Stardust Contenders

Pitch
First contact as a sports movie - mankind is invited to send a delegation to an interstellar Olympics just 5 years after making contact, and so must send a delegation equally adroit at diplomacy, anthropology, game theory and athletics to represent them. Its inspirations are a hybrid of Mass Effect and Cool Runnings, with a dash of The Player of Games.

Game Setup
To play Stardust Contenders, you'll need:
- At least two friends willing to spend 4 hours on this. One of you will be the GM, the rest will be players.
- Some six-sided dice.
- A bunch of index cards.

Humans
Before Contact, people were just... people. Only having someone to compare ourselves showed us how special we were.

Take the first index card and write 'Humanity' on it. Write down what's special about humanity, newly revealed in comparison to other races. Also write down a resource humanity has to offer galactic society, and what's currently preventing them from taking advantage of it. These two elements are humanity's traits, usable by all characters. Finally, write down which sport humanity is bringing to the games.

Humanity has the Athletics, Culture and Politics tracks at 0, representing their interstellar reputation in those fields.

Aliens
Though now, there's far more people in the galaxy than just humans.
Put out an index card for each player - one for each alien culture. Going around the table, suggest:
-  Two distinguishing features.
- A possible but unverified weakness.
- Why they disdain humanity.
- Why they're curious about humanity.
- A name.

Write these down, and repeat for each culture.

Characters
Each player takes a card and writes their character's name and concept down on it.

Characters in Stardust Contenders have the following stats:
- Speed: Moving quickly and precisely.
- Brawn: Strength, endurance and toughness.
- Tactics: Quick thinking, strategy and leadership.
- Physiology: Diagnosing, healing and augmenting humans.
- Astrophysics: Interstellar travel, spatial anomalies and theoretical physics.
- Xenology:  Alien cultures, beliefs and physiologies.
- Presence: Raw charisma, being the centre of attention.
- Socialise: Subtly/indirectly exerting social pressure. 
- Empathy: Understanding other's goals and weaknesses.

Each player chooses one as their defining skill (rating 3). No two characters can have the same defining skill. Give three other skills a rating of 2, and set the rest at 1.

Finally, put together your intro montage: an introduction to your character's background and motivations. It has three sections:
- What background did your character come from?
- What defining moment made them famous?
- What secret flaw or obligation are they struggling with?

Describe your intro to the table and sum up each point as a 2-5 word phrase; these are your starting traits.

Doing Stuff
To do something roll take a number of dice equal to your skill. Decide if you're boosting this with traits - unless they're humanity’s traits put an x next to them to remind you they're used up. Roll skill ()d6, take the highest, and add +1 for each trait used. Succeed on a 5+.

The Event
Our translators still imperfect, and he have only the most basic schedule to give you. You'll have to work out the details once you're on the ground.

Build up the Games' schedule. Start with these cards:
- The Opening and Closing Ceremonies
- 1 game for each race (including humanity)

Each player also picks two of these to add in:
- Diplomatic summit
- Formal gala
- Bar crawl
- Media interviews
- Art exhibition
- Trade fair
- Planetary safari

Put the Opening and Closing ceremonies at opposite ends of a line and shuffle and deal out the other cards between them. Split them into three groups, as equal as you can make them. These'll be the three weeks of the Games.

Playing
The game starts at the beginning of the first week - you've just arrived at the planet or space station the games are being hosted on, found your quarters and unpacked. 

Each week is broken into two phases: preparation and play.

Preparation
Each player gets two actions, picked from the following list.

Research
You investigate an upcoming event. Roll an appropriate skill. 
- Success: the GM explains what it involves and what your team can do to get +1 to a reputation track.
- Failure: as success, but the GM will also say one crucial element humans are unsuited for.

Prepare
You train or put together resources for an upcoming event. Roll an appropriate skill for what you're doing - normally Physiology, Tactics or Socialise.
- Success: you (or a teammate) gain a one-use trait to use in that event.
- Failure: you gain the trait but exhaust yourself - mark off one of your traits.

Ally
You try to get one of the aliens on-side to help you out. Say what sort of ally you're looking for and roll an appropriate skill: 
- Success: they'll promote you (+1 to one of the three tracks) if you do something for them in one of this week's events.
- Failure: They'll warn you not to do something in one of this week's events; if you do it, you'll take -1 reputation in one track.

Rest
Take a break to refresh all your traits.

Events
Once preparation is over you run through the week's schedule, following these steps for every event:

1) Make a plan
The GM will tell you if this event is mainly Athletic, Political or Cultural. Put together a plan, deciding who'll be the main playmaker and what others are doing to try and assist them. 

2) Set-up
Everyone assisting in the plan describes their action and rolls an appropriate skill:
- Success: you do your part, giving the main actor +1 dice to their roll.
- Failure: you fumble; give the main actor -1 to their roll.

3) Follow-through
The main actor makes their roll, modified by set-up. Get -1 to this if the team wasn't able to research the event.
- Success: the plan works! Take +1 to this event's relationship track.
- Failure: the plan's not enough. Choose: accept the loss, or push it to gain victory - get +1 to this event's track but take -1 to another.
The GM describes the outcome of the event, and you move to the next one.

Wrapping Up
At the end of the Closing Ceremony, assess your tracks. For every point above 0, a player can describe one positive result for humanity as a result of the games. For each point below 0, the GM describes one negative outcome as a result of the team's actions. Example: the team ends with Athletics +3, Culture +2, Politics -1, so gets 5 positive outcomes and 1 negative. Finally, wrap up with a description of each character's life after the games.