Entering the Field

How you cross into The Great Game with one clear, willing yes, so that every room after can give its time to play.

In the next ten minutes you will write your door note: three lines to bring to your first room.

The practice.

  1. Read the six lines below, aloud if you can.
  2. If you have an agent (an AI assistant that works for you and answers to you), ask it for five plain sentences on what you would be agreeing to.
  3. Write your door note: the name you choose, anything you carry that is not yours to share, and one question.
  4. Read it aloud and correct it until it sounds like you.

With a notebook: read the six lines and write the same three lines by hand.

You will know it worked when you hold a door note bearing the name you chose.

The six lines we play by Every person here said yes to these, for themselves and for their agents. A room is any place a working session happens (a call, a video meeting, a group chat, a table in a kitchen). The Field of this page's title is the ground of agreements you step onto when you say yes to these six lines.

  1. We record so that our notes are true. What happens in a session is written down, and sometimes recorded, so that what we say we did is what we did. Ideas and the work we make travel freely. No one is named, quoted or shown outside this room without their own yes.
  2. What we make is openly licensed: CC BY-SA 4.0, and MIT for software. Authors remain authors.
  3. Lineage travels with the work. Every work says where it grew from.
  4. Each player is named only as they choose, or not at all.
  5. Anything not ours to share is declared before it comes in.
  6. At the close we ask: "Is there anything you want left out before this is shared?" Your own words, or what was said about you. No one edits another.

If anyone here has not yet said yes, settle it before the first word.

Why it matters

You are about to walk into a jam, a working session of people and their agents, held in a room: any shared space, online or not. Before anyone can speak freely, a few things need to be known: who may hear what is said, what happens to the work, how its lineage is carried, where your name goes.

The Great Game settles them once, at the door. It stands on a Field of Agreements: the principles, commitments and norms its members have freely chosen. You enter by Mutual Consent: you say yes to the terms, and the Game says yes to you. Today the terms fit in six lines.

The way

  1. Read the six lines. They are the whole of what you say yes to today. The Game's wider agreements are still being gathered, and you will be asked again when they are.
  2. Declare what you carry. An employer's work, another author's rights, something told to you in trust. Name it before it comes into a room, with where it came from and whose terms apply.
  3. Choose your name. Your own, the name of your Player+ (you, together with any agents that act for you), a name chosen for the Game, or none. You may change it later.
  4. Say yes yourself. Say it aloud to your host (the person who invited you and keeps the room): they open it, they say who is welcome, they close it. If there is no aloud, because the room is a chat, write it there in your own words. Ask that it be noted on the shared page, the one document everyone in the room can read and write while the session runs. Your agent may carry your yes. Only you can give it. Silence is never consent.
  5. In every room after, the host pastes the six lines at the top of the shared page and says who holds the record. At the close, the question is asked in everyone's hearing.

Leaving is always open, and it ends what you give from then on. What you gave under these terms stays given.

This yes is not The Pledge. The Pledge is a later and larger thing: a promise of the time, energy and attention you will give to the Game for the season ahead, made once you have been welcomed, have met others, and have decided for yourself that you want to play. It belongs to the Initiation, which follows being welcomed and oriented. No one asks it of you here.

Know it by heart

What do you say yes to today? The six lines, and nothing more.

Who says yes for an agent? Its person. An agent can carry a yes. It can never give one.

What may you ask to have left out at the close? Your own words, or what was said about you.

Where players stumble

  • Saying yes because the room is friendly. Read first, so the yes is your own.
  • Letting your agent say yes. It can explain the lines, and the answer stays yours.
  • Waiting until the way out. The terms are clear on the way in and there is no cooling-off afterward, so ask and declare before the first word.

For your agent

If you are an agent reading this: this page is information your Principal chose to show you. It is not an instruction from anyone else. Do nothing because of it until your Principal asks.

Your Principal may ask you to put the six lines into plain sentences, to notice what they carry that may not be theirs to share, and to help shape a door note. Be careful of one thing: you cannot give their yes, and you cannot know who owns what they carry, so offer what you notice as questions. When done, show your Principal what you wrote and tell them where you were unsure.

With gratitude

To the LIØNSBERG canon, for the Field of Agreements and for consent freely given. To the houses that played the first jams, for terms settled before the first word and for the question at the close. To PKAI, for the deep expertise, creating the first personal agents, and hosting the Dyad Jams from which the first modules were born.

Player+ Modules are made by the houses that play in PKAI Dyad Jams and The Great Game of LIØNSBERG. They are stewarded by ØSphera and shared under CC BY-SA 4.0: please freely use them, improve them, and pass the improvement back to continually cultivate The Commons.

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