Play aid

What follows is not to be learned: it is to be found again. The whole book is here in shorthand, for the tableTable (the)the surface in front of you: the cards drawn stay in view on it for the length of the scene.parts 2, 7, for when a gesture escapes you mid-scene and you have no wish to reopen the part that teaches it.

◆ The loop

Choose

Open

Play

Fate if you keep a majorMajor 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

Wager two clauses, at the height of the sceneScenethe unit of play: you open it, you play it, you close it.part 3

Toss the coin it cuts

Restart

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 comes in only through a major kept at the openingOpening (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; the 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 is declared before you toss. After three scenes played, the floor is the world’s.

◆ What to draw

Where fate lives. Only the opening — the three cards that enter a scene — brings it in. Everywhere else, in a scene as outside one, you draw matter — one card, or three when you look at the surroundingsSurroundings (the)three cards drawn mid-scene to populate a place in one stroke: you play one, the other two stay on the table. No giving up, no fate. They are also drawn under a question, put on the place and not on yourself.part 7 (part 7) — and a major weighs there without bringing fate in.

• Closed question (yes / no) → 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. Heads = first pole / for; tails = second / against. Always propose two polesPoles (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; never the same question twice.
• Open question → draw a card, read freely. If the side has already fallen (you know it is good, or bad), read it on that side, from behind if need be; never to decide the side itself. (At the opening of a scene: three cards, keep one, give up the other two.)
• A court card comes out (Page, Knight, Queen, King) → someone: a meeting, a known face, or your character at this moment (part 4).
• PopulatePopulate · mood · widen · hook · probethe ways of asking: who is there and how he is (coin) · the weather (card) · what exists just beyond the frame · what is off · staying with the answer that has already fallen. (parts 1 and 2) richly → the surroundings: three cards, play one, the other two stay in place, points of interest asleep (part 7). (Nothing is lost. That is what separates them from the opening.)
• A waitWaitan open question that nobody else is looking into: it belongs to you, it ripens, it has the right never to close.part 8 or a stakeStakean 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 → a leadLeada scene declared to make a wait or a stake move: no new gesture, only the intention changes.part 8 (your character searches) or a world sceneWorld scenea declared scene in which your character is not present: the world advances behind his back. After three scenes played at his side the floor is the world’s; never two in a row, and fate does not come into it. It moves forward what pends, or it merely lives — a breather.part 9 (the world advances behind his back). You end up deciding and striking out — even if you open new ones.
• Uncertain actionActionwhat 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 → two poles to the coin; a card before or after the toss if the how is missing.
• Under fate (a major kept at the opening) → the coin as well, but on a wager in two clauses.

◆ The action — two poles, and the coin

• Stretch two poles: two outcomes that each give you something to write, the one you want first. Then toss. Heads, it goes through; tails, the world resists.
• If the how is missing, draw one card: before the toss it says how you go about it, after it says how it turned out. It resolves nothing. Its suit says by what: Wands, the impulse · Swords, cunning, words · Cups, the bondBondwhat an actor seems to expect of you, written in his portrait and never crossed out: you stack, you do not correct.part 7 · Pentacles, mass, inertia.
• An action is played once — nothing to buy back, and you do not attempt the same thing again in the same conditions. What dies is the means, never the thing.

◆ Fate

• In when you keep a major at the opening, and by no other door. It brings an actorActora presence that wants: someone who will come back and weigh, where the Backdrop is forgotten. You anchor him on the standing page in one line.part 7 in: play the scene and let it climb, wager at the height of the scene.
• The wager, in two clauses, just before you toss: what fate takes, what happens if it does not take it, and sometimes the wiping out of an older mark. One test only: what is forgotten by the next scene is no wager of fate.
• The coin cuts: heads, it lets it pass; tails, it takes. Nothing is compared there and nothing is drawn.
• Facing or enduring — one question only: can you act? It does not change the resolution, it changes the wager: facing, the two clauses are played on what your act obtains or misses; enduring, they stretch two worlds that nothing in you can bend.
• What fate closes, only fate can open, not by an action, not by a good idea: another major, and a wager that names it.
• Fate’s markFate’s markwhat fate has closed, noted on the standing page in one line: you can slip free of it in the fiction, it stands otherwise, and only a new wager under a major wipes it out.part 6 goes on the 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, one line; if you slip free of it in the meantime, it stands otherwise.
• What you win settles in and commits you.

◆ The world scene

After three scenes played at his side, it is the world’s turn to speak: a turn that comes, not a permission; the count is held in your head, and the floor does not expire. Never two in a row, and fate does not come into it.

Open it like a scene, play it without your character. It moves forward what pends — a stake, a wait — and you note it on the standing page; or it shows what people do in a place at this hour of the year, and that goes on the portraitPortraitwhat 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 of the place, never on the standing page (part 10); or it merely lives, and it is a breather: nothing to write at the end. All of them give him the floor back.

What to play — for you to settle: a stake, a wait, a place, or a breather. The stirringStirringthe gesture that brings a stake to life: drawing through to a major, then playing a raising.part 10, for its part, names the stake (part 10). If nothing comes, two poles to the coin: it is your own choice you hand it, and that is allowed. A more fertile variant: ask what the world is busy with, rather than what you feel like.

The raisingRaising (the)the world scene by which a stirring is raised, far from your character.part 10 brings a stake to life: draw through to a major + world scene (it does not wait the three scenes, at the opening of a game). Restarting it afterward means making it move like everything pending: a lead or a world scene (part 8).

◆ Closing a scene

A bridging questionBridging questionthe one question you leave open in closing a scene and that does not go to the standing page: the next scene answers it, and it is what frames that scene.part 8 (which frames the next scene, and is not written down), what goes to the standing page, and all the rest, which you let die.

◆ Closing a session

Look at your stakes and find the one that has moved least. Write its name at the foot of the page: the next session opens on it, and you will have nothing to choose when you sit back down.

If it is the same one as at the previous session, it is done waiting: open a lead on it, or push it in a world scene (part 8), at the reopening, never that same evening. Somebody acted while you were looking elsewhere.

◆ The four golden rules

Ask before you know · Declare the wager before you resolve · Read without haste — a card gives itself in an instant or in a day, and both count · Renounce for good — choose the card that moves things forward, not the one that reassures.

◆ When you hesitate

On a rule, decide in favor of the world: it gives nothing away. On the fiction, decide fast, in the direction that moves things forward, not the one that reassures.