I figure we’re a bit overdue for an update on what’s going on with Golden Sky Stories, so here goes. Right now the plan is to launch the GSS Kickstarter on the heels of Tenra Bansho Zero‘s Kickstarter. Assuming Andy and Luke keep on schedule, that means we should be launching the GSS Kickstarter around the end of June. That means we have a couple more months, and we’ll be using that time to get everything in order so that when we do our own Kickstarter we’ll be that much more able to get everything out to everyone without undue delay.
Slow and Steady Does the Layout
The graphic designer for Golden Sky Stories is none other than Clay Gardner. He is the designer of OVA: Open Versatile Anime, and has done graphic design work for a huge variety of projects, including several games from Minion Games. The original Japanese version of Golden Sky Stories was already a feast for the eyes, but Clay is using his graphic design skills to add another layer of polish all the same. He recently put up a blog post where he shows off what he’s doing with the power descriptions for rabbit henge. Clay’s currently about halfway done with the layout, and I’m really liking how it’s looking so far.
Something Fishy
A while ago I hit on the idea of making a new, original character type for GSS as a Kickstarter reward. Ben Lehman (who you may know from games like Polaris and Bliss Stage) stepped up and offered to try his hand. About a day later he sent me his first draft of a writeup for fish henge. We’ll be doing some refinements between now and the Kickstarter of course, but Ben’s writeup is already wonderfully whimsical and mythical. It’s a bit of an “advanced” character type that’ll be a little tricky to play.
I’ve also been working on a writeup for “pony henge,” which are indeed partly inspired by My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, albeit with plenty of elements inspired by reading up on horses on Wikipedia. Looking up idioms/cliches about an animal is a great way to come up with powers for henge by the way. I’m still working out what exactly to do with these new writeups, but at present I’m thinking of having the fish henge be a Kickstarter exclusive and having the pony henge be a freebie.
Are there any additional Henge types in the works (beyond the two mentioned so far)?
Well, at one point Kamiya released a writeup for mouse henge as a special convention handout. I’m hoping we’ll be able to provide a translated version, but Kamiya feels that as it stands it’s not up to snuff and needs revisions.
We are planning to eventually release the supplements, which include rules for mononoke (creatures of pure magic), elder henge (snakes, spiders, centipedes, and turtles) which are basically local gods, and humans, plus guidelines for using the existing powers and weaknesses to create new character types.
We’re also interested in putting together more original material, including hacks for totally different settings, but we’re only in the very earliest planning stages for that sort of thing.
That sounds really cool!
You’ve definitely got my support once you guys have the Kickstarter page set up. Good luck with the project!
Helloooooo?
Anybody here? I’m still very interested in Golden Sky Stories… Can you guys give us any updates?
Sorry for the late reply. Basically real life has been throwing us lots of curveballs, and it’s taking time to get everything ready for the Kickstarter. Clay is gearing up to do a final around of edits to the layout (plus design the character sheet), and we’re hoping to launch in early 2013, after the holiday season is behind us.
Good to hear! I can’t wait to see the final product. Plus, I hope the book (or at least the PDF version) might be released soon, as I have the opportunity to run it on a RPG forum community meeting in Febuary. My players already are very excited about it.
I was wondering about the progress with other henge or othe rplayable characters. I have been running demos of Golden Sky Stories for the past few years and keep promising more to come, but it has been a long wait. I am looking forward to the Oni, at least I think the one horned boy in the artwork is supposed to be an oni.
In case you missed it, the new character types added as stretch goals in the Kickstarter are available in our original supplement, “The Colors of the Sky”; there’s links on the GSS product page (http://starlinepublishing.com/our-games/golden-sky-stories/). The oni and other mononoke are going to be in Mononoke Koyake, the first Japanese supplement, and we’re hoping to have a Kickstarter to launch it, hopefully by early 2015.
Thanks for the update. My friends and I have all the available suplements, and we are very happy with the game as it stands now, but I was looking forward to the oni and my friends are looking forward to the alien. Thanks again!
Hi Ewen, I can’t say how happy I was when I discovered this game. I had Maid before, but never found GSS before. I’ve always been interested in ‘conflictless’ tabletop RPGs.
I recently saw a picture of someone who had this game and, like, 4 other books for it in Japanese, are those real? Will they get translated too? Nya, wish I could read Japanese ^^;
Yeah, there are three supplements, and we are planning to translate and release all of them. Real life stuff has made things take way longer than we’d have liked, but it is coming.
Hey, hope things have been getting better. Brad Talton, myself, and all your friends in NM have been thinking of you.
We do, of course, wish to see more supplements, but we also want you to be doing okay.