I hear you! And you’ve got me thinking about why this wasn’t a major issue for us.

There are some moves in the non-star playbooks, as well. Like, the bulk of the Lover’s stuff has to do with helping the stars or manipulating them into doing what she wants them to do (via incentive or implied threat). But without a player willing to create and pursue their own goals, I’m not really sure how potent that is in keeping the Lover, at least, in proximity to either star. In fact that character did pursue some stuff, but there’s the bandwidth problem I mention in the OP.

The Other’s main jam is that it can give its Heart to another character and they both benefit (ish) from it. So there’s usually an aptitude drive to hang out with someone, anyone. But that’s not a fictional thing, that has everything to do with the Other’s player wanting to engage with the Heart rules.

During setup, there’s a thing you do where once Space Wurm has laid claim to two of the five available fronts, the remaining 3 get divvied up among everyone else. Part of the divvying is that when you’re paired up with a Front, you get some strong fictional-positioning benefits: if you’re associated with Interstellar Travel, then you might have special access to starships or if you’re associated with the Spice, that means you can always get your hands on some. Stuff like that. And since the stars are driven to engage with those Fronts, that connection is usually their “in” with it. It’s very effective!

In our game, I made an error (IMO) in that we only had 2 non-stars for the 3 Fronts. So instead of giving both supporting characters a connection to the third Front, I took it instead. It works, it was okay, but it meant that nobody had a special investment in it or provided a special in to SW or M. I think it’s not a coincidence that that was also my under-developed Front: note the big blanks in the Neuronium zone on my smap.