The Forge Guest Pass
Joining a world someone else has been building for months is not the same as starting one. You are a guest in a house with walls already up. The pass is three lines long in each direction: three facts you must honor, the one question you bring, and the one thread you may add. Fill it in before the session, read it out at the table, and you will spend the evening building instead of asking what you missed.
Three facts I must honor
in the table’s own wordsThe things already true in this world. Write them down before you add anything of your own — a guest who contradicts the canon costs the table more than a guest who says nothing all night.
The question I bring
The one thing you actually want to know about this world. A good question opens a door for everyone at the table — a test for the keeper is a different thing, and it reads as one.
The thread I may add
The one thing you would like to leave behind. Keep it a thread — something the table can pull — rather than a conclusion they have to accept. A newcomer’s gift is a hook, not a verdict.
A pass becomes canon — it does not become a forum post
You bring the pass to the table and read it aloud. The keeper checks it against what the world already holds, and what survives that check is recorded as a canon entry with your name on it — a place, a faction, a person, a rule — sitting in the same place as everyone else’s and cited the same way. What does not survive is not a rejection; it is a thread that needed one more turn at the fire, and the table will usually tell you which turn.
The difference is worth naming. A forum post is a claim you make and then defend on your own. A canon entry is a claim the table has already agreed to carry. The whole point of writing the three facts down first is that it gets you from the first to the second inside one session instead of six — a guest who arrives knowing what is already true is a guest the table can build with straight away.