One Membership, Every Site
A single membership covers the whole DND family — the Free, Pro, and AI-credits tiers, what's always free, and why nothing is charged during beta.
Your membership is not something you buy four times. One membership rides your single shared account and covers DNDCards.com, DND.chat, DNDWar.com — and DNDNote.com when it lands. There is no per-site billing.
One membership, not per-site
The DND family runs on one shared account: sign in once and the same identity, workspaces, campaigns, cards, and characters are yours everywhere. Your membership works the same way — whatever tier you're on applies across every site at once. There is no separate DND.chat subscription and no separate DNDWar plan.
The real, code-backed membership model lives in DND.chat (the tavern), and it has three tiers: Free, Pro, and AI credits.
The three tiers
| Tier | Price | Status | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Live (beta) | Campaign chat & auditable dice, card conjures & initiative, session scheduling & uploads, the default dice palette |
| Pro | TBD | Coming soon | Premium cosmetics, priority voice rooms, expanded narration & recap AI, early access to autopilot sessions |
| AI credits | Packs | Coming soon | Pay-as-you-go meter for LLM features only — never required for core chat or dice |
Free — the whole tavern, today
Free is the only active tier, and during beta its eyebrow reads Beta — included rather than "Free". It is full tavern access: Campaign chat & auditable dice, Card conjures & initiative, Session scheduling & uploads, and the Default dice palette (tome, frost, ember themes). The CTA is Enter the tavern.
Pro — premium polish, after beta
Pro is a cosmetic-and-capacity tier marked Coming soon with a price of TBD. Its planned highlights are Alternate dice skins (metal, obsidian, bone), Priority voice rooms (LiveKit), Expanded narration & recap AI allowance, and Early access to autopilot sessions. None of these are enforced today; the Pro card shows no purchase button. (The actual Pro subscription price isn't yet defined.)
AI credits — the LLM meter
AI credits is the pay-as-you-go wrapper for the per-user credit ledger, priced as Packs and also marked Coming soon. It meters Color commentary lines on rolls, Session recap generation, and Autopilot DM scene turns — and is Never required for core chat or dice. For pack prices, exactly which endpoints debit credits, and the checkout reality, see the AI Credits & Billing reference.
Always free vs. metered
The split is simple: anything mechanical and deterministic is free forever, and only the LLM (large-language-model) features ever meter.
- Always free, never gated: core campaign chat and the auditable dice that every roll writes to the log. The credits tier itself states Never required for core chat or dice.
- Metered (LLM only): color commentary on rolls, DM session recaps, and Autopilot DM scenes.
In practice that means you can run an entire campaign — a human DM, async or live — on the Free tier without ever touching an AI feature. The AI is opt-in, not a tax on playing.
The same split shows up in the PDF Shredder and structured import: the deterministic Markdown/JSON adventure import is free and instant — it skips the AI pass entirely — while the AI shred path runs on AI credits, included free during beta.
Why nothing is charged today
Everything is free during beta, and that's enforced in several places at once:
- Beta mode is on (
NEXT_PUBLIC_BETA_MODE=true), so the pricing and feature pages show beta banners and the Pro and AI credits tiers display Coming soon. tierForUser()hard-returnsfreefor every user, so Pro gating is never applied.- The
ai_credits.enabledflag defaults off, which makes credit consumption a no-op — LLM calls succeed and never reduce a balance. - Stripe checkout is a stub. There is no live checkout, so no payment can occur.
The net effect is that the product is effectively all-Free in beta: Pro and AI-credit billing are defined in code and listed on the pricing page, but flagged "Coming soon" and not charged. The deeper billing-state details — the stub checkout, the balance API, and admin top-ups — live on the Credits & Billing page.
Dice skins are cosmetic only
Tiering touches one visible thing: dice skins. The free skins — Tome, Frost glass, and Ember coal — are always usable. The Pro skins — Gilded metal, Obsidian, and Bone ivory — are purely cosmetic with No gameplay effect, since the audited roll log stays the source of truth. During beta the Pro skins carry a Beta tag and are selectable for free; after beta they tag Pro and lock.
Don't confuse this with DNDCards' marketing tiers
DNDCards.com has its own separate marketing pricing page with different, aspirational tier names: Adventurer (Free, "while in development"), Archmage (TBD, "pricing being decided"), and Guild (TBD, "for groups & creators"). Those have no billing behind them — they are placeholder copy, not the real membership tiers.
The real, code-backed model is the Free / Pro / AI credits set described above. Don't conflate the two. (There's also a separate gamification rank in DNDCards — Novice / Journeyman / Loremaster / Archloremaster — but that's a cosmetic DM rank, not a paid tier.)
Where to go next
- AI Credits & Billing — pack prices, the metered endpoints, the checkout stub, and admin top-ups.
- How It All Connects — why one account and one membership span the whole family.
- FAQ & Troubleshooting — quick answers on "is it free?" and "what needs credits?".
DNDNote.com — Coming Soon
DNDNote.com is the planned fourth DND family site — not yet built, but already promised one account and one membership with the rest of the family.
AI Credits & Billing Reference
The credit packs, which LLM features debit credits and how much, the balance API, the Stripe checkout stub, and admin top-ups — nothing is charged in beta.