Troubleshooting

Most of what goes wrong at a remote table is the network, and most of it fixes itself. This chapter is arranged by what you see on the screen: what it means, and what to do about it.

One rule sits above all of them. Ending the session is a last resort. It clears the live map, the session's dice photos, and the fight on every device at the table. If one person has a problem, fix that one person.

"Connection lost." (player)

What you see. A dark overlay covers the whole screen with a spinner, the words "Connection lost.", the line "Tap Reconnect when your network is restored.", and a Reconnect button.

What it means. The channel to the DM's device is down. Usually wifi or cell service on your end.

What to do. Wait until your network is actually back, then tap Reconnect. The button reads "Connecting..." while it works.

• There is no code to type again. Your device remembers the session.
• You keep your color, your token on the map, and your place in the initiative order.
• Far Table never reconnects by itself. A device hammering a dead network helps nobody, and it hides from you that anything was wrong.
• Anything the DM revealed while you were away arrives on its own once you are back. See chapter 16, Staying in Sync.

If tapping Reconnect does nothing repeatedly, the problem is almost always the network, not the app. Switch from wifi to cell service, or back, and tap it again.

A player vanished from the roster (DM)

What you see. A row on the Players card is simply gone. No message, no dialog.

What it means. That player's device dropped and did not come back within about twelve seconds. Far Table holds a dropped seat for that long, so a quick blip is invisible to you and nothing on your screen changes at all. Past that, the seat is released.

What to do. Nothing on your device. The player rejoins with the same join code and your device catches them up as a late joiner. Keep playing; do not end the session, and do not restart hosting.

"Sync interrupted" and "Map transfer interrupted" (player)

What you see. The slim sync banner at the top of a player's screen changes to one of:

• "Map transfer interrupted. DM will retry."
• "Sync interrupted: N of Y failed. DM will retry."

Then it clears itself.

What it means. A transfer broke off partway. The banner deliberately relabels itself instead of freezing on a percentage, so a stalled transfer looks like a failure rather than a number that never moves.

What to do. Keep playing. The DM's device retries on its own. If the map still has not arrived a minute or two later, the DM can present it again from the Atlas.

That banner only ever reports material coming in. It never fires on the DM's device for material going out.

A red dot in Network Status (DM)

What you see. In the Network Status panel on the Session tab, one player's row carries a red dot, and the collapsed summary line reflects it.

What it means. A transfer to that player failed. Amber means they are still receiving; green means idle and up to date.

What to do. Wait a moment. Your device retries. If a row stays red while the rest of the table is green, that player's connection is the problem: have them tap Reconnect on their side. Chapter 14, Hosting a Session, covers reading the panel in full.

A backup would not write (DM)

What you see. A short message slides up naming a reason and a stable error code. No file is offered.

What it means. Something failed on the way: a missing image file, a write error, or an artifact that no longer matches its recorded fingerprint. Far Table refuses to hand you a half-good backup.

What to do. Try again. If it fails the same way twice, write the error code down before you do anything else. Nothing on your device was changed by the attempt.

Restore failure messages (DM)

Restoring reads a file before it writes anything, so a bad file costs you nothing.

• "not a valid backup file (RS01)" means the file you picked is not a Far Table campaign backup at all.
• "the file couldn't be read (RS02)" means it is unreadable: truncated, corrupted, or still copying down from a cloud folder. Let a cloud sync finish, then try again.

A plain restore that fails leaves your device exactly as it was.

Replace failure messages (DM)

Replacing an existing campaign from a backup is the one flow that overwrites real work, so its failures are dialogs you must dismiss, not messages that slide away. "Nothing happened" is the one thing you cannot afford to miss.

• Replace didn't run. The safety copy could not be made, so Far Table refused to start. Your campaign is untouched.
• Replace failed. It stopped partway, and your previous version was put back automatically.
• The rare bad one. The replace failed and the automatic rollback also failed. The dialog tells you your previous version is saved as a verified snapshot, not to delete anything, and to get help recovering it. Take that literally: stop, leave the campaign alone, keep the error code.

Chapter 31, Backing Up and Restoring Campaigns, covers the whole flow.

"This page could not be saved." (homebrew editor)

What you see. A red strip across the top of the entry editor reading "This page could not be saved.", with a Retry next to it.

What it means. The homebrew editor has no Save button. Every field you commit saves itself, and this strip appears when one of those saves failed. Your typed work is still on screen; it is not yet on disk.

What to do. Tap Retry. Do not tap Back while the strip is showing: Back is only safe when the autosave is clean. If Retry keeps failing, stay on the page, free up whatever you can on the device, and retry again; the strip does not give the reason, but a full disk is the usual one.

"showing official content only" (reference and homebrew)

What you see. A persistent banner across the reference surface: "Your homebrew library could not be opened. Showing official content only.", with a Retry.

What it means. Your homebrew library file is on the device but could not be attached to the rules engine. Official content still works. Your own entries are invisible for now, in cards, in search, and everywhere you would pick one.

What to do. Tap Retry, which rebuilds both editions' engines and tries to attach the file again. If it comes back, restart the app. If it still comes back, restore your library from a .ftlib library backup: a library restore is all-or-nothing and states plainly what it would change before it runs. Nothing is silently merged.

Your homebrew is not lost while this banner is up. It is not being read.

The demo campaign offer is gone (DM)

What you see. The "Try the demo campaign" row at the foot of the campaign list is no longer there.

What it means. You already imported it. Once taken up, the demo is a normal campaign row under its own name, with the same row menu as any other campaign, and the standing offer disappears so there is never a second entry for the same thing.

What to do. Scroll the campaign list and open it by name. If you deleted it, the offer comes back at the foot of the list. Chapter 3, The Demo Campaign and the Tutorial, covers re-importing and replaying the tutorial from step one.

Before you end the session

Ending is the blunt instrument, and it is almost never the right answer to one person's problem. It clears, on every device at the table:

• The active map.
• The session's dice photos.
• Combat and encounter state.

The Atlas survives, and so does everything you already revealed to a player, which stays browsable on their own device with no session at all. But the fight does not, and neither does the map you spent ten minutes staging.

So work down this list first:

1. Have the affected player tap Reconnect.
2. If that fails, have them leave and rejoin with the same code. They come back as a late joiner and are caught up automatically.
3. If their device is beyond saving, keep playing without them and present what they missed when they return.

End the session when the night is over. Not before.

That is the manual. Go run a game.