Good Habits vs Bad Habits
Two kinds of habits, two completely different rulebooks. This page lays them side by side.
At a Glance
| Good Habit | Bad Habit | |
|---|---|---|
| What it tracks | A behavior you want to build | A behavior you want to stop |
| Spawns | A soldier companion | A demon |
| Logging a completion means | "I did it" - a win | "I gave in" - a loss |
| The goal is... | Log as often as scheduled | Log as rarely as possible (ideally never) |
| Streak counts | Consecutive show days you met the goal | Consecutive show days with zero logs |
| HP grows when | You log a completion | You avoid the habit on a past show day |
| HP shrinks when | You miss a show day | You log a completion |
| Participates in combat | Yes - its soldier fights in dungeons and adventure quests | No - demons don't battle |
What Counts as a Good Habit
A good habit is an action you want to take regularly. "Go for a run three times a week." "Meditate for ten minutes a day." "Read for twenty minutes before bed." The defining feature: there's a concrete thing you do, and doing it is the win.
Good habits produce soldiers because they're about building capacity. The more consistently you act, the stronger the companion becomes - both as a game mechanic and as a metaphor.
What Counts as a Bad Habit
A bad habit is a behavior you want to cut. "Stop scrolling Instagram at night." "Stop eating junk food after 10 PM." "Stop snapping at people when I'm stressed." The defining feature: not doing the thing is the win.
Bad habits produce demons because they're about facing a pattern. You don't build a muscle by avoiding scrolling - you weaken a pull. That's why the mechanics invert.
Why the Rules Invert
If bad habits worked like good habits, you'd be rewarded for logging - which would mean you're rewarded for giving in. That's backwards. So bad habits flip the whole system:
- Logging a bad habit is bad. It's a confession that you slipped. The demon grows.
- Not logging is good. Each past show day you didn't give in starves the demon a little more.
Why passive "success" is a deliberate choice
There's no "I avoided it today" button for bad habits. The system treats absence-of-log on a scheduled day as the positive outcome. This matters because nudging yourself to not do something works better when the absence itself is the victory - not a second action you have to remember to perform.
The One Rule That Applies to Both
You can't change the good/bad flag after creation. If you realize a habit is on the wrong side, you have to delete it and create a new one. The category, schedule, unit, and everything else can be edited freely - see Managing Habits - but this one choice is permanent.
Related Pages
- Habit Soldiers - what good-habit soldiers do in combat
- Habit Demons - what bad-habit demons represent
- Streaks & Habit HP - the HP rules in detail
- Habit Categories