Error Messages

"Something went wrong on our side."

That sentence, always those words, means a system fault: something the app or the server did wrong, not something you did. Whatever you were doing was reasonable and did not work, and there is nothing to correct on your end.

The panel that says it offers:

• Retry — runs the thing that failed again. It appears only when a retry could plausibly succeed (a request that did not reach the server, a server that answered with an error); a bug in the page itself does not get one, because it would fail the same way.
• Reload the app — a full reload, which clears whatever state the page was in.
• Report this — sends us a report (see below). The button tells you what happened to it: sent, or opened in your mail app because the report could not be sent.
• Details — folded away under the panel: a status code, a short technical note. It is there for whoever helps you, not for you to decode.
• Status and Support links.
• Roll back and Preview previous version — when the fault is against a campaign, map or character you can edit. See Rolling back a fault.

The same message can appear as a notification in the corner rather than a panel, with the same Retry and Report buttons, when the failure happened in the background — a list that did not refresh, a save that did not land.

If the server is unreachable, every request fails at once with this message rather than each one waiting on its own; the app checks every fifteen seconds whether the server is back and reconnects itself when it is. Retry on any of those messages checks right away.

Anything else

Any other message is a user error: the specific thing the app can tell you, in its own words, about what did not work — a slug that is already taken, a file that is too large, a character you do not have access to — and, when there is one, what to do about it: a field to fix, an alternative to click, a rule to read.

There is no Report button on these, because there is nothing for us to fix; the message is the fix. If a message of this kind is wrong — it says you cannot do something you should be able to — that is worth a report through Support, and the message itself is what to quote.

Asking for access

A permission message — you do not have access to this character — carries a Request access button when the app knows what you were refused. It opens a small dialog where you pick the level you need (Viewer, Collaborator or Editor); whoever can share that thing gets a notification and answers from its Share dialog, and you get a notification with the answer. Once you have asked, the message says Access requested … ago — waiting for an answer instead of offering the button again; if the request is declined, it says so and lets you ask again. When access is granted, the page loads on its own.

Who can help. Inside a campaign you belong to, the dialog names the members who could grant that level, by username. Outside one, it says only to contact the owner(s) of this asset — the app does not surface other people's names to justify a button.

A message without a Request access button is one where the app could not tell what was refused; the owner is still the person to ask.

Rolling back a fault

When Something went wrong on our side is about a campaign, a map or a character you can edit, the panel offers two more things:

• Roll back opens that thing's history with the previous version selected, so putting it back is one more click.
• Preview previous version shows the previous version without changing anything. If it shows correctly, you get a Roll back to this version button — and a report is filed for us automatically, carrying the change that broke it, because a change that broke a page is exactly what we want to hear about.

What "Report this" sends

A report is sent only when you click it, never automatically. It carries what someone answering it needs and nothing they should not have:

• the page you were on, the app version and build,
• your user id (an identifier, not your name or email),
• the ids of the campaign, map or character on screen,
• the error itself, as the app classified it,
• the last twenty requests the app made — method, path, status and timing, never what was in them,
• the last thirty lines the app logged to the browser console, with anything shaped like a key or a token blanked out,
• your browser and window size,
• anything you typed into the report.

It does not carry request or response contents, your chat, your characters, or any API key you have set in Settings.

If the report cannot be sent — because the server is what is broken — the same text opens in your mail app addressed to support, and you can send it or not.