# Forging the Path to Free Trader Beowulf
tags: #articles #game/rpg/starforged #game/rpg/traveller
![[Traveller - Mayday (cover, illo).jpg]] ![[Starforged (cover).jpg]]
Look, let's be honest, you didn't expect that I would be able to drop a moving, emotional bit like [[Day 04 - Message|today's RPG A Day entry]] and not be able to follow it up with actual game mechanics and discussion of an RPG. You would be sadly mistaken.
I have as strong a compulsion to play with systems as other people have a compulsion to play with themselves, possibly for the same reasons. And I'm going to do it here in front of all you people, as usual. That's why you come by. Pun fully intended.
So you know I love **[[Traveller]]**. Not just the setting, but the setup—the implicit Johnny-on-the-spot of being the only person in space who can respond to a plea for help and deciding whether to do so or not. But also, the idea of owning my own ship, picking up cargo, taking it from place to place, and making a profit, getting into trouble along the way. That's really appealing to me.[^1]
I'm not sure what it says about me that I have a space trucker fantasy and probably do think that would be a wonderful life—if I don't get my first option of being an omniscient god. But here we are.
I'm weird. That doesn't matter.
You also know that I'm going to recommend **[[Ironsworn - Starforged|Starforged]]** as the ideal modern system to pursue this in. Frankly, the picture of the cover at the top of the post gave that away.
But let's talk about how you can do that. Because, sure, you can play that right out of the box, but it might not be immediately obvious how to set yourself up for it. We'll do a little walkthrough. It'll be fine.
## Ingredients
![[Starforged (cover).jpg]] ![[Sundered Isles (cover).jpg]] ![[Ancient Wonders (cover).jpg]]
Most of the time when I write up some sort of introduction or treatment, I try to pick games that are free or low cost and use as little supplementary material as possible because I want it to serve as an introduction to the experience.
That's not what we're doing today. There is a ton of great third-party material available for Starforged. And I could go out and pull a whole bunch of it, which would be applicable here. But if we're going to go with the bare minimum to do a take on Traveller, then we need the following three books:
### Starforged
I suppose it goes without saying that you will need the core book for this, but I don't think you'll mind. This is, I still maintain, one of the best sci-fi RPGs published in the last couple of decades, and it's my go-to for quite a lot, as anybody who's been following the things that I write here and elsewhere already knows probably all too well. I have no shame. I make no money from it; I just love it and want to present it to you.
Yes, you're going to need the core book to play along here.
- https://tomkinpress.com/pages/ironsworn-starforged
### Sundered Isles
You may be wondering why you need **[[Ironsworn - Starforged|Sundered Isles]]** if you're going to be playing what is effectively a relatively hard sci-fi (though I would more describe it as cassette futurism), **Traveller**-derived setting.
And the answer is kind of interesting. **Sundered Isles** goes into some significant depth on talking about how you can think about making moves for your fleet—that is, how to think about the things that happen in a space engagement for not only you but the wider context of what an initial engagement looks like, the moves that might set you up for the actual fight, how to play through the fight, and things that might be important.
This is not just useful when talking about sailing vessels, and the text itself is pretty clear about that. One of the setting options that you can pursue in **Sundered Isles** itself is a sort of space fantasy, which is a bit more grounded than the 18th-century pirate Age of Sail, which is the assumed default.
On top of that, there are some new and very useful mechanics for trading cargoes, managing your cargo hold, and shipborne supplies.
This is definitely going to come in very handy *very* soon.
There's also a few handy assets which easily can be reinterpreted into a more hard sci-fi understanding for the ones that don't reproduce the ones that already exist in **Starforged**.
Finally, there are some additional oracles which expand some of your options for describing planetary and orbital settlements. Having more oracles never hurts anyone's feelings.
- https://tomkinpress.com/pages/sundered-isles
### Ancient Wonders
Here we're really going off the expected path because this is not from Shawn Tomkin. Instead, **[[Ancient Wonders]]** is quite the behemoth of a book from Ludic Pen. You can reasonably assume that there are some really excellent oracles for expanding on ancient wonders and megastructures in the setting, and you'd be absolutely correct. But that's not really why I'm here for it.
Instead, I want it for the more grounded, more realistic sector creation (which is now solar system creation). If you're familiar with **Traveller** and how it is appreciated by its fan base, then you know creating realistic space environments is one of the things that they adore and will never give up.
By default, **Starforged** really doesn't create solar environments. In a sense, it really handwaves them, and the most important thing about any particular sector is really the planet or planets involved. The sun doesn't actually come up very much unless it is particularly unusual. That's not grounded enough for us. Instead, we are going to build relentlessly, focusing on pseudorealistic solar systems to have our adventures in, with extremely detailed biomes.
I don't know what to tell you. That's what's going to happen because that's more **Traveller**.
- https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/505365/ancient-wonders
## Truth in Advertising
We are going to start by thinking about what our Truths should be in the context of Traveller. Truths are how you define what your world is like and guide your creation all the way through to characters.
If you're unfamiliar with the setting of **Traveller**, firstly, congratulations for making it this far into this much talk about it without knowing anything. But if you need a super fast catch-up, then I can recommend nothing so much as [Christopher Kubasik's conversion of Traveller into Sorcerer mechanics](https://archive.org/details/traveller-sorcerer-christopher-kubasik). Five pages and it's just enough that you know what you're up to, but not so much that you can't wrestle with it.
I'm not going to go into an in-depth answer on each of the truths, but we are going to touch briefly on the ones which come across in **Starforged** and in **Sundered Isles**, just to pull the flavor together.
### Starforged
We get to start flipping through things here on page 82. Nothing from the default assumptions of the setting really run into conflict with what we want to do, except perhaps the focus on it being an unjust future. It's just the future—some places are unjust, and some are just. Some authorities rule rightfully, and some are totalitarian authoritarians. Some rebels are totalitarian authoritarians. By and large, the Third Imperium does the best it can with what it has.
#### Cataclysm
For our purposes, there was no cataclysm. There is just the spread of humanity throughout the galaxy. Earth still exists, but it's probably not even close to the focus of your interests.
#### Exodus
No cataclysm, no exodus. Not our problem.
There's plenty of other, more local concerns to be engaged with.
#### Communities
Here's where things get interesting. For the sake of us hooking into that core game loop that I was talking about earlier, there must be people near enough and needy enough that trade is important, but not necessarily so many that one trader won't make a difference.
Thus, we're going with a variant of that third option, where mankind has made their mark in the galaxy, but things threaten that stability, especially on more local levels.
#### Laws
The Third Imperium is a feudal governing architecture. In most places, it governs with a light hand simply because it has to. There aren't enough Imperial forces to be everywhere at once, even in relatively populous, controlled space.
Out on the edges, it really is a lawless frontier. Closer to Terra, it's much more organized.
#### Religion
Traveler is a surprisingly secular setting. While there are mentions of religions and even cults, it isn't central to most of the stories, especially for people who travel widely.
That said, I love religions as tenets of local cultures because, under stress, people develop beliefs in things.
Being a mendicant priest of something or other is definitely a reason to travel from star to star.
#### Magic
Magic, in the classic sense, certainly doesn't exist. But psionics most certainly do.
What's the difference? Mainly a scientific approach, and the fact that the Psionic Academy is an organization that tries to stay on the down-low but seems to be everywhere.
Now, could some culture wield psionics in a way that they drape in the cloak of magic? Absolutely. I encourage such perversions of the natural order.
#### Communications and Data
Here is where cassette futurism rears its head. Because while the Third Imperium is a highly technological and well-developed place in the core, faster-than-light communication, despite the fact that there is faster-than-light travel, does not exist. That means that information is literally moved by couriers from one system to another and must be transmitted in and out. The setting description for Kubasik's conversion I referred to earlier is a fantastic description of how and why that happens.
Yes, this does mean that if you get particularly lucky, you might be able to outrun bad news about yourself. Or you might not. Or you might be the guy who needs to get information somewhere faster than the usual network will take it. Good luck. You're going to need it.
#### Medicine
Unsurprisingly, this differs widely across the Imperium. Out on the fringes, you might be lucky to find a well-trained medical practitioner. They might just be an up-jumped veterinarian, but you'll be glad to find them.
Then again, you might find someone who trained in the Core and is more than qualified to install cybernetics or engage with entire limb replacements. You're probably not going to find advanced gene therapies, though that's not off the table either.
#### Artificial Intelligence
AI doesn't have much of a presence. When it does, it is a bit clunky, blocky, take up way too much physical space, and sometimes develops a little bit of a quirky personality. Outside of the Deep Core worlds, AI is just not often found. And when it is, it's either extremely helpful or the problem.
#### War
War is either really not good for trade, or it is terrible for trade. The Third Imperium is not a stranger to war, even on a vast scale. But for the most part, space is much larger than it's economically practical to mobilize across.
When wars are in play, it tends to be in an individual system or even factions on a specific planet. It's also a situation where there's profit to be made by someone appropriately cunning, though don't get more cunning than your legs can run fast—that ends poorly.
#### Lifeforms
Frankly, they're everywhere. Though on terraformed or well-colonized planets, they are generally pretty well-tamed. However, there are a lot of colonies on planets with flora and fauna which don't like people very much.
#### Precursors
Not as much of an issue in Traveller as you might think. However, I love the idea of precursor civilizations.
So we're going to say that a vast number of civilizations have risen and fallen before humanity made it out to whatever part of the galaxy they're in.
Sometimes you find weird facilities, ancient weapons, horrific nightmares. Do you know what else you find in there? Things you can sell for a lot of money. Maybe you could even pay off the ship.
#### Horrors
All that said, supernatural horrors? There are stories about ghost crews and remnant undead, but they're just stories. Rogue cybernetic entities? Sure. Mad scientists tinkering with things man shouldn't know? Absolutely. Hideous corporate experiments encompassing entire planets out in the backwaters that no one ever goes to and which may have ended in horrific violence? Please. Yes. But no supernatural horrors.
#### Aliens
Technically not in the default **Starforged** list because there are no aliens in **Starforged**. It's essentially a human setting. But Traveler definitely does have aliens, and you're probably wondering what weird mechanical madness I'm going to specify here in order to cover all the possibilities.
The answer is I'm not going to suggest any. No mechanical changes at all (except for something that we will discuss here shortly).
Instead, I want you to think of the various species of aliens as empowering you to change your fictional positioning, allowing you to do things more easily or make things more difficult. In the fiction, generally approach it such that it's the storytelling that differentiates you, not the mechanics.
##### Aslan
**Description:** These feline humanoids have a deep-seated warrior culture, resembling large bipedal cats. Their society, the Hierate, is based on a rigid code of honor and a constant drive for territorial expansion, with males seeking land and females managing politics.
**Strengths:**
- A highly motivated, disciplined culture that excels at warfare and expansion.
- Their strong sense of honor makes them reliable allies—provided you don't violate their code.
- They possess a keen sense of smell and hearing, and are physically formidable in a fight.
**Weaknesses:**
- A deep-seated, territorial aggression makes them prone to conflict, and their society is in a constant state of low-level war.
- Their cultural norms are profoundly alien and difficult for others to understand, making diplomacy a minefield of potential insults.
- A male Aslan's social status is tied to land ownership, which can make them obsessively greedy and single-minded about real estate.
##### K'kree
**Description:** These large, centaur-like herbivores are intensely religious and xenophobic, viewing non-K'kree as "Meat." Their society is a collective "Herd" dedicated to cleansing the galaxy of predators, making them stubborn and slow to adapt.
**Strengths:**
- Their immense size and strength make them powerful in melee combat and heavy labor.
- The tight-knit, collectivist nature of the Herd provides immense social stability and an unyielding loyalty to their species.
- Their society's dedication to tradition and their home world means they are master stoneworkers, architects, and farmers.
**Weaknesses:**
- Their religious fervor and xenophobia make communication and cooperation with them nearly impossible for most species.
- They are physically unsuited for environments with high gravity or a carnivorous food chain.
- The concept of individuality is foreign to them; a lone K'kree is a dead one, and they refuse to travel without the support of a Herd.
##### Hivers
**Description:** Physically weak, hexapodal, starfish-like beings. They are pacifistic masterminds who manipulate other races with diplomacy and intricate, long-term schemes. Their society, the Hive Federation, is a complex web of alliances and plots.
**Strengths:**
- Unrivaled at manipulation, diplomacy, and subtle influence.
- Their alien perspective allows them to see patterns and connections that other races completely miss.
- They are naturally non-violent, making them effective negotiators and mediators (when it serves their purpose).
**Weaknesses:**
- Their physical weakness makes them terrible at direct combat or any activity requiring brute force.
- Their psychology is so foreign that even their closest allies have trouble trusting them, as their motivations are often inscrutable.
- They are prone to overthinking and "analysis paralysis," often missing simple solutions while they develop a twelve-step master plan.
##### Vargr
**Description:** Uplifted canine humanoids descended from wolves. They are charismatic and fiercely independent. Their society is a patchwork of thousands of squabbling states, and their love of adventure makes them a constant, if disunited, presence in the galaxy.
**Strengths:**
- Their natural charisma and emotional intelligence make them excellent leaders, diplomats, and social manipulators.
- They have a fierce sense of freedom and loyalty to their pack, making them tenacious and brave when it counts.
- Their individualistic nature and lack of a central government allow them to adapt to new situations with great speed.
**Weaknesses:**
- Their society's disunity means they are constantly at war with themselves and often can't be relied upon for a stable political or military alliance.
- Their pack-based psychology and emotional volatility can make them unpredictable and prone to rash decisions.
- They have a negative reputation throughout the Imperium, which makes a Vargr adventurer's life harder from the start.
##### Zhodani
**Description:** A human-descended race with widespread psionic abilities. Their empire, the Zhodani Consulate, is a technologically advanced, rigidly controlled society where psi powers are integrated into daily life and government.
**Strengths:**
- A high percentage of the population possesses psionic abilities, giving them a massive advantage in mental combat and communication.
- Their society is a highly ordered and efficient "benevolent dictatorship" that has all but eliminated crime and mental illness.
- They are highly intelligent and well-educated, with a strong focus on intellectual pursuits.
**Weaknesses:**
- Their highly controlled society is stifling and distrusted by other races, making cooperation difficult.
- They are so reliant on psionics that non-psi solutions to problems are often ignored or undervalued.
- Their "Thought Police" and rigid social hierarchy are terrifying to those who value personal freedom and make them anathema to many species.
##### Droyne
**Description:** Small, reptilian humanoids with a strict, hive-like caste system. They were the first race to develop jump drive, and though their empire is long gone, their ancient knowledge and technological skill still make them a factor in the galaxy.
**Strengths:**
- Exceptional technicians, engineers, and scientists due to their caste specialization.
- Their long history gives them access to a vast, ancient library of forgotten knowledge.
- Their caste system provides immense social stability, with every member having a clear purpose.
**Weaknesses:**
- The rigid caste system limits individual potential and makes social mobility non-existent.
- They are small and physically weak, making them poor combatants.
- The Droyne language and their hierarchical society are difficult for other races to understand and navigate.
##### How To
So let's say that you would like to play a Vargr, like a man of culture would.
You know that you probably don't come from a place that's incredibly politically stable. You're an individualist. You love to get out there and get stuck in the rest of the world. You're charming and clever. You're emotionally and intellectually adaptive.
But you do tend to be unpredictable, and people don't necessarily like you.
What does this mean? Well, maybe there are some assets that you end up wanting to take preferentially. There are definitely a few that allow you to be better at getting along with people than others. There are some that let you manipulate others. Perhaps this guides your choice of assets.
Maybe it changes the challenge rank of something that needs to happen. For instance, you need to go to a fancy dress ball and hobnob with the movers and shakers of one of the imperial worlds in order to seal a trade deal.
Normally, that just might be a scene challenge with a rank of troublesome. A human would sweep in, shake some hands, kiss some babies, wink at the trade factor, and get a signature before being out the door. But you're a Vargr. People don't quite trust you as much. You have to work a little harder.
So maybe the rank bumps up to dangerous or even formidable, depending on whether this planet has been attacked by Vargr in the past. You're going to have to talk to more people or invest more effort in order to get that contract signed.
Lean into the fiction before you worry about the mechanics.
In this case, maybe the fiction leads you to realizing you're not the right person to go make that contact. So you need to hire a human to act as your emissary at the party—the guy who you want to negotiate. He probably has something he needs you to do that you might be better suited for.
Maybe he just needs to be bought off.
Don't let being an alien in a largely human-controlled feudal imperium become an issue of dice. Make it an issue of fiction. Provide story hooks rather than cut them off.
### Sundered Isles
**Sundered Isles** has some overlapping Truths that have to be dealt with. Most of those I've already touched on, so no need to revisit them. But there are a few that we're going to talk about.
#### Iron Vows
I put this off from the discussion of iron in **Starforged** because I think it's better treated here. After all, not all characters are assumed to be Ironsworn.
For our purposes, we are going to state that iron vowels are literally that—promises bound by tradition and intention. Nothing about them mechanically is going to change because they provide a really strong motivator and structure for pushing characters into action and reminding you why characters are pushed into action. But characters don't swear by iron; they simply promise or vow with iron intention.
#### Navigation
This is definitely worth talking about in the context of **Traveller**.
The short version is that jump drives in **Traveller** are generally defined as having a specific range, and they can't be activated within the gravity well of a large body. The further from a gravity well you are, the safer you are to jump, and you will almost always jump into a system outside of a major gravity well.
Notice all the caveats. These are good things to use should a move go awry. Some things go badly.
A pilot can, without electronic assistance, plot a jump. But it's a slow, painful process that is prone to accidents. Well-known jump paths definitely reduce the chance of mishap but navigational charts may simply not be accurate, or the situation may be such that the conditions have changed.
#### Empires
Unlike many games, where the very idea of empire is anathema to the writers, in **Traveller**, the Third Imperium is, if not entirely benign, certainly intentionally a force for stability and, most of the time, justice. Unfortunately, they are also often distant from the places which need stability and justice.
It is a very large galaxy, and it takes quite a while to get across it.
You very well may consider yourself a loyal citizen of the Imperium. You may consider yourself uninterested in the political niceties when it comes to interstellar trade, local law, or the wider galactic authority.
Both of those are perfectly reasonable positions to take.
#### Piracy
Not only is there piracy in the setting; it's fairly widespread, especially out on the fringes. But even in more controlled space, space, as it has been previously mentioned, is quite large, and that means there's both a lot of places to hide as well as a lot of places to search.
The size of space also means that there is no single type of pirate. Some really are merciless raiders who want nothing but to kill and steal. Some hold themselves to a code of conduct, though what that code might be may not be immediately obvious or particularly traditional. In some places, away from Imperial control, pirate authority might be the only authority that exists, much like a part of a city which is under mob rule.
Pirates can be bad news. You might be a pirate. You also might be bad news.
## Factionalization
That takes care of the truths and talks about the setting in a wider sense. Having done all that, let's go to the **Sundered Isles** book on page 48 and 88 and think about factions. The faction system is one of my favorite additions to the game from **Sundered Isles**, and it essentially just gives you some ways to put organizations who have goals, desires, and aims into your games so things aren't happening in a vacuum. You are not the only thing happening in the world. Other people want things—they might want things from you, or you might want things from them—and you have a reason to interact with them or their agents.
We'll manually assemble a couple of factions which represent the Third Imperium itself and the Psionic Academy. But if you would like to run your own game of pseudo-**Traveller**, then you will definitely want to roll up a couple more. Maybe more than that. Don't be shy or sparing with them, even if they're obscure. You ultimately put together a table, which you can roll on to determine who's in control of a new region, or if someone new you meet has a connection to one of the factions.
I'm not going to go through the step-by-step of creating a faction, as I've done that elsewhere on the garden. But the results are always kind of fun.
When you're making your own factions, don't neglect the step where you define the faction relationships, because those can be really interesting and they drive more of the dynamic.
If nothing else, figure out what their relationship with the Imperium itself is, and how the Imperium views their relationship.
### The Third Imperium
**Empire, Established**
- **Leadership:** Feudal (regional governors)
- **Imperial Tactics:** Treaties and alliances, Disciplined military forces
- **Imperial Vulnerabilities:** Impending succession crisis, Vulnerable trade route
The Imperium is struggling with the fact that the galaxy is a big place, and it controls a lot of space. To do that, its architecture is largely feudal, with a very deep hierarchical structure. While it's capable of fielding significantly powerful military forces, they are spread over an extremely large area, and local conditions and local administration often have to make do with what they have.
### Psionic Institute
**Organization, Obscure**[^2]
- **Type:** Mystics (Psionicists)
- **Organization Methods:** Evaluates recruits with elaborate tests, Operates under strict codes and laws
- **Organization Secrets:** Operates from a secret location, Supported by a mysterious benefactor
Perhaps unsurprisingly, most people in the galaxy don't like Psionicists. They think that the uncontrollable and uncontrolled power to dig through their brain, pick things up and throw them remotely, or set things on fire is disreputable and threatening.
There is significant stigma associated with being a psion.
Of course, that's just a really good reason for people with psychic abilities to flock together and for at least one really aggressive organization to try and pull them together to train them. Of course, centuries ago, the Imperium outlawed the Psionic Institute and largely banned psions in general. That led immediately to them reopening at least two of the training facilities, and perhaps more, and simply keeping it a secret.
### Your Own
You definitely should create at least a couple of factions to be at play even before you create your first character. It's a serious game changer. Perhaps your character will be motivated to have a relationship with one of the factions that you create. Perhaps they will want to be a member of a rival faction you hadn't even thought of before you had assembled the first.
Make use of the tools at your command, and don't be afraid to expand on them. At least one of the factions you create should represent whatever local authority is in the system. You may want to delay putting that one together until you generate the system itself to know how many settlements, what kind, how large, what their problems are, etc.
Don't forget to come back to this. It's important.
## Being a Mystery
Alright, at this point, we are headed for character generation. Also, you probably have at least one idea about who you want to play, how you want to play it, and it might not even fit the character of how I've described the **Traveller** game loop that inspires me. Maybe you don't want to command your own ship trading along the jump lanes and getting into crazy shenanigans. Maybe you just want to pick a planet and get stuck in, messing around on the surface there.
All of these things are perfectly valid, but for the sake of the rest of the article, we're going to aim at the classic **Traveller** experience.
That means that we can skip the first step, which is to forge the character concept of deciding whether you're simply someone who's bound by your vows, if you're just a sailor on the seas of fate, or rebelling against higher authority. We are traders—maybe shady, maybe toeing the line.
But that's where we're going.
The classic step two is to generate some random things, figure out your backstory and characteristics in a fictional sense. Not really touching anything that makes a mechanical difference yet—the idea is to build the fiction. Who are you? What do you want? Where did you come from?
But then we run into the first bit of mechanical character creation.
### Walking the Path
The first thing that you do is pick two paths from the asset deck. Now, we have the choice of pulling from either the core Starforged assets or Sundered Isles, depending on what you want and what you imagine to fit in well.
Note that your ship is not one of these. We are purely talking about paths at this point.
Starting with the **Starforged** asset list:
There are, of course, some choices that are more appropriate than others, like *Courier*, which gives you some mechanical texture when you swear an iron vow to transport a precious commodity. You get what's essentially a health track for it, and complications will reduce it. Hint: This will generate more complications for you, as it should be.
*Explorer* is a really good path if you are expecting to go and blaze the trail out on the fringe. If you want to go out, find new worlds, run into people on them, and maybe improve the cartography that other traders can use, pick up *Explorer*.
*Mercenary* is pretty glorious. You wouldn't think that, being a guy that travels from place to place, trading whatever you have in your cargo hold, would be a good combination with selling your services as a hired gun. But somebody always needs a hired gun. If you're a mercenary, you can take advantage of that fact.
*Navigator*, of course, is a good call. It goes well with *Explorer* if that fits your mindset. If you want to reduce the chances of bad things happening when you jump from place to place, this is the guy to grab. Of course, the fewer bad things happen, the less story happens, so this might not be what you want.
Obviously, *Trader* should be on the list. In fact, it's almost de rigueur, though you don't have to have it. Interestingly, as it's implemented in core **Starforged**, it's really focused on resupplying yourself and your ship with supplies, not on actually trading goods. We'll get back to this, I assure you.
From **Sundered Isles**:
If you're looking for more emphasis on the crew of your ship, rather than traveling by yourself, it never hurts to pick up *Crew Commander*. While I don't think it's absolutely necessary, it can be really interesting to set that as a goal for yourself to pick up as you become a more successful space merchant. It is really fun.
Likewise, *Peddler*, which differs from Trader in that it's really more about modifying the `Sojourn` move or letting you trade goods and coin. It really competes with *Trader* for that slot on your sheet. Depending on how you imagine your focus as a character decides which one of those you choose.
Do I even have to point out *Pirate Captain*? Seriously, I don't even need to point that out.
I would be deeply remiss if I didn't point out *Swashbuckler*. I mean, sure, you could go the Han Solo route and choose *Scoundrel* from the core set, but if you pair it with being a *Swashbuckler*, you can be the fast-talking, rope-swinging while clutching your sister to your chest hero/traveling catastrophe you've always wanted to be! You know it's true.
### The Name's the Thing
Come up with a name. A good name. Something that sounds solid and dependable. Or something that sounds alien and strange. Or something that sounds completely mundane and utterly middle of the road, because then you can be a vast contrast. Names are important.
### Vow in the Background
We're going to bump up against something important here, and it's kind of key to getting that old-school **Traveller** vibe I've been talking about the whole time. I'm going to take some of the control for your background vowel out of your hands because, for the classic old-school right-in-your-face setup situation, it needs to be some sort of variation of the following:
*I need to pay off the loan that I took out to buy my ship (Epic).*
While you don't have to use this *specific* language, you definitely need to lean into this as your background vowel because it's going to drive everything to come. Why do you need to keep moving from planet to planet, trading goods, and getting into shenanigans? Because you need to pay off the loan.
Over and above upkeep on your ship (which we will probably talk about here shortly) while you're setting your background vowel, set a clock over to the side as well, which is a threat. I like to use the words, *"The repo man cometh."* But really, what it is, is a clock that fills up when you waste time before the guys you owe money to come knocking with a grim look on their face and a gun in their hand.
You can reset it when you actually send them a payment. Make it 4 or 6 ticks, just enough to make the presence of the loan shark breathing down your neck fairly decent pressure, but not so much you feel like you can't get away with a little bit for a minute. Maybe get this one little thing in off to the side, you know, and maybe you can dodge them for a minute once they come looking for you. That could happen, right? Absolutely. What's the worst that could happen?
### Stats? We Don't Need No - Oh
Since you've already picked your first two paths, this should be pretty straightforward. You know the drill on assigning edge, heart, iron, shadow, and wits. Look at what stats the things you want to do make use of the most, and then set them the highest, obviously. Right?
Maybe not necessarily. Stats in Starforged really don't represent how good your character is at a thing. That's purely fictional in a real sense. What the stats represent is how often the things that they do, fictionally, *introduce complications* that they have to deal with.
You can have the smartest man on the planet, but if every time he gets involved in a battle of wits, things tend to go sideways for him, and he doesn't necessarily get what he wants, maybe his wits aren't his highest stat?
Think of the stat as helping to decide what kind of stories that you're going to tell about your character after the fact.
Also, notice how your assets can give you a +1 boost under certain circumstances, which reinforce your character concept and might give you some wiggle room on maybe not setting that particular governing stat to your sole 3. Maybe your fast-talking Scoundrel can afford to set +shadow to 2 and really lean into being a great pilot by making +edge 3.
Work out what kind of shenanigans you want to see happen most often and set that stat to the lowest value. It's all about deciding what your focus is.
### Taking Command
Here's another place that I'm taking the reins out of your hands in order to keep the feel because you don't get a choice. We're looking at the character creation rules for *Sundered Isles* here because we're talking about ships, and it loves ships.
You are *going* to have a ship now. It's up to you whether or not you want it to just be a little starting ship or a full-bore flagship that you intend to hold on to for a while. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's a literal *flagship*.
The main difference is that the incidental ship with the novice command isn't one that you can add modules to. You can't actually build it out to your specification. It's just a basic little ship to get started in. It's got a little bit of cargo. It's fine, I guess. Your crew isn't much to speak of, if you have a crew at all. It does the job. Maybe this is where you want to start and want to work your way up to buying a real trade ship that you can start customizing to your own needs as part of the game. Very valid. Perfectly reasonable. But if you want the big boy-worthy command, well, you can have that.
If you go with the novice command, you grab the Sailing Ship asset and stick that in front of you. If you go with the worthy command, you grab the Flagship asset and set that in front of you.
But you're definitely getting a starship.
Don't pass on the ship history characteristics and crew characteristics, because fleshing out your ship a little more is just that much more fun. It's okay if it sucks a little bit. It's okay if it has a horrific cursed effect (though you should probably shift it away from being supernatural and more toward physical, if you want to keep to the theme). Embrace the suck. Make it part of the experience. You might come to love it.
### Final Asset
Alright, it's time to finalize things a little bit. As far as we're concerned in character generation and the things I'm going to tell you to do, this is going to be it. You need to pick one last asset. But it can be anything—a support vehicle, a module (if you took *Flagship*) a path, or a companion.
Honestly, this is where things get a little extra spicy, because that third path can give you even more flexibility or double down on your specialization. Ship modules speak for themselves. It's obvious why those things might be useful, handy, or desirable. As for companions, well, if it's good enough for the Doctor, it's good enough for you. Friends, family, and the people you met along the way to get to this point are all fair game. Everything here is appropriate to our theme and our setting. So go nuts. Have yourself a good time.
This might be an opportunity to pick something not related to being a deep space trader. Break out of the mold. Pick something you wouldn't otherwise think of. Maybe you dabble as a spy. Maybe you lost an arm and have a mechanical augmentation. Maybe you're just driving a truck to pay the bills and what you secretly always wanted to be was Lynn Minmay. It could happen.
## Check the Bay
There are two more things that are really important that we need from **Sundered Isles**, one of which is the fact that it differentiates your supplies kept in your ship from the supplies kept on your person or with the group. The moves to resupply the ship differ from the moves to resupply the stuff in your pocket, and in fact, you can resupply your pockets when you're back on the ship and able to access your cargo. Likewise, the move that you make and the context in which you make it determines which supply is depleted if it's necessary along the way. The book example is pretty straightforward. Are you sailing along a known route in your ship that is making the move `Set a Course`? You'll pull from the hold supply. Are you traveling overland, planetside? Pull from your personal supply.
Like everything else in **Starforged**, the key is to look at the fiction first and make sense of it. Then apply the mechanics reasonably based on the fiction. It's fairly obvious why this is really important to a **Traveller** re-implementation.
You are going to *want* to keep your ship fueled up and ready to travel as long as you're traveling in it. Running low on supplies is going to push you to make dock or find someone to scavenge, whether somebody else put them in that position before you got there or you had to see to it personally.
Supply is easy to track.
But now for something a little more exciting. On page 28, it starts talking about Wealth and Treasure.
This, my friends, is where the real meat of your cargo bay is kept, which is why you put on that refrigeration module in the first place. When you find, buy, or otherwise accidentally stumble upon goods, they go into your "treasury," which is usually the hold of your ship. Maybe you've rented a warehouse somewhere while you're working planetside. Maybe you keep it in the boot of your car. This is where you keep all the goodies.
If you're going from planet to planet looking for stuff to take off-world and make a good income, make your payments—this is the stuff. No, you don't have to track everything down to the last coin. This isn't that kind of game. But you may have a value 3 set of crates full of weapon electronics, which you can use to bribe people, maybe even for repairs on your own ship, or to sell off in exchange for credit.
Cargoes can be a great excuse to be able to make moves you couldn't otherwise justify. And they can be a great thing for people who need you to do a little something for them to actually do.
I wouldn't think of trying to play **Traveller** in this mode without some sort of tracking of cargo and wealth.
Of course, this feeds directly into the fact that keeping up a ship with a crew has overheads. You need to pay upkeep.
Where do you get this upkeep? That's right, from the stuff in your cargo.
Trade. It's what's for dinner.
## Deep Space Derelict
This is where things start to get a little spicier. And by spicier, I mean crunchier, because we are going to pull out **Ancient Wonders** and start assembling our starting solar system.
Believe me, this is no joke, especially when we start generating the specifics of the planets. It's going to get wild. Truly wild.
Come to think of it, I don't think I've done this in public before, so I'll walk you through the process. We're going to generate a starting solar system, though you certainly don't have to use this one, and in fact, probably shouldn't. Building your own is part of the fun.
### Starshine
We're not going to start with a megastructure in our starting system because that just seems like begging for trouble. Though, you certainly could do so if you wanted to, or you could just ask the oracle if one's there. Whatever works for you. We're not going with that.
What we do need to do is generate the stellar object in the middle of the system. After all, if it wasn't a big gravity well with stuff around it, we probably wouldn't be parked here. Time to break out the dice.
D100: **67**.
A smoldering red star. Well, this isn't going to end well for life in this planetary system, but you know what? Sometimes life is hard.
### Dirtside
Now that we have something to orbit around, let's figure out how many planets we've got.
Luckily, that's just another table, as you probably expected.
D100: **68**.
Look, I can't help it when the dice are really strange. Let's be honest, the dice are really strange sometimes.
This system has three planets. Cool, we can work with that.
Now we have to decide/figure out in what orbital position these planets are placed. Yes, they have orbits. Yes, they have planetary phases. Yes, there is actually a map that I'm putting together, which we will do something with here shortly, with all these little bits on it.
D100: **70**.
We've got six planetary slots/orbits open, and we're rolling to see where the first planet drops, and it's in 70, so it is in the fifth orbit.
D100: **80**.
And it's in the fifth phase, which puts it to the solar southwest.
Now let's figure out where Planet 2 is.
D100: **16**.
D100: **77**.
Now we only have five slots open, so with a roll of 16, we are in the first orbit and a phase of also in the fifth. Well, now we know what's going on there. These planets are lining up. Oh no, the planets are lining up!
D100: **99**.
D100: **41**.
D100: **99**.
That placement comes out to be 99, which is a 4th slot entry, and 41 puts it in the 3rd phase to the stellar southeast.
### What's a Teroid?
You can't have a good solar system without having asteroids. So let's find out where our asteroid belts are and how many there are of them, because that's going to be important. You can't mine asteroid belts if there's no asteroid belts to mine, right? There's got to be some industry around here somewhere.
D100: **38**.
Excellent. One nice asteroid belt. But where is it?
D100: **52**.
With three orbits left, a roll of 52 puts us firmly in the second orbit slot. That's pretty close in for an asteroid belt. I'm betting most of the heavy metals blew outward from there. This could lead to some interesting side effects.
### Ground Truth
This is where we start figuring out exactly how things are shaking out. Since this is the starting system, we're going to actually work out what the state of each of these planets is.
That means we are going to be doing a lot of things before we get back to talking about the settlements, mainly because the planetology is fun, ridiculous, and we should run through it for at least one or two of these things.
That means we're off to page 26 to figure out the planetary heat of each of the orbit slots in this system. Yes, there's a table for that.
We know that there is a smoldering red star in the middle of the system. So the first planetary orbit is Searing. The fourth is Cool. The fifth is Cold. This is going to matter a lot real soon, because we have to work out the planetary class, and thus the biome. No, I'm not kidding.
We're going to be using the planetary class based on heat in planets expanded here in **Ancient Wonders**. So, time to go back to the dice. We have a column with the temperature, which is cross-referenced with what type of world it is. Oh boy, let's go. I'm going to start referring to these planets by their orbits. So the first one is planet 1 on the innermost ring. Then there's the asteroid belt. Then there's planet 4 in orbit 4 and planet 5 in orbit 5.
D100: **2**.
D100: **15**.
D100: **7**.
| Orbit | Heat | Class |
| ----: | ------: | ------------------- |
| 1 | Searing | Furnace World (p52) |
| 4 | Cool | Jungle World (p15) |
| 5 | Cold | Ocean World (p70) |
This actually doesn't look too bad. Sure, the Mercury equivalent is a furnace world. I'm sure that's not going to have anything in the way of life on it. But Orbit 4 is pretty pleasant with a cool jungle. And even the cold world is an ocean world, so we might see some life down in the depths.
Already the system is coming together conceptually, and we haven't got much further than tweaking a few values and figuring out how big and hot it is and what kind of planet it is.
Moving on to page 40, it's time to figure out how much gravity these things have, which is going to be kind of interesting. First we roll to figure out how large the planet is, and then we roll to figure out what its gravitational effects is.
Planet 1?
D100: **67**.
D100: **92**.
Huge, high grav.
Planet 4?
D100: **94**.
D100: **91**.
Massive, severe.
Okay, 5, don't disappoint me.
D100: **100**.
D100: **44**.
Vast, Severe
| Orbit | Heat | Class | Size | Gravity |
| ----: | ------: | ------------------- | :------ | :------ |
| 1 | Searing | Furnace World (p52) | Huge | High |
| 4 | Cool | Jungle World (p15) | Massive | Severe |
| 5 | Cold | Ocean World (p70) | Vast | Severe |
Alright, I grant this place is much less habitable than it might have originally appeared. These are some huge, massive, immense planets across the system, which does suggest there are a lot of resources for mining, but humans are going to have a lot of trouble surviving on these planetary surfaces without some sort of significant mechanical help.
Of course, we don't know if anyone lives on these planets at all, or if they simply reside in orbital habitats, but it's looking pretty spicy.
For each of our planets, we need to find out if they have an orbital feature. I'll go ahead and do that and fill out the table so we learn a little bit more. No need to do that on screen—the clattering of dice probably keeps you up anyway.
| Orbit | Heat | Class | Size | Gravity | Orbital Feature |
| ----: | ------: | ------------------- | :------ | :------ | :-------------- |
| 1 | Searing | Furnace World (p52) | Huge | High | Moon |
| 4 | Cool | Jungle World (p15) | Massive | Severe | |
| 5 | Cold | Ocean World (p70) | Vast | Severe | Moon |
Alright, we have some moons going around planets here. Not entirely surprising given their sizes. Hopefully, these moons can sustain some life somewhere. Though we do know there's life on the jungle world—there's a jungle. Everything else is still up in the air.
Okay, time for a new table, giving us the moons, which are based on the size of the planet they're orbiting. So, these could be pretty chunky.
D100: **42**.
Our huge, seething furnace world has several moons, apparently. How many is several? Well, let's find out! (It's 1d6+9).
D6: **3**.
Planet 1 has 12 moons. No, I'm not going to sit here and do all 12 moons, but you certainly could. Each of the moons has its own stats, from its density to its size and various specifications.
I'm almost terrified to find out how many moons the vast ocean world has.
D100: **25**.
It has a plethora of moons. And for those who are curious, a plethora of moons is 1d100+100 moons.
D100: **32**.
That's 132 moons.
Brother, you could spend an entire campaign just going between these moons and surveying them, exploring the surfaces, discovering all the weird, wacky stuff going on, because the core planets are so large, and the gravity and the density of the moons are going to be less than the planet they orbit. These things could be in really habitable gravitational ranges.
It's a shame that the jungle world, which is in a really good heat slot, doesn't have any moons.
Okay, out of curiosity, I want to do one moon around the ocean world. Let's just see how it shakes out.
D100: **33**.
That gives us a minor moon, but it's orbiting a vast ocean world. So what does that give us for base gravity? Low. You know what? I can live with low gravity on a planet. That's pretty survivable. But we're not done yet. We still have to roll for the density of the moon in question. It could surprise us.
D100: **23**.
Sadly, it did surprise me a little bit. It came up with a light density, which means the gravity modifier actually bumps it down one less than low.
That brings the gravity down to weak, but we can live on a weak gravitational planet. That's not a big deal. It's not particularly large, but this could be habitable.
The discussion of gravity's on page 40 does tell us that with a weak gravity, we can't actually sustain a complex environment. But there's a role for that planetary class. Let's go over and simply assign it to barren—it's a barren world. Nothing wrong with that.
#### The Barony
To paraphrase a particularly good movie quote, but what *kind* of barren world are you?
D100: **95**.
Oh well, nothing wrong with that. It's just a simple Rocky World. What does that mean? Well, let's go check that out. There's a planetary class for that.
There's a list of sample names here which I really quite like. Let's go with Orpheus. This moon's name is Orpheus. Perhaps its orbit travels just outside the atmosphere of the planet, as if it dips into the underworld and returns.
It's a minor moon, so it's only got one biome. It's not big enough for anything larger.
What is that biome, you may ask?
D100: **3**.
Aeolian. That's pretty cool. Huge wind-carved canyons provide barren refuges. Alright, we'll roll and see if there's anything particularly interesting about this Aeolian surface. But wind-carved canyons does suggest there's an atmosphere of sorts.
D100: **39**.
Hurricane-like winds. I guess there's more than an atmosphere of sorts, even despite the low gravity. I'll have to think about that one. But it's interesting. This is a very strange, small little moon where humans can, at least to some level, eke out an existence, albeit a very dangerous one.
#### Planetside Service
Okay, we got distracted there for a little bit, going into the really huge number of moons hanging out here, but we should also deal with the planetary surface, since we've got this cold ocean world with its crushing gravity. Let's see what kind of shenanigans are going on there by going to its biome on page 70 to see what shakes out.
First, we need to give it a name, and there are some really good ones in this list here. I think we're going to go with Aegir. It just feels fun.
Time to figure out the biotic diversity. How many biomes are going on?
It's a vast planet, so there's plenty of room for lots of action.
D100: **61**.
61 makes it an intricate planet, one with five biomes going on. Oh dear, this could get kind of exciting. Which ones? Which ones do we have on this planet?
D100: **26**.
D100: **1**.
D100: **58**.
D100: **80**.
D100: **89**.
26 gives us an atoll. 1 gives us an archipelago. 58 drops us into a Hycean biome. 80 gives us a mangrove. 89 gives us a reef. There is quite a lot of action going on in this planetary surface.
How about the atmosphere?
D100: **3**.
None/thin. Okay, that's kind of interesting. A very thin atmosphere above the oceanic surface, but plenty of interesting biotic activity.
Really, how much life is kicking around here?
D100: **15**.
Life is, strangely enough, extinct. All of the things that implied living things actively functioning on the surface? That was a long time ago. Nothing remains.
Frankly, this paints a pretty horrific picture. A dead water world. We could dig into more detail on each of the biomes, but I don't think that's necessary at this point. Maybe we come back at a later time and go exploring for ancient hidden ruins or digging up the corpses of high-gravity lifeforms.
Plenty of hooks have just been dropped on the table in front of us.
### Settling In
We know there are people in the system because we're in the system. There's got to be trade, and for that, there have to be people who want things and people who are willing to give up things in exchange for them.
Where are we starting out in the Imperium? You know, I think we're going to kick off in the Outlands. It's a good place to start—not as far between gas stations as out in the Expanse, but definitely not the safest place in the galaxy to be. Control is light, reinforcements are a long way away, and things can get spicy while you're the only person on site to deal with the problems.
That also means that we have three settlements in this starting solar system. So, things can get pretty interesting. I feel like we've come this far with it, so we're going to flip a coin to decide which settlement system that we're going to use. Whether it be **Starforged**, or **Sundered Isles**.
#### Settlement 1
**Isles** it is!
**Settlement: Emmerby**
- **Location**: Margins.
- **Settlement location**: Shore.
- **Settlement size**: Village or outpost.
- **Settlement typical population**: Dozens.
- **Settlement aesthetics**: Modest.
- **Settlement aesthetics detail**: Practical, charming structures.
- **Settlement first look**: Built among a Ruin.
- **Settlement authority**: Oppressive.
- **Settlement focus**: Culture.
- **Settlement typical facilities and services**: Archives, festivals, historical sites.
We have to do a little bit of interpretation, given the nature of the difference between Sundered Isles and basic Starforged settlement location shore essentially makes it an orbital. However, an interesting ruined orbital station that it took over—that's fascinating. An oppressive authority which focuses on archives, festivals, historical sites? This feels a bit religious, or at least archivist. Emmerby, then.
We better figure out what planet this thing is orbiting because it could be very, very weird, or it could be very exciting.
Let's see what else we have in store.
D100: **60**.
Alright, we have three planets, and we need to figure out where this thing is orbiting. So, 60 gives us the second planet out.
That's the jungle world. This could be interesting. There's an orbital ruin above the jungle world. Maybe we need to go back there and flesh out what that planet looks like. We'll get there, maybe.
#### Settlement 2
The coin flip brings us back to **Starforged** for the next settlement.
**Settlement: Altura**
- **Settlement location:** Orbital
- **Population:** Hundreds
- **First look:** Pillaged Corpse, Built within repurposed ship
- **Initial contact:** Wary
- **Authority:** None / lawless
- **Projects:** Energy, Mining
- **Settlement trouble:** Volatile energy source
Another orbital, so let's find out where this thing is orbiting.
D100: **93**.
Now we're out there orbiting the ocean world, full of its dead ecology. That kind of makes sense. There's plenty of moons to be tucked into for a little lawless mining wildcat team. Probably built inside an old freighter that they converted into a mining ship. Oh yes, plenty of good stuff here.
#### Settlement 3
Back over to the **Isles** to make the last settlement.
**Settlement: Giant Camp**
- **Settlement location:** Inland
- **Size:** Village or outpost
- **Aesthetics:** Industrial, Ramshackle
- **First look:** Colossal statue or monolith, Under attack
- **Controlling faction:** Known faction
- **Disposition:** Wary
- **Authority:** Protective
- **Focus:** Metalworking, Livestock / horses
- **Details:** A section of the settlement is collapsing into an expanding sinkhole, An artificer crafts elaborate prosthetic devices
- **Settlement trouble:** Beast on the hunt
Alright, this is going to take some interpretation. It's inland, so that is planet-side. Let's figure out what planet it's set down on.
D100: **48**.
On the second planet again. So, good times. It's on the surface of the jungle world, which we haven't actually figured out what it is. But we know there's an orbital settlement living in a scavenged facility. And now these guys on the surface. I feel like we need to work out what that planet actually looks like. There's too much focus going on here.
##### Jungling
Alright, what do we know? The planet is massive, gravity is severe, and it has no moons. So let's start with the biome diversity.
D100: **74**.
For a massive planet, 74 gives us another intricate one. Oh boy, five biomes.
D100: **62**.
D100: **4**.
D100: **54**.
D100: **14**.
D100: **96**.
Rainforest, bioluminescent, petrified forest, cenote, and tepui.
For the record, a tepui is a tiered mountain enveloped by vegetation, so it's a mountainous region covered by shockingly low jungle plants (I say shockingly low because the gravity is so significant).
Damn, those guys really could be ranchers over here.
What's the atmosphere like?
D100: **68**.
We have a very breathable atmosphere here. A lot of gravity, so the atmosphere is going to be really dense, but it's breathable. Okay, this settlement starts being a lot more plausible.
Okay, let's follow that up by figuring out the level of life. We know we have plenty of plants, but how about the fauna?
D100: **78**.
Overrun. This planet is overrun with life under its severe gravitational pull and within these crazy jungles. This makes a lot of sense. I'm here for it. I'm totally okay with it.
So back to Giant Camp, which is a planetside industrial facility that has a core gravity generator keeping the immediate surroundings livable for the human populace. It's Imperium Loyalist, so they tend to be fairly wary of others anyway out here, away from the Core Worlds. The planetary size means there's a fair amount of material to go mining for, and some of the local fauna is quite useful for food, export transport to other planets as exotic goods, and pets, unfortunately. The gravitational field is taking its toll, and the interaction with the grav bubble is starting to cause some surface issues. Plus, there's that damn stalker out in the jungle.
Both of them are engaged in mining, so I'm betting that Giant Camp does a lot of the heavy labor with machinery and possibly even aided by some of the local fauna in a very low-tech, retro way, and then they ship the raw materials up the grav well to the orbital.
There's some opportunity for profit here, and some real opportunity to get sucked into desperate shenanigans.
## Passing Through
Finally, we cover passages which are essentially well-known routes through FTL space between two points because we're in the Outlands. There are two passages that are well-established and well-charted at the moment. The obvious one goes between the Jungle Planet and the Ocean Planet. That means that the other heads out of the system to another system. What's in that system? I don't know. We could sit here and generate it as well, but I think we've come to a good stopping point.
## Travelling On
![[Forging the Path - Sector Sheet (illo).webp]]
It doesn't look like much right now, but once you start putting in moons around each of these planets, start exploring what's going on, and start looking for more stuff, you will find things—and you may regret it.
Here we are. We've run through a bit of the intricacies of how to play **Traveller** elsewhere, what things are important about the setting, and what you might find surprising in terms of how it can be mechanically expressed.
I hope you've enjoyed the trip. We stumbled into a star system which was a lot more exciting than we originally expected, but that's okay. That's exactly the sort of thing you expect to have happen.
What are the next steps? Well, that's entirely up to you. You've got a ship; you need a cargo. You've got some tensions. You've got a desire. When you're making your adventure through the Third Imperium, make sure to drop yourself right in the middle of an exciting situation and make your immediate vow important and short-term enough to get you out of it. Don't forget there's upkeep and loan sharks to pay.
Here's to the Third Imperium. May the throne be warm forevermore.
[^1]: If you are, amazingly enough, unfamiliar with the **Traveller** setting or original systems, Chris Kubasik, who has written an immense amount for various RPGs and RPG space novels, wrote a series of blog posts back in the day called *[Traveller: Out of the Box](https://talestoastound.wordpress.com/tag/traveller-out-of-the-box/)*, and they are fantastic. Totally worth reading if you've never done so before. Highly recommended.
[^3]: In the course of messing around for the last several hours trying to find this and then getting it put online, I had [Gemini generate a fairly interesting report on trying to find it and then updating it when I did actually decide to put it online myself](https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQ-OWyc4LfE4lzNJlsQvHRSBh1Uzq3vKLktnzVaNera_JoQ15MFxeNR7DutsWOsPgImXn_YUHXxPRGU/pub). Might be interesting if you're into reading about where this stuff came from.