#grovesystem

Eleven months ago, I set out to build a game that explored what it was like living in the communities that form at campgrounds all across the United States. Inspired by games like Wanderhome, Outer Wilds, and Stardew Valley, I wanted to make a game system that captured the tactile camp crafting vibes of late summers.

The game quickly turned into a whimsical science fiction setting and the system developed over time into a unique way of playing - a three-phase gameplay loop, token-driven gameplay, narrative crafting, a skill learning progression system, collaborative adventure creation, and much more: Banda’s Grove.

Banda’s Grove was released earlier this month in version 1.0, and so we turned our attention to how we can provide tools to the community - and the Grove System was the obvious next step.

The Grove System is the outcome of months of work, distilled down for others to use. We are releasing it for free and with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license! Inside, we provide easy cut-and-paste rules for you to copy and tweak, along with design notes that share insights of why we designed things the way we did.

As we wrote The Grove System, we made another game in parallel to test it out and ensure we weren’t missing anything, and while we still have a lot of work fleshing that game out - we know now that the Grove System itself is solid.

(Expect an announcement in the future for that game!)

The Grove System on itchio

What kind of games can I make?

From cyberpunk to farming sims, and space exploration, to coffee shop socials, the Grove System is robust enough to handle your game idea! The core feature of The Grove System is building and exploring communities’ triumphs and struggles in your setting and themes.

Is making a Grove Game hard?

Not at all! In the document, we provide copy and paste wording for you to drop all the parts into place, and flesh out and tweak however you choose - writing detailed settings, or a rolling table, or even simple prompts for players to build out details themselves. If there’s a mechanic you don’t want to use, you can simply ignore it.

I’m not a game designer, why should I care?

If you have enjoyed Banda’s Grove - its nostalgia, gameplay, or even just individual pieces - the Grove System is our way of helping other game designers make games that use those same mechanics you love in Banda’s Grove!

We've released 5 games without explicit combat rules and generally try to take a combatless stance on our ttrpgs, but when we started making a game to test out our own Grove System, a Hollow Knight fan game needs at least the threat of tactical combat. Here is our very early, first pass, alpha combat rules that uses the Grove System's token and action mechanics. There's still some parts missing, and we haven't playtested it yet, but we wanted to share. One of the biggest struggles I had with this, is with combat using tokens, the overall economy needed to be larger. During play tests of Banda's Grove, we're looking at accumulating max of 6 tokens during play usually. We needed a feedback loop to regain some tokens, and apply bonuses that increased tokens applied per token spent.

Half the playbooks in the game will only have support actions that reduce damage or increase damage ("tokens applied") for others, while the other half have direct token damage actions. Only tokens directly applied to enemies at defeat are regained to some extent and are then distributed equally among all players.

Our "Learn a Skill" advancement system (we call it "Earn a Charm" in this specific game) comes into play here, where you can improve your combat action. Someone who has a "Defend" Action - which will reduce the damage you or one person close to you takes by 1 - might be strengthened, and you reduce 2 damage. OR you earn a charm that applies a spike to the shield, and now you reduce 1 damage on the next attack and apply 1 token of damage directly to the enemy.