BLUERABBIT has two play areas, not one. The Journey is your individual progression: milestones, XP, levels, achievements. The Garden is your relational progression: a living picture of who you actually work with, and how well you keep those relationships going.
Where the Journey answers "how am I growing?", the Garden answers "who am I growing with?"
If your adventure has the Garden switched on, it has its own entry in the menu. You can also choose to start each visit in the Garden rather than on the Journey. See Finding Your Way Around.
What You See
Everyone enrolled in your adventure appears as a hexagon with their photo (or initials): other players, NPCs and your Game Masters, arranged in rings around you at the centre. Each adventure has its own Garden, just as it has its own Journey.
Three things about each hexagon are worked out from what actually happens between you:
- Distance is how often you interact. The people you deal with most sit closest to you. Everyone else fills the outer rings.
- Colour is what they're best at. A person's hexagon takes the colour of their master skill, whichever skill they've earned the most in. People who share a master skill share a colour, so clusters of expertise show up at a glance. Someone with no skills yet shows in a neutral blue.
- Brightness is how recently you were in touch. Someone you interacted with today is in full colour. The longer it's been, the more their hexagon drains of colour: a little after a day, more after a week, more again after a month. After 60 days without contact they're fully grey, exactly like someone you've never interacted with. They stay on the map and you can still click them. Any real contact brings them straight back.
Your own hexagon at the centre has a gold border and never fades.
Connections
Everything above is derived from your activity. Connections are the one thing on the map you state: a way of saying "this person matters to me", whether or not you've spoken lately.
- Click someone and choose Connect. They get a request, which they can Accept or Dismiss. Until then you'll see Request sent, with a Cancel button.
- If you both ask each other, you're connected straight away.
- Either of you can Disconnect at any time.
A connection is pulled to the centre of your Garden, ahead of everyone else, and gets a gold halo around its hexagon. The halo doesn't stop the fading: a connection you haven't spoken to in months greys out like anyone else. The halo says they matter to you. It doesn't mean you're in touch.
The Connections panel lists requests waiting on you (under Waiting on you) and everyone you're connected to.
The Backdrop
The Garden's background gets richer as your skills grow. It compares your total Blooms with the average for players in your adventure who have earned any, and shows one of five states:
- Dormant: nothing earned yet.
- First signs: under a quarter of the average.
- Growing: a quarter to half of the average.
- Healthy: half the average, up to the average.
- Full bloom: at or above the average.
This is independent of how many people you know. A Garden can be bright but empty (strong skills, few relationships) or full but dull (lots of relationships, few skills). Your current state is written out in the Garden section of your profile box, which opens when you click your picture in the corner of the screen.
Moving Around
Drag the canvas to pan. The zoom control shows the current percentage, with − and + buttons and a ⦾ button that recentres on you. The mouse wheel zooms around your pointer, and you can pinch on a touch screen.
Click anyone to open their drawer: their skills, recent wall posts, any open help requests, and buttons to message them, connect, endorse them or gift a Bloom. Click your own hexagon to open yours, with your Blooms left to give, a box to ask for help, and your own requests.
The Dock and Its Panels
The canvas is deliberately mostly empty. Everything else sits in a dock at the bottom right:
- Business: your balance, your energy against its cap, and how many encounters are still out there. The button shows a ! if your balance has gone below zero. See Encounters.
- Tasks: things that improve you.
- Missions: things you do with other people.
- Help: ask for help, and see ways to help others.
- Connections: requests and the people you're connected to.
- Rewards: Blooms waiting for you to claim.
- Messages: your direct messages.
Business, Tasks, Missions, Help and Connections open as floating panels. Drag a panel by its header to move it, and press − to minimise it back to the dock. Your layout is remembered for each adventure on the browser you're using. Rewards, Messages and any help request you open appear as windows on top of everything else. Badges on the dock buttons show counts, such as unread messages and rewards to claim.
Tasks and Missions
Two of those panels are the Garden's core mechanics, and they do opposite jobs:
- Tasks improve you. Build a habit, practise something, do the work, and your own skills and level grow.
- Missions improve your Garden. Reach out to other people, and the relationships around you get healthier.
The way to remember it: helping yourself is a Task. Helping someone else is a Mission.
Rewards You Claim
Some Blooms land the moment they're earned: endorsements, gifts, asking for help, and Task rewards. Others wait in Rewards until you collect them: a finished Mission, help of yours that someone approved, and Blooms your Game Master awarded to a group. Open Rewards and press Claim. Nothing is added to your skills until you do.
How the Journey Feeds the Garden
The two halves aren't separate games. Milestones and achievements can award Blooms in a skill, and skills are what the Garden runs on. They set your colour, they're what people recognise you for, and they're what help requests are tagged with.
Look for the ? help button for a short guided tour of the Garden.
Related
- Skills & Blooms Explained: the currency underneath all of it
- Giving Blooms: the two ways to recognise someone
- Help Requests & Messages: asking for help and giving it
- Garden Tasks: growing yourself
- Garden Missions: growing the Garden