Cabin RPG

[grin]

Play infinite games, win infinite prizes

Cabin RPG is a project to turn neighborhood building into a fun systematic process. The goal is to give anyone in the world a step-by-step guide for meeting their neighbors, hosting a regular gathering, weaving relationships among the community, and ultimately turning their neighborhood into a Cabin neighborhood. The RPG ties together many things that Cabin Labs has been working on for the last year and puts the “network” into network city.

This is a preliminary vision doc that describes how we see Cabin RPG today. I expect many details to change in the process of building it, but the rough outline is clear enough to share for feedback. I’d love to hear what you think.

Goals

Guide people to build quality neighborhoods at their own pace

The NAP is Cabin’s most active initiative and it’s a beautiful thing. However, it only works for a certain type of person and is limited by the number of people @savkruger can handle at once.

Cabin RPG will take people down the same path of neighborhood-building, but at their own pace. It will lay out the steps, provide guidance and encouragement, and track progress. People will complete steps at whatever rate works for them. Think of it like the difference between a personal trainer and a workout app.

Generate qualified leads and marketing content for Cabin

The NAP is best for participants who are ready to dedicate many hours a week to doing the work required. The best way to find and vet such people is if they can show that they’ve already started trying to build community – for example by playing Cabin RPG. Anyone making progress in the game will likely be a great candidate for more focused attention from the NAP team.

As part of playing the game, people will post descriptions, pictures, and videos of the gatherings they run. Cabin can use this content to showcase the growing city, which brings more attention (and hopefully residents) to the neighborhoods themselves. Getting aligned people to move to a neighborhood is a common request that Cabin gets from stewards.

Reward neighborhoods for engagement

Neighborhood-building is hard work that often goes unappreciated in our societies. We can make it more appealing is by rewarding it. This could take many forms – attention, the joy of accomplishment, camaraderie for stewards, Cabin tokens, partnerships with other organizations, grant money, and so on.

Grow the network

Cabin’s online network is an amplifier for everything going on locally. The larger and stronger our network, the more value we can offer to local communities. I believe Cabin RPG will be the flywheel that lets Cabin grow into a thriving network city.

How Does It Work?

We have a ton of ideas for the game. But before we get to the really exciting stuff, we have to build the basics, gather feedback, and then iterate.

The first version of the game will start out with three core elements:

Neighborhood Scores

Every neighborhood on the city directory will get a score indicating how far along it is in the “neighborhood journey”. The score will go up as stewards or others in the neighborhood do things in their community and on cabin.city. Hosting a gathering, earning stamps, bringing on a co-conspirator, taking the NAP, posting pictures of an event – these are all examples of the types of things that would earn a neighborhood more points.

The City Directory

The directory becomes a leaderboard of which neighborhoods are furthest along. Neighborhoods rise to the top as they grow and gain points. This affords them more visibility and attention. As an added bonus, the city directory curates itself (this is similar to a past version of the directory that used a token-curated registry).

Neighborhood Journey

The journey is a progress path that game participants see which guides them towards neighborhood building milestones. A neighborhood that’s just getting started would see suggestions to start a chat group, knock on doors, and start planning a potluck in the park. More established neighborhoods would be encouraged to run a recurring event on autopilot, bring on cohosts, and even step back a bit to give others space to take the lead. A mature neighborhood might see opportunities for grants to improve nearby parks or ways to get involved in local government.

By laying out clear next actions at every step and rewarding progress with points towards the neighborhood score, the journey of communitybuilding becomes a game.

Each possible action on the path will be posted to a neighborhood’s activity feed. This creates content, enables social activity on cabin.city, and creates an enticing feeling of aliveness to our digital city.

Our Design Principles

We plan to adhere to these principles as we design and build out Cabin RPG.

1. FUN: The game must actually be fun to play so we don’t have to push people to engage.
2. Motivating: People must feel inspired to participate and contribute to their neighborhoods. The game must actually lead to IRL community-building.
3. Self-serve Aha Moments: People must experience “firsts” that make community-building rewarding (e.g., meeting a neighbor, organizing the first event, etc).

Where This May Go

If we can build a fun game-like experience that actually leads to vibrant IRL community, we can unlock several promising options for Cabin’s sustainability. Some possibilities:

• partner with third spaces in thriving neighborhoods, or run our own
• build credibility with local governments that opens the door to funding for neighborhood building
• work with brands to offer deals to community members that contribute the most to their neighborhoods. this may lead to a Cabin citizenship that people actually want to pay for.
• help values-aligned nomads who are looking to settle down find a community to live in

More broadly, Cabin RPG could be the way that Cabin helps people become their best selves at scale. In Life After Lifestyle, Toby Shorin writes:

We are transitioning out of the era of Lifestyle, and into an era where the production of culture is valued—both subjectively and financially—on its own terms. From an era where brands are designed to sell products to an era where brands are designed to be culture, to transform lives, to instill beliefs.

Cabin RPG is my best idea for how Cabin can achieve that.

[jon]

love this as the guiding direction for our app — helping people take the incremental steps of neighborhood building is the best thing we can do to grow our network city

[Dahveed]

I can already picture going on quests and earning points to level up your neighborhood while having fun – awesome! Can see a lot top-of-the-funnel potential for the NAP. We do need to be mindful to design it in such a way that these two things don’t happen:

1. So easy that the participants won’t see the need for the NAP (both money- and commitment-wise).
2. So difficult that the participants will forever give up on community building (whereas via the NAP they’d have a lot more support to get them through the tough patches, doubts, anxieties, etc.)

This also feels like a good fit to collab with Eileen’s proposal - bringing back and growing the lore of Cabin. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently in terms of: do we go the classic RPG route of Renaissance Faire kinda world-building language? Or is it a more neighborhood/community-specific language? Or something new entirely.

Anyway, I’m excited for both ideas. The gamification and the DIY choose-your-own-adventureness of this are very exciting. If we move forward with it, I’m definitely pitching it to my friends in not-yet-Cabin neighborhoods.

[eileen]

I’m excited to see this, Grin! As you can see from my Gatherer’s guild proposal, I have been thinking about something similar. (Actually, been thinking about this for Cabin since 2022 when I worked on Passport Stamps and Gathered a Build Week).

I especially resonate with: “reward neighborhoods for engagement”

I have some resistance to the “Neighborhood scores” mechanism.

Rather than simple “points,” I think incorporating place-based tokens and alternative financial systems through community treasuries will make the RPG truly compelling for serious tech-informed community builders.

But also, starting with points on a spreadsheet is probably the simple and effective way to get started

I think the Neighborhood Journey aspect is related to my idea of an information library.

Next steps for neighborhood building are highly contextual. Some actions are straightforward but some challenges and opportunities are unique to climate/place. The more in-context stories we have of how it goes to build community, the better!

Through curating side quests and submitting our own stories (for in-game reputation rewards?) we will collectively create a valuable treasure trove of how-to-do-it info.

I also see this as an opportunity to loop back in rural nodes, like N0, Elkenmist, Montaia, etc.

Here in the greater Portland area, Ioan M stewards a third space in Portland called Bridgespace which is intended to be a bridge to Elkenmist, a node situated directly in pretty much endless forest, so people can connect with nature. There’s a cohort of folks (some gathered from “tpot” twitter!) who regularly come to enjoy some time with this human and greater than human community.

But, Elkenmist struggles with things like advertising and could use/host more folks coming from the city. Some structure like could come from an RPG would be beneficial.

The objective to get people out into Nature was core to the mission of Cabin in the past. I think creating more bridges to wilderness through the RPG is in line with Cabin’s values.

[Ktando]

Thanks for sharing this, Grin. Before moving forward and coding an entire game, are there lower lift ways to test and validate if people would use this, the parts they would find valuable, if people who don’t play other games would be inclined to try this one which has an IRL purpose. If there’s already been pre-work done to answer some of those questions, it would be awesome to learn more about what you’ve heard from potential users.

[grin]

Glad it’s caught your imagination!

@Dahveed

We do need to be mindful to design it in such a way that these two things don’t happen:

1. So easy that the participants won’t see the need for the NAP (both money- and commitment-wise).
2. So difficult that the participants will forever give up on community building (whereas via the NAP they’d have a lot more support to get them through the tough patches, doubts, anxieties, etc.)

I agree with this. The goal of the game is to make more neighborhoods happen. If it’s so hard that people don’t play it, then it is failing at its mission. And if it’s so easy that people don’t do the NAP but still build amazing community, that’s actually a wonderful problem to have!

[grin]

@eileen

I’m excited to see this, Grin! As you can see from my Gatherer’s guild proposal, I have been thinking about something similar. (Actually, been thinking about this for Cabin since 2022 when I worked on Passport Stamps and Gathered a Build Week).

I did not know you were the mastermind behind stamps. Thank you so much for making them. I love them, they were one of the inspirations for me behind this line of thinking, and I’m planning to lean heavily on them for the game.

@eileen

I have some resistance to the “Neighborhood scores” mechanism.

Rather than simple “points,” I think incorporating place-based tokens and alternative financial systems through community treasuries will make the RPG truly compelling for serious tech-informed community builders.

But also, starting with points on a spreadsheet is probably the simple and effective way to get started

I’m totally with you. Scoring (esp with numbers) is a double-edged sword. On the one hand a score creates clear goals and games for people to play. On the other hand any score will of course be imperfect and I worry about the unintended consequences of deciding what gets rewarded.

I think the right way to start is a very simple and flexible scoring system, coupled with careful attention and feedback with the participants, and then iterate on the design. And I’m very open on where that process might lead us. Alternative financial systems, community treasuries – it’s all on the table. I love incorporating novel ideas in service of solving our concrete problems.

@eileen

I think the Neighborhood Journey aspect is related to my idea of an information library.

Next steps for neighborhood building are highly contextual. Some actions are straightforward but some challenges and opportunities are unique to climate/place. The more in-context stories we have of how it goes to build community, the better!

Through curating side quests and submitting our own stories (for in-game reputation rewards?) we will collectively create a valuable treasure trove of how-to-do-it info.

Yes, love this idea! Another impetus for Cabin RPG was my desire for such a library. When people reach out to me about how they can get involved, I wish I could point them at a “how to run your first community event” doc. In fact I even wrote one, and also this and this, but it’s a meager start. I would love to put into writing the collective knowledge that you and others at Cabin have and offer it as branching paths in the Neighborhood Journey, which I agree will be very contextual and non-linear. All good solutions are context-dependent.

@eileen

I also see this as an opportunity to loop back in rural nodes, like N0, Elkenmist, Montaia, etc.

For sure. We never wanted to alienate these nodes. But we did not know how to fit them into the NAP structure because it needed to start out pretty narrow in focus and it didn’t have much to offer these nodes (we tried, there wasn’t much interest). But @savkruger’s current definition of a neighborhood certainly includes these places. And the great thing about the RPG and the library is that they can be more flexible and more useful to rural nodes.

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When I first read your Gatherer’s Guild proposal, I did not really understand it . Now I see that we’re talking about many of the same things but maybe framing them slightly differently. There’s a lot of overlap in what we want to build. I’m looking forward to working with you on all this if you’re open to it, whatever shape it may ultimately take

[grin]

also @eileen please share your fav resources for the things you mentioned like place-based tokens. I’m especially interested in the best examples of these things being used to solve real-life problems.

[grin]

@Ktando

Thanks for sharing this, Grin. Before moving forward and coding an entire game, are there lower lift ways to test and validate if people would use this, the parts they would find valuable, if people who don’t play other games would be inclined to try this one which has an IRL purpose. If there’s already been pre-work done to answer some of those questions, it would be awesome to learn more about what you’ve heard from potential users.

Yes, great point! When I use the word “game”, I don’t mean a full-blown video game or anything like that. I mean more a light game-ifying of things we already have. My rough estimate is that the MVP won’t take more than a few weeks to ship. (caveat: I’m in the process of breaking down the work more concretely, so this is preliminary). But I hope that gives you a sense of what I’m talking about.

Some general validation: people clearly love leaderboards! Just look at things like Stava, StackOverflow, or (in crypto) Jokerace and Mirror’s Write Race. In fact Strava is particularly relevant because it helped people do an uncomfortable but ultimately beneficial thing (working out) through social gamification. This is the type of game I have in mind.