This game is a lot like Communism: Interesting in theory, dull and oppressive in practice.
A long time ago, back at a now-defunct convention which will remain nameless, I was asked about whether I was a fan of tabletop RPGs by a random stranger, to which I answered that I was. He started telling me about a new tabletop game that was coming out of Japan called Golden Sky Stories, and then he handed me this gargantuan, unbound pile of papers that was part of the rulebook that had been published up to that point. I no longer have that mess of a packet, but I did download it off of DriveThruRPG. Flipping through it, I felt like it had a few interesting concepts going for it- a primarily slice-of-life kind of a game that explores to some degree Japanese mythology in a modern setting. In theory, it's sort of like World of Darkness, having the mythical and the supernatural be integrated with the modern world, only a bit more light-hearted and without the unspeakable horror involved.
In practice... Well, let's just say when I finally got around to running a session of this game, I was disappointed far sooner than my players were.
Did I mention this was another Ryo Kamiya game?
Without any further ado, let's take a leisurely stroll into the world of Golden Sky Stories.
Did I mention this was another Ryo Kamiya game?
Without any further ado, let's take a leisurely stroll into the world of Golden Sky Stories.
Setting
With a lot of these games I really dislike, it seems I'm suckered in with a really cool setting, then completely let down by how it actually plays out. So, what does this game offer me that was so intriguing to start off with?
Golden Sky Stories primarily takes place in rural Japan, since many of the mythical elements being predominantly Japanese in nature.The game can potentially take place anywhere, but it's pretty obvious that it's supposed to be Japanese. That's fine, though. This game has a distinctively Miyazaki-esque kind of feel to it, so beyond it taking place in a whole other world, Japan seems to be the most fitting place for it to happen.
The players in the game are henge (hen-gey), shapeshifters that are originally animals that have some significance in Japanese iconography- foxes, raccoon dogs, rabbits, regular dogs, cats, and birds. Along with these people are creatures called Local Gods, who are also animal-like entities bound to a particular location, like a forest, a pond, river, or a mountain. Within the restriction of being bound to that particular location, these entities are, for all intents and purposes, godlike, though they fit in more closely with the idea of spirits of the land in animistic tradition.
Henge tend to interact with humans on a varying basis between wanting to or being asked to take care of something on behalf of a local god. They can engage in some form of human interaction, though using human technology and understanding the nuances of their society is usually beyond them- they are primarily animals, after all, despite the ability to shapeshift into humans or a half-human amalgam, as per the cat-girl conventionality (except for the birds, who grow wings).
The henge each get their own set of powers, as do the local gods, though their purview is a bit... Limited. I'll discuss the powers a bit more in character creation, but the most impressive thing about the henge is their shapeshifting ability, and even that's not much to write home about. Still, there's something to be said about a world with the supernatural incorporated where it's not necessarily a huge threat to humanity, it's just sort of there and always has been a part of the natural order and has been no cause for fuss. Revealing the aspects of your supernatural prowess is naturally shocking to some, but it's nowhere near as threatening as doing something like, say, breaching the Masquerade in any given Vampire game. Hunters aren't going to come out in this game to murder your face off.
While the idea of the supernatural being pretty well-integrated with the everyday world is an interesting one, its biggest flaw is that it takes out a bit of the conflict in this game, but believe me, this is a far bigger problem once we start discussing mechanics and the storytelling. Here, it's incidental. There are interesting concepts at work here, and the setting itself isn't what causes this thing to implode on itself.
Setting: 7/10
Character Creation
So, now that we've got it established what a henge is, what kinds can you play and what can you do with them? Well, as mentioned before, there are six kinds: Fox, Raccoon Dog (Tanuki), Dog, Cat, Rabbit and Bird. You also have four stats which are really weird, to say the least. There's your Henge Stat, which is essentially your supernatural prowess, Animal, which is your instinct and survival abilities, Adult, which is your ability to interact with modern human society (the only trait you can have at 0, incidentally), and Child, which I had a really hard time defining but sort of comes down to being able to manipulate people and willpower. It's not even that I have a problem with these being non-traditional RPG stats, but when I have a hard time defining what exactly some of them mean, there's a problem.
Another aspect I find kind of irritating about this character creation is the way they deal with henge. In the book, they give very clearly illustrated and described characteristics to some sample characters throughout the book, who are very vibrant and come alive at the page. On its own, this might be pretty good. If this were its own bit of fiction, this would be a very strong set of characters.
The problem is that, given the way the character creation is done, it seems like the sample characters are the only characters you can really play. Of the powers that the characters can get, 6/12 are already picked out for you, and many of them feature character traits that match the sample characters to a T. It's almost as if your character's personality was already picked out for you before you even started playing the game. One could try to make a similar argument that the same could be said of other games, but I want to note that Golden Sky Stories asserts that what it describes is how all henge of these types will act all the time. At least in most games, what they describe are tendencies that particular kinds of characters may have, rather than saying "This is true of all X ever" about half of their character traits.
Still, credit where credit is due: what is left to the player is to choose additional weaknesses that also come with powers. It helps build the character further, but going into this game, it feels like your character was already half-built for you, so it kind of takes the soul and the individuality of these characters out of it. Still, this is something pretty easily fixed by players, but the game should not ever have to force players to disobey its precepts.
Character Creation: 6/10
Mechanics and Storytelling
You may be wondering why I mashed these two categories together. Well, it's because they both suffer from the same problem, and will thus be judged in the same way. I can sum up their problem very, very quickly:
THIS GAME REMOVES CONFLICT FROM THE STORY.
We're talking about pissing-in-a-milkshake innovation here, people. Ryo Kamiya had the "brilliant" idea to try to create a slice-of-lifey story and tried to remove conflict from it, namely violent confrontation. In theory, this forces the players to focus on character development and interaction in order to solve problems. In theory, it circumvents several hours of combat sessions and semi-tedious dice-rolling, using the traits that the characters take on as a threshold for skill checks- You either make it or you don't.
In practice, it artificially deprives a player of options, which is NEVER OKAY.
For starters, the skill check system. Yeah, this confused me for a bit and took me a while to discover how exactly it worked, only to discover that the best way I can describe it is the threshold system. The GM issues a problem for the characters to solve and assigns the appropriate trait to it. If they have enough of the trait, they get over the obstacle pretty easily. If not, they fail. There's no two ways around it. There's not even a dice roll. If it's high enough, you succeed. If not, instant failure. Notice something wrong here?
It's an option removed from the players' pool. If they don't have a high enough level in, say, Adult, there's no way in hell they're going to be able to operate a cell phone, not even by trial and error. Sure, this game takes away the luck aspect of there being failure, but honestly, any other game would at least offer you the chance to succeed, even with a low score.
Henge tend to interact with humans on a varying basis between wanting to or being asked to take care of something on behalf of a local god. They can engage in some form of human interaction, though using human technology and understanding the nuances of their society is usually beyond them- they are primarily animals, after all, despite the ability to shapeshift into humans or a half-human amalgam, as per the cat-girl conventionality (except for the birds, who grow wings).
The henge each get their own set of powers, as do the local gods, though their purview is a bit... Limited. I'll discuss the powers a bit more in character creation, but the most impressive thing about the henge is their shapeshifting ability, and even that's not much to write home about. Still, there's something to be said about a world with the supernatural incorporated where it's not necessarily a huge threat to humanity, it's just sort of there and always has been a part of the natural order and has been no cause for fuss. Revealing the aspects of your supernatural prowess is naturally shocking to some, but it's nowhere near as threatening as doing something like, say, breaching the Masquerade in any given Vampire game. Hunters aren't going to come out in this game to murder your face off.
While the idea of the supernatural being pretty well-integrated with the everyday world is an interesting one, its biggest flaw is that it takes out a bit of the conflict in this game, but believe me, this is a far bigger problem once we start discussing mechanics and the storytelling. Here, it's incidental. There are interesting concepts at work here, and the setting itself isn't what causes this thing to implode on itself.
Setting: 7/10
Character Creation
So, now that we've got it established what a henge is, what kinds can you play and what can you do with them? Well, as mentioned before, there are six kinds: Fox, Raccoon Dog (Tanuki), Dog, Cat, Rabbit and Bird. You also have four stats which are really weird, to say the least. There's your Henge Stat, which is essentially your supernatural prowess, Animal, which is your instinct and survival abilities, Adult, which is your ability to interact with modern human society (the only trait you can have at 0, incidentally), and Child, which I had a really hard time defining but sort of comes down to being able to manipulate people and willpower. It's not even that I have a problem with these being non-traditional RPG stats, but when I have a hard time defining what exactly some of them mean, there's a problem.
Another aspect I find kind of irritating about this character creation is the way they deal with henge. In the book, they give very clearly illustrated and described characteristics to some sample characters throughout the book, who are very vibrant and come alive at the page. On its own, this might be pretty good. If this were its own bit of fiction, this would be a very strong set of characters.
The problem is that, given the way the character creation is done, it seems like the sample characters are the only characters you can really play. Of the powers that the characters can get, 6/12 are already picked out for you, and many of them feature character traits that match the sample characters to a T. It's almost as if your character's personality was already picked out for you before you even started playing the game. One could try to make a similar argument that the same could be said of other games, but I want to note that Golden Sky Stories asserts that what it describes is how all henge of these types will act all the time. At least in most games, what they describe are tendencies that particular kinds of characters may have, rather than saying "This is true of all X ever" about half of their character traits.
Still, credit where credit is due: what is left to the player is to choose additional weaknesses that also come with powers. It helps build the character further, but going into this game, it feels like your character was already half-built for you, so it kind of takes the soul and the individuality of these characters out of it. Still, this is something pretty easily fixed by players, but the game should not ever have to force players to disobey its precepts.
Character Creation: 6/10
Mechanics and Storytelling
You may be wondering why I mashed these two categories together. Well, it's because they both suffer from the same problem, and will thus be judged in the same way. I can sum up their problem very, very quickly:
THIS GAME REMOVES CONFLICT FROM THE STORY.
We're talking about pissing-in-a-milkshake innovation here, people. Ryo Kamiya had the "brilliant" idea to try to create a slice-of-lifey story and tried to remove conflict from it, namely violent confrontation. In theory, this forces the players to focus on character development and interaction in order to solve problems. In theory, it circumvents several hours of combat sessions and semi-tedious dice-rolling, using the traits that the characters take on as a threshold for skill checks- You either make it or you don't.
In practice, it artificially deprives a player of options, which is NEVER OKAY.
For starters, the skill check system. Yeah, this confused me for a bit and took me a while to discover how exactly it worked, only to discover that the best way I can describe it is the threshold system. The GM issues a problem for the characters to solve and assigns the appropriate trait to it. If they have enough of the trait, they get over the obstacle pretty easily. If not, they fail. There's no two ways around it. There's not even a dice roll. If it's high enough, you succeed. If not, instant failure. Notice something wrong here?
It's an option removed from the players' pool. If they don't have a high enough level in, say, Adult, there's no way in hell they're going to be able to operate a cell phone, not even by trial and error. Sure, this game takes away the luck aspect of there being failure, but honestly, any other game would at least offer you the chance to succeed, even with a low score.
This game also seems to really be pushing for non-violent roleplaying, focusing a great deal on social interaction rather than combat. Again, an interesting idea, one that has certainly been done well before. However, it really fails at the intention. I'm pulling this straight from the book, because... Well, look at this.
"This is a game, and yet it isn’t. It isn’t a game where you fight with others. It isn’t a game where you compete with others. It’s a game where everyone works together to create a story. If you can tell a good story, everyone wins, and if the story is boring, then everyone loses. That’s the kind of game this is.
"The henge do not fight with weapons or magic. They don’t seek out or expose great secrets. They don’t save the world. They don’t earn money. Stories about henge are simpler, but every bit as important. They save people not through money or food, but with their hearts. Such stories are waiting for you in this town.
"Small quarrels might happen during these stories from time to time. Someone might even get a little bit hurt. But that doesn’t resolve the story. Please, try to forget about other games, just a little, and play this one. Henge are special creatures, and yet they’re not. They have the ability to be of some small help to ordinary people."
"The henge do not fight with weapons or magic. They don’t seek out or expose great secrets. They don’t save the world. They don’t earn money. Stories about henge are simpler, but every bit as important. They save people not through money or food, but with their hearts. Such stories are waiting for you in this town.
"Small quarrels might happen during these stories from time to time. Someone might even get a little bit hurt. But that doesn’t resolve the story. Please, try to forget about other games, just a little, and play this one. Henge are special creatures, and yet they’re not. They have the ability to be of some small help to ordinary people."
Kamiya, Golden Sky Stories, Page 16.
These paragraphs here inform the rest of the mechanics and basically boil down the limits of the storytelling right here. This colors the rest of the book in this saccharine BS and saps most of the conflict out of the game. It's trying to make this a "little game" for "little stories," but honestly, as a player, and as a storyteller, let me say that no one actually cares about little stories if they're still little. This game tries to make its little stories big by making everything else smaller, but a dust speck is still a dust speck, regardless of whether everything around it is microscopic.
Instead, this game really should've found a way to make these little stories represented in conflicts. Conflicts are how we define storytelling. Conflicts are how human beings conceptualize the universe. If you're going to have these every day stories, make it so they're a big deal. That's a big problem with this game- nothing is really a big deal. There's not a whole lot that matters all that much. Is it really vital that they save people from tiny scuffles with their hearts? How would things proceed without them? If the book is to be believed, pretty smoothly.
Their presence has no impact, their actions have next to no impact, and their being "of some small help to ordinary people" doesn't have all that much bearing on said ordinary people OR on the henge themselves. Every ending in this game is going to be a happy ending. Your choices are meaningless. There's no conflict that can begin here that can't be resolved in a few minutes with virtually no danger involved, or anything at stake other than the temporary, fleeting feelings of those involved that will just fade away in time. Don't you dare try to resolve anything by fighting, though. You really mustn't fight (took that straight from the book, not even kidding). The option is available, sure, but it's over in one check of the stat numbers. I'd say it's a way to make the combat less important than the social interaction, but nothing is really important here.
These stories might as well not happen at all. There's no reason to play this as a roleplaying game. A game comes with conflict. A game comes with uncertainty. Sure, in a tabletop RPG, you're not necessarily competing with anyone in the real world, but in the game's universe, there is certainly a conflict going on there that you, the players, are not entirely sure how it's going to be resolved.
This is not true in Golden Sky Stories. Choices are taken away from both the narrator and the player. Sure, having a linear path with no real options is fine in a video game, because a video game can have a singular story. I will grant that Golden Sky Stories may have made for a good video game, but as a tabletop game, it's horrid precisely because it limits options. The tabletop RPG is supposed to be a PARADISE of choices. It's a medium where you're not limited to things like programming or what was already written. A good tabletop RPG presents you with another world to play in and lets you loose. A bad one makes you wonder why you're playing it at all.
If you feel like I'm drawing big leaps from small packages, allow me to show you what became basically the defining moment in my realizing just how badly made this game was, and how I came to truly realize how restrictive the intended mode of play was. This sentence is what the GM is supposed to say in the opening narration from a sample campaign, and if any of you are people who regularly run tabletop games, you'll instantly see what's wrong with this first sentence.
See it yet? If not, allow me to once again direct your attention to the first half of the first sentence. "You all came to the Shrine Forest to play on a whim."
There is no opportunity for the players to establish their motivation for coming. The players aren't even given the option to attempt to decline the offer to go to the forest. They're not even really given a reason why they'd be here in the first place, they just came "on a whim," with no real consideration as to whether these characters would really have this whim or not, or even whether they'd come here knowing what they'd find.
You are told how to proceed.
You are not allowed to think.
You are only ordered to comply.
If you question it, you're subverting the game.
Nothing else really needs to be said, does it?
None of the other mechanics matter. There's no point in mentioning any of them anymore because there are no choices here. The mechanics may as well not exist. This game is "there's a bunch of animals that can turn into people. Things happen in a place and someone is mildly inconvenienced or offended but everything is fine now. The end." No uncertainty. No reason to believe that this is not how it's going to happen.
It's not even that I'm against non-violent problem solving. Hell, in my Geist: The Sin-Eaters game, much of what the characters focus on has to do with little idiosyncrasies people have, and of realizing that violence will not necessarily solve their problems, and violence is, more often than not, the cause of their problems rather than the solution. They solve problems intellectually. They solve them by talking things out. They solve them by doing research. The secrets they expose aren't necessarily big, and they save the world and the people in it only in a small way. The conflicts exist, though. There's a lot of uncertainty, and I would dare say that there are times that they've helped people with their hearts rather than with their might or minds.
They did things this way because they chose to. They always had the option to engage in battle. They always had the option to simply crush their opposition. They always had the option to do the less-than-nice thing, but that's what makes making the good choices actually have value- the fact that the bad choices are always an option.
This is not so in Golden Sky Stories. To call your option "The Good Choices" would imply there was any choice at all.
It has failed miserably.
Mechanics and Storytelling: 1/10
Total Grade: 37.5% F
Golden Sky Stories is a real tragedy. There was something to be said about the concept it presented, but it tried to defy convention without understanding why the convention was there. When it did, it violated a most sacred precept of Tabletop Roleplaying, and indeed, rendered it completely useless as a gaming platform at all. The introduction of this game said that, if the story is boring, everyone loses.
I'm afraid to say that everyone lost with this one.
Timere Defectum, everybody.
Golden Sky Stories is property of Star Line Publishing. Geist: The Sin-Eaters and World of Darkness iare property of White Wolf Publishing.
Instead, this game really should've found a way to make these little stories represented in conflicts. Conflicts are how we define storytelling. Conflicts are how human beings conceptualize the universe. If you're going to have these every day stories, make it so they're a big deal. That's a big problem with this game- nothing is really a big deal. There's not a whole lot that matters all that much. Is it really vital that they save people from tiny scuffles with their hearts? How would things proceed without them? If the book is to be believed, pretty smoothly.
Their presence has no impact, their actions have next to no impact, and their being "of some small help to ordinary people" doesn't have all that much bearing on said ordinary people OR on the henge themselves. Every ending in this game is going to be a happy ending. Your choices are meaningless. There's no conflict that can begin here that can't be resolved in a few minutes with virtually no danger involved, or anything at stake other than the temporary, fleeting feelings of those involved that will just fade away in time. Don't you dare try to resolve anything by fighting, though. You really mustn't fight (took that straight from the book, not even kidding). The option is available, sure, but it's over in one check of the stat numbers. I'd say it's a way to make the combat less important than the social interaction, but nothing is really important here.
These stories might as well not happen at all. There's no reason to play this as a roleplaying game. A game comes with conflict. A game comes with uncertainty. Sure, in a tabletop RPG, you're not necessarily competing with anyone in the real world, but in the game's universe, there is certainly a conflict going on there that you, the players, are not entirely sure how it's going to be resolved.
This is not true in Golden Sky Stories. Choices are taken away from both the narrator and the player. Sure, having a linear path with no real options is fine in a video game, because a video game can have a singular story. I will grant that Golden Sky Stories may have made for a good video game, but as a tabletop game, it's horrid precisely because it limits options. The tabletop RPG is supposed to be a PARADISE of choices. It's a medium where you're not limited to things like programming or what was already written. A good tabletop RPG presents you with another world to play in and lets you loose. A bad one makes you wonder why you're playing it at all.
If you feel like I'm drawing big leaps from small packages, allow me to show you what became basically the defining moment in my realizing just how badly made this game was, and how I came to truly realize how restrictive the intended mode of play was. This sentence is what the GM is supposed to say in the opening narration from a sample campaign, and if any of you are people who regularly run tabletop games, you'll instantly see what's wrong with this first sentence.
There is no opportunity for the players to establish their motivation for coming. The players aren't even given the option to attempt to decline the offer to go to the forest. They're not even really given a reason why they'd be here in the first place, they just came "on a whim," with no real consideration as to whether these characters would really have this whim or not, or even whether they'd come here knowing what they'd find.
You are told how to proceed.
You are not allowed to think.
You are only ordered to comply.
If you question it, you're subverting the game.
Nothing else really needs to be said, does it?
None of the other mechanics matter. There's no point in mentioning any of them anymore because there are no choices here. The mechanics may as well not exist. This game is "there's a bunch of animals that can turn into people. Things happen in a place and someone is mildly inconvenienced or offended but everything is fine now. The end." No uncertainty. No reason to believe that this is not how it's going to happen.
It's not even that I'm against non-violent problem solving. Hell, in my Geist: The Sin-Eaters game, much of what the characters focus on has to do with little idiosyncrasies people have, and of realizing that violence will not necessarily solve their problems, and violence is, more often than not, the cause of their problems rather than the solution. They solve problems intellectually. They solve them by talking things out. They solve them by doing research. The secrets they expose aren't necessarily big, and they save the world and the people in it only in a small way. The conflicts exist, though. There's a lot of uncertainty, and I would dare say that there are times that they've helped people with their hearts rather than with their might or minds.
They did things this way because they chose to. They always had the option to engage in battle. They always had the option to simply crush their opposition. They always had the option to do the less-than-nice thing, but that's what makes making the good choices actually have value- the fact that the bad choices are always an option.
This is not so in Golden Sky Stories. To call your option "The Good Choices" would imply there was any choice at all.
It has failed miserably.
Mechanics and Storytelling: 1/10
Total Grade: 37.5% F
Golden Sky Stories is a real tragedy. There was something to be said about the concept it presented, but it tried to defy convention without understanding why the convention was there. When it did, it violated a most sacred precept of Tabletop Roleplaying, and indeed, rendered it completely useless as a gaming platform at all. The introduction of this game said that, if the story is boring, everyone loses.
I'm afraid to say that everyone lost with this one.
Timere Defectum, everybody.
Golden Sky Stories is property of Star Line Publishing. Geist: The Sin-Eaters and World of Darkness iare property of White Wolf Publishing.
No comments:
Post a Comment