GUIDELINES.md

# STARFORGED-STD-3001 Vol 2 Appendix E-1

## Guidelines for Translating the Human Universe into the Starforged World

**Companion to:** [`APPENDIX-E.md`](APPENDIX-E.md)
**Purpose:** the appendix says who the players are (real Earth humans, per NASA-lineage anthropometry + UN demographics). The Starforged setting-distribution says who the *characters* are (per Nem × Mila 2024). This document is the mapping between them — how a specific real-human player picks up a specific Starforged character without violating either the appendix (physical accommodation) or the setting distribution (fictional accommodation).

The rule underneath every guideline below: **preserve at the substrate, transform at the presentation**. Handedness, interpupillary distance, and body-mass are real; species, avatar sex, and apparent age are chosen. The physical / presented split from [[identity-vs-pose-separation]] is the operative lens.

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### G.1 Species

- **Player species:** always Homo sapiens (Appendix E.3). Not chosen.
- **Character species:** freely chosen from the Nem × Mila 2024 distribution — 50% humanoid, 38% semi-humanoid, 6% cyborg, 2% animal, 2% plant, 1-2% exotic.
- **Guideline:** when a character is generated for the player rather than by the player (a random NPC, a background extra, a rolled Iron Vault sample), roll `d100` against the species table. When the player picks their own PC, no roll — free choice, and the group's aggregate should trend toward the distribution over enough characters rather than be forced per PC.
- **What is preserved:** none of species. The whole point of the setting is that species is not conserved from substrate to presentation.
- **What is transformed:** everything on this axis.
- **Physical accommodation carry-over:** a plant-form or cyborg-form character is still played by a real Homo sapiens body that has to sit at a table, hold a die, and see a screen. Anthropometry stays E.6-compliant regardless of chosen species.

### G.2 Sex Presentation

- **Player sex:** at birth per Appendix E.4 (M 50.4%, F 49.6%, intersex ~0.05%). Adult ratio ~1.00.
- **Character sex presentation:** feminine 71%, masculine 18%, other 11% per Nem × Mila (Q2-3).
- **Guideline:** avatar / character sex presentation is a chosen dimension, not a substrate one. The Nem × Mila data specifically shows the cross-mapping — physical-male players present feminine 70% of the time, physical-female players present feminine 74%. Explicit cross-presentation is normative in this population, not exceptional; the setting reflects that.
- **What is preserved:** legal / medical documentation of the substrate (only relevant for out-of-fiction consent flows, safe-signals, and physical accommodation questions).
- **What is transformed:** everything at the presentation layer — voice pitch (via [[identity-vs-pose-separation]] voice pose), silhouette (via ANNY-SOMA fit), pronouns (per player statement).
- **Content-warning surface:** if a table's session zero surfaces a hard limit on sex-presentation swaps for other players, that limit is honored at the group level rather than the individual level; the guideline does not override table safety tools.

### G.3 Age Presentation

- **Player age:** distributed per Appendix E.5. Play-age floor 8+ per publisher guidance; effective playerbase ~91% of population.
- **Character age presentation:** 58% youth (15-24), 17% juvenile, 12% adult, 12% no-age, 1% infancy per Nem × Mila (Q2-7).
- **Guideline:** apparent age is a chosen dimension. Nem × Mila reports "no clear correlation between physical age and avatar age" (survey p32); the setting inherits this — a 47-year-old player running a youth-presentation character is inside the modal case, not the exception.
- **Hard floor:** a character presenting as juvenile or infancy still generates in-fiction content appropriate to the player's age and the table's session-zero limits. Presentation is a chosen aesthetic; the story that develops around a juvenile-presenting character stays inside those limits.
- **Character age in years within the fiction** is independent of presentation — a semi-humanoid may look youth-15-24 and be 200 years old. Roll or choose separately.

### G.4 Anthropometry — Physical Fit

- **Player anthropometry:** per Appendix E.6, design span 1st-percentile female (146.7 cm stature) to 99th-percentile male (194.8 cm).
- **Character anthropometry:** entirely fictional; the character sheet does not have a stature field unless the player wants one.
- **Guideline:** anthropometry belongs to the physical substrate and does not translate — it constrains the *accessories* the player uses (dice tray reach, journal binding, headset IPD 51-74.5 mm, chair height), not the character. VR clients shall support the full IPD span (E.6). Physical props shall not assume a specific hand size within E.6.
- **Non-standard bodies:** players outside the 1-99 %ile span are accommodated by the same rule — physical accessories, not character sheet.

### G.5 Handedness

- **Player handedness:** right 89.4%, left 10.6% per Appendix E.8.
- **Character handedness:** freely chosen; no setting-distribution constraint.
- **Guideline:** unlike sex and age presentation, handedness is often preserved rather than transformed — many players find it easier to have their PC share their own handedness for tactile-immersion reasons. Nothing enforces this. Physical props (dice tray, character journal, sky-die roller) shall function without penalty for either handedness; digital clients shall permit left/right swap of any handed control.

### G.6 Region and Language

- **Player region:** per Appendix E.7 — Asia 59%, Africa 19%, Europe 9%, Latin America 8%, North America 5%, Oceania 0.6%.
- **Character region:** in-fiction; the setting's factions and sectors have their own geography with no direct mapping to Earth regions.
- **Guideline:** language coverage of *Starforged* materials shall track E.7 as a floor rather than the tabletop-hobby historical anchor of ~100% English. In-fiction, an accent or linguistic tell that a player carries from their real language is a valid character-color choice, but the setting's factions do not map 1:1 onto Earth cultures — that mapping would flatten both.
- **Naming:** in-fiction names, place names, and faction terms may be freely drawn from the player's linguistic background without implying an in-fiction Earth analog.

### G.7 Consent and Safety Signals

- **Substrate always wins on safety.** Any in-fiction transformation (species, sex, age, silhouette) that would render an out-of-fiction safety signal harder to see is invalid. Voice-pose transformations (per identity/pose split) shall retain a preserved-identity channel for out-of-band signals ("pause", "yellow card", "hard limit").
- **Presentation is chosen; consent is durable.** A player who does not consent to another player's chosen presentation (species / sex / age) does not have to explain why. The group's session-zero limits are the mediator; this document does not override them.

### G.8 Companion Hardware

- **VR headset:** IPD span 51-74.5 mm (E.6); stature-independent seated setup. Any Starforged VR client shall permit standing / seated / bedbound modes.
- **Physical dice / dice tray:** reach envelope shall accommodate 1st-F to 99th-M seated (E.6 shoulder breadth 36.3-54.4 cm, hip breadth seated 32.8-46.7 cm).
- **Character journal:** binding shall not force one-handed operation into a specific hand (E.8).
- **Screen readers, translators, dyslexic-friendly typography:** shipped by default, not as an accessibility add-on. A distribution as broad as E.7 makes these part of the design span, not an afterthought.

### G.9 Roll-Up: Translation Recipe

Given a specific real-human player, produce a specific Starforged character:

1. **Substrate check:** confirm player fits within Appendix E design span for the seating / device / prop they will be using. If outside, adapt accessories, not the character.
2. **Species roll:** `d100` against G.1 or free-choice. Record.
3. **Sex-presentation roll or choice:** feminine / masculine / other per G.2. Record.
4. **Age-presentation roll or choice:** youth / juvenile / adult / no-age / infancy per G.3. Record.
5. **In-fiction character age in years:** independent of presentation, per G.3.
6. **Handedness:** preserved from player unless player wants otherwise (G.5).
7. **Voice-pose spec:** identity slot fit ([[identity-vs-pose-separation]] voice) + prosody spec.
8. **Anthropometric silhouette:** not stored on the character sheet unless player wants; if used for a VR avatar, generated via [[anny-soma-fit-model]] against a targeted silhouette that matches the chosen presentation (G.2, G.3), not the player's substrate.
9. **Session-zero limits:** all of the above are subordinate to the group's session-zero limits.

### G.10 What This Guide Does NOT Cover

- **In-fiction character advancement, moves, assets, oracles, encounters, truths.** Those are in `chibifire/starforged` — Tomkin's rules content, CC-BY-4.0.
- **Setting geography, timelines, faction diplomacy.** Also in `chibifire/starforged`.
- **Group / campaign / server infrastructure.** Out of scope for a physical-characteristics standard.
- **Player-versus-player conflict mediation.** Out of scope; belongs to the group's safety tools.

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*These guidelines were drafted by an AI and read by a human before they shipped.*