As a great show of how fluid game design is at this stage, in our last Devlog I said we simplified the word “Fragment” and “Plane” to just Plane. Upon further reading through the game, I chose the wrong word to keep. I ran into an issue of describing what Plane was succinctly, but it is pretty clear what Fragment of a campground is. So I went back and updated the terms and everything fits a lot cleaner now.

Badges

The last few days have seen a lot of work on a single mechanic: Badges. In Banda’s Grove, Badgers are the primary way that players can gain access to new moves and special bonuses for their Camper.

Before, Earning a Badge was a Weekday Action. You spent a pebble and an Action and described a scene of studying for a Badge. It felt pretty lack luster and not tied to character advancement at all.

To fix this, I first created two new concepts: Knowledge and Expertise.

Every time you use a Move, you mark the Knowledge Track on your character sheet. When it fills, you can choose to take a point of Expertise in one of four categories: Crafting, Community, Nature, or Quantum. And then reset the Knowledge Track.

Badges are categorized into those four categories now and cost a certain amount of Expertise to claim. In addition to the badges already in the game, I’ll be adding more, specifically around adding unique Moves that you can gain as many of the current badges are passive bonuses.

Updates Across the Game

The New Convergence Checklist

The introductory portion of the book did not do a good job of explaining how to start a new game. We’ve combined a few sections and created a clear, concise checklist of steps to setup your first game.

Converging the Grove

The Map Drawing and New Grove sections were combined, simplified, and updated for the new mapping rules and we reduce the word count by 20%.

Rules and Regulations

Core Rules was renamed to “Rules and Regulations”, to be more on theme with National Park Service terms. Inside the following Changes:

• Pebble rules have been condensed and simplified
• Failing mechanic has been removed
• “Meet an NPC” Move explained during the NPC section, Move can be used during Weekday or Weekend phases.
• Spirits questions simplified, and Moves explained in their section.
• Blips rewritten and condensed, updated for new mapping rules
• Knowledge and Expertise section added.
• Grove Badges moved to their own section and updated with new rules
• The Weekend Section completely rewritten, to support Events + Adventures.
• Weekend Adventure explanation rewritten. New, short example given.
• Sunday Night section rewritten and updated
• The Weekday section completely revamped, Moves consolidated to a single, non-nested list. Pebble costs removed from Header, and standard formatting applied.
• Special Moves denoted (Meet an NPC), giving players the ability to create new NPCs during any phase.
• Heal a Blip Move added for 1 pebble + Quantum Shard cost
• Crafting and Gathering sections condensed and updated
• Nature Watching section updated and clarified, including denoting creature callouts in the book (name + index number, ie Bonder(25))
• Special Event section renamed to Event. Rewritten, simplified, and updated for new Weekend and Mapping rules
• Convergence Event section updated for new mapping rules and blip/quantum woods rolls simplified.
• Build a Facility section simplified, Facilities moved to their own list under “The Library” section

Make a Camper Section

Next up, we have the Make a Camper section, our character building portion. This also got a complete overhaul, and while it’s still very much a work in progress, these are the changes we’ve made so far:

• Rewrote the introduction, including reiterating the Grove Ranger’s role in the game.
• Created a “Steps To Make Your Camper” summary list.
• Created a General Steps that apply to all playbooks:
  • Name
  • Pronouns
  • Fragment you belong to
  • Discover a Hobby
  • Hold a Secret

That all frees up room in the Playbooks. There are Player guidelines included in each playbook, rather than at a “game level”, we are adding an additional Move to each playbook, and rewriting the existing Moves to be more useful. There will now be 0, 1, 2, and 3 pebble spend Moves for each playbook.

The Library

All Lore/Worldbuilding content has been moved to the Library:

• The descriptions of each Fragment
• Badge List
  • Organized into categories, and updated with new Badges rules
• Crafting Recipes
  • We’ll be expanding this to offer more options out of the box
• Facilities List
• Festivals/Events
  • Section header renamed Event Calendar
• Rumors and Happenings
• Time and Seasons
  • Removed optional time tracking for Weekend Adventures, that was tied to Moves and Hex travel.
• Tips for Creating
  • Updated and simplified advice, rewritten for the table, rather than just the Grove Ranger.
• The Weekend Adventure Board
  • Updated wording for new terms and rules.
  • We’ll be adding in the two supplemental adventures we’ve created to round out the built-in adventures to 10.
• Nature Watching Creatures

Finally, the New Camper Orientation, and Quick Start will be getting updated and rewritten, but we haven’t started on those yet.

Until next time! -Andy