Ask for Help

When the work needs what the body lacks, ask — of the Board, of neighbouring Cells, of the Commons. Asking is a strength move, never a failure move.

Every body eventually wants something it does not have: a skill, a tool, a room, a pair of hands, someone who has already made the mistake you are about to make. The move is simply to say so, out loud, to people who might answer. It is listed among the ordinary moves of the Game rather than among its emergencies, and that placement is the whole teaching.

It needs saying because of what asking is usually taken to mean. In most arrangements of work, needing help is read as evidence of insufficiency, so people wait until they are stuck, then ask quietly, then apologise. That order — late, small, embarrassed — is what makes asking expensive. Asked early and plainly, the same request costs the asker nothing and often costs the answerer very little, because what is scarce for one body is frequently spare in the one next door.

There are three places to put an ask, and it is worth using all three. The Board — where offers and requests from across the body are already visible, so that a need does not have to find a particular person to be answered. Neighbouring Cells — the ones near enough to hand something over the same week (Requests and offers). The Commons — where what has already been made and freely licensed is waiting to be picked up rather than rebuilt (Knowledge as commons).

The craft of it is concreteness. We need help is unanswerable; we need two hours from someone who has run a crowdfunder, before the 14th can be answered or refused, and both are useful. Say what, why, by when, and what happens if no one can. Then let a no be a no: an ask that is really a demand poisons the next one (Sovereignty). And record what came, and thank it, because a body that receives without acknowledging stops being asked (Gratitude, Resource the Work).

There is a second direction to it, less often used. Asking upward — of elders, of the wider body, of what is above your own seeing — is the same move made for guidance rather than for resource (Request For Guidance, Guidance, Wise Eldership).

Also called: asking · the strength Play Stands on: Requests and offers · Mutual Aid · Trust · Commons Opens onto: Resource the Work · The Board · Request For Guidance · Guidance · Knowledge as commons · Catalytic Resources · Fostering Ecosystemic Resource Flows · Wise Eldership In play: the table and the Room — called whenever the Quest needs what the Cell lacks Sources: Play — Ask for Help, in The LIØNSBERG Playbook's Questing Plays (first-season vintage, five lines) · The Gameboard (the instrument the card names) · lionsberg.wiki: The LIØNSBERG Playbook Open: The card names the Board as the Gameboard; the Field carries the surface under the first name and the two are not reconciled in writing. · Nothing states what a body does when an ask goes repeatedly unanswered, which is the case a first season is most likely to meet.