Golden Sky Stories

This is one of my go-to games, especially for cons. It never fails to delight folks, allowing for both cute silly fun and heart wrenching emotional moments. I've run many many one-shots, and it holds the record for the longest campaign I've ever run.

This game is very much a slice of life game, and easily falls into the Iyashikei (healing) genre, with a tone similar to what you'd find from Yotsuba&!, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō, My Neighbor Totoro, Hakumei and Mikochi, and The Helpful Fox Senko-san (which is literally about an 800-year old fox spirit who shows up to help uplift the spirits of a young working man.)

My biggest critique of Golden Sky Stories is that the system is a bit fiddly, as you have to keep track of multiple resource pools which cascade from one to the next. You have Dreams, Connections, Wonder, Feelings, Memories, and Threads. And, several of these resource pools do similar, but slightly differnt things from one another; Wonder activates Powers while Feelings boost Action Checks, but both of them turn into Memories, and Memories can be used for either Powers or Action Checks. You also have the bit of back and forth math of keeping your Connections rankings in sync with the other Players. But, this really only becomes a problem when you're running longer multi-session campaigns.

That said, GSS also has one of the best bennie mechanics of any game I've ever played, in the form of Dreams, where any player can applaud the actions of another Player at any time for any reason. It's a great way to get folks to play to character and to cheer one another on!

Golden Sky Stories is a heck of a game.

It was my first introduction to the Japanese trpg scene and it completely re-aligned my own approach to design, so this is going to be less of an objective review than usual, but I heartily recommend checking this out.

The PDF is 146 pages, with wonderful, charming, super expressive illustrations peppered heavily throughout the book.

Flavor-wise, Golden Sky goes for a cozy, pastoral tone. You play as shapeshifting animal gods in a small, rural town, and most of your adventures are just...doing nice things for people. Maybe there's a little mystery or suspense, or a moment of conflict, but it's your ability to repair relationships and solve disagreements that makes everything right in the end, not bonking each other on the head with swords.

Golden Sky isn't really built around pvp or combat, and its engine is dead simple. You have static numbers for skills, and if your number meets or exceeds the TN for a check, you succeed. If it doesn't, you can spend points from a limited pool to succeed anyway. Your pool refreshes periodically, and you can increase its size by levelling up your relationships with people.

Golden Sky's standout feature is its relationship mechanic. Anyone, at any time, can give anyone else exp. Usually it's for good roleplaying or doing something cute, not for progressing the adventure. With exp, you can strengthen relationships. The stronger your relationships are (and the stronger other people's feelings towards you are) the more points you have to pass checks or to activate unique powers based on your class.

Golden Sky is surprisingly class-based, but there's a lot of room to differentiate characters within each class. You could have several bird-henge or cat-henge in a party, all of which feel completely different, and class supernatural powers are often tied to fun drawbacks. Nothing feels punishing or "I have to take this to be viable." Just building a character is a treat.

If I have to critique Golden Sky Stories for something, it's that the sample scenarios it comes with have very little tension in them. There's a *lot* of good hooks in the town and npc section, but the scenarios themselves might not have enough going on to engage a group that hasn't played anything like this before. Supplemental material (such as Colors Of The Sky and Twilight Tales) helps patch this, but I recommend homebrewing your own custom scenario to start.

Overall, if you like cozy games, if you want something to play with a younger audience, if you want to check out some extremely high production values, and if you want to see a little bit of what the jtrpg scene has to offer, I strongly suggest snapping up a copy of Golden Sky Stories.