Quickplay

Everything you need to play one session of Wanderstar: the rules, four ready characters, and a complete adventure. No other book required. A 2D6 sci-fi RPG of people who don't stay put. For the full game — character creation, careers, ships, the Shore in depth — see the Wanderstar rulebook.

Index§

• The World
• The Four Peoples
• The Core Test
• Characteristics & Advantage/Disadvantage
• Momentum
• Skills
• Boons & Banes
• Trauma & Recovery
• Combat
• Adversaries
• Advancement & Session End
• Adventure: The Cold Lantern
  • The hook
  • Act I — The Cold Dock
  • Act II — The Engineering Deck
  • Act III — The Saboteurs
  • Wrapping up
• Your Crew
  • Edda Halvorsen — Sleeper medic
  • Stills-the-Echo ("Echo") — Wanderborn engineer
  • Bram Hullward — Seeder soldier
  • Ace Trueflight-Ember — Hound (Companion) pilot
  • Weapon & armor traits (your crew's gear)

The World§

Roughly fifty years after astronomers found it, a sliver of humanity did the unthinkable: they boarded a rogue planet. It had no sun, was moving too fast for any star to catch, and was aimed — loosely — at the Large Magellanic Cloud, 160,000 light-years off, a trip of some ninety million years. They got on it anyway. They called it Wanderstar.

The first generations lived underground in the dark, drawing heat from the planet's radioactive core, farming in tunnels under artificial suns. Over about fifteen hundred years they built a civilization down there — and then cracked faster-than-light travel. A ninety-million-year voyage became reachable in a lifetime, and a doomed rock became the founding of a new home.

That home is the LMC, now called the Shore: hundreds of inhabited systems, settled unevenly across thousands of years, no two worlds telling the same story. Wanderstar itself passed through too fast to be caught and is gone into intergalactic space. Nobody is going back. The Shore is all there is, and it is enough.

You play Wanderers — people who, for whatever reason, are not staying put. The Shore is vast and full of places that need someone willing to go where settled people won't. That willingness is the whole job.

The Four Peoples§

Eight thousand years split humanity into four peoples. Heritage is roleplaying only — it carries no mechanical effect. Pick whoever speaks to you.

Each is detailed in Chapter 31: Sleepers, Wanderborn, Seeders, and Companions.

The Core Test§

When an action is uncertain and the stakes matter, roll:

2D6 + skill bonus ≥ 8 = success.

The target is always 8 — never higher for hard tasks, never lower for easy ones. Difficulty lives everywhere except the number: in whether you roll at all, in Advantage/Disadvantage, in whether you're trained, and in what failure costs. A task with no real chance of failure just succeeds; one with no real chance of success just fails.

• Snake eyes (natural 2): catastrophic failure, regardless of bonus.
• Boxcars (natural 12): exceptional success, regardless of penalty.
• Margins color the result: a bare success may carry a complication; a miss by 1 may be offered as success at a cost. These are GM tools, not extra rules.

Opposed test (two characters directly against each other — a chase, a lie vs. scrutiny, a grapple): each rolls 2D6 + their own skill (often different skills), applying their own Advantage/Disadvantage. Higher total wins; ties go to the defender. The 8 doesn't gate it — it's head-to-head.

Characteristics & Advantage/Disadvantage§

Six characteristics. Unlike most games, they never add a bonus to your total. Each is instead set to Advantage, Disadvantage, or Neutral. When a relevant one is Advantage or Disadvantage, it changes how you roll — an extra die, keeping the best or worst two; a Neutral one does nothing (detailed below).

Strength (force) · Dexterity (agility, precision) · Endurance (stamina, resilience) · Intellect (reasoning) · Education (formal knowledge) · Social Standing (reputation, presence).

When a characteristic is relevant:

• Advantage: roll 3D6, keep the highest two.
• Disadvantage: roll 3D6, keep the lowest two.
• Neutral: roll 2D6.

Any one Advantage + any one Disadvantage cancel to a flat 2D6, no matter how many of each. Advantage does not stack. Each skill has a default characteristic (below); the GM may call a different one when it fits.

Advantage reshapes the curve rather than sliding it, so it matters most on low-bonus rolls:

Characters are built with characteristics in equal Advantage/Disadvantage pairs.

Momentum§

A per-session resource. Adversity builds it; spending it presses your edge.

• Start each session with 3. No carryover. Caps at 6.
• Gain 1 whenever you roll with Disadvantage (any source, any outcome)
• Gain 1 per trauma point taken.
• Spend to activate Advantage when a source applies:
  • 2 for a characteristic
  • 1 for a Boon or a situational edge the GM grants
  • No stacking — pay only the cheapest source. So a Boon (1) funds the same Advantage a characteristic would charge 2 for.
• No Momentum = no Advantage. The source is there; you just can't use it.

Skills§

30 skills, five categories of six. Default characteristic in parentheses (the GM may call another). Full write-ups live in Chapter 23.

Ranks: Untrained −3 · Trained +0 · Experienced +1 · Professional +2 · Expert +3.

Trained is the threshold that matters most — it removes the penalty. The Untrained −3 means a flat roll succeeds only on 11–12: knowing what you're doing is the difference.

Boons & Banes§

Short descriptive tags — edges and vulnerabilities too specific to be skills.

• Boon: when relevant to a roll, gain Advantage for 1 Momentum (half a characteristic's cost). e.g. "Reads the Tunnels," "Steady Hands."
• Bane: when relevant, you suffer Disadvantage (and gain 1 Momentum for the Disadvantaged roll, as always). e.g. "Won't Leave Anyone Behind," "A Century Out of Step."

Each Bane invoked during a session earns 1 XP at session end.

Trauma & Recovery§

No hit points. Harm is trauma marked on two tracks.

Damage vs. armor. On a hit, the attacker rolls the weapon's damage against the target's armor:

Base armor is 3 (natural resilience); worn gear adds to it. Armor is a flat value, never rolled.

The two tracks, each with two nodes, marked left to right:

Physical:  [ ] Wounded  →  [ ] Maimed
Mental:    [ ] Shaken   →  [ ] Broken

1 trauma marks one node on either track (your choice); 2 trauma marks two, split as you like. If your chosen track is full, trauma overflows to the other. Wounded and Shaken are complications, not penalties unless the GM ties one to a specific action; Maimed and Broken are severe and lasting.

Recovery. Wounded/Shaken clear with extended rest — or first aid in the field: a character Trained+ in Survival with a kit spends a Significant Action, rolls Survival (8+), and clears one Wounded or Shaken node on another character (you can't patch yourself, and a given character can be patched only once until they take fresh harm). Maimed/Broken each need a full recovery session and never clear by first aid.

Death: if you must mark a node and every node on both tracks is already full, you die.

Combat§

Combat is the core test under pressure. An attack is 2D6 + skill ≥ 8; harm is trauma.

Players roll; the world doesn't. When you attack, you roll. When an adversary attacks you, the GM doesn't roll to hit — you roll to avoid it (the right skill vs. 8), and only a failure brings harm.

Initiative: each combatant rolls 2D6, Dexterity granting Advantage/Disadvantage — applied free (no Momentum, like creation). Act high to low.

Your turn: one Significant Action (attack, aim, reload, first aid, force a door) plus a few Minor Actions (a short move, draw a weapon, drop prone, shout an order). You may trade your Significant Action for a second move or to ready a reaction.

Range bands: Engaged (~1.5 m, melee) · Close (≤10 m) · Short (≤30 m) · Medium (≤100 m) · Extreme (>100 m). Beyond a weapon's effective band → Disadvantage. Any shot past 100 m is Extreme (Disadvantage) unless the weapon has Scope and you aim first.

Melee & thrown: melee uses Close Quarters (Str) at Engaged range; thrown weapons (knife, grenade, rock) use Ranged Weapons (Dex).

Aiming (a Significant Action): your next shot at that target gains a situational Advantage (pay 1 Momentum to activate it, like any Advantage), as long as you don't move or lose sight of the target.

Reactions (one free per round; +1 costs 1 Momentum): a success imposes Disadvantage on the attacker.

• Dodge (Athletics) — not vs. Blast.
• Parry (Close Quarters) — melee only.
• Dive for cover — no roll; you drop behind nearby cover. The only defense vs. Blast.

Cover adds to armor: Light +2 · Solid +4 · Total = can't be targeted.

Effect = (2D6 + skill) − 8. By default it's color, not bonus damage — it matters only where a weapon trait calls for it.

Adversaries§

Enemies need fiction, not stat blocks — no characteristics, no skills, no trauma track. An adversary has at most two dials:

How hard it hits — the damage die. Roll it against your armor when you fail to avoid:

3D is a deadly standard: against a bare body (armor 3) it almost always means 2 trauma; against a flak jacket (armor 6) usually just 1.

How hard to put down — toughness. Narrated, not numbered: a mook drops on one solid hit; a hardened foe shrugs the first and needs a few; a boss is a scene with a shape and may turn, flee, or deal. For a long fight, decide a tough foe takes two or three hits to drop, and tick them off as they land. A crowd is one threat — nastier die, or Disadvantage on the players' avoid rolls.

A round, played this way (a sniper and two thugs pin Edda):

GM: The sniper has you cold — Recon to spot the muzzle before she fires. Edda: Failed, a 6. GM: A round cracks off the deck. 3D vs. your armor… 13. No worn armor, so that clears twice 3 — two trauma. Mark them; you're Wounded and Shaken. (Edda gains 2 Momentum.) Edda: I dive behind the cargo sled — Athletics. GM: A 9 — you make it; the sled's solid cover now. The two thugs rush you. (Mooks: one hit each.) Edda: I come up shooting — Ranged Weapons. A 10. GM: The lead thug folds. The other thinks better of it.

The GM rolled one die — the sniper's damage — and only because Edda missed the roll that would have kept her clear.

Radiation (a hazard). Some hazards bypass armor. Radiation compares to a Wanderer's Radiation rating — 0 for an unprotected body, higher only in rad-rated gear (each pregen's armor lists a Rad value). Ordinary armor does nothing against it, and its trauma is Maimed/Broken-grade — it needs a full recovery session, never first aid.

Advancement & Session End§

Run this quick routine at the end of the session:

1. Award the session. Everyone gains 1 XP.
2. Roll marks. Whenever you fail a test using a skill at Trained or better during the session, you mark that skill. Roll 2D6 per mark: on a natural 12 the skill goes up one rank (max Expert; a natural 12 on a skill already at Expert grants 2 XP instead); otherwise gain 1 XP. Clear every mark. (Untrained skills can't be marked.)
3. Tally Banes. 1 XP for each Bane invoked in play.
4. Reset. Momentum returns to 3 next session.

Spend XP any time: 10 XP = +1 skill rank (including Untrained → Trained, the only way to advance an Untrained skill) · 10 XP = remove a Bane (between sessions, if the fiction supports it) · 5 XP = add a Boon. Hold unspent XP as long as you like.

Adventure: The Cold Lantern§

A complete first session — about two to four hours. Read it once; it needs no other prep. Run the opposition the Wanderstar way: players roll to avoid, the GM rolls only damage.

The pitch. A dying frontier station, the Cold Lantern, is freezing to death. Its core-heat tap is failing, its decks are going dark, and the corporation that owns the lease would rather foreclose than fix it. The crew is hired to get into the sealed engineering deck, recover what's needed to keep the lights on, and find out why the heat is failing. The answer is sabotage — and the saboteurs are still aboard.

The truth behind the screen. The Lantern is an old hab-ring around a dead gas-giant moon, kept alive by a single radiothermal tap drilled into the moon's warm core. For three weeks that heart has been failing — not by accident. GANYMEDE Salvage wants the ring dead and legally salvageable; their quiet agent aboard, Sool Vantongue, hired two saboteurs to cut coolant lines slow enough to look like decay. Umbral Coring & Heat, which holds the heat-lease, has decided foreclosure is cheaper than a frontier repair and stopped answering calls. Caught between them is administrator Mira Holt, out of money and options, hiring strangers off the dock because no one official will help.

The job, as offered: get into the locked engineering deck, retrieve the exchanger control core (mag-clamped in the now-irradiated hot zone) so the station's engineers can attempt a repair, and bring back word of why the heat is failing. Holt can pay Cr3,000 plus salvage rights.

Three light faction clocks. Don't roll against factions — just track them as fiction and tick between scenes:

• Residents (Holt) — want the Lantern to live. Clock fills as the cold spreads → the ring is evacuated. Starts 2 of 4; it's already late.
• GANYMEDE (Sool) — want it dead. Clock fills as the exchanger degrades → the core fails for good, the station is theirs. Their saboteurs are the crew's direct opposition.
• Umbral (absent) — want the cheapest exit, but can be flipped with proof of criminal sabotage into sending a real repair team. Evidence is the lever, and the cleanest path to a win.

The hook§

Default: the crew's ship is low on fuel or funds and the Lantern is the only port in reach; on the dock, Holt is openly trying to hire anyone capable. (Or: a contact tips them off; or her weeks-stale distress call reached them mid-jump.) Per-character pulls if you want them: Echo — a failing core-tap is exactly what her warren lives or dies on. Edda — the cold is killing the old and young first. Ace — Tace Driftwell tipped him GANYMEDE is circling; salvage money in knowing the truth first. Bram — Won't Leave Anyone Behind: a frightened station is his wound.

Act I — The Cold Dock§

Cold enough to see your breath, half the shops shuttered, residents queuing for outbound passage. This act is roleplay and information — roll only when something's uncertain. Holt makes her offer plainly and admits her own engineer won't go to the engineering deck since the rad-warnings started. What's findable:

Sool Vantongue is here too, watching who Holt talks to. A perceptive crew (Recon opposed by Sool's Sneaking) notices they're noticed. Sool will try, once, to buy them off — "take a finder's fee, look the other way." How they answer sets the tone. Faction beat: take the job openly → GANYMEDE's clock ticks forward (the saboteurs are warned). Play coy → it holds.

Act II — The Engineering Deck§

The set-piece: a social/stealth obstacle, then an environmental hazard, before a shot is fired.

The checkpoint. The lift opens on a folding table and two hired guards (mooks, 2D). The crew can talk through (Deceive, Charm, or Bureaucracy opposed by a guard's Psychology — "we're the official repair crew" works beautifully), sneak past (Sneaking vs. the guards' Recon, via a maintenance crawlway a Recon test finds), or go loud (fast, but the noise brings the saboteurs sooner, and Holt wanted this quiet).

The hot compartment (radiation hazard — see the Radiation note under Adversaries). The exchanger compartment takes a rising dose from the exposed core, and no one has a sealed suit. Any hit here is Maimed-grade.

• Read it first. A Recon test (Advantage with a dosimeter — 1 Momentum) reveals the core pulses: time a dash to the ebb and a Wanderer gets one clean round inside. This is the intended solution.
• Grab the core. The control core is mag-clamped down — releasing it is a Mechanical test (8+). Echo does this trivially; anyone else is likely Untrained, and failure means a second round inside — now the rads land (1 trauma, Maimed-grade; gain 1 Momentum).
• Negate it. A rad-suit, or shutting the exposed core behind a blast hatch first (Engineering or System Ops), removes the danger. Reward the crew that prepares.

What the core proves. Read it (Engineering, Electronics, or System Ops, 8+): the coolant lines were cut by hand, on a schedule, by someone with contractor access. This is the evidence that flips Umbral — worth more as proof than as salvage. Faction beat: recovering the core ticks the Residents' clock back and arms the crew against Umbral; the saboteurs now come to finish the job.

Act III — The Saboteurs§

As the crew leaves with the core, the lift opens and the sabotage crew arrives. The combat set-piece.

• Korr and Dab — two hardened foes (each takes two hits to drop), carbines, 3D. Competent, not suicidal: they fight to drive the crew off the core and break for the lift if outmatched.
• Sool Vantongue (if angered or exposed in Act I) arrives a round or two later — a boss, not a brawler: a concealed stunner (Stun, 3D) and a willingness to deal, threaten, or flee. Sool is a scene, not a number.

Run it the Wanderstar way: the saboteurs never roll to hit — the targeted player rolls to avoid (Dodge, dive for cover, break line of sight) vs. 8, and only a failure brings the GM's one damage roll. Cover is everywhere: coolant housings (Solid, +4), conduit banks (Light, +2).

The choice at the core — three honest endings, none "correct":

1. Save the station. Hold the core, drive off or capture the saboteurs, hand Holt's engineers the part and the evidence, then shame or bargain Umbral into a real repair team (a Negotiate / Bureaucracy / Political Science scene, possibly back-and-forth). The Lantern lives. Residents' clock empties; GANYMEDE's breaks.
2. Take the money. Sool's offer is real — hand over the core for a GANYMEDE fee (Cr5,000+) and let the ring die on schedule. Clean credits, cold conscience, a station full of people who'll remember. GANYMEDE's clock fills.
3. Walk away with the truth. Grab the core, leave the factions to their war, sell what they know one jump out. The most Wanderer ending — and the one most likely to make enemies on both sides.

Wrapping up§

Pay: Holt's Cr3,000 + salvage for saving the station; GANYMEDE's larger, dirtier fee for letting it die; or whatever Umbral pays once the evidence is in hand. Then run Advancement & Session End above — mark skills failed at Trained+, +1 XP for the session, +1 XP per Bane invoked (Won't Leave Anyone Behind, Mistaken for Property, and the rest all have openings here). If anyone took a Maimed node in the hot compartment, that's a full recovery session waiting — the perfect spine for adventure two.

Threads: GANYMEDE doesn't forget. A shamed Umbral now knows the crew's name — patron and threat at once. A saved station is a port and a home base; a dead one, a derelict the crew helped make.

Your Crew§

Four ready Wanderers — one per people. Hand them out and play. Each starts every session with Momentum 3 and (unless noted) no trauma. Characteristics are Advantage / Disadvantage / Neutral; skills list their rank; every skill not listed is Untrained (−3). Each sheet lists people the character can call on: an Ally is a reliable friend; a Contact is a useful professional connection.

Edda Halvorsen — Sleeper medic§

A physician from a world 160,000 light-years and an unmeasured age behind her.

• Characteristics: Education Adv · Social Standing Dis · rest Neutral.
• Skills: Biology Professional · Psychology Professional · Chemistry Experienced · Survival Experienced · Research Trained.
• Boons: Thinks for Myself (resisting manipulation/dogma) · Wakes Clear-Headed (shaking off shock/sedation/fog) · Lost-Age Physician (old-world medicine) · Steady Hands (medical work under pressure).
• Banes: A Century Out of Step (knowing who's who / what's current) · Old Grief (resolve when faced with the world she lost).
• Gear: First-aid kit · med-scanner · field stims · thermal cloak · power cell. Base armor 3 (doesn't fight). ~Cr1,700.
• Contacts: Sennar Brightwell (Ally — influential former patient).
• Play: The reason the crew survives its wounds — clears Wounded/Shaken in the field with Survival + kit + Steady Hands. Formidable on disease, poison, biology. Keep her out of working a room.

Stills-the-Echo ("Echo") — Wanderborn engineer§

Tunnel-born master of machines with a tarnished name and a family in the deep warrens.

• Characteristics: Education Adv · Social Standing Dis · rest Neutral.
• Skills: Engineering Professional · Mechanical Experienced · Electronics Experienced · Physics Trained · Survival Trained · Sneaking Trained · Driving Trained · Network Trained · Command Trained · Recon Trained · Ranged Weapons Trained · Athletics Trained · System Ops Trained.
• Boons: Reads the Tunnels (dark/underground/enclosed) · Field-Rigged Fix (improvised repairs).
• Banes: Tarnished Reputation · Light-Blind (glare/open sky) · Low-Gravity Frame (sustained exertion in normal-plus gravity).
• Gear: Concealable flak vest (armor 6, Rad 1) · "Bulwark" boarding scattergun (4D; Spread, Zero-G, Slow) · echolocation rig · mechanical toolkit. Cr3,000.
• Contacts: Tends-the-Kiln (Ally — partner) · Moose Trueyoke-Ember (Contact — works foreman).
• Play: Lead with engineering and tech under her Education Advantage. Superb in the dark; bad in bright open spaces. Scattergun is for boarding-range trouble.

Bram Hullward — Seeder soldier§

A career grunt who gets everyone out alive and can't quite say what for anymore.

• Characteristics: Strength Adv · Endurance Adv · Intellect Dis · Education Dis · rest Neutral.
• Skills: Close Quarters Professional · Tactics Experienced · Ranged Weapons Experienced · Command Experienced · Survival Experienced · Network Experienced · Explosives Trained · Bureaucracy Trained.
• Boons: Lead From the Front (rallying allies under fire) · Hold the Line (refusing to break or be moved).
• Banes: Lost My North Star (resolve when asked what he's fighting for) · Blunt Instrument (Deceive / subtle Charm) · Won't Leave Anyone Behind (disengaging while someone's in danger).
• Gear: Surplus carapace plate (armor 13, Rad 5) · "Long Quiet" marksman carbine (100 m, 3D; Scope, Silent) · autopistol · 2 frag grenades · breaching charge · toolkit. Cr4,500.
• Contacts: The Eighth Ridge (Allies — old infantry section) · Warden-Captain Iyo Steelshield (Ally — security chief).
• Play: The front rank — put him between the crew and the gun. Brutally hard to move or rattle. Leave hacking, paperwork, and clever talk to others.

Ace Trueflight-Ember — Hound (Companion) pilot§

A self-taught flyer who washed out of every institution that wouldn't take a Companion, and flew anyway.

• Characteristics: Dexterity Adv · Endurance Adv · Education Dis · Social Standing Dis · rest Neutral.
• Skills: Piloting Professional · Network Experienced · Survival Experienced · Sneaking Trained · Driving Trained · Deceive Trained · Close Quarters Trained · Psychology Trained · Recon Trained · Communications Trained. (Holds 5 unspent XP.)
• Boons: Reads a Room (fast read of people/mood) · Holds a Dangerous Secret (leverage) · Nose for Trouble (sensing ambush/tail) · Always Finds a Way Through (hazardous piloting/navigation).
• Banes: Mistaken for Property (where Companions aren't treated as people) · Can't Sit Still (patient, sedentary tasks).
• Gear: Smartweave flight vest (armor 10, Rad 2; Self-mending) · snub scattergun (30 m, 4D; Spread, Dangerous) · med-scanner · hand lamp. Cr2,000.
• Contacts: Old Marrow (Ally — adopted kid) · Tace Driftwell (Contact — salvage broker).
• Play: Flies anything; threads approaches that shouldn't be survivable. The scout he was never allowed to be. Keep him out of official rooms — Mistaken for Property and his Social Disadvantage bite there. Scattergun's Dangerous: a bad roll can hurt him.

Weapon & armor traits (your crew's gear)§

Tags that change how an item behaves — the few the crew (and the adventure) use:

• Blast — an area/explosive attack (grenades, breaching charges). Hits everything in the radius; each target must dive for cover to avoid it (Dodge and Parry don't apply), and cover helps only if it lies between the target and the center of the blast.
• Spread — close range Advantage; beyond Short range, Disadvantage.
• Slow — fires only every other round.
• Zero-G — fire in low/zero gravity with no recoil penalty.
• Scope — ignores the 100 m Extreme-range rule, if you aim first.
• Silent — Disadvantage on attempts to locate the shooter by sound.
• Dangerous — at Effect −5 or worse, the weapon explodes: its damage hits the wielder and it's wrecked.
• Self-mending — armor lost to wear restores after a short rest.
• Stun — never wounds or kills; on a hit meeting armor, the target marks no trauma but is incapacitated for rounds equal to how far damage beat armor (min 1). An hour's rest erases it.