Table of Contents

Front Matter§

• Title page & credits
• Opening fiction — a short Wanderer's-eye scene to set tone before any rules
• How to use this book (incl. a content note)
• Table of Contents

Part I — Welcome to Wanderstar§

1. What Is This Game? — what a tabletop RPG is, what you need to play, players vs. GM, dice notation (2D6, D66), and why Wanderstar
2. The World in Brief — the rogue planet, the crossing, and the Shore in five pages
3. Core Concepts at a Glance — characteristics, skills, Advantage/Disadvantage, Momentum, trauma, Boons & Banes
4. An Example of Play — the whole system running in one continuous scene, read before the detailed rules so the engine clicks

Part II — How to Play§

5. The Core Mechanic — 2D6 + skill ≥ 8; the 7-centered curve
6. Advantage & Disadvantage — 3D6 keep-2; cancellation; characteristics as edges, not modifiers
7. Momentum — the per-session economy; activation costs; gaining it
8. Skills in Play — the rank ladder, the Trained threshold, attempting things untrained
9. Boons & Banes — freeform tags, invoking them, costs and earnings
10. Trauma & Recovery — the two tracks, armor and damage thresholds, no-HP design
11. Combat — turn flow, attacks, and applying trauma
12. Scale — the system tying personal, vehicle, and ship scales together; how a size gap changes a fight
13. Hazards — environmental dangers, exposure, and other non-combat threats

Part III — Creating a Wanderer§

14. Character Creation Overview — the four steps, example characters to follow
15. Step 1 — Name & Heritage — the Four Peoples in depth: Sleepers, Wanderborn, Seeders, Companions (with lineages — Hounds, Ferals, Warrens, Drays, and inventing your own)
16. Step 2 — Characteristics — the six characteristics; setting Advantage/Disadvantage pairs
17. Step 3 — Careers — terms, entry tests, first-term auto-success, term outcomes, aging, Life Events
18. Step 4 — Spend XP & Outfit — free XP, the outfitting package, starting Banes, buying ranks and Boons
19. Finishing Up — clearing Wounded/Shaken, what carries into play, filling out the sheet
20. Advancement & Session End — marks, the 2D6-per-mark roll, XP awards; how a Wanderer grows once play begins

Part IV — Careers in Detail§

(one consistent spread per career: entry test, fixed skills, term characteristic, D66 benefit table, and flavor) 21. The Twelve Careers — Military, Academic, Drifter, Scout, Merchant, Criminal, Medic, Diplomat, Engineer, Enforcer, Entertainer, Agent 22. Life Events — the 1D6 table-picker and the D66 event tables

Part V — Skills & Equipment§

23. Skill Descriptions — all 30 skills across the 5 categories, with example uses
24. Gear — weapons, armor, equipment, trinkets, provenance tiers, a random-gear generator, and gear list prices (what those credits buy is in Ch. 28)

Part VI — Travel, Trade & Hardware§

25. Ships, Vehicles, & Drones — operating and fighting vehicles, ships, and drones
26. Ship & Vehicle Design — building and statting craft
27. Jump & FTL Travel — how crossing the Shore works in play
28. Trade & the Economy — merchant trade, markets, and what a credit is worth in motion

Part VII — The Setting§

29. The Crossing — the full timeline from Detection (Year −50) to the present
30. The Shore — the LMC as humanity's home now; the Seeders' civilization; a six-world starter map (the Shoals of Providence) and a signature bestiary
31. The Four Peoples — culture, tensions, and how heritages relate beyond chargen; a D66 legends-and-threads table for each people (incl. Sable and the lost arks)

Part VIII — Running the Game (GM Section)§

32. The GM's Role — adjudicating, setting difficulty, awarding marks and XP; Session Zero & Safety
33. Building Adventures & Campaigns — pacing terms and sessions; the trauma-as-limit philosophy; rumors and the campaign-frame generator
34. Faction Play — the powers that move a sector: the faction model, the between-sessions faction turn, a D66 generator for factions of every kind, and a ready D66 corporations roster with hooks
35. Contacts — allies, rivals, patrons-as-people, and the contact network
36. Starter Adventure: The Cold Lantern — a complete, ready-to-run first session the GM can run with no prep

Part IX — The Sector & Adventure Toolkit§

(dice-driven generators the GM rolls at the table — every table is D66 unless noted) 37. Sectors & Worlds — system contents, world character, moons and belts, space stations, settlement detail, and the Technology Level (TL) scale 38. Jobs & Salvage — who's hiring, the job, the catch, the payoff; plus a derelict-and-salvage generator 39. People on the Fly — instant NPCs (face, demeanor, and what they want) and heritage naming tables for all four peoples 40. Adversaries — statting opposition; a D66 foe generator and a table of pre-rolled adversaries 41. Encounters — a shared encounter frame plus tables for fringe space and the jump week, space stations, planetary settlements, and the natural landscape

Part X — Playing Without a GM§

(solo and cooperative, GM-less play — the oracle that replaces a GM's rulings, and the procedures for running a session alone or as a leaderless group) 42. Playing Without a GM — why the system suits it, the fair-play contract, and shared safety with no one holding the tone 43. The Oracle — yes/no questions on 2D6 vs 8, likelihood as Advantage/Disadvantage, the doubles "spark," and the What Intrudes table 44. The Session Loop — framing scenes by expectation, driving the Part IX toolkit, running opposition, and keeping threads 45. Solo & Co-op — what differs between the two: solo journaling and self-pacing; co-op authority models, spotlight, and the disagreement tiebreak — with a worked example

Reference (Back Matter)§

At-table play aids first, then reading reference.

• A1 — Quick-reference rules summary
• A2 — All tables in one place (every D66, cost, and threshold, indexed by chapter)
• A3 — Character sheet
• A4 — GM record sheets — sector/world record and faction tracker
• A5 — Journaling Your Play — a shared shorthand (a Wanderstar dialect of Lonelog) for solo and GM-less logs, and the format the site's Journal reads and writes
• A6 — Pregenerated Wanderers — five ready-to-play stat-blocks, one per people (the starter-adventure cast)
• A7 — Converting Published Adventures — running Traveller, Cepheus, Stars Without Number, and other OSR/NSR modules on the Wanderstar chassis
• A8 — Characteristic Archetypes — the 141 named characteristic profiles
• A9 — Glossary
• A10 — Index — a subject index to the whole book, keyed by chapter

Pregenerated Wanderers§

Ready-to-play example characters — one per people — collected as stat-blocks in Appendix A6, with full worked creation logs in the Quickplay/Characters/ folder.

• Edda Halvorsen — Sleeper medic · Stills-the-Echo — Wanderborn engineer · Bram Hullward — Seeder soldier · Ace Trueflight-Ember — Companion (Hound) pilot · Jinx Quietclaw-Feral — Companion (Feral) fixer

Campaigns (supplementary)§

Beyond the in-book starter (Ch 36), connected scenarios and sandboxes live in the Campaigns/ folder — built on the rules above, with no new mechanics save one campaign's single flagged optional subsystem. Together with the starter, they form The Sunless Saga, the line's four-part through-arc (WC00 → WC01 → WC02 → WC03); each part also stands alone.

• False Light — a light Coldwake Reach sector frame + three connected scenarios (ships & jump, trade, salvage) that continue The Cold Lantern; each runs GM-led, co-op, or solo.
• Dead Air (WC02) — a medium, more-linear ~15-session campaign bridging False Light and The Frozen Crown; a courier run across The Throat, hunted by NULL; touches every pillar, weighted by its story.
• The Frozen Crown — a large open Driftmarch sandbox (a derelict Sleeper ark and the powers circling it) built to run a year or more; party-agnostic, GM-led/co-op/solo, with one flagged optional base-building subsystem its sole exception to "no new mechanics."