Backing Up and Restoring Campaigns

Your campaign lives on one device. No account, no server, no copy held for you anywhere. A backup file is all that stands between a lost phone and a lost campaign, so the campaign list nags you in amber until you make one.

This is a DM chapter. Players have nothing to back up; their copy of what you revealed is chapter 30, Browse Offline: the Player's Atlas.

Making a backup

Open the campaign list, tap the three-dot menu at the right of the campaign row, and choose Back up…. It is the same menu on a Mac or Windows machine, opened with a click.

The app packs everything into one file named after the campaign, ending in .ftbk, re-reading every map and image against its recorded fingerprint as it goes. If anything has drifted, the backup is abandoned rather than handed to you half-good. Then a sheet titled BACK UP TO… shows the file name, its size in megabytes, and a green verified checkmark, which is the point of the exercise: the file was written and read back intact.

Two destinations:

• To a drive or folder… opens your operating system's save dialog: a thumb drive, a network drive, or a folder your cloud service syncs.
• Somewhere else… opens the share sheet: AirDrop or Save to Files on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, Nearby Share on Windows, Quick Share on Android.

Mac and Android list sharing first; Windows lists the drive first. iPhone and iPad have sharing only, so the share sheet opens directly. Cancelling the save dialog does not count as a backup, and when a share hands off without telling the app whether it landed, the "last backed up" line does not advance.

Restoring

Restore always starts inside the app. Tap Restore backup at the bottom of the campaign list. A sheet titled RESTORE FROM… offers:

• A backup file… the operating system's file picker.
• Safety copy: your last replace. The snapshot the app takes just before replacing a campaign. One per campaign, and it cannot be deleted by hand.
• Received backups. Bundles that arrived from another device you paired with. Each has a menu with Share, Save to, and Delete from this device.

One thing to know: tapping a .ftbk file in Finder, Files, or an AirDrop notification does not start a restore. Far Table is the file's icon and handler, but opening it lands you on the app's start screen with nothing changed. Come back here and use the picker.

Once you pick a file, the app reads only its header, writes nothing, and names the campaign, item count, and size. A file that is not a backup says "not a valid backup file (RS01)"; one it cannot read says the file couldn't be read (RS02).

Continue, or import as a copy

Then a dialog headed ADD, with the campaign's name and two choices:

• Import as a copy makes a fresh, independent campaign that can never touch anything you already have. If a version is already here, it warns you and appends " (copy)" to the name.
• Continue this campaign treats the backup as the same campaign coming home. If it is not on this device, one confirm dialog and the import runs. This is the choice for moving a campaign to a new device (chapter 32, Moving a Campaign to Another Device).

The guarded replace

Choose Continue this campaign when that campaign is already here and you land in the replace flow, which is deliberately hard to walk through by accident. First a red ALREADY ON THIS DEVICE dialog. Then a preview headed REPLACE CAMPAIGN that rehearses the replace and reports what it would do, counted in Atlas language:

• add in green, with a breakdown such as maps, photos, or encounters.
• change in amber.
• remove in red.

Underneath, in plain words: differences are shown, never merged, and anything you changed here after that file was made is overwritten. If the backup matches what you have, it says "Nothing to change" and stops. If your campaign changes while the preview sits open, the counts are recomputed behind an amber banner telling you to read them again. Confirm with Replace and the spinner names each stage.

When it goes wrong

Failures are dialogs you must dismiss, never a message that slides away: "nothing happened" is the one thing you cannot afford to miss.

• Replace didn't run. The safety copy could not be made, so the replace was refused. 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 restore also failed. The dialog says your previous version is saved as a verified snapshot, not to delete anything, and to get help recovering it. Take it literally: stop, leave the campaign alone, keep the error code.

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

Next: chapter 32, Moving a Campaign to Another Device.