Chapter 3 — Core Concepts at a Glance

This chapter is a map, not the territory. Every system in Wanderstar is explained in full later in the book; what follows is a single page of vocabulary so that nothing surprises you when it shows up. Read it once, get the shape of things, and move on. Each entry points to the chapter where the real rules live.

You don't need to memorize any of this. You need only to recognize the words.

The 2D6 test§

Almost everything uncertain resolves the same way: roll two six-sided dice, add your skill bonus, and try to reach a target number — usually 8 or higher. Because two dice cluster around 7, an 8+ target means an unskilled attempt leans slightly toward failure, and training is what tips the odds your way. This single roll is the spine of the whole game. (Chapter 5)

The six characteristics§

Every Wanderer has six characteristics: Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intellect, Education, and Social Standing. Unusually for the genre, they do not add numbers to your rolls. Instead they grant Advantage or Disadvantage — a quality of the roll rather than a modifier on it. You set them in equal pairs at character creation, and any Disadvantages you choose then are permanent. (Chapter 6)

Advantage & Disadvantage§

When something tilts in your favor, you roll 3D6 and keep the highest two. When something tilts against you, you roll 3D6 and keep the lowest two. That's Advantage and Disadvantage. They don't stack, and any one Advantage plus any one Disadvantage on the same roll cancel completely, leaving a flat 2D6. This is how characteristics, gear, circumstances, and tags all push on a roll without inflating the math. (Chapter 6)

Momentum§

Momentum is a per-session resource that starts at 3, caps at 6, and never carries over between sessions. In play, activating a characteristic's Advantage costs Momentum — 2 for a characteristic, 1 for a Boon or a situational edge the GM offers. You gain Momentum back by rolling with a Disadvantage and by taking trauma, so the dice's worst moments quietly refuel your best ones. (Chapter 7)

Skills & ranks§

There are 30 skills across five categories. Each sits at one of five ranks: Untrained (−3), Trained (+0), Experienced (+1), Professional (+2), and Expert (+3). The jump from Untrained to Trained is the one that matters most — it erases the penalty that makes unskilled work so unreliable. Reaching Trained is the threshold every Wanderer chases. (Chapter 8)

Boons & Banes§

Boons and Banes are freeform tags describing something true about your character or situation. A relevant Boon grants Advantage; a relevant Bane imposes Disadvantage. They cost and earn experience in opposite directions — Boons are bought, Banes pay you back — and they're the most flexible way the game lets fiction touch the dice. (Chapter 9)

Trauma§

Wanderstar has no hit points. Harm lands on two tracks — Physical (Wounded → Maimed) and Mental (Shaken → Broken) — each with two nodes. Your base armor is 3; damage that meets your armor inflicts one trauma, and damage that doubles it inflicts two. The serious nodes (Maimed, Broken) take real time to clear. It's a system about consequences that stick, not numbers ticking down. (Chapter 10)

Combat & hazards§

Fights run in rounds using range bands rather than exact distances, and they feed straight into the trauma system above. The galaxy's other dangers — vacuum, bad air, heat and cold, falling, radiation, disease, privation — all run on a single "trauma on a clock" framework, so the environment threatens you with the same currency a firefight does. (Chapters 11, 13)

Careers & advancement§

Your character's life before play is built through careers, served in four-year terms whose outcomes are rolled rather than chosen — the source of your skills, gear, contacts, and the occasional scar. Once play begins, you advance the contrarian way: you mark a skill by failing a test with it, then get a chance to improve it later. Experience accrues, and growth comes from the things that go wrong as much as the things that go right. (Part III, and Chapter 20)

That's the whole vocabulary. With these words in hand, the rest of Part II will read like elaboration rather than introduction — and you're ready to build your first Wanderer.