Support & FAQ

Display names must be 3 to 30 characters long and may contain only letters, numbers, underscores, and hyphens. They cannot start or end with an underscore or hyphen.

Names that pass the character rules can still fail uniqueness: every player's display name must be globally unique across all worlds. The server returns a 409 Conflict if the name is already taken, with a generic message that doesn't confirm which name slot is occupied.

If you keep hitting collisions on a common name, try adding a regional suffix or a culture-themed prefix — "Wulfric-of-York" or "Ulf_Skogen" almost always lands.

— The Steward

Password reset has not yet shipped on the backend. The authentication slice (Slice 07) gave us account creation, login, and refresh-token rotation, but a self-service reset flow is a separate slice that has not been written.

Until it lands, send a note through the contact form below with the email address you used at registration. The team can manually reset your password through the database during the pre-alpha window.

This caveat will be retired from the FAQ the moment the reset endpoint ships.

— The Steward

The current Sign Out button only clears the local session — it deletes the refresh token from your browser's storage and forgets the access token in memory. The server-side refresh token row remains valid until its 7-day expiry, which is how multi-device login is intended to work.

A logout endpoint that revokes a specific refresh token (or every token under an account) is on the backend roadmap but has not been built yet. The relevant entry in docs/current-phase.md lists "Logout / refresh-token revocation endpoints" as out-of-scope for the current backend phase.

If you suspect a token has been compromised, contact support and we can revoke it directly in the database.

— The Steward

This is Windows SmartScreen doing its job. The pre-alpha builds are not signed with an EV code-signing certificate yet, so SmartScreen warns that the publisher is unknown.

On the warning dialog, click "More info," then "Run anyway." Windows remembers the choice for that specific binary, so subsequent launches go straight through.

If you don't see the "Run anyway" option, right-click the .exe, choose Properties, look for an Unblock checkbox at the bottom of the General tab, and tick it. This happens when the file inherits the "downloaded from the internet" marker from your browser.

An EV certificate is on the procurement list for the first public beta.

— Field Engineer

The app is fine. The message is Gatekeeper's way of saying the binary is not notarized by Apple — a much harsher warning than the older "unidentified developer" prompt.

Right-click (or Control-click) the app in your Applications folder and choose Open. macOS will show a softer dialog with an Open button. After confirming once, the app launches normally on every subsequent double-click.

On Sequoia and recent Ventura builds, the right-click path is being phased out. If the dialog refuses outright, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click "Open Anyway" next to the Marcher Houses entry that appears after a launch attempt.

Apple Developer Program notarization will land before the first public beta.

— Field Engineer

Not yet. The Phase 1 platform list is Windows and macOS only. The Unity client targets both, and a Linux build is technically achievable from the same codebase, but it has not been a build target or a tested platform during pre-alpha.

If there is enough community demand once the public alpha opens, a Linux build is a reasonable Phase 3 addition. The frontend's release schema is already written to accept new platforms without code changes — only the data file widens.

— Field Engineer

Each culture locks two things at registration: where on the world map you spawn, and which five unique buildings your house can construct. The standard universal buildings — Wheat Field, Granary, Warehouse, Barracks, Quarry, Woodcutter's Hut, Great Hall, and the rest — are available to every culture.

Anglo-Saxons spawn in the lowlands of southern England and the Welsh border. Open arable land, generous wheat output, very exposed to enemy marches.

Franks spawn in the fertile river valleys of northern France and Normandy. The Seine and Loire support vineyards and dense trade — wealth and risk arrive on the same road.

Norse spawn on the rugged coasts of southern Norway, the Scottish Highlands, and the northern Danelaw. Poor farmland but excellent natural choke points. A Norse hall in the fjords can hold for years against numbers that would crush a lowland keep in a season.

— Court Chronicler

Renown is the political and military currency of the realm. Every player generates a small natural Renown trickle over time, so progression never stalls completely. Renown buys two things: lifetime rank-ups (Thane, Earl, Marcher Lord, Sovereign) and the right to launch offensive marches — every attack consumes a flat amount of Renown from your current pool.

Banquets are how lords accelerate their Renown gain. A Banquet consumes refined goods produced by culture- and terrain-gated industry — tapestries from Highland villages, salted sturgeon from coastal wharves, fine wine from Frankish river valleys — and applies a time-limited multiplier to your natural Renown trickle.

Banquets never consume raw production staples (Wheat, Wood, Stone). Only refined goods qualify. The Banquet is the spend mechanic; rank-up and march launch are the consumption mechanics.

Renown ships as part of the backend's Phase 2 work and lands the moment the engine writes the first Refined Good to a player's stores.

— Court Chronicler

It's the anti-spam invariant. Without a per-march cost, a high-rank player with a large standing army could endlessly probe the borders of every neighbor for free, breaking the strategic economy of the realm.

Each offensive march consumes a flat amount of Renown from your pool the moment it's issued. The cost is independent of distance and army size in the current implementation. Defensive movements (returning to your own Castles) cost no Renown.

The current cost is documented in the backend's Slice 29 record. It will be tuned with player data once the alpha opens.

— Court Chronicler

A Charter is your individual village plot on the world map — a permanent, hand-authored slice of geography. At registration, after you pick your culture, the engine assigns you a random available Charter inside your culture's region. The terrain type of the Charter (Highland, Woodland, Coastal, RiverValley, Fenland) is permanent and dictates which raw resources your settlement can refine.

The Castle is what you build on your Charter. Your first Castle is the keep on your starting Charter, raised automatically when you complete onboarding. Subsequent Castles are earned by claiming additional Charters through conquest, alliance, or seasonal events — but those mechanics are gated behind backend slices that have not all shipped yet.

If you ever see the word Charter alone in the UI, it's the land. Castle is the keep you raised on that land.

— Court Chronicler