgrading between paid tiers, it also tells you the prorated amount you will be charged now.
4. Enter a Coupon or Promo Code if you have one.
5. Click Change Subscription! — once. It takes a moment.

Upgrading

Upgrades take effect immediately. You are billed at once, and the new tier's features become available straight away. If you are moving from one paid tier to another, you are charged only the difference for the remainder of your current period, not a full new period.

Downgrading

Downgrades are delayed. You keep your current tier until the end of the billing cycle you have already paid for. The change takes effect when that period ends. Nothing is refunded and nothing is deleted. Section 3.3 explains exactly what happens when the change takes effect.

Cancelling

There is no separate cancel button. Cancelling is the same action as downgrading to the free Peasant tier: click Switch to Free (Peasant). Billing stops, and you keep your paid features until the end of the period you have already paid for.

While a campaign is ending its paid period, the subscription page shows this clearly. The tier row shows the expiry date, and the Next Payment row reads "Cancelling — switches to Free (Peasant)" with the date. Both are shown in red.

If the change does not go through

If your card is declined when you subscribe for the first time, the panel shows the reason. Nothing is charged, and your campaign is unchanged. Correct your payment method (see 3.4) and try again.

Please read this section before you downgrade, not after. Chronica does not delete your data when your tier drops. However, some things become unavailable, and one of them needs a decision from you.

The rule underneath all of it

There is one exception: images, when your campaign is over its storage limit. This is important, so please read the storage warning below before you edit anything.

Players over the new seat limit

This is the part that needs your decision. If your campaign has more players than the new tier allows, Chronica asks you to choose which players keep a place.

Until you do, the campaign's feature pages send everyone to a lockout page. This affects characters, maps, quests, players and the other feature pages. The lockout page shows your total players, your unlocked players, the number your tier allows, and how many more players you need to lock.

1. Go through the player table and lock enough players to reach your allowed number.
2. Click Save Locked Status.
3. The campaign unlocks and everyone else carries on as normal.

Locking is not the same as removing. A locked player keeps everything: their characters, inventory, wealth and notes. They simply cannot open the campaign. On their dashboard, the campaign is shown with a padlock and a note asking them to contact their Game Owner. If they try to open it, they are refused. When you have space again, unlock them from the same page, and they continue exactly where they stopped.

Once you have space, an orange unlock shortcut appears next to your player list. It is shown to the Game Owner when there is at least one locked player and room to unlock someone.

Storage over the new limit

Your uploaded files are not deleted. You lose the ability to add more files until you are back under the limit, either by removing files or by upgrading.

Moving below Knight also hides the File Hub file list. The files are not deleted. You cannot browse them until you are on a tier that includes the File Hub.

Features that switch off

Any feature above your new tier becomes unavailable. Depending on how far you downgrade, this can include Places, Encounters, Entities, Shops, the Image Library and the File Hub. Ads return on the free tier. Images you already selected from the Image Library stay attached where you placed them, but you cannot open the library to choose more.

Extra Game Masters

Having more than one Game Master is a paid-tier feature. On the free tier you cannot assign new ones, and the option disappears from your players' settings. Game Masters you appointed earlier will usually keep working, but do not depend on this. If running your campaign requires a second Game Master, stay on a paid tier.

Billing Information in your Account Settings navigation is where your payment method is stored. It belongs to your account, not to a single campaign: one payment method is used for every subscription you own.

Adding or changing a card

1. Open Billing Information from the left-hand navigation in Account Settings.
2. Open Edit Payment Method. It is already open if you have no card saved.
3. Enter the Name on Card and your card details.
4. Click Update Card.

Your saved card is then shown under Your Payment Method as the last four digits and the expiry date. Adding a new card replaces the old one. There is one payment method per account, not a list.

If a card is declined, the page shows the reason and nothing is saved. Correct the details and try again. You will need to type the card number again, because the field cannot be refilled automatically for security reasons.

Paying with PayPal

PayPal is available instead of a card. It works differently from a card subscription, so please read this section before you choose it. PayPal subscriptions are arranged by our team rather than set up in the app, and they run for a fixed 12-month term.

To get one started, fill in the PayPal request form. We aim to reply within 8 hours during normal business hours (Pacific time), and within 24 hours outside them.

How PayPal subscriptions differ

• They do not renew automatically. This is the most important difference. A card subscription continues until you stop it. A PayPal subscription ends at the end of the term.
• They are sold in 12-month terms only. There is no monthly PayPal option.
• They are set up manually by our team, so there is a short wait instead of an immediate change.
• The annual discount still applies. Knight and Monarch tiers receive the usual annual discount of one free month.
• Charter Members keep their discount on Knight and Monarch.

Current pricing for every tier is on the pricing page.

Removing your payment method

There is no button to remove a payment method yourself, because a saved card and an active subscription must be stopped in the correct order. To have yours removed:

1. First, change every campaign you own to the free Peasant tier. This stops any further charges. Doing this first allows us to process your request quickly.
2. Email support@chronica.ventures and ask us to remove your payment method.
3. We will remove it from our system within 48 business hours and confirm.

Every charge Chronica has made is available to you, with an invoice you can download for each one.

The full history

Open Payment History from the left-hand navigation in Account Settings. It lists every payment on your account, newest first, with the date and time, the campaign it was for, and the amount. View Paid Invoice on any row opens the invoice, which you can save or print. This is the document to use as a receipt.

The list covers all of your campaigns together, so if you run several, this is the one place to see everything you have been charged.

The recent view

Each campaign's subscription page also has a Recent Payment History panel showing its latest invoices, and a Full History button that opens the complete list. If you have never been charged for that campaign, the panel says so.

Times on this page use the time zone of the device you are reading on, so they will be correct wherever you are.

Sometimes a payment does not go through. A card expires, or a bank declines the charge. This section explains what you will see and how to fix it.

What you will see

A campaign with a failed payment is paused. As the Game Owner, opening it takes you to a page titled "There is something wrong with this campaign subscription", with a link to your subscription settings. Your subscription page also shows a red banner at the top containing a Clear Subscription Error link.

Getting the campaign back

The cause is usually a card that has expired or been declined, so start there:

1. Go to Billing Information and update your payment method (3.4).
2. Return to the campaign's subscription page and re-select the tier you want.
3. If the banner is still showing afterwards, click Clear Subscription Error.

The campaign opens again once the subscription is active.

If you would rather not keep paying

You do not have to repair a card to get your campaign back. Moving to the free tier is a valid choice, and all of your data stays with the campaign. On the subscription page, click Clear Subscription Error. When a subscription has already been cancelled, or has expired after a failed payment, this button changes the campaign to the free Peasant tier and the campaign opens again immediately.

If Clear Subscription Error doesn't help

That button is only for one situation: a subscription that Stripe has already cancelled or allowed to expire. If your subscription is in a different state, the button will tell you so and direct you to support instead of making a change. This is not an error. It means the cause is something else.

If that happens, email support@chronica.ventures. Include the campaign name and roughly when the problem started. We will check the billing record directly and fix it.