Privacy

Last updated 8 August 2026

Plain version: we collect the least we can get away with, we never sell it, we tell you what leaves our systems and why, and we delete the things we no longer need. If you are a parent, the section on children is written for you and is worth two minutes.

Who we are

The Hearth is a tool for running Dungeons & Dragons games. It is built and operated from Western Australia. It is currently a very small operation — if you email us, a person reads it.

What we collect

To give you an account:

Your email address, and a password (stored hashed by our authentication provider — we never see it). If you sign in with Google, we receive your email and basic profile instead.
A display name, which starts as the first part of your email, and a profile picture if you add one.
Your date of birth.

Why we ask for your date of birth, since it is the one that surprises people: we use it to work out whether an account belongs to an adult, a teenager or a child, and that decision controls which AI features the account can use. We ask for it in order to protect children, not to build a profile. We do not use it for anything else, and we do not share it.

What you make while using it: characters, campaigns, maps, notes, NPCs, story planning, homebrew content and dice rolls. Some of these have free-text fields you write yourself, like a character's backstory.

What you type into the AI features: we keep a record of AI requests so we can measure what they cost and investigate problems. The text you typed is deleted after 90 days — we keep only the non-personal record of the request after that.

Technical: a session cookie to keep you logged in, and standard web-server request information. We work out which country a request comes from, which we use to route crisis support to the right helpline and to apply the correct rules for children's accounts. We do not store your location.

We do not use analytics, advertising or tracking cookies. There is no Google Analytics, no advertising pixel and no third-party tracker in this product. The only cookies are the ones that keep you signed in.

Who else sees it

The Hearth uses specialist services to do things we cannot do ourselves. All of them are outside Australia. By using the AI features you consent to your information being handled by them, and you should know that Australian privacy law will not hold us accountable for what an overseas recipient does with it in the way it would if they were here.

Grouped by what they are for, rather than by company:

Written AI features — the text you type into them. Currently Anthropic.
Generated images, such as portraits and maps — the prompt describing what to draw. Currently Google, with OpenAI as an automatic fallback, and a separate service used to increase a map’s resolution.
3D miniatures — a reference image of the character. Currently Meshy.
Video calls — a character name and an anonymous ID, and nothing else. Deliberately not your email address or your real name.
Hosting, storage and login — the data itself, held on our behalf.

We are deliberately not tying ourselves to any one provider. Some features already switch automatically if their first choice is unavailable, and we are extending that. It means the specific companies above will change over time — so treat this as the current list rather than a permanent one. If it changes materially we will update this page and change the date at the top.

We do not sell your information, and we never will. We do not share it with advertisers, data brokers, or anyone outside the purposes listed above.

Children

This is the part we would want to read first if it were our child, so it is not buried at the bottom.

Children use The Hearth — including the developer's own. That is why the age band exists and why it does something real.

An account belonging to someone under 13 can use: help building a character, rules lookups, level-up advice, questions about their own notes, and the safety and support path.

It cannot use:

Image generation. Not on any feature, deliberately and permanently. We can steer and screen a text assistant in ways we cannot reliably steer an image generator, and a bad image is not a subtle failure.
Open-ended roleplay or companion-style chat.
Tools meant for adults running a game.

These are not suggestions to the AI. They are enforced in code, on a list of specifically permitted features, and anything not on that list is refused automatically — so a new feature is closed to children until someone deliberately opens it.

Everything a child types into an AI feature is screened by an automated safety check before it is sent anywhere, and the thresholds are stricter for accounts that are not adults.

Accounts for under-13s in the United States. We do not currently accept them. United States law sets specific requirements for verifiable parental consent that we have not yet built, and we would rather decline than do it badly. A parent or guardian can create an account and play together in the meantime.

If you are a parent and you want your child's information removed, email us and we will do it. You do not need to give a reason.

Artificial intelligence

Several features use AI. When you are using one, you are talking to software, not to a person, and we say so on the screen where it happens. It can be confidently wrong — please check anything that matters.

AI-generated campaigns, maps, NPCs and rules answers are starting points, not authority. The rules calculations in the game itself — hit points, spell slots, armour class and so on — are ordinary hand-written code with tests, not AI output.

How long we keep things

The text you type into AI features: 90 days, then the text is destroyed.
Your account and the things you have made: until you ask us to delete them.
Records of what AI requests cost: kept, but with the personal text removed after 90 days.

Getting your information, correcting it, or deleting it

You can delete your account yourself, from your settings page. You will be asked to type your email address first, because it cannot be undone.

Deleting your account removes:

Your account, your login, and your profile including any picture you uploaded.
Every character you have made.
Your notebook entries.
Any campaign you run — including its maps, story and NPCs, for everyone playing in it. Other players keep their own characters.

What survives, and why: the record of what your AI requests cost us. Your name is removed from those records and the text you typed is deleted with them, so what remains cannot be traced back to you. We keep it because we need to know what the service costs to run.

You can also ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, or ask us to correct it. Email us and we will act on it — we aim to do so within 30 days.

Security

Access to your data is controlled at the database level, so one account cannot read another's campaigns or characters. Passwords are hashed by our authentication provider and never visible to us. We are a small operation and we do not pretend to have the security apparatus of a large one — we have tried to make the sensible decisions and we would rather tell you that plainly.

If something goes wrong

Email us. If you are not satisfied with how we have handled a privacy matter, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), which oversees privacy in Australia.

Changes

If we change this in a way that matters, we will say so on this page and change the date at the top. The date at the top is always the date the current version took effect.

Contact

support@thehearth.gg — also the address to use for anything in the Terms.

Privacy Terms Contact