The compass question

Before every move: does this make life a little more like Heaven?

If it does, make the move. If it does not, stop, discern, and choose a better one. A ten-year-old can ask it. So can a tribe, a guild, a bioregion, a planet. It never changes, it needs no measurement apparatus, and it always points toward The Goal.

This is the whole of the Game's ethics carried in one portable sentence. Everything larger — the Twelve Irreducible Elements, the Pillars, the Playbook, the Path — is the unpacking of what answering it well requires. Nothing larger replaces it. A body that loses the question can still run its rituals perfectly and drift for years; a body that keeps it can lose almost every instrument and still steer.

The question is asked before the move, not after. That placement is the load-bearing part: it makes the compass a practice rather than a judgment, and it puts the reading in the hands of whoever is about to act rather than whoever is in charge. It pairs with Hell On Earth to stay honest — a question with only one pole cannot be answered wrongly, and therefore cannot be answered at all.

When two moves both point Heavenward, the older players ask a second question: is this the highest thing we could do right now, for ourselves and for the whole? Not every good move is the next move. That second question is where Wisdom, Discernment, and the Critical Path enter; the first question sorts direction, the second sorts sequence.

Also called: the one question · the compass · Does this make life a little more like Heaven? Stands on: Heaven On Earth · The Goal · Hell On Earth Opens onto: Wisdom · Discernment · Value · Waste · The Lens · Design To The Goal · Play In play: At the door, as the first thing handed to a newcomer that they can use the same hour; at the table, before every Commitment; at every rung beyond, unchanged in wording. Sources: The DNA of Heaven (seed text, second draft — the one question, and the second question for older players) · The Little Book of the Great Game — Second Draft · Heaven and Hell as Co-Created Trajectories (Card, status: captured) · the Player+ module lexicon (Play the Game). lionsberg.wiki: The Great Game of LIØNSBERG. Open: The canon has no single page at this name; the question lives inside the Little Book, the modules, and the seed. Its wording is stable across all three; its second question appears only in the seed's second draft and has not been through a season of use.