Imagine a small town in the Japanese countryside. There's only a single rail line with two car trains passing once an hour and no more. Most of the roads are little more than dirt paths. Rice paddies outnumber houses. Temples, shrines, bamboo groves, flower beds, and forests. It gets very dark a night, the people are outnumbered by animals, and the fireflies come out in profusion every summer.

This town is home to more than just people, even if they don't all know it. If you go out to the right places at the right time of day, some of the people you talk to might be something else in disguise.

What is Golden Sky Stories

Golden Sky Stories is a little Japanese tabletop RPG. It's a cute, heartwarming, and comfy game that's more about helping people in a small town with their small problems and maybe learning a lesson about friendship along the way. There's no big damn heroes, no mysterious dungeons and no slaying of terrible beasts. It's all about chill, laid-back fun. Quite the change of pace from most games.

It'd also be great for a forum roleplay, whether we use the rules or not. There are no dice to roll. Instead, success or failure is more a matter of resource management. Do you want to succeed at something now, even if you might not be able to handle something else later? Or do you think it would be funny, cute, or appropriate for your character to fail? That's the sort of game this is, so the mechanics honestly translate pretty well. Not much to keep track of, just pools of points to spend.

Anyway, I'm posting here instead of the Tabletop section because I may not even be using the actual tabletop rules, and just using the game's premise as a springboard for cute, laid-back stories.

The characters

Your characters are henge, animals with a bit of magic that lets them take on human form. Henge are still primarily animals, they live like animals, don't need housing, money, cell phones, and so-on. They get their food as animals, and when they transform ,they appear fully clothed.

Henge human forms aren't perfect. They retain their animal instincts in some ways, or their ears and tail might still be visible. It's not like it's a huge secret, though. Most of the older residents in town know about the henge and will pretend they didn't see your bigger slip-ups. Henge can speak like humans, even in animal form.

Henge can also perform other feats of minor magic, depending on what they are.

I addition to henge, there are humans, animals, local gods, and other spirits or youkai wandering around. It's a wonderful world out there in and around your little town.

The Town
The town is small-town Japan. Or small-town America, we can probably work with that and just change up the legends a little, but the game's set in Japan and uses a very Japanese concept. And we don't need to worry about being too faithful to actual Japan, anyway. A fantastical world is just fine.

I'll provide some locations in town, a rough map, and at least some of its inhabitants. But I also want players to feel free to add their own places and people. It's part of the fun. And there's plenty of folks in a population of up to 10,000 anyway.

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Anyway, this is just to gauge interest. if you like the idea of cue, heartwarming adventures in a small town, either as a change of pace or just in general, you might like this RP.

Sounds like a fun concept to try. In fact I might have a possible character concept already.

As for the setting, how about an Americasian place, like in Big Hero 6 or Ace Attorney or Yo-Kai Watch or... Well, you get the idea. Basically we're in America, but everything is comically Japanese (e.g. We eat "donuts", when they're really onigiri).

I wanna be a trash eating possum henge.

Also count me in!

The henge covered in the rulebook I have are Fox, Cat, Dog, Racoon Dog (Tanuki), Rabbit, and Bird. Though if we move to America as a setting or otherwise muck around, there are certainly other options. The possum is actually one good example of a more uniquely American critter. I at least am pretty sure there's nothing call a possum or opossum (or related to those guys) native to Japan.

Glad to see some interest.

Very interested! I love playing as kitsune.

I don't think the game's rules are so complex as to make reskinning one of the existing critters to be more possum-y too difficult.

If you can link me a copy I can look trough it and see what could be done.

The Colors of the Sky-supplement also has mouse, wolf, horse (or rather pony), fish, and for those wanting to play humans, witch.

But if we're going to add possums and the like, we probably should go without rules, though the books are good guidelines for how characters may act. Besides facts, looking for associated folklore and popular culture on possums would probably be helpful in developing the personality traits and skills of the character.

Although a little personal twist in character shouldn't hurt too much. I was thinking that my character is a dog, who spends his days with the family's littlest ones watching Paw Patrol (or whatever this world's equivalent to it is) and other pre-school edutainment shows. As such when he transforms, his "clothes" are like those of a superhero, and his actions take heavy inspiration from the shows the children watch. He sings, uses catchphrases, quotes and in general acts over the top. He may grow out of it, or go in his own direction, depending on where the story goes.

This is intriguing indeed!

Oh, neat, someone else familiar with the game. I don't have The Colors of the Sky, although I should pick it up at some point. I do have Twilight Tales, so other youkai may turn up from time to time, though possibly not as player characters.

Anyway, I'll have to think a bit on what to do for the setting overall. Last time I considered small town America, my thoughts went toward looking at American folklore and such for ideas. So it'd probably be a mix of Native American stories and other such things, if one wanted to draw directly from them instead of the more Japanese sort.

I can link Colors of the sky to you if you wish.

Gonna have to spend some time looking up possum folklore. If there's not enough I'm basically doing this as a schtick

Very interested if there's still room, SoL is almost always awesome. I plan on playing a Mouse or Tanuki, or maybe a Rat if the setting is in America.

I also have a link (which may or may not be the same link Jerkchicken has) to The Colors of the Sky 2 - Kappa's and Oni's magical adventure - supplement, which adds some American, or at least Western story elements. The Henge (and Mononoke) available there are Kodama, Western Fox, Witch's Cat, Raccoon, Sheep, Tsukumogami and Magical Girl (who, like Witches, have male counterparts).

The authors sure have a wide repertoire available.

Well, I've been quiet a bit, but I'm not dead yet. I'm still not sure on using rules versus not. Though, leaning towards not.

I'll try to figure things out for the setting and get a thread posted as soon as I can.

I have never heard of this game before but I am so completely ready to be sold on it. I've been feeling like I need to find a roleplay that isn't dark or violent or gritty at all. But that type of stuff seems soooooo popular right now. I think this might be just the sort of thing I was hoping to find.

And here we go, a thread.

Apologies for those planning on being American critters, but I've decided to stick with the Japanese setting. No plan on using the rules of the actual game (distribution of dreams, in particular, would be difficult), so no need to worry about learning them.