Ask the Sky

Solo roleplaying engine

Play a character, in the world of your choosing, and write what happens to them.

When the outcome is uncertain, you do not settle it. The coinCointhe oracle of closed questions: heads the first pole, tails the second. It is what resolves an action (part 5) and fate (part 6).part 1 answers yes or no; the tarot gives the matter of everything else. It tells no story on your behalf: what a card means is yours to decide, tonight.

Play the everydayEveryday (the)what plays out when you have kept a minor at the opening: fate has not come in, nothing is put at stake.part 4, gently. Or wagerWagerwhat fate can take, named in two clauses at the height of the scene, just before you toss the coin: what it takes, what happens if it does not take it. What is forgotten by the next scene is no wager of fate.part 6 your fateFatewhat comes in when you keep a major at the opening, and by no other door: the moment stops being ordinary. It resolves with the coin, never with cards, and what it closes, only it can open.part 6, and live with it.

The default world is called the Free Lands: a fallen empire, flying vessels, a mother city named Nandésis. The engine carries yours just as well.

Where to start

The book is here — thirteen parts, to be taken in order: you learn by playing, and you play a real sceneScenethe unit of play: you open it, you play it, you close it.part 3 as early as the third. And if you like to carry it with you, the PDF is the same book, offline.

What you need

• A notebook and something to write with.
• A tarot deckDecka single pack of 78 cards, majors and minors mixed, reshuffled at the opening of every scene.part 2 of 78 cards. A Rider-Waite-Smith off the shelf does the job very well: one single deck, majorsMajor Arcanumone of the twenty-two named cards, from The Fool to The World. It does not answer: it names, and it weighs.parts 2, 4, 6 and minorsMinor Arcanumone of the fifty-six cards of the four suits, from Ace to King: the matter of the everyday.parts 2, 4 mixed.
• A coin.

No knowledge of the tarot is required; an appendix introduces it for whoever is discovering it.

To print

Two A5 sheets, to set down beside the notebook. The play aid holds the whole game on one double-sided sheet, for the gesture that escapes you mid-scene. The blank standing page is meant to be reprinted rather than corrected: there is only one standing pageStanding pagethe page that keeps what is pending: living actors, waits, stakes, desires under way, fate’s marks. There is only one, and it replaces the previous one.part 8, and it replaces the last.

Ashcan edition

What you are reading here is an ashcan edition: the book is complete and playable, but it is not finished. The illustrations are not final, passages will be rewritten by hand, and the final layout will come later. It is circulating in order to be played.

It changes, too, and two pages say so. The ashcan log lists what moved, and when. The devlog says why.

23 September 2026What is not written does not existA new section opens part 0, and it states the law the rest of the book had been obeying in silence: you may prepare, but only writing creates.Read the entry 21 September 2026The cards stopped decidingTwo resolutions became one: the coin settles every uncertain outcome now. The first devlog that invalidates a rule you may have played.Read the entry 18 September 2026The world does not only happenPart 10 carries two movements: what comes, and what lasts. And the coin finally has a picture, one that shows the question.Read the entry

All devlog entries — they appear on itch.io first, and land here in both languages.

The book is also on itch.io, in both its editions. Taking it there files it in your library, where the versions that follow will come to join it.

A translated edition

This English edition is translated from the French, which remains the source. The translation is complete and checked, with the same scenes, the same card plates and the same wording of the rules, but it has not yet had its final read-through in English. If a sentence rings false to you, it is the translation, not the game.

Your feedback

An edition that circulates in order to be played only moves forward through the games that get played. If you play one, tell me what started on its own, what resisted, and the moment you closed the notebook. There is a page for that, with the three questions, and nothing that leaves anywhere but your own mail program. Or write to me directly at mikael.liseciel@gmail.com. I read everything.

License

This book is made to circulate: play it, print it, lend it, share it as it is, freely, so long as nothing is sold along the way and my name travels with it. The detail is on the Author's note and license page.