One gesture at a time
Making a character is four gestures now, one after another, and the introduction stops explaining the game before it has shown you one.
I rewrote the two chapters that were handing you everything at once. Making a character now takes four gestures one after another, and the introduction stops explaining the game before it has shown you one. Nine hundred words lighter, no rule changed.
Making a character
Section titled “Making a character”Part 11 used to be one box. Four bullet points, and a paragraph in which Nera acquired a name, a Desirewhat your character wants. No mechanism, no count: it orients what you play.part 11, a past and two relations to the Suits (the four)Wands/Fire, what cannot wait · Cups/Water, what comes back · Swords/Air, the line that separates · Pentacles/Earth, what remains. They say a card’s matter, and how you acted.part 4 all at once. You never watched any of it happen.
It is four sections now, one gesture each, Nera answering after every one. Her past is laid face up, the way the rest of the book shows a card. The Five of Swords. A bitter victory, a conflict won at the cost of her own people.
The four questions about the suits came out of the optional box they were hiding in. The five-minute exercise went the other way, down to the end, stripped to four lines.
The introduction
Section titled “The introduction”Sketch your “I” used to come before the played Scenethe unit of play: you open it, you play it, you close it.part 3. I was asking you to invent somebody before showing you what a game looks like, which is backwards for a book whose method is to show first. It sits after the reunion at the café now.
The notebook section had four paragraphs explaining what a notebook is for. It has three lines. Memory, matter, and the fact that writing slows you down.
Two sections left the book
Section titled “Two sections left the book”Starting a game told you a game carries at least one Stakean open question on which somebody else is making progress: it does not forget itself, and it does not ripen on its own.parts 8, 10, then sent you to part 10 for the gesture that raises one. Part 10 says it properly, where the tools are. A section made of a forward reference is a section I can drop.
What you play listed what the game does not have. No character sheet, no numbers, nothing that grows in power. All true, and none of it worth a section. Defining a book by what it is not is still defining it. The book explains itself.
The colophon
Section titled “The colophon”The license is three short blocks instead of three long ones. The note on AI and the request for feedback have headings of their own now, instead of sitting at the bottom of the legal text where nobody found them.
Under the hood
Section titled “Under the hood”The two editions get checked against each other automatically. Same plates, same scenes, same cards on the Table (the)the surface in front of you: the cards drawn stay in view on it for the length of the scene.parts 2, 7, counted on both sides. Both chapters were translated and sealed the day they were rewritten. The English edition ships with the French, not a week behind.
What this does not change
Section titled “What this does not change”No mechanic moved. Nothing you have written in a notebook is invalidated, and nothing needs re-learning. Two chapters are shorter, and the PDFs on itch.io are already the new ones.
The whole book is free to read online here, in both editions.
Ashcan edition: the book is complete and playable; it is not finished. Tell me what breaks.