[FREE BETA] The Village RPG: Gamifying PEP/SKIP for Families & Homeschoolers

Hello Permies,
I've been lurking around the PEP and SKIP threads for a while now, and honestly I've loved the system from day one. But I ran into a problem at home. My kids looked at the Badge Bits and saw a checklist. They saw work. I couldn't blame them. So a few weeks back I started building something to fix that, and I want to give it to this community for free because I need your eyes on it.

I call it The Village RPG. It's a browser-based game that runs entirely offline. Just an HTML file you double-click. The quests are the actual Sand-level Badge Bits from PEP. You make a family team, upload a real photo for your avatar, and pick a role. Maybe you're the one doing the physical work, or you're taking the pictures, or you're keeping the space feeling right. When you finish a Badge Bit, you get a digital tool. A knife at first. Practice that skill again and the knife upgrades. Sturdy, then legendary. My kids stopped seeing a checklist and started seeing a game they actually wanted to play.


I also hooked in the Marble OS Taxonomy and Jon Young's 8 Shields model. When a kid practices bread baking, the game unlocks prompts that branch out. Baker's percentages. Egyptian grain storage. The whole quiet mind concept. I built the bridge back to the forum on purpose. When you finish a quest, the game spits out a copy-paste template with all the photo prompts you need, so you can hop over to the Permies PEP forum and post your evidence for certification.


Right now it's completely free and open. No accounts, no servers, just the file. If I ever build a hosted version I might charge five bucks to keep the lights on, but that's way down the road. For now I just want families playing it and I want your feedback.

Does this actually reflect the PEP requirements?
Are the 8 Shields prompts hitting the mark or do they feel forced? What badges should I add next?
Any bugs on your browser?

You can grab the file here https://chat.z.ai/space/e1sw75vqxgc1-art. I'd love to hear what you think.

This project has grown and has kind of Taken on a life of its own and it's getting pretty huge now. At this point it lives in a new space and is about to be translated into about 10 different languages but so far is only working for Spanish and English. There's lots of stuff that I've added in the last few days let alone the last couple weeks and a lot of updates are needing people's eyes and actual playthroughs from beginning to end of these experiences these quests these Journeys and I want to upgrade things but it needs more hands-on experience from people who would tap into something like this. It's gearing up to be a paid thing maybe about five bucks a month I don't know nothing big but something to keep people's skin in the game.

Please get your eyes on this get a hold of it play with it Tinker with it break it and give me the reports give me your experiences give me your honest brutal feedback and don't hold back please.
Is it too crazy to make that type of invitation I mean is that too pushy?


https://focusingpulse.github.io/permies-skip-pep-data/

That's pretty cool, Chris!

One thing I noticed when I was finalizing badge bits is that every time I assign someone to the "Tracker" role, it brings me back up top to the "Gardening Guild." The same thing happens when I finalize the bit. That is annoying when I am deep in Tool Care.

Harold Skania wrote:That's pretty cool, Chris!

One thing I noticed when I was finalizing badge bits is that every time I assign someone to the "Tracker" role, it brings me back up top to the "Gardening Guild." The same thing happens when I finalize the bit. That is annoying when I am deep in Tool Care.

Excellent!
I appreciate the feedback so much, it's an honor actually.
I give it a shot as far as attempting to solve that issue. When you're back, open Tool Care, assign a Tracker, and it'll hold your place.

I added a new mode last night "Survival Mode" lol.


Please feel invited to check out the new ways that the biomes change the pallet and how these new modes work because they're the newest additions to this and probably would have the most bugs. These are the four modes just a description so you can get an idea:

Adventure Mode — the classic progression. Work through tiers — Sand → Straw → Wood → Iron — guild by guild. Complete 50% of a tier within one skill guild to unlock the next tier for that guild. You earn the badge at 100%.

📖 Story Mode — a guided choose-your-own-adventure that walks the family through ~30 real quests across four acts: The Awakening → The Growing → The Deepening → The Legacy. Every run tells a new story and each act gets harder — at fork points, your choices decide which guilds the next act draws from. Each adventure produces a shareable code, so you can replay the exact same story or try a friend's. "A guided adventure — every run tells a new story. Each act gets harder. Your choices steer it."

Survival Mode — train the family for the long haul. Four escalating acts: Assess (honest inventory of water, food, heat, skill) → Store (water that stays drinkable, food that keeps, rotation discipline) → Sustain (the household becomes a system — charging off-grid, filtering water, growing and preserving) → Endure (deep storage and skills that hold when everything else is uncertain). Spanning all six domains: water, food, energy, shelter, health, community. The game's own line: practice until it's boring, because boring means it works.

🎮 Free Roam Mode — every quest open from the start, no tiers to unlock. Still need 100% to earn the badge.
All four run inside the biome system — Apartment (PEA path, cool city tones), Suburban (PEP, warm earth), Rural/Acreage (PEP, deep forest) — which tints the whole world, plus the avatar studio, the CO schoolhouse tracker, and the Gold Nugget Commerce guild.