Ask the Sky
What it is
Section titled “What it is”You write a character's story in your notebook, alone, one Scenethe unit of play: you open it, you play it, you close it.part 3 at a time. You decide what they attempt; when the outcome is uncertain, you do not settle it yourself. You draw two tarot cards, one for them, one for the world, and the higher card wins. Then you write what happens.
The tarot tells no story on your behalf. The two outcomes the Cointhe oracle of closed questions: heads the first pole, tails the second. It never resolves an action.part 1 picks between are the ones you imagined; what a card means is yours to decide, tonight, for this scene. There is no character sheet, no numbers to add up, no catalogue of actions to pick from, and nothing that grows in power. A session fits in a few handwritten pages.
The rules are learned by playing, one part of the book at a time, and you play a real scene from the third one on.
The default world is called the Free Lands: a fallen empire, flying vessels, a mother city named Nandésis. The engine carries any other world just as well, which is what one of the appendices is for.
Never played?
Section titled “Never played?”Play your first scene: twenty minutes, guided, with nothing read beforehand. A notebook is enough. If you do not have a tarot Decka single pack of 78 cards, majors and minors mixed, reshuffled at the opening of every scene.part 2 or a coin at hand, the page supplies both for the length of one scene. At the end you will have written something, and you will know whether the game is for you.
What you need
Section titled “What you need”- A notebook and something to write with.
- A tarot deck of 78 cards. A Rider-Waite-Smith off the shelf does the job very well: one single deck, Major 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 Minor 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
Section titled “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 pagethe page that keeps what is pending: living actors, waits, stakes, desires under way, doors closed by fate. There is only one, and it replaces the previous one.part 8, and it replaces the last.
If you type your session rather than writing it by hand, the table holds those same two things on screen, and works offline. It does not draw the cards for you: shuffling the pack is part of the game.
Ashcan edition
Section titled “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 the ashcan log says what moved, and when.
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
Section titled “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
Section titled “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
Section titled “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.