Skills are yours to define, per adventure. Everything in the Garden runs off this catalogue: hexagon colours, help request tags, endorsements, gifts, Task and Mission rewards. It's worth setting up deliberately before players arrive.
You'll find it on the Skills tab of Manage Content. Press New Skill to add one.
One Catalogue for a Template and Its Cohorts
The skill catalogue belongs to the template adventure, and every cohort made from it shares it. Editing the Skills tab from a cohort edits the template's catalogue, so the change shows in every cohort at once. Players' levels are separate: each cohort keeps its own. See Adventure Templates & Cohorts.
What Each Skill Carries
Each row shows the skill's name and badges for what matters at a glance: Max level, Endorsable, Draft if it isn't published, and how many Tasks pay Blooms into it. Everything else is behind Quick Edit. Press Save when you're done.
- Name: what players see. Use their language, not internal jargon.
- Colour: chosen from the colour picker. It becomes the hexagon colour of every player whose master skill this is, colours the skill across the Garden and the player's Journal, and is the fallback colour for a Task hexagon on the Journey that teaches this skill. Pick visibly distinct colours; that's what makes clusters readable.
- Icon: chosen from the icon picker, shown on the skill's chip. Leave it on none for a plain name chip.
- Image: optional artwork, shown wherever the skill has room for one. The icon and colour carry it everywhere else.
- Max level: the ceiling, 40 by default. Use 40 for a proficiency people build over time, and 1 for a skill that works as an unlock gate.
- Status: Published or Draft.
- Endorsable: "Peers can award Blooms in it". This is saved and shown as a badge, but it doesn't currently stop players endorsing or gifting in that skill, so don't rely on it to protect a gate skill.
- Description: what the skill actually means. It appears as a tooltip on skill chips in the Garden and on the player's Skills tab in their Journal, so players genuinely read it.
The toolbar above the list searches by name, filters to Published or Drafts, and sorts by default order, name, or how many Tasks use each skill.
Designing a Good Catalogue
Write real descriptions. A skill called "Resilience" with no explanation means whatever each player assumes. A sentence of definition makes endorsements consistent across your whole roster.
Keep it to competencies people can recognise in each other. If a player can't tell whether a colleague showed it, they won't endorse it, and the skill stays empty.
Give distinct colours. Twelve skills in twelve shades of blue produce a Garden nobody can read.
Be careful with gate skills. Any published skill can be endorsed and gifted today, and asking for help earns a Bloom in the skill asked about. A skill with a max level of 1 can be reached through those routes as well as through the Journey.
Renaming Rather Than Deleting
If you're reworking a catalogue that's already in use, rename existing skills instead of deleting and recreating them. Every Bloom ever awarded is tied to the skill it was given in. Rename it and that history follows the new name. Delete it and the points players earned are left pointing at a skill that no longer exists.
Wiring Skills Into the Adventure
- Milestones and achievements can award a Bloom in a skill on completion. Set it alongside their other rewards. See Designing Milestones and Achievements, Paths & Ranks.
- Tasks can pay any number of Blooms into one skill, and Missions pay their reward into the skill you choose. See Running the Garden as a GM.
- Conditions can test Blooms: a player's total, their level in one skill, Blooms received from peers, or Blooms given. That's how a skill can unlock an achievement, complete a Task, or grow an evolving Tabi's artwork. See Conditions.