The same card shape

Upper half common, lower half your own — one card at every level, from a person to a world.

The upper half arrives from above and is the same on every card in the Game: the Goal, the moment, the milestones, this season's plan for the whole and the stretch of road this player's part touches, the rules and the score. It changes only by Proposal, at a turning. The lower half belongs to the player and is filled at the Turn: who we are and our roles, where we are, how we are, our Quest, what I will do this week, what I did last week and the gap, our measures, our proposals, when we read again.

It is load-bearing because it is the cheapest possible interface. Two halves and a fixed order mean a card from a valley you have never heard of can be read at a glance, and a season can be rolled up without anyone agreeing on software, language or culture. Read downward, a card opens onto the cards beneath it; read upward, onto The plan of the whole. That is how the whole is woven with nobody in charge of the weaving.

It is the first of the Minimum standards of interoperability because the others depend on it: an address is meaningless without a line to address, and a number means the same thing everywhere only if it sits in the same place on every card. A hand copy on any paper counts exactly as much as a printed one, and the edition is printed on the back so two cards can be told apart.

Also called: upper half common, lower half your own · Standard 1 Stands on: The Player · The Playcard Opens onto: Minimum standards of interoperability · The plan of the whole · An address · Screens and paper In play: table · Home · beyond Sources: The LIØNSBERG Operating System (book, draft v0) §18.1 · The Little Book of the Great Game, The Playcard (second draft) · The DNA of Heaven, Parts V and VII — lionsberg.wiki page name: The Playcard Open: The OS calls the object a card and lists seven of them; the Little Book's Playcard is the one a player holds. They agree on the two halves.