Reference — Journaling Your Play (Lonelog)

Solo play and a journal go together (Chapter 45). The log is your memory of threads and cast, the "table" you frame scenes to, and — with no one across from you — the place the story actually lives. This appendix gives that log a shared shorthand so a session reads the same to you next month, to another solo player, or to the app that writes it for you.

The shorthand is Lonelog, an open notation standard for solo RPG logging. Lonelog is system-agnostic on purpose, and it invites each game to speak its own dialect. What follows is Wanderstar's dialect: the same five symbols every Lonelog user knows, mapped onto our grammar — the target is always 8, difficulty lives in Advantage and Disadvantage, there are no hit points, and the Oracle sparks. A log written this way is still plain Lonelog — anyone who knows the standard can read it, whatever game they play.

You never have to notate a session — prose alone is fine (Chapter 45). This is here for when structure helps, and it's the format the site's Journal reads and writes.

A note on where the numbers live. Everything below is the source of truth for what the Journal emits. If a mapping here and the app disagree, this appendix wins — fix the app.

Index§

• The five core symbols
• Rolling — the core test
• Asking — the Oracle
• Things that persist — tags
• Structure — headers, sessions, scenes
• What the dialect never writes
• A session in the dialect
• Credit

The five core symbols§

Lonelog is five marks, and they follow the shape of play: you act or you ask, you resolve it, you record what changed.

Everything else — scenes, sessions, threads, clocks — is optional layering on top of these five.

Rolling — the core test§

A test is @ (the action) then d: (the roll), read against 8, then => (what happens). The target never moves; the bonus is the skill rank (Ch 8: Untrained −3, Trained +0, Experienced +1, Professional +2, Expert +3).

@ Lean on the broker over the old debt
d: Persuade 2d6+1 = 9 ≥ 8 -> Success
=> He gives up a name rather than let the fixer hear about the bad chart.

Advantage and Disadvantage are how difficulty is expressed — never a changed target, never a flat modifier (Ch 6). Note the roll shape and which two dice were kept:

d: Pilot [Adv] 3d6 keep-hi = 6,4,2 → 10 ≥ 8 -> Success
d: Stealth [Dis] 3d6 keep-lo = 5,3,1 → 4 < 8 -> Fail

Momentum is a character resource, not the world's (Ch 7). When a Wanderer spends it to claim situational Advantage, record the spend on the line:

d: Persuade [Adv] (spend 1 Momentum) 3d6 keep-hi = 6,3,2 → 9 ≥ 8 -> Success

The natural extremes carry regardless of bonus (Ch 5): a natural 2 is a catastrophic failure, a natural 12 an exceptional success. Flag them on the result:

d: Gunnery 2d6 = 12 -> Success (boxcars)
d: Survival 2d6+2 = 4 -> Fail (snake eyes)

Because NPCs never roll (Ch 40), a threat's action is still just your roll — the skill that meets it, at Disadvantage if it's dangerous — and only its damage die on your failure. There is no enemy roll to log.

@ Dodge the dockhand's swing
d: Athletics 2d6+0 = 6 < 8 -> Fail
=> His club connects. dmg d8=5 → I'm Wounded. [PC:Echo|phys:Wounded]

Asking — the Oracle§

An Oracle question is ? then -> with the answer. Judge the likelihood first and write it, since likelihood is the Oracle's Advantage/Disadvantage — and the Oracle's dice are free (they never touch Momentum, Ch 43). Map likelihood to the roll: Likely = Advantage (3D6 keep-hi), Even = 2D6, Unlikely = Disadvantage (3D6 keep-lo). 8+ is Yes.

? Is the fixer here tonight?
-> Yes (Even; kept 5,4 → 9)
=> She's working her usual booth.

The spark. When the two kept dice are doubles, the world adds something (Ch 43). Read it into the answer:

? Is the fixer here tonight?
-> Yes, but… (Likely; kept 5,5)
? Has the rival crew already gone?
-> No, and… (Even; kept 1,1)
? Is the post abandoned?
-> Yes, and… (Even; kept 6,6)

Yes, and… is kept 6-6; No, and… is kept 1-1; every other double is a plain …but. When a spark wants more than a "but," hand it to What Intrudes or throw the scene open to an Encounter (Ch 41), and log the handoff as a roll:

tbl: What Intrudes d6=3 -> A relationship shifts — an old face reveals where they stand.
gen: Encounter -> Situation: mid-deal / Reaction: wary

Things that persist — tags§

Tags are the web a GM would hold in their head (Chapter 44) — threads, cast, powers — plus your Wanderer's state and stuff. Square brackets, a type prefix, a name, then |-separated details. First mention gives the details; later mentions can shorten to [#N:Name].

Threads — open loops, as a question or goal. States: Open, Closed, Abandoned (or a custom state like Urgent).

[Thread:Who hired the rival crew?|Open]
[Thread:Pay the dock-boss before he calls the debt|Urgent]

Cast — the people you've met, one line each: what they want and where they stand on the Contact spectrum (Ch 35): Ally, Contact, Rival, Enemy.

[N:The Fixer|Rival|wants the salvage claim]
[N:Bram the Broker|Contact|owes Echo, fears exposure]

Powers — factions and their clocks (Ch 34). The clock is the only number, and it moves on the faction turn between sessions. Show a tick as from→to. A faction is a named power with optional tags and a clock; a bare clock is any other progress track (a countdown, a repair, a deadline) with no faction behind it:

[Faction:NULL|hostile 3/8]
(faction turn) [Faction:NULL|hostile 3→4/8]
[Clock:Reactor overload 2/6]

Tags after the | are optional ([Faction:NULL 3/8] is fine); use [Clock:name filled/size] for a faction-less track and [Faction:name|tags filled/size] for a Wanderstar faction.

Your Wanderer — trauma (two tracks, never hit points), Momentum, XP, and any invoked Banes. Trauma nodes are Physical Wounded→Maimed and Mental Shaken→Broken (Ch 10). Show changes with → or ±:

[PC:Echo|phys:Wounded|mental:—|Momentum 3|XP 4]
[PC:Echo|Momentum-1]
[PC:Echo|bane:known to the chart-forgers ✓]     (invoked this session → +1 XP at session end)

Gear and wealth, when they matter enough to count (Ch 24, 28) — the Resource layer of Lonelog:

[Inv:Vacc suit|1|patched]
[Inv:Reaction mass|3|jumps]
[Wealth:Credits 1,200]

Foes, for a fight worth tracking (Ch 40) — no HP; a Wanderstar foe is a damage die plus narrated toughness and a position. Only the Wanderer rolls; the foe tag is a memory aid, not a stat block.

[F:Dockhand|tough:steady|dmg d8|Close]
[F:Corsair boarders ×3|tough:green|dmg d6|Medium]

Structure — headers, sessions, scenes§

A Chronicle opens with a header — the cover page. In a file it's YAML front matter; the Journal keeps the same fields:

---
title: The Long Account
ruleset: Wanderstar (Lonelog — Wanderstar dialect)
mode: Solo                       # Solo · Co-op · GM + Oracle
wanderers: Stills-the-Echo
lines: <topics the story won't go near>       # Ch 42 — set these even solo
veils: <topics it can touch but not dwell on>
tone: Cold, careful, small-time
started: 2026-06-30
---

Then sessions and scenes. A session is a play boundary (## Session 4); a scene is the unit of play (### S1 *where, when*). Number scenes straight through, branch a flashback with a letter (S5a), or split a montage with a decimal (S7.1) — all standard Lonelog.

Close a session by running session-end exactly as written (Chapter 20) and banking the result as a summary line:

=== Session end (Ch 20) ===
XP 4 → 8 · Pilot marked → Professional (+1 rank) · Persuade marked → +1 XP
Banes invoked: 1 (+1 XP) · Momentum reset → 3
Recovery owed: Maimed leg — needs a full downtime session (Ch 10)

A step outside the fiction — a reminder, a house rule, a safety check — goes in parentheses as a meta note: (reminder: pull the dock-boss thread next session).

What the dialect never writes§

The whole point of a dialect is that it stays true to the system. The Journal (and any hand-written Wanderstar log) must never emit generic-solo vocabulary that contradicts our rules:

• Never a variable target. The bar is ≥ 8, always. No TN, no DC, no moved number.
• Never a flat modifier for difficulty. Harder or easier is [Adv] / [Dis] — the roll shape, not arithmetic on the 8.
• Never hit points. Damage marks a trauma node (phys:Wounded, mental:Broken); it never subtracts an HP total. No Stress track either.
• Never an enemy roll. NPCs don't roll — a foe contributes a damage die on your failure, nothing more (Ch 40).
• Keep the canon words exact. Wanderers, the Shore, Momentum, trauma, Advantage/Disadvantage, Boons & Banes, Masteries, the Oracle.

Everything Lonelog offers that doesn't collide — the symbols, threads, cast, clocks, tracks, timers, inventory, scene structure — we keep as-is, so the log stays interoperable.

A session in the dialect§

The solo loop from Chapter 45, written in the dialect the Journal would produce:

### S1 *Station concourse, late shift*
@ Find the rival crew's fixer
(expectation: a place this small, the fixer works one bar)
? Is the fixer here tonight?
-> Yes, but… (Likely; kept 5,5)
tbl: What Intrudes d6=3 -> A relationship shifts
=> She's mid-deal with Bram — the broker who once sold me a bad chart.
[N:The Fixer|Rival|wants the salvage claim]
[N:Bram the Broker|Contact|owes Echo, fears exposure]

@ Lean on Bram over the old debt
d: Persuade [Adv] (spend 1 Momentum) 3d6 keep-hi = 6,3,2 → 9 ≥ 8 -> Success
=> Rather than let the fixer hear about the chart, he gives up a name. [PC:Echo|Momentum-1]

? Is the name the real buyer behind the rival crew?
-> No (Even; kept 3,4 → 7)
=> A cut-out. [Thread:The name is a front — whose?|Open]

? Does the fixer move on us now?
-> No (Unlikely; kept 1,2 → 3)
=> She files it away instead — a Rival now, not yet an Enemy.
=> Good stopping place. One Bane nearly came up — note it. [PC:Echo|bane:known to the chart-forgers ✓]

That's the whole engine on the page: frame, expect, test, ask, follow the spark, bank the thread.

Credit§

Lonelog is an open solo-logging notation by Roberto Bisceglie (Loreseed Workshop), © 2025–2026, released under CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://zeruhur.itch.io/lonelog. That license covers the Lonelog specification itself; the logs you write with it — including everything you journal in Wanderstar — are your own work, yours to keep, publish, and license as you like. This appendix describes a Wanderstar-specific dialect of that notation, offered in the same spirit: take what helps, leave the rest.