I've been an on and off member of the ARRL every since I was first licensed in the 90s. At one point, I was even a VE. I don't remember exactly what made me decide to drop membership many years ago, but in the following years the actions of the ARRL have not inspired confidence.

I have received zero emails about my VE status, and I haven't participated in any licensing sessions in years.

I'm a registered user of LotW, but not an ARRL member. Pretty sure they sent it to all registered users.

Yes, the story engine is the core system. It's primarily what I used for my solo game, as Traveller has enough other systems to fill in the world running. But I think the character engine might be simpler than using something like the Traveller 5 personals system if you truly need some randomness to how NPCs will react.

I'm going to suggest the Motif system, as it has Story, Character, and World emulators that might make it easier to run.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/7970/thought-punks/category/38729/motif-framework

I have used this system for a solo game of Traveller and it worked quite well.

https://textpattern.com/

One per universe. Of course I play ttrpgs.

This was available for pre-order through Anderson Entertainment. Those of us who did so already have the full preview PDF and we'll be getting the book first.

I've had to do that so I could install new firmware to enable matter, but after that didn't need to access the manufacturer account anymore.

Blue Planet is getting an update - Blue Planet: Recontact

The Kickstarter closed some time ago, and several beta PDFs have been provided.