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4 The Cycle of Play

A session of ALONe, whether or not you integrate it with another RPG, follows a cycle.
The length of the session will determine if you go through several iterations of this cycle, or just
one.
The very first time you play, of course, the cycle begins with creating and introducing
your character(s) and the starting conditions, including their Descriptors and starting Revisions.
You may have done this already, following the guidelines in Chapter 2.
Once those things are known, you begin the first scene of the session. In ALONe, a
major scene is called a Beat, a name inspired by the concept of ‘story beats’ in media like
novels and films. During the Beat, you set up stakes to decide what consequences are on the
line, and then you ask questions, answer them with the GMA engine, and narrate the story.
You use the game’s mechanics and the deck of cards to resolve challenges, and you make
decisions about what your character does in reaction to, or to provoke, change. Random
Events may interfere, and NPCs and outside forces will influence the story and try to achieve
their own ends.
At any time during the Beat, you may use your Revisions to engage in a Vignette,
creating a flashback or parallel scene, or even taking control of the current moment. During a
Vignette, you don’t ask questions about what happens; you just get to decide. This is what lets
you change the game in specific ways, so that after the Vignette, you are facing challenges
you enjoy and engaging with the story you find most interesting.
When the Beat ends because the stakes have been resolved (generally, this means that
either the characters got what they want, or somebody else did), you may optionally take some
Downtime, which lets you gloss over the boring stuff. Your character can grow and advance,
but only in ways that don’t require any conflict or chance—or you can go directly into the next
Beat without waiting, or simply end your session on a clear narrative break!
At certain specific points in either the narrative or the session (or both), you may gain
new Revisions to spend on story edits and changes in Descriptors. How often this happens is
something you have to decide, based on the power curve and genre of your game.
This chapter will go through each of these parts of the game in greater detail, below,
starting with Revisions and some more in-depth explanations of how Descriptors work. When
you’re finished here, you should be able to dive right in and start playing, but you can go on to
the next chapter if you want advice on setting up and managing a campaign.

Recording of Play
As I play a game of ALONe, I write up what happens in the form of a story. I also record
questions, draws, and results as notes in the text. In case you want to do the same, and