The Beholder's Gazette is a static website. There are no accounts, no logins, and no ads. We count visits with Google Analytics (see below). This page explains the little data that is involved. Last updated October 12, 2026.
🦅 Subscribe and Contact forms
If you subscribe by raven or send us a message, what you type (your email address, plus your name and message if you give them) is saved through Google Forms, where only the editor can see it. We use these details only to send you the Gazette or to reply to you. We never sell or share them.
To unsubscribe, or to have your details deleted, send a message through the contact form.
🎒 Saved in your own browser
Some tools remember things using your browser's local storage. This data stays on your device. It is never sent to us, and clearing your browser's site data removes it.
Vault of Wonders (loot generator): the treasure you save.
Town Square (NPC generator): your saved NPCs.
The Tavern (rumors): rumors you drew recently, and which rumors are still left in each category's deck, so you don't get repeats until the deck runs out. The DM Session Kit and the DM Toolbox's Tavern tab deal from the same decks.
Spellbook: your named spell lists and the spells you starred in each. A shared list link carries only the list name and spell names.
Bestiary: the monsters on your encounter list, until you send them to the Toolbox or clear the list.
Monster Maker: the monster you're working on, and the one before it if a link or a Load replaced it while it had unsaved changes. The monsters you save go in the Worldbuilder's campaign notebook.
Handout Maker: the last handout of each kind (wanted poster, letter, bounty board, price list), with what you typed into it, and whether ink saver is on.
Merchant's Row (shop generator): the shop currently on the page, including any haggle roll.
DM Toolbox: the tavern and shop names you keep, the initiative tracker's current fight, your progress clocks, your random tables, the party you entered on the Party tab, and the downtime tracker's party, and your last 50 dice rolls (shared with the floating 🎲 button on the tool pages, along with whether you hid that button).
DM Screen: your screen layouts: the cards on each, their order and size, which ones the players see, what you type on its notes cards, and the last few rolls on its dice and table cards. Its clock, table, party, initiative, and notebook cards keep nothing of their own: they show what the Toolbox and the Worldbuilder already keep.
DM Session Kit: the town crier's headline, rumor, NPC, loot, and shop currently on the page, plus your party size for the loot split, so a refresh doesn't lose them.
Worldbuilder: your campaign notebook, with the rolls you saved, your notes on them, the links between them, your session log, the quests you track, your homebrew monsters, the family trees you change or build, your DM-only notes, which lines of each roll the players may see, the maps you upload, the pins you drop on a continent map or on your own maps, and where each entry sits on the Web tab (and which ones you placed by hand). The pictures of the maps you upload are too big for local storage, so they go in your browser's IndexedDB storage instead, on your device all the same.
Offline copies: the site saves the tools, their data, its fonts, and the pages you read in your browser's cache, so the tools work with no connection. This is ordinary site data: nothing about you is in it, and clearing site data removes it.
💾 Back up everything
Browser storage is easy to lose: clearing site data, a new device, or a private window starts every tool empty. Export everything the tools keep here to one file, then import that file later, or in another browser, to bring it all back. Both happen inside your browser: the file is never uploaded.
An import only reads the file as data and checks each part against what its tool saves. It shows what the file holds and changes nothing until you press Restore. Map pictures must really be PNG, JPEG, or WebP pictures your browser can open, or they're left out. The offline copies aren't in the backup; the site saves them again on its own.
🌐 Other services
Like most websites, pages load fonts from Google Fonts, which sees your IP address when your browser fetches the files. The site itself is hosted on GitHub Pages, which keeps standard server logs. Links to Patreon take you to Patreon's site, which has its own privacy policy.
📊 Analytics
The Gazette uses Google Analytics to count visits and see which articles and tools get used. It is the same Google Analytics account as our main site, ashforgestudio.com.
Google Analytics sets cookies (named _ga and _ga_…) to tell visits apart. Your browser sends Google the address of each page you view (including any share-link details in it, like a dice seed or a spell list), the page that sent you here, and your browser, device, rough location, and IP address. Google says Google Analytics 4 does not store IP addresses. We see only totals, never who you are, and we don't send Google anything you type into the forms or tools, or anything your browser saves for the tools.
To opt out, block cookies for this site, use a content blocker, or install Google's opt-out add-on. Everything on the site works the same either way.
📰 Satire notice
The Gazette is satire. Articles are parody inspired by real events and are not real news. All names in articles are fictional stand-ins.