Chapter 32 — The GM's Role

This part of the book is for the Game Master. If you're running Wanderstar, the chapters ahead cover building adventures (32), running factions (33), running opposition (34), the contact web (35), and advancement (36) — and the toolkit chapters after them (37–40) hand you the dice-driven generators for worlds, patrons, NPCs, and encounters. This one is the foundation: what the GM actually does at the table, and the handful of principles that make the system sing.

The rules you've read so far are the players' rules. The GM's job is not to know them better than anyone — it's to hold the world steady, decide what's uncertain, and let the dice and the players' choices tell the story. Most of that work is judgment, and the system is built to keep that judgment light.

Playing without a GM? The deciding-what's-uncertain role this chapter describes is handed to an oracle — the dice answering the questions a GM would. If you're playing solo or co-op, read this chapter for the principles, then turn to Part X (Chapters 42–45), which adapts every one of them for a table with no one in the GM's seat.

What the GM does§

At its core, the GM does four things, over and over:

Describe the world. Set the scene, voice the people in it, and tell the players what their Wanderers perceive. Then ask the question every scene turns on: what do you do?
Decide what's uncertain. When a player declares an action, decide whether it simply happens, simply can't, or calls for a test (Chapter 5). This is the GM's most frequent and most important call.
Frame the stakes and the threats. When something pushes back — an adversary, a hazard, a locked system — frame what it's doing and let the player roll to meet it (Chapter 40).
Adjudicate and award. Read the dice against the fiction, narrate what happens, and at session's end hand out the marks and XP that move characters forward (Chapter 20).

You are not the players' opponent. You present an interesting, consistent world and let the consequences fall honestly. When you're unsure of a ruling, make the call that keeps the fiction moving and the stakes real, and refine it later.

When to call for a roll§

The single skill that most improves a Wanderstar GM is knowing when not to roll. A test is for a moment that is both uncertain and interesting — where failure is genuinely possible and genuinely matters. Everything else just happens:

A task with no real chance of failure for this character succeeds without a roll. An Expert slicer opens an ordinary lock; it's done.
A task with no real chance of success fails without a roll, or simply isn't possible.
A task that's uncertain but boring — the outcome won't change the story either way — should be narrated past, not rolled.

Reserve the dice for the fork in the road. When you do call for one, name the skill (from what the player is doing) and the characteristic (the skill's default, or another the situation warrants), and let them roll against 8.

Difficulty without moving the number§

Wanderstar's target number is always 8 (Chapter 5). You never raise it for a hard task or lower it for an easy one. This is the discipline the whole system rests on, and it is worth internalizing. To make something harder or easier, reach for these instead:

Whether to roll at all — the bluntest and most-used dial (above).
Advantage and Disadvantage — the main difficulty knob. Good conditions, tools, time, or help grant Advantage; bad footing, haste, exhaustion, or a hostile environment impose Disadvantage. Sources don't stack; one reason either way is usually enough.
Training and gates — call the harder skill, or rule a task simply can't be attempted below Trained, or without the right gear or access.
The cost of failure — make failure bite more rather than make success less likely. A hard, important task is one where the consequences are real.
More than one success — when something is hard because it's large, require several successes before a set number of failures (a progress clock), or run it as an extended contest.

Hold the line on the 8 and these tools become second nature. They also keep the odds legible: players always know that 8 is the bar, and that their fate rides on conditions they can influence.

The player-facing principle§

The dice at the table belong to the players. NPCs don't roll (Chapter 40). When an adversary acts against a Wanderer, you don't roll to hit — you frame the threat and the player rolls the skill that would meet it, against 8. Succeed and they avoid or blunt it; fail and you roll only the threat's damage. A dangerous foe means the player rolls at Disadvantage, never against a higher number.

This keeps your hands free for the fiction and keeps every roll a player's stake in the outcome. The one exception is crewed vehicles and starships, which carry their own damage track (Chapter 25) — but even there, your crew rolls and you roll only the enemy's damage.

Manage Momentum honestly§

Momentum (Chapter 7) is the engine that makes Advantage a real choice, and it runs on your calls. Every Disadvantage you impose feeds the players a point; every point of trauma they take feeds them another. This means leaning on a tough situation is not pure punishment — it arms the table for what comes next. Impose Disadvantage when the fiction earns it, offer situational Advantage (at 1 Momentum) when a player sets something up well, and let the resource flow. A session where Momentum never moves is a session where the difficulty dials aren't being used.

Awarding marks and XP§

Advancement is mostly automatic, which keeps you out of the business of doling out rewards (Chapter 20). Players mark a skill themselves whenever they fail a test at Trained or better; at session's end they roll each mark, and you simply confirm the session happened (everyone gains 1 XP for completing it). Your real job here is to let people fail at interesting things — the fail-forward system means a character who only ever attempts what they're sure of never grows. Frame challenges that invite characters to reach past their reliable skills.

Tone and the material you're given§

Wanderstar hands you a great deal of ready-made friction. The four peoples (Chapter 31) carry eight thousand years of resentment and recognition into every mixed crew and every world they touch — who left, who stayed, who was made. Contacts (Chapter 35) generate adventures through the favors they're owed and owe. Corporations (Chapter 34) are patrons and creditors with reach across the jumps. The no-FTL-comms fact (Chapter 27) means information is always partial and often stale, which is a gift: it lets you spring what can't be outrun and keeps the players acting on incomplete maps.

Lean on these. The best Wanderstar sessions come not from elaborate plots but from honest consequences playing out across a galaxy too large and too disconnected for anyone to be safe in for long.

Session Zero & Safety§

Before the first roll, spend a little time agreeing on the game you're all going to play. This is Session Zero, and it's the cheapest way to make everything after it better. It needn't be formal — a single conversation covers it:

What kind of campaign is this? Frontier survival, hard-luck trade, political intrigue, salvage, the slow business of belonging — Wanderstar runs all of them, and a crew that knows which one it's in plays toward it. Set the tone and the rough premise together.
What does the crew share? A ship, a debt, a home world, a reason to take work. A sentence of shared history turns five strangers into a crew.
What's on the table, and what isn't? Wanderstar deals in hard material — trauma of both kinds, loss, isolation, the weight of a vanished home, and a setting whose history runs on enslavement and rebellion (the Companions were made as property and freed by force). Talk openly about the themes the group wants to explore and the ones they'd rather leave off the table.

Safety is a standing tool, not a one-time talk. Anyone at the table — GM included — can call to pause, fade, or wind down a scene or topic, at any time, without owing a reason. Honor it instantly and move on; the story is never worth a person's comfort. Revisit the lines as the campaign grows and people learn what they actually enjoy. None of this blunts the danger: a consistent, lethal galaxy is more compelling, not less, when everyone has agreed on the kind of story they're telling together.

This is whole-table work, and it matters just as much without a GM — when no one is holding the tone, the group holds it together (Chapters 42, 45).