The cards stopped deciding
Two resolutions became one: the coin settles every uncertain outcome now. The first devlog that invalidates a rule you may have played.
Two resolutions became one. The Cointhe 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 settles every uncertain outcome now, in an Actionwhat you play when an attempt is uncertain: two poles stretched, the coin cuts, and a card may explain it afterward. It is played once.part 5 as in Fatewhat 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 the cards are left doing what they were always best at: saying how, and saying who.
One game, two engines
Section titled “One game, two engines”Until this week the game asked you to compare cards. Two cards for an action, yours against the world's, highest one wins. Which meant a scale to hold in your head: the Court cards (the)the Page, the Knight, the Queen and the King of a suit: the cards that show someone. They call up a meeting, a known face, or your character at this moment.part 4 sit above the Ten, the Ace beats the King and loses to everything else, the Fool takes the World and nothing more, a tie goes to the world. Then you read the outcome off a 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 with four entries.
None of it was hard. All of it was a page you had to reopen. For a game that fits in a notebook and gets played alone on a weeknight, that page was the only one anybody ever reopened, and it was the one with no fiction on it.
Two poles, and the coin
Section titled “Two poles, and the coin”The whole resolution is now the gesture from part 1. You stretch two Poles (the two)the two worlds you set down yourself before tossing the coin: never a yes and empty air. It is by them, too, that an action is resolved.parts 1, 5, you toss.
Heads is what you want. Tails is what happens when the world resists. Same demand as on the first page of the book: each pole must give you something to write. I grab the sheet against I do not grab the sheet is not an action, it is a closed door. I grab it, and he knows it against I miss it, and I am out in the open is one: both move the Scenethe unit of play: you open it, you play it, you close it.part 3, and one of them costs you.
There is nothing new to learn. The coin you were already tossing for the truths of the world now settles what you attempt, and the exigency travels with it.
What the cards do now
Section titled “What the cards do now”They stopped resolving and went back to speaking. A card can come at either end of the toss, and never in the middle.
Before, it says how you go about it. You know what you are attempting, not in what manner; the suit hands you the gesture, and you stretch your poles around it. Wands is the dash that does not calculate, Swords the line that cuts, Cups what touches, Pentacles what holds.
After, it says what it broke on. The outcome has already fallen, the card has nothing left to settle, so it explains: not Malias who stopped you, but the sheer number of them.
Neither, either, or both. Nothing obliges you. An action that tells itself needs no extra card, and drawing one anyway only slows your hand.
What died with the scale
Section titled “What died with the scale”The ranks, the Ace as a wheel, the Fool as a wheel, the tie that went to the world, the four outcomes, and with them the burst of fate and the crushing.
Those last two cost something to let go. A burst was a fine thing: you won with a 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 the world gave you more than you had asked for. But it was born of a comparison, and there is nothing left to compare. What it did is still available to you, in the sentence rather than in the table, and the book still tells you to write bigger than the question when the moment carries it.
Fate, in one run
Section titled “Fate, in one run”Part 6 no longer has its own machinery. The major you keep at the Opening (the)the gesture that begins every scene: three cards, you keep one, you give up the other two. The only draw where choosing costs, and the only door of fate.part 3 brings in what is going to fall on you, you play the scene to its height, you name the Wagerwhat 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 in two clauses, you toss.
Facing and enduring survive, but not as two procedures. The coin settles both the same way; what differs is the shape of the wager. When you can act, the two clauses hang on what your gesture gets or misses. When you cannot, they stretch two worlds that nothing in you bends. Facing puts you standing, enduring leaves you sitting.
What fate takes has a name now
Section titled “What fate takes has a name now”It is fate's mark, and it goes on the Standing 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, one line, or nothing will remember it is there.
It does not freeze your story. Taken prisoner under fate, you can be out by the next scene; the mark stays, differently, and now you are hunted. If fate ends a friendship, you can make it up; the mark soaks into the reconciliation and leaves a bitterness. To clear it you need a major kept at an opening, and a wager that names its cancellation.
Court cards call up someone
Section titled “Court cards call up someone”Part 4 gained a section it had been missing. In every suit, four cards show a person: the Page, the Knight, the Queen, the King.
When one falls the question changes. Not what does this say, but who is here. A meeting, someone you have already crossed paths with, or yourself at this moment. The third is the one people forget, and often the truest: the Knight of Swords the day you cut too fast, the Queen of Cups when you are holding upright somebody who is giving way.
Eight pictures
Section titled “Eight pictures”Seven plates entered the body of the book, one for each gesture that had none: the dash in part 5, the wager in part 6, the question put to a place in part 7, what is left open in part 8, what lasts in part 10, the Portraitwhat you write about someone, actor or character: a name, what he wants, his suits, and what he carries when that says who he is. Without any count, and never corrected — you write a fresh one, further on.parts 7, 11 in part 11, the Compass (the bearings)the four suits taken as directions, on the day the page empties: what to turn toward when you no longer know what to do.part 12 in part 12. An eighth opens the court cards.
Part 12 is the longest chapter in the book and had a single illustration, at its head. It has two now.
Under the hood
Section titled “Under the hood”Both editions were written in the same pass, and the two are compared automatically: same skeleton on either side, same plates, same scenes, same cards on the table, counted both ways. Thirty-nine illustrations, French and English alike. Every section touched has been resealed.
The glossary froze a rendering already in service, court cards, which the English appendix has been writing since the start, and buried another: the ranks is gone from both editions. The lexicon lost three entries and gained two, which puts it at thirty-seven.
What this changes for you
Section titled “What this changes for you”Seven devlogs could end on the same line: no mechanic moved, nothing you have written is invalidated. This one cannot, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.
Here is the position, and it is the only one that makes sense for a book that circulates in order to be played. What you have already written stays valid. A game in progress is not replayed and not corrected: the actions you resolved with cards happened, the outcomes that fell are the outcomes. The rules change the day you decide they change, and not before.
For what comes next, switch. One way to resolve instead of two, nothing to hold in your head, and the cards handed back to what they do better than any table: telling you how, and telling you who.
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.