“Remember This: Try.” — Willpower as the Smallest, Strongest Engine

Some slogans stride across banners; Nemik’s last word flickers like a match in cupped hands:

Remember this: Try.

Not conquer, not prevail—just the bare-bones dare to act before odds finish their lecture. At the table, that single syllable can power starships, topple citadels, and rescue a session sagging beneath bad rolls, because it reframes victory as effort rather than outcome.

Picture the rookie pilot banking into a TIE wing she can’t outgun. Her player knows the dice are cruel tonight, but she locks S-foils and rolls anyway. Years from now no one will quote that damage total; they’ll remember the breath she took before punching the throttle. Harness that breath with a simple rule: every character gets a Resolve track of three empty circles. Whenever a player attempts something meaningful and risky—vaulting a speeder gap, confessing a buried fear, handing contraband bread to a hungry child under holocam glaze—they fill one circle. When all three glow, the character earns a Surge: an automatic success on a future check or the right to declare a helpful world detail. Dawn wipes the track clean. The mechanic pays players in narrative momentum for daring to swing.

Trying implies failure, and failure feeds stories. Each time a brave attempt collapses, drop a Momentum token into a communal bowl. Let five tokens buy the party a flash of fortune: an ally appears with forged codes, a security grid flickers, a crowd complicates a patrol’s line of fire. Misses compost into future blossoms; players learn there is no wasted courage.

People, not systems, keep ideals alive, so stock the setting with bit players who refuse to quit. The slicer who’s bricked eight data heists but grins at the ninth, the pensioner printing rebel leaflets even as troopers torch her presses—these small lanterns shame PCs into relighting their own. Let such NPCs occasionally aid a plan, but more importantly let them embody the verb that titles your session notes: Try.

Midway through each game night, pause for a one-sentence circle. Ask every player, “What brave try did you make tonight?” Not what roll they nailed—what risk they embraced. Speaking the gamble aloud prepares the fuse for the next act and nudges cautious players toward bolder choices.

Even plot arcs can hinge on attempts, not successes. Maybe the encrypted holonet packet the crew fails to steal still sparks sympathy across a dozen systems when footage of their capture leaks. Recruitment swells, supply caches open, governors panic. The galaxy moves because someone lunged, not because fate applauded.

Keep the word visible. Write TRY on a sticky note and slap it atop your GM screen. Whenever play drifts into resource hoarding or analysis paralysis, tap the note and raise an eyebrow. Someone will leap before looking, the table will inhale, and the story will roar forward another meter.

Empires fall less from perfect plans than from relentless experiments in hope. Give your players permission to be those experiments. Hand them Nemik’s tiny command like a battered but unbroken banner, and watch them push the dark back—one earnest attempt at a time.

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