The Clock of the Game
Time is the one thing every table must share. The Game keeps time by the sun, which no one owns.
Four turnings a year, at the two solstices and the two equinoxes. The moment of a turning is the same everywhere on Earth and falls on the calendar date of your own place. A Season is the ninety or so days between one turning and the next, named by the turning that opens it — year and month — so that no Cell needs to agree with any other about season names or about which hemisphere it lives in. Every edition of the book carries the next eight turnings; when fewer than two remain on your card, find the next edition, or look at the sky.
It is load-bearing because a shared clock is what makes many tables one Game without any authority over time. Sheets arrive in the same week. Proposals gather together. Nobody sets the calendar, sells it, or can withdraw it. The week needs no shared calendar at all: your Cell's week begins on whatever day it gathers, and week one of a season is the first gathering after the turning. Most seasons hold thirteen weeks; a few hold twelve or fourteen.
How it is kept. In the week of a turning, gather as always and add the four things of the season: count The Circle's Scorecard, tell the best story, choose the next Quest, fill The Season Sheet. Many make a meal of it; some gather with the other Cells of their home so the sheets can be handed over face to face. Each Cell counts its own seasons from its first turning, written on The Circle Sheet as founded in season; a Cell that begins mid-season plays the weeks that remain and counts its first full season from the next turning. And the discipline that keeps all of this honest: a time is read from a clock, never computed — The clock is read, never computed.
Also called: the clock Stands on: The turnings · Season · Chronos Opens onto: The Turn · The Heartbeat · The Season Sheet · Temporal markers apart from milestones · The Playcard In play: table · Home · beyond Sources: The Clock of the Game, Little Book chapter (current best understanding · "the shared clock; turning dates are the astronomical solstices and equinoxes") · The Seasons of the Great Game · The LIØNSBERG Operating System §18.2 (draft) · lionsberg.wiki: The Clock of the Game Open: The turning dates printed in the chapter are given to the day; the astronomical moment falls on different local dates in different places, which the chapter acknowledges without resolving for the sheet's line 3.