If you’ve been following this blog, noticing my forum posts, or talking to me in person, chances are you saw this coming.
Star Line Publishing is a joint publishing venture between me and my longtime friend Mike Stevens (with a few other people lending a hand), and I am very, very happy to announce that Star Line Publishing’s first big release will Golden Sky Stories, an English version of Yuuyake Koyake, a tabletop role-playing game by Ryo Kamiya, the designer of Maid: The Role-Playing Game.
Golden Sky Stories is a heartwarming role-playing game. Players take on the role of henge (pronounced “hen-gay,” like a chicken that’s happy, not a Celtic monument), animals with just a little bit of magical power, including the ability to temporarily take on human form. They live in a little town in rural Japan, where they help ordinary people solve problems and become friends. This is not a game that will replace all of your other games, but it’s a game you can turn to as a change of pace, to go somewhere warm and safe. It is a diceless, resource-based game, and it’s meant for game sessions to last between 45 minutes and two hours.
For Maid RPG we crammed three books worth of material into one volume, but for GSS we’re starting with a thorough and careful translation of the 120-page core rulebook. It introduces the base rules of the game, lets you play as six different kinds of henge (foxes, raccoon dogs, cats, dogs, rabbits, and birds), and includes a replay, NPCs with story hooks, two scenarios, and a guide to Hitotsuna Town. We’re aiming for a very faithful translation, and the only notable change will be the addition of several pages of cultural notes. The original Japanese version has three very excellent supplements (plus a doujin supplement for, of all things, Touhou), but the main book is wonderfully complete by itself. We very much want to put out the other material, to tell the full story of Hitotsuna Town and give you many other new kinds of characters to play and meet, but one thing at a time.
For various reasons it’s taken some considerable time to sort everything out enough to go public, so as of this announcement we’ve already been working hard on this project for some time. We aren’t yet ready to set a firm release date, but things are actually pretty far along. The actual translation and editing are already done, and our layout guy (Clay Gardner, creator of OVA) has already gotten started. We expect the book to be a little over 120 pages, and it will feature fantastic art by Ike, who has since gone on to find success with an excellent manga called Nekomusume Michikusa Nikki (Catgirl’s Wayside Grass Diary).
As with Maid RPG, I’ll be posting up previews with tantalizing details about the game and its workings leading up to the actual release. I’ll be writing about the setting, the game’s workings, and what you can expect when we do finally release the supplements in English.
If you would like to help make Golden Sky Stories a reality, we’re planning to do a Kickstarter to raise money for the first print run. We believe this is a wonderfully unique game, and we hope you’ll help us spread the word!
Retailers, distributors, and anyone else interested in this game are welcome to contact us at info@starlinepublishing.com.
Yaruki Zero Games 
Count me in to buy these, I bought the Japanese versions a few years ago but an English version is much better to carry and show.
Swirly-eyebrow fox girl is the best character. +5 to stoic reaction faces!
Wow, no wonder Nekomusume Michikusa Nikki gave me a similar vibe to the descriptions I’d heard from you of Yuuyake Koyake. I didn’t know about the Mangaka having previously done art for that RPG.
And I’ve been looking forward to this news ever since I first saw you talking about this. Looking forward to buying this.
Fantastic news!
I’ll surely buy one.
Looking forward to the Kickstarter project.
Seems like an odd choice to kick off the company with, what with the potential for this particular offering to be perceived as a furry thing by the Western market.
Will Star Line publishing also produce copies of some of your own games, like Magical Burst, or is it planned to be purely a western publisher for Japanese games?
Frankly I’m not terribly worried about reaching the kinds of people who would wrongly brand GSS as being “furry.” The response has been tremendously and pretty much exclusively positive so far. :)
Mike and I will most likely be using the SLP label for whatever we publish in the future, which could include my games as well as other stuff (fiction, comics, etc.), hence we named it “Star Line Publishing” instead of “Star Line Games.”
This is THE AWESOME!
I can’t wait to get this and run it at an upcoming RECESS Game Event (Mini-Gaming conventions held three to four times a year in New York City).
Great news Ewen!
I’m excited about this. I hope there’s a PDF I can buy because I don’t buy paper books anymore.
Yes, there definitely will be a PDF. It’s be available as one of the Kickstarter benefits, and after that we’ll be looking to make it available through some of the major online stores.
Maid RPG was a great book to read, and I’m expecting this one will be as well. I also hope the supplemental material will be released in good time. Do you have any idea when you’ll be creating the Kickstarter, and what sort of benefits you’ll be giving donors?
I think GSS will be a great read too, if for very different reasons from Maid RPG. I want to get the Kickstarter started by the end of the year, and we’re slowly getting there. We haven’t 100% nailed down the rewards, but they will include of course the PDF and print book of GSS, plus the same for Maid RPG, and T-shirts and other goodies. I have a rough translation of the first supplement (Mononoke Koyake) done, and I’d like to include an advance preview of it as an incentive too, or maybe even fast-track the whole book if the Kickstarter does particularly well. My business partner is also working on an original Secret Project using the GSS rules that will make its way into the Kickstarter if it’s ready in time.
I just saw the starlinepublishing.com site. It’s not really that well-made of a site. You’ve got a major functional problem, first of all. The frame with the news stuff in it is of limited height. You need to fix that, or everyone has to read it in a tiny little hole. The best solution would be to not use frames. There’s a reason divs exist.
Also your color choice isn’t great. It could be worse; the colors are at least nice enough to use lube as they rape our eyes, but such a vibrant color over so much space is a poor choice, and the sidebar just looks silly.
I really don’t disagree with you at all, and we’re going to have to work on improving the site design moving forward.
I have written a review (in Spanish) of Yuuyake Koyake, with the hopes of increasing the awareness of your translation. ;)
Here is the link:
http://arcano13.com/fanzine/spip.php?article462
I hope you like it.
Having lived in Japan for the last 2 years, I was fortunate to come across this game in the hobby shop. I have to say I’m blown away by the effort you have put into helping bring this masterpiece to the rest of the English speaking world.
Very inspiring!
Congrats man, You know i have been following your podcasts and blog for some time so i will say that i am glad you finally are given the opportunity to pursue bringing this out. To show my support, i will definitely pick up a copy, maybe even 2. One to donate to the local anime con.
Just read an article on Golden Sky Stories in OtakuUSA.
I have to say it’s been awhile since something has caught my eye like this.
I’ll have to try and get myself a copy~^^