Once your skills catalogue exists, the Garden largely runs itself: players endorse, gift, ask for help, answer each other and connect. This page covers the levers you hold.
The Garden and Tasks are each a feature you switch on per adventure, as The Garden and Tasks in the Features list of Adventure Settings. See the settings reference. Everything here is authored by GMs and admins. NPCs can see it but not change it.
Tasks or Missions?
The two mechanics aren't interchangeable, and picking the wrong one is the most common way a Garden goes flat:
- Author a Task when you want a player to improve themselves: build a habit, practise something, show up, do the work. Tasks pay XP, BLOO, energy, and Blooms into a skill.
- Author a Mission when you want a player to improve their Garden: reach out, connect, help somebody. Missions pay Blooms.
Helping themselves is a Task; helping others is a Mission. If you find yourself writing a Mission a player could complete alone, it should have been a Task.
Authoring Tasks
Tasks live on the Tasks tab of Manage Content. Press New Task, or Edit on an existing one, and the form opens in a side drawer.
- Basics: title, status (Published or Draft), instructions, and a look: a colour, an icon and an optional image. These are what the Task looks like as a hexagon on the Journey. Leave the colour blank and it follows the skill the Task teaches.
- Trigger (Completes when…): the player marks it done (a button, or a QR scan), finishes any milestone, finishes one specific milestone, logs in each day, or meets a set of conditions. Condition Tasks use the same condition rows as achievements, and a counter can carry a "within N days" window. See Conditions.
- Time limit: a countdown that starts when each player presses Start, 0 for none. Choose what happens if they run out: "They can start over", or "One shot — it's gone". A missed attempt never pays.
- Recurrence: once ever, unlimited, or timed with a cooldown in seconds, minutes, hours or days. A condition Task can't be unlimited: saving one sets it to once, so use timed if it should repeat.
- Reset via: on a timed Task the player marks done, choose Scanning a QR code instead of Cooldown timer only, for example for a check-in station. Players then complete it by scanning, and scan again after each cooldown. Untick "Show the QR code to players in the app" so they have to find the printed one. The code and its link appear in the drawer for you to print. If a photo of it gets shared, press Regenerate and the old code stops working immediately. See QR Codes.
- Rewards, each optional: XP, BLOO, Energy (how players win back what encounters cost them; it can't be negative), and Blooms in one skill.
To put a Task on the Journey map, place a Tasks widget or a single Task hexagon from the Journey Builder. See the Journey Builder palette.
Authoring Missions
Missions live on the Missions tab of Manage Content. Press New Mission, or Edit on an existing one. The form has four parts.
Basics
Title, status (Published or Draft) and instructions. Only published Missions reach players.
Who sees this mission?
Pick one audience, then choose one or more entries within it:
- Global: everyone in the adventure
- Guild: one or more guilds
- Individual: one or more named players
- Achievement: anyone who holds it
- Branch: anyone on that path
A player who joins the audience later, by joining the guild or earning the achievement, sees the Mission from then on.
How is it completed?
Either The player marks it done (they press Mark done; it's the honour system), or Auto-tracked from real interactions, with a target count and one of these rules:
- Send a message: each direct message the player sends
- Help someone: each help request they reply to, counted when they post the reply, approved or not
- Endorse someone: each endorsement they give
- Ask for help: each help request they post
- Get one of your requests solved: note that as built, this counts for the helper whose reply is approved, not for the player who asked. Until that changes it rewards having your help approved.
- Gift a Bloom: each Bloom they gift, which comes out of their own 20
- Post on the Wall: each post they make on the Wall
- Make a connection: each connection request they accept. The person who accepts is the one credited.
How the counting works:
- It counts from the moment the Mission is published and the player is in its audience. Nothing done before counts.
- It counts actions, not people. A rule can't be limited to one skill or one person. If you want "help 5 players who need Leadership help", say so in the instructions, knowing that any five replies will count.
- Each Mission completes once per player.
There's no rule for reconnecting with someone a player has drifted from. The fading on the canvas does that job.
Reward
Choose a skill and how many Blooms to award (2 by default). With No skill reward the Mission pays nothing, since a Bloom is always a level in some skill. Rewards are claimed: when a player completes a Mission, it appears in their Rewards and the Blooms land when they press Claim.
A practical starting set
One low-target Ask for help Mission to seed the Help Board, one Help someone Mission so those requests get answered, and one Make a connection Mission once the cohort has settled. Endorsement and gift Missions work well for recognition drives; remember a gift Mission draws on each player's limited 20. Missions that ask for more social effort than your cohort's size supports will just sit there uncompleted.
Tasks and Missions in Cohorts
Tasks and Missions belong to each cohort, not to the template. Editing them in one cohort changes only that cohort.
- A new cohort starts with copies of the template's Tasks and Missions automatically.
- For anything added to the template later, open the cohort's Admin Tools and choose Missions & Tasks. It lists the template's Missions and Tasks, each marked Here or Not copied yet, with a Copy the N missing button for each kind. It copies only what's missing, matched by title, and doesn't update ones the cohort already has. If a copied Task has lost its milestone trigger, the page marks it Trigger missing and offers Restore the triggers.
- Guild and named-player audiences don't carry into a cohort, because its guilds and players are its own. Achievement and branch audiences do. A Mission left with no audience arrives as a Draft, so it never turns into a Global one by accident. Set its audience and publish it.
See Adventure Templates & Cohorts.
Awarding Blooms to a Group
From the Missions tab, press Award Blooms directly to open the Award Blooms page:
- Choose a Skill and an Amount, and write a Note. Players see the note, for example "Great teamwork in today's workshop".
- Choose the audience: Guild(s), Named player(s), or A player-meta field plus the value to match exactly (for example a country field and "Mexico"). See Player Meta.
- Press Preview audience to see how many players match.
- Press Send and confirm. It can't be undone.
Each matched player gets the award in their Rewards, with your note, and the Blooms land when they claim it. The page lists recent awards: what, to how many players, and who sent them.
Granting Skills Directly
For one player, open their drawer in the Garden. Under GM: Award skill points, pick a skill and an amount and press Grant. Use this for things the system can't see: excellent work in a workshop, leadership during a live event, something that happened off-platform.
A direct grant lands straight away and isn't limited to once a day. It's recorded with you as the giver, so it appears in the player's Skill History like any other Bloom.
Gift Bloom Balances
Every player starts with 20 Blooms to give in each adventure, set up automatically the first time their balance is needed. There's no roster setup step.
In a player's drawer, GM: Reset gift Blooms sets their balance to the number you enter when you press Set balance. It sets the number rather than adding to it. This is the only way gift Blooms are replenished: there's no automatic refill. If you're running a long adventure, plan a periodic top-up, or tell players their 20 are meant to last.
What to Watch
- A grey Garden means people aren't interacting at all. That usually means the adventure needs to give them a reason to, not that the Garden is broken.
- One colour dominating means your catalogue is too narrow, or one skill is far easier to earn than the rest.
- An empty Help Board usually means nobody has been shown it. Seed it with an Ask for help Mission.
- Endorsements clustering inside guilds is normal early on. A Global Make a connection or Send a message Mission helps break cliques open.
Related
- Setting Up Your Skills Catalog
- Garden Missions (what players see)
- Managing Your Player Roster
- GM Toolkit