The Playcard
The one card you do not fill in: the aim, the compass question, the moves, and the words, received with the Flame and kept where you eat.
Every other card in the Game is written on. The Playcard is received. It carries, on one side, the Game in a sentence, The one question, The Five Moves, the shape of the week and the season; on the other, The Twelve Words with one line each, the next turnings from The Clock of the Game, the address of the library, and the edition. A hand copy on any paper is a Playcard, and copying it by hand is how most of the world will first hold one.
It is load-bearing because it is the survival kit. A Cell can lose its book, its sheets, and its screen and still play so long as one Playcard remains, because the card is the whole Game in a hand. It is also the instrument of one-ness: what is printed on it is the same at every table on Earth, which is what lets a stranger's Circle be recognisably the same game as yours. It changes only by The edition, only at a turning, and the old card counts until the new one arrives — nobody is ever out of the Game for holding last season's card.
How it is used. Receive it with The Flame from your Carrier. Pin it where you eat. Read the words aloud with your people once. Give copies away freely — it travels under a share-alike licence and is meant to be reproduced. When fewer than two turnings remain on it, find the next edition, or simply look at the sky: the turnings will keep coming whether or not the book does.
Also called: the Playcard (received) Stands on: The Great Game of LIØNSBERG · The Twelve Words · The Five Moves · The Clock of the Game Opens onto: The Questcard · The Circle Sheet · The Season Sheet · The edition · Notebook form · Screens and paper In play: door · table · Home Sources: The Playcard, Little Book chapter (current best understanding · "the rules card; the same on every table, changed only by the whole at a turning") · the Player+ Modules lexicon, Playcard · The DNA of Heaven, Part V (Fable synthesis, second draft) · lionsberg.wiki: The Playcard Open: Two senses are live. The Little Book and the modules say the Playcard is received and not filled in; the seed and the Operating System describe a Playcard filled at each Turn, one per player, with an upper half arriving from above and a lower half written by the player. Both are in use; the field keeps them under one name and flags the split. · The printed card still says Circle, Home, and Ring where the words are now Cell, Home Cell, and Supercell.