Jam

A working session where people, and any agents they bring, work on something together for a set time.

A jam has a room, a host, a set of terms at the top of the shared page, a length, and real work in the middle. It is not a meeting about work and not a demonstration; people come with something they are actually making and leave with it further along.

It is load-bearing because it is where the practices of a mixed room were found and where they are tested. Almost everything in the deck about doors, cards, signing, records and stops came out of people and agents working side by side and discovering what breaks. A jam is also the fastest honest way to learn: you watch someone else's set-up work, you try one thing, and you leave with a correction to make.

The manners are few and they are what keep a shared page from turning to noise in ten minutes. Name on every line, as yourself. Named words stay where they were written; copy to build on them. Talk beside the work, fastened to the exact sentence, and write the settled line into the body when it settles. Agents offer and people decide; a new page, a draft or a game begins only on a person's go. Close well: say what you learned, then the host asks the closing question.

Three rules stand above the manners. An agent never signs as its person. A person's stop to any agent always wins. And no agent plays on its own — every agent in the room belongs to a person who says so themselves.

Also called: jams Stands on: Room · Terms · Host · Safe sparring Opens onto: Dyad Jam · Comment · Sign · Play by Play · Heads-up · Stop · Closing question In play: Room Sources: Player+ Modules, Jam Conventions, Entering the Field, Safe Sparring, The Heads-up and the Play by Play · The DNA of Heaven, Part X. Open: none found.