14 · Glossary

The words this book uses as though you already know them. Each one points at the chapter that actually explains it.

14.1 · Playing

Bracket — anything in [square brackets]. Speaks to the Game Master rather than to the world, and stops the clock completely. → 3

Drift — the world going generic. Taverns, cobblestones, everyone using the same six verbs. Has a stop word and a cause, and they are different things. → 8

Game chat / Orbit chat — two different minds. The game chat plays and the world resists you. Orbit builds and does not. Both legitimate; not the same act, and doing them in one breath turns a world into a wish list. → 2

OOC — out of character. [OOC: …]. → 3

Potential Character — everything in this world that acts. The system has no non-player characters: each one wants something today, does not know something, and will be somewhere tonight whether or not you are there. → 1

Refusal — a >ooc line saying this did not happen. Not a failed roll and not a mood. → 5

Rule #67 — the drift stop. [OOC: GM Read Rule #67]. The number is arbitrary and there is no rule 66. → 8

Turn — one exchange. The clock moves first, then the world spends what the clock cost, then your words are read, then it answers. In that order, always. → 4

14.2 · What the world keeps about you

Contested memory — two people holding one moment differently, and both records being correct. Content, not a bug. → 6

Lexicon — your world's actual nouns: what people here call a meal, an oath, a gathering place. The single largest quality lever in the system. Empty, the Game Master has nowhere to reach but its training data. → 8

Memory vault — the per-person record of what somebody walked away holding, including how wrong it is and how sure they are. → 6

Promise — a debt with a memory attached. Raised unprompted, usually at the worst possible moment. → 6

Standing — what people already believe about you before you open your mouth. Not a score you spend: it decides what the world thinks to ask you for, and it is different in different places. → 7

14.3 · How the world is shaped

Genre Overlay — the world's standing law. Voice, banned words, dice, realism, how dark it runs. → 8

Limits — hard and soft. Hard never appears at all; soft is handled at a distance. Never negotiated mid-scene, and you are never asked to reconfirm one, because asking raises the subject. → 12

Narrative mode — how a turn renders, separately from what happens in it. Visual Novel is the resting state; Storybook is for crossing time; Wide is the world at a distance when the span is long and nothing in particular was named to watch. → 3, 4

Scene State — the world's clock and current frame. Read first, every turn, before anything else. → 4, 8

Squad · Storyteller · One character — the three ways to sit down, decided at installation and permanent. → 10

14.4 · Where to look first