The Little Book of the Great Game (the concept)
The floor text: enough to play, small enough to read aloud in one sitting, and complete enough that a table with nothing else can begin.
The Little Book is the Game reduced to what must be the same at every table on Earth. It holds the rules at the table, the cards a Circle fills in and the one it receives, the shared clock, the twelve words, the way a season leaves the table, the way a person leaves, and the way the paper meets the wire. Its chapters are short on purpose: a book that cannot be read aloud in an evening will not reach the people the Game is for.
It is load-bearing because it is the transmission unit. The Great Game of LIØNSBERG has a full rulebook, the Playbook has the choreography of each Play, The LIØNSBERG Operating System has the production discipline — but what travels hand to hand with The Flame is this. Its own claim is modest and exact: everything inside a season belongs to the Circle; only the few shared things are fixed, so that ten thousand tables are one game.
How it is used. Read it once with your people. Copy The Playcard by hand if you have no printer — a hand copy is a Playcard. Keep The Questcard, The Circle's Scorecard, and The Circle Sheet in a box. At each turning fill The Season Sheet and send it home. When something is wrong, The Way Out; when something is better, write it as a Proposal on line 12 and let The Way Up carry it. The book changes only by The edition, at a turning, never mid-season.
Also called: The Little Book Stands on: The Great Game of LIØNSBERG · The Twelve Words · On translating Opens onto: The Playcard · The Questcard · The Circle Sheet · The Circle's Scorecard · The Season Sheet · The Clock of the Game · The Way Up · The Way Out · The Return In play: door · table Sources: The Little Book of the Great Game and its chapters (each marked current best understanding) · The Little Book of the Great Game — Second Draft · lionsberg.wiki: The Little Book of the Great Game Open: Two live texts sit side by side — the chapter set and a second draft — and they differ in places (the second draft carries A Word on Words, which the chapter set does not). · The chapter set still says Circle and ring where the word is now Cell and Supercell.