The phone

In a present-day or science-fiction world, your character carries a phone (a comm, in sci-fi). It sits beside the story and works between scenes.

A phone is on by default in present-day and science-fiction worlds and off in fantasy, and the builder can turn it either way. The device has the world's own word: a phone, a comm, or a sending-stone in a fantasy world that has one.

The people your character has swapped numbers with. A number changes hands in a scene, the way it would at a bar.

After each scene, the game reads whether a number changed hands with anyone who spoke. The storyteller can also swap numbers in the scene. Nobody is in your contacts until that happens.

Text anyone in your contacts. They answer in their own voice, as their day allows: someone asleep or at work answers later. How far they'll go for you follows how much they trust you.

Replies come from the person themselves: their voice, what they remember of you, how much they trust you. A big ask from someone who barely knows you gets a no. Someone asleep, busy or in a fight answers when their day allows, by the world's clock. A contact can also text first when something in their own life moves on.

Call and they pick up, or don't. On a call they speak aloud. Hanging up hands the call back to the story.

A call rings for a few seconds, then they pick up or don't. On the call screen their lines are spoken, in their own voice (narration credits; mute it with the speaker button). A silence on a call means they hang up.

When the conversation ends, it's handed back to the story: what was arranged, what was learned, and any change in trust. Arrangements the engine keeps: Engine

• A meeting. They are at the place at the time.
• An errand. Its result is dealt when it's agreed, and arrives on time.
• A job against someone. Whether it works follows the hired hand's threat against the target's.
• Money. Someone who agrees to send money pays it from their own purse, if they have it.

A party has one group thread for its members, and they can add their contacts to it.

Send money to a contact, or to someone in your party, in the world's own money.

The coins button in a thread sends money to that contact, or, in the party thread, to a member. It moves all at once or not at all, and the other side's answer and memory carry it. Engine

The phone also holds the Feed, where the news and posts about what characters do go round. See News and the Feed.