I ran a campaign in Stars without Number system for a good long time, for two and a half years (and the following text will casually assume familiarity with the system), and over time it inspired one of the players to try his own hand on GMing this system of largely independent gaming in isolated Star Sectors.

That, by the way, is a genius lore design idea that makes it easy to declare a campaign “in the same universe” while allowing for diverging rules details, different technologies, different politics and different or even NO aliens, and never clashing, because post-scream — after the sundering of the Human Mandate Empire — there simply is no way to reliably travel between separate sectors, and over centuries of isolation anything can have happened.

New Sector, new game

The new GM’s setting is an old colony ship dipping through the endless night for ages: it was launched before the jump gates were established and has been, without knowing it, overtaken by technical development. When it will reach its destination, someone else will already have got there and already started settling and developing the sector. They had a jump gate, they had lots of traffic, then everything went to shit, then everything was rebuilt from scratch …. and THEN we dip along in our millennium old rust bucket.

The players are

• An android (warrior/expert) who is tasked with maintenance in constant contact with the ship’s main computer and has a storage of backup bodies in case he gets destroyed. His name is Charlock
• Hong Sha, a carefree pilot (also warrior/expert, and: me)
• Dr. Wilberforce, a dark-haired, very pale vampiresque medic (also warrior/expert, go figure)
• Godrick Moonfire, a “silent and deadly” type, wears all black and grey, has PTSD from a war, does not like to talk with people, but has an NPC wife and an underage NPC son on board. And is the only non-warrior. He is a psychic.

At first we were all at the birthday party of a maintenance manager called Rico; a backdrop to get the party together and let us get to know each other; and that worked: we drew the “silent and deadly” type out and got him to open up a bit, and made friends.

We got to know a number of key NPCs, especially from the piloting and security crew; and when I learned that we have a number of smaller mechas and exoskeletons, I proposed a mecha race to run through the central maintenance and transport shaft. That idea got traction and we soon started to enlist pilots for the exoskeletons and organised the event.

Fast forward a week (IRL and in game both), things have been set up, and the race is on.

Massive Race

This is when the GM found out that he had miscalculated a bit: he had made a meticulous plan (seldom a wise course of action) and considered the mecha-race the big main event of the session — when of the four players, only one was signing up for the race (that was me).
One of the others chose to help with organising the event, and two elected to watch from the sidelines.

That took him by surprise as he had envisioned most of us competing. An additional issue was that he had overindulged on the details: The race — up the central chute of the kilometers-long space ship — was to take 30 rounds with tactical decisions and skill rolls. And there were 30 starters. Thirty!

30 rounds for 30 racers, that would be 900 dice rolls. He didn’t go that far: when someone fell behind with a series of low rolls, that participant was dropped out and didn’t get to roll any more, and that reduced the field to 20 after the first couple of rounds, and to 6 NPCs toward the end.

Due to a combination of successful dice rolls, fortunate tactical decisions, and of course the baked-in natural advantage that a focus-studded player character has over low-level NPCs, I actually managed to win the race. A very close call, though. By a hair! Rolling pretty high in the final couple of rounds after barely keeping up with the top-placed racers for most of the event.

The GM was prepared to let me fail if I could not keep up, but some really good rolls and the occasional +1 from the watcher on the radio gave me the edge I needed to stay in the race and even keep up with the front group for most of the race.

Doubt and stress

The two players on the sidelines put considerable stress on the GM. He had planned for us all to be deeply involved, and now he found himself rolling mostly against himself.

I tried to involve the others by staying in radio contact and asking them for advice, and one of them used his skills to watch the track via video feed so he could point out tactical hints to me. The GM assigned those a target number, which sometimes gave me a +1 on my rolls.

The fellow player who had opted to help in preparations was acting as some kind of side-GM whenever the parts came up that he had introduced to the track (obstacles, wind machines, spots with increased gravity or zero grav, respectively).

Improvise or stay the course?

Sure, the GM could have dropped his prep and cut the race short to avoid extended times of player-sidelining, but he chose to stick with his plan to hold the race live.

Was that good or bad?

• It was good in the sense that he had really prepared this race track and the NPCs had their distinct personalities, styles and skill sets, and during the race these individual traits came out to shine in those who managed to stay in the top group. The GM really had prepped for this event, that I had thrown his way when I had proposed it on a whim. There were various obstacles and navigational challenges that the GM had expected to keep us players on our toes; which they did (for that one player who raced).

• Bad in the sense that the two who did not participate were more like an audience than players, including the one who ran some support rolls: support rolls are more like a side-show.

And yet: as befits an old school game, there was all the choice in the world.

These two players had actively chosen to sit and watch, even when given every opportunity to reconsider and join the race. It is one tenet of Old School play that the players must seek their own involvement, not wait for the GM to hand them a plotline to follow. And to their credit, they did not complain.

WWYD

What would I have done as a GM: I would never have made the race that big. I would have given it a handful of rounds and 6 to a max of 12 racers. I would have glossed over most of them and made it more dramatic by really focusing on a few strong opponents. And then let the dice duke it out.
But that is because I would have just seen it as one of many possible activites;

he on the other hand had a real plan: he wanted us to witness certain things that would only make sense later. He does that, playing the long game.

Next time we are going to have another time jump, a major one. I suppose we will wake up from cryo and have some rather complex problem to solve. I am looking forward to it, and I hope to get more interaction with fellow players taking some spotlight.