Achievements are how you recognize progress beyond raw XP: a visible marker of what someone has actually done. As a GM you're designing three distinct tools here, not one.
Three Tools, Three Jobs
- Badge — a one-off recognition. "Finished onboarding", "Perfect score on the compliance quiz". Awarded once; doesn't imply anything came before or after it.
- Path — a branch of the journey. Paths decide which milestones, items and badges a player sees, and a player holds only one path from each branch (see Branching & Prerequisites).
- Rank — a title tied to level. Use ranks when progress itself is the reward (Bronze/Silver/Gold, Associate/Senior/Lead): something that visibly upgrades as a player advances.
Create them from Manage Content → Achievements → New Achievement. The editor has four tabs: Settings, Codes, Players and Conditions. Unique codes, awarding players and conditions all need the achievement saved first.
Settings
- Name, Type (Badge, Rank or Path), Achievement Badge (the image, required) and Color.
- Skill Reward (Garden) — a Bloom in one of your skills, paid when it's earned.
- Rewards — XP and BLOO (and EP, if the adventure uses energy), on badges and paths.
- Branch — on paths: which branch this path belongs to.
- Available for — on badges: all paths, or only players on one path.
- Deadline — on badges. Unique codes stop working after it.
- Secret Message — shown only to players who have earned it, when they open it on their Achievements page. Redeeming a magic code shows it in the celebration too.
Ways an Achievement Is Awarded
- Auto-Grant Conditions (Conditions tab) — awarded the moment a player's progress satisfies every condition. The celebration explains why ("You reached Level 5!"). Leave it empty for an achievement that's only awarded some other way. See Conditions — When Things Unlock.
- A milestone's Achievement Reward — the drawer in the milestone builder. Offers badges and paths.
- An encounter choice — an Encounter Choice option's Then grant.
- A Branch Choice step — for paths.
- The rank ladder — for ranks, by level (below).
- Magic codes — the Codes tab (below).
- By hand — the Players tab (below).
Most achievements should fire automatically: set the rule once and forget it. Reserve manual grants for genuinely human moments, like a standout contribution or something that happened in a live session, that no rule can detect.
Branches Hold on Every Path In
A player can never hold two achievements from the same branch, and that's enforced on every way an achievement can arrive: manual grants, Assign all, CSV uploads, magic codes, milestone rewards, QR completions, Auto-Grant Conditions and encounter choices. A refused single grant tells you "Player already has an achievement from this branch"; bulk grants skip those players and tell you how many were skipped.
Magic Codes and QR Codes
The Codes tab gives you two kinds of code:
- Magic Code — one code anyone in the adventure can use. Each player can redeem it once. Type your own or press Generate; the Magic Link beside it redeems the code in one click.
- Unique Codes — press Create Code for each one-time code you need. Each can be redeemed once, by one player. The Available, Redeemed and Expired tabs show where every code stands, including who redeemed it and when, and Show all links lists every available code's link in one block, ready to paste into a mail merge or a print run.
Once saved, the Settings tab also shows the achievement's QR Code. It's specific to the adventure you opened the achievement from: every cohort built from a template gets its own QR, so open the achievement from that cohort to print the right one. The magic code itself works in any cohort of the template.
Players redeem a code through the taskbar's Magic Code quick link, by scanning the QR, or by opening a magic link. Redeeming opens the celebration panel with the badge and its secret message.
Awarding by Hand
The Players tab lists everyone enrolled in the adventure you opened it from. Click a player to award the achievement or take it away, or use Assign all / Remove all. Bulk Upload Players takes a CSV with a single column of email addresses.
To see and manage who holds what across a whole cohort, use Player Records (linked from the Players tab as Open in Player Records): filter, then remove one, a selection, or everything matching. Removing an achievement also takes away the XP, BLOO and Bloom it paid. If its Auto-Grant Conditions are still met, the engine will award it again the next time that player's progress is recalculated, so change the conditions first if you mean it to stay gone.
Designing a Rank Ladder
Ranks don't use Auto-Grant Conditions. They're awarded by the adventure's rank ladder, set in Adventure Settings on the Ranks tab: each row pairs a Level with a Rank achievement. Create the Rank achievements first; the ladder only lists published ones. A rank's own Conditions tab says which level currently awards it, with a link to Edit the rank ladder.
When a player reaches a level, they receive every rank at or below it and a level-up message showing the new rank's badge; the highest becomes their current rank. You can still grant a rank by hand, but not to a player below its level: the grant is refused, and bulk grants skip those players. Removing a rank is always allowed.
Decide the tier count up front. Three to five works for most programs; beyond that the distinctions stop feeling meaningful. Space the levels so players can always see the next rung.
Badge & Color Design Tips
Badges render small in grids, so simple, high-contrast images read best. Reuse your Adventure's accent colours across achievements so the whole reward system feels like one visual language rather than a grab-bag of clip art.