Asynchronous only, parish-scale, and never global.
Twelve parishes, drawn on the same geography as the ones on this site. Nothing in the game requires two people to be online at the same moment, and no leaderboard anywhere in it ranks a player against somebody they will never meet.
The twelve, and what each is working on.
Parish membership is shared with the rest of this site rather than duplicated. A player who is in the Marches here is in the Marches in the game, through the integration layer, and nothing else about them crosses.
The only leaderboard in the game.
Ranked within one parish, on nature units, for one season, and reset when the season ends. There is no global table, no all-time table and no cross-parish ranking anywhere in the design.
The CotswoldsThis season
- 01 A player in the Cotswolds Nature units, this season 1,840
- 02 A player in the Cotswolds Nature units, this season 1,610
- 03 A player in the Cotswolds Nature units, this season 1,455
- 04 Youyou Nature units, this season 1,290
- 05 A player in the Cotswolds Nature units, this season 1,180
- 06 A player in the Cotswolds Nature units, this season 1,044
- 07 A player in the Cotswolds Nature units, this season 980
It ranks on nature units deliberately, because they are the one score that cannot be bought, hurried or converted. A leaderboard on Coins would rank the players who spent the most on Kaleb, which is not a competition anybody should be encouraged to enter.
Why there is no global leaderboard.
Because a global leaderboard in a game with a paid time-skip ranks spending. It cannot do anything else. The top of it is whoever compressed the most calendar, and every player who looks at it learns the one lesson the design is trying not to teach.
A parish table of two thousand people, reset every season, ranked on the currency that cannot be bought, is a genuinely different object. It is close enough to matter, small enough to be reachable, and it measures patience rather than throughput.
It also matches how this site already works. The parishes exist, they are geographic, they are run by members rather than by a community team, and a game that invented a second parallel social structure would be building a worse version of something that already functions.
What the social layer does and does not contain.
| In the design | Deliberately absent | |
|---|---|---|
| Timing | Asynchronous. Nothing needs two people online at once | Real-time co-op, raids, live events |
| Ranking | One parish, one season, on nature units | Global tables, all-time tables, cross-parish ranking |
| Interaction | Visiting, helping, bartering produce | Attacking, stealing, sabotaging, competing for a scarce resource |
| Chat | None in the game itself | Free text between players, which would need moderation this design cannot fund |
| Identity | A farm name and a parish | Real names, precise location, age, or anything about a child |
| Goals | Shared parish objectives with capped, equal rewards | Guild wars, competitive parish rankings, contribution shaming |
No free-text chat, anywhere in the game
A game likely to be accessed by children, attached to a family television brand, cannot responsibly ship unmoderated player-to-player text at a scale it cannot fund moderation for. So there is none. Players visit, help, barter and share parish goals, and every one of those interactions is a structured action rather than a message.
The rest of the social layer.
Neighbouring
Walking somebody else’s farm, helping with a job, and leaving without having taken anything.
Bartering
Swapping what you grew for what they grew, with no currency and no market anywhere in it.
Parish goals
Collective targets with capped, equal rewards and no contribution table.
The parishes, questioned.
You are placed by rough geography and you can move once a season. Parish membership is shared with the rest of this site through the integration layer rather than being asked for twice.
Because Coins can be earned faster by a player who buys Kaleb’s time, and a leaderboard that ranks spending is a leaderboard that teaches the wrong thing. Nature units cannot be bought, hurried or converted.
None. Every interaction between players is a structured action — a visit, a help, a barter offer — because unmoderated text in a game likely to be accessed by children is a risk this design will not take.
Visiting somebody else’s farm.
Asynchronous, useful, and impossible to do anybody any harm with.
