Roadmap: absorb Traveller — the full book, LLM as referee, pure adaptation

[Kieleth]

The decision

Owner call, 2026-08-08: pause the NPC roadmap (#37) and absorb a
complete classic RPG instead of inventing mechanics — the logomancers
lesson, inverted into a discipline. Traveller is the system: the
most algorithmic RPG of its era, and the owner's own.

The rule that governs everything here: the book is the spec.
Ontology = the book's data model. Engine = the book's procedures.
LLM = the referee who applies rules it can cite. Zero invention,
minimum translation.

Legal base (researched, verified 2026)

Original rulebook text stays copyrighted regardless of age; the
adaptation vehicle is open licensing:

• Cepheus Engine SRD (OGL 1.0a): complete restatement of the
  Classic/Mongoose-1e 2D6 system. Closest to the 1977 book.
• Mongoose Traveller SRD (ORC, 2022 rules): current edition,
  officially open.

W40K was considered and is a dead end (GW has never open-licensed
anything). D&D SRDs (CC-BY) remain a fallback with maximum LLM
fluency, not chosen.

Sub-decision pending: which SRD text is the adaptation base.
Cepheus for 70s purity vs Mongoose-ORC for current rules.

Why Traveller fits this engine unusually well

• UWP world profiles: a planet IS a tuple of declared slots
  (size/atmosphere/hydro/population/government/law/tech). That is a KG
  entity class, verbatim. Half the book is already an ontology.
• Lifepath character generation: a self-contained, fully
  table-driven procedure (careers, terms, skills, aging, mustering
  out — you can die in chargen). The famous solo mini-game.
• d66 tables everywhere (patrons, encounters, trade, animals —
  including ANIMAL ENCOUNTER tables, which connect straight back to
  the predator work).
• 2D6 task rolls: one resolution mechanic for everything.

Architecture sketch (to be designed, not decided here)

• A traveller schema pack: classes/enums/slots transcribed from the
  book (UWP, careers, skills, equipment).
• Tables as data, loaded, rollable.
• The engine rolls the dice, the LLM narrates them — the referee
  must not be able to invent a roll. Same honesty architecture as
  everything else in this repo: the LLM proposes, mechanisms verify.
• LLM-DM through the existing seams: the Director pattern
  (logotron) + the KG-ops grammar (Logogenesis plan). A session is a
  sequence of validated KG ops.

Proposed first slice

Character generation as a playable session. Self-contained,
purely mechanical, famous on its own, and watchable (rule 12): the
LLM referees your career term by term, the engine rolls survival and
skills, the KG accumulates a life. Proves the whole absorption
pipeline (book -> schema -> tables -> referee) on the smallest
complete loop before touching worlds, trade or combat.

Next investigation step

Pull the chosen SRD text and produce the absorption inventory: every
book section mapped to ontology / engine-procedure / table-data /
referee-prompt, with page-level citations. That document is the
contract for the whole track.

[Kieleth]

Owner decisions (2026-08-08)

1. Adaptation base: BOTH SRDs. Cepheus Engine SRD (OGL, Classic
   flavor) and Mongoose Traveller SRD (ORC, 2022 rules). The inventory
   maps each absorbed section to its source SRD and license; where they
   diverge, the divergence is recorded and one is chosen per section
   with the reason.

2. Sub-project, outside the engine. A separate repository consuming
   Logosphere as a library (the FetchContent path fixed in PR test: guard the NPC layer, and fix engine consumption #35 is
   the consumption route). The engine stays generic; the game owns the
   Traveller schema packs, tables, referee prompts and sessions —
   the same boundary discipline as Roadmap: NPC automation, where it stands #37 item 3, at repo scale.

3. The spin: Traveller merged with a Sentinel Worlds: Future Magic
   sensibility — frontier systems, patrol-procedural tone, psionics
   prominent. Mechanically this costs NOTHING invented: Classic
   Traveller/Cepheus carries a complete psionics chapter (telepathy,
   clairvoyance, telekinesis, awareness, teleportation). The spin is a
   SETTING pack over absorbed rules.

   Legal boundary, drawn now: Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic
   (1988) is an EA property; abandonware is not public domain. Tone and
   themes as inspiration with our own names and text — the title,
   universe and assets are off-limits. Same reasoning that killed the
   W40K option.

Next step (unchanged, now with a home to build)

Scaffold the sub-project repo, pull both SRD texts into it, write
docs/ABSORPTION_INVENTORY.md: every book section -> ontology /
engine-procedure / table-data / referee-prompt, source SRD + license
per section, citations throughout. First slice remains chargen-as-a-
session.

[Kieleth]

Reframe (owner, 2026-08-09): logoveyer is BUNDLED with the engine

Supersedes the earlier "sub-project outside the engine" decision. It
lives at examples/logoveyer/ (branch feat/logoveyer, scaffold moved
in; the standalone repo was verified identical and removed).

Two reasons, both structural:

1. It is the engine's showcase. The first full demonstration of an
   LLM controlling a game for real: an open ruleset, refereed end to
   end, from character generation to the first session — inside the
   open engine repo where it can be seen whole.

2. It forces the space era. No space sci-fi exists in the engine
   yet, and the pattern of this repo is that games earn engine
   mechanisms by needing them (logotron -> interaction model,
   logogenesis -> worldgen, predator -> NPC layer). Logoveyer's needs
   flow upstream as engine issues: star systems and celestial scenes
   (the celestial/moon preset and orbit Isometric camera orbit: azimuth-parameterized projection #9 are seeds), ship interiors,
   subsector map rendering, vacuum/EVA (zero-g is already an
   invariant). Boundary rule as always: if it would serve a fantasy
   game equally, it is engine; if it smells of Traveller, it is the
   game's.

Scaffold contents unchanged: mission README, the three binding rules
(the book is the spec; the referee cannot roll; everything watchable),
and docs/ABSORPTION_INVENTORY.md — 16 Cepheus chapters mapped, five
slices, chargen-as-a-session first.

[Kieleth]

Owner decisions, 2026-08-09: pure Cepheus (the Mongoose cross-reference row is dropped), and a TWO-LAYER ontology with 100% separation. schema/cepheus/ = the book, one pack per SRD chapter file (auditable 1:1 coverage, targeting 100% of the book's data model as its own workstream). schema/voyager.yaml = the game, cherry-picking cepheus packs by explicit import, sole home of corrections/tweaks/expansions. The diff between layers is the game's design document. First split landed on feat/cepheus-layer: Character (the book's word) in the cepheus layer, Voyager is_a Character in the game layer, empty of tweaks so far. Generator gained recursive multi-pack discovery and tree-preserving import staging, both backward compatible.

[Kieleth]

Design captured canonically in docs/RPG_MODULE.md (feat/rpg-module-doc): the rulebook meta-ontology, ingestion and executor are ENGINE domain; no magic strings (ontology refs + KG expressions, skills become ontology elements); outcomes are KG-ops, one validated write grammar for the book, the referee, and the game; the dated decisions log; and the OPEN list nothing may build past. The document is the source of truth over conversation memory from here.