Hello and welcome back to the Banda’s Grove Overhaul Devlog! If this is your first Devlog, check out our first Devlog that explains why Banda’s Grove is getting an overhaul.

Taking a break can be healing. It has been a while since I actively worked on Banda’s Grove, choosing to let it simmer in the back of my mind, and it’s worked out beautifully.

(DevNote: Although Devlog 04 and 05 were posted back to back, about 2 months have passed between their writing. Unfortunately we forgot to post Devlog 04 to itchio back then.)

One of the core issues with the original Banda’s Grove is there was very few conflicts, complications, or drama, and very few ways to build it into the game session. Idyllic settings are nice, but play centers around getting into and out of dramatic situations - even slice of life ones.

In other token games, like Belonging Outside Belonging or Sleepaway, you must use a Weak Move to gain a token. This adds a complication in some way to the story. That token you can then spend on a Strong Move.

In Banda’s Grove, I didn’t want to tie gaining tokens directly to specific moves. Originally, we tied it to specific roleplay actions we wanted the players to take: Roleplay cozy, slice of life moments, helping others, etc. to gain a token.

But this didn’t implement any way for the game to trigger complications.

While designing another game that includes token-based combat based on the Grove System, I needed a much higher token economy. Players stack tokens on enemies to deal damage to them, so the pool needs to be much higher. Not one or two tokens, but ten, twenty, forty, etc.

Banda’s Grove needs a higher token economy as well for some of the other mechanics we have in place (such as Community Resources, crafting, new playbook moves that use 3+ tokens per use, etc.)

The system I created for players to gain more tokens is this:

• If an action risky, assign a number of tokens the player needs to spend to avoid a complication while attempting it, between 1 and 10, called the Action Cost.

• Players can spend that number of tokens from their pool to avoid the complication and accomplish their task.

• If they don’t have enough tokens to avoid the complication completely, they can spend down the Action Cost to a lower level of complication:

  • 1-3 - Minor
  • 4-6 - Standard
  • 7-10 - Major

• Or, they can voluntarily take the complication, accomplish the majority of their task, and gain the number of tokens equal to Action Cost.

• The larger the risk, the more tokens it costs to avoid, the more significant the complication, but the greater the reward for just taking the complication anyway.

• Major Complications cause something negative to happen in the immediate scene, and at the world-scale.

  For example, if I want to quickly rifle through the filing cabinets looking for the case file in the police station before I’m found, that could cost 5 tokens to avoid any complications. I decide to instead risk that complication to gain 5 tokens instead, because I think I’ll need them later.

  I rifle through the cabinets and right as I pull the correct case folder, a guard flips on the light, and notices me! His left hand reaches for his radio to call for back up while the right hand takes out his baton…

Applying this to Banda’s Grove.

We still want to encourage specific roleplaying, and so when roleplaying a slice of life moment, you can still gain 1 token.

However, we now have this risky action cost. It gives players the ability to decide when to take complications in exchange for tokens, with the added benefit of telegraphing how big the complication is.

The Drama Economy is how often dramatic events, or complications occur during play. This gives players control of that economy to ratchet up complications and stack them on top of each other to gain more tokens, or dial it back until the current complications are taken care of.

In Banda’s Grove these complications can be slice of life ones: A stolen hammock, The general store owner goes missing, a fissure opens in a seam between two Fragments, The Quantum Woods explode with light and time begins to flow backwards for everyone at the Grove.

We’ve also renamed our tokens from Pebbles to Particles for ~reasons~, which we will reveal more about later.