Starlight
A downloadable game
Starlight is a GM-less roleplaying game where you wake up in a strange, unknown world not knowing who you are and where your home is. It’s a game about building cities from memories, about the people who live in them, and all the weird, familiar things that can happen-- things that will help you remember. It’s a game about healing, about changing, about discovering who you are and who you want to be.
It's a game about finding home, wherever that may be.
Starlight can be played with two to five players without a game master or facilitator, but is best played with three to four people. A complete game of Starlight may take multiple sessions of three or more hours of play depending on the amount of players.
Create cities rich with diverse life, get to know its people and culture, and discover how it all connects to your characters' pasts. Change, grow, and become someone you want to be as you regain more of your memories and make friends along the way.
One of the central themes of Starlight is memory loss. As such, game sessions have the potential to explore heavy topics related to trauma. It is everyone's responsibility to provide a non-judgemental space for players to disengage at any time and to utilize appropriate safety tools to do so.
Endless thanks to the Our Shores team, for making this possible in the first place and my lovely editor, Lexi, who's always there to help me along the way!
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $15 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Community Copies!
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Opt in Discount
This discount is available no-questions-asked to anyone who, for any reason, can't reasonably pay full price for these products, such as those who face employment discrimination due to marginalization, or those in countries where exchange rates make purchasing products at American prices unfeasible.
This product also has a large number of free community copies available, so if this discounted price is still too much to afford, please feel free to take a free community copy!
Donate a Community Copy
For $20 USD, you'll get a copy of Starlight and also donate an additional community copy to the pool! With every $10 USD after that, I'll add an additional copy for it!
Community Copy
For those interested in Starlight, but are currently experiencing financial hardships and cannot afford it, feel free to claim a community copy!
If there are no more community copies available, marginalized folks are welcome to email me at valistarrii@gmail.com or send me a message at @Valistarri on twitter and I'll give you a download key, no questions asked!
Development log
- New Character Illustrations + Bundle PromoDec 26, 2022
- Starlight 2.0Oct 24, 2022
- Minor Edits!Jan 19, 2022
Comments
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Beautiful!
I'm sorry, but i have yet another question. It seems like the red spark's move and the white one have the same text ("can you teach me what you know?"). Is it intentional?
Ah, no it is not intentional! Thank you for the catch!
Red spark's move is meant to be " How can I help you overcome this?"
I've updated the files to reflect this correction! Thank you again!
thanks a lot for the answer (i couldn't access internet for the past week, sorry for the late reply).
My friends and I tried your game and did enjoy it, although we did encounter some problems due to a lack of structure and procedures regarding the creation of the scenes.
We played lots of pbta, bob games, and freeform games, so we knew how to overcome this obstacle, but we had the impression that a manual should give this kind of informations, without taking anything for for granted.
We found that such a beautiful game would have been way more enjoyable, had we some instructions about asking each other questions (and how to formulate them in an engaging way), how to give meaning to scenes, how to handle the pacing of the scenes, and how to keep the focus on the spotlighted character without forgetting about our own.
These are all things that come somehow natural to someone who has played as MC in Monsterhearts, for example, or who has enjoyed a couple of Fiasco sessions, but still, the fact that these informations are not in the manual, created in me the feeling of being lost and not really knowing what to do.
Please, do not think for a moment that with my considerations I'm trying to give a negative impression of your work. I did love it, and so did my two friends. The character creations is a little challenging (it's hard to think of three different reasons why our character like each other without knowing anything about us) but rich of interesting story-seeds, and we had a lot of fun with the creation of the lodestar (a las-vegas like city full of lighst and entertainment everywhere, where privacy and solitude are a luxury, and with a dark secret behind the wonder of infinite energy in the desert).
I write you this publicly hoping that a sincere review could be useful to you and to anyone who is thinking about buying the game or has bought it but still not played it, because this is a game that deserves to be played a lot and we wish you the best luck with it.
Hello. I have a question. I can't find an indication about who narrates the scenes.
I seem to understand that in each lodestar the focus will be on a single character, while the others would act as secondary characters.
That said, should the players of these non-focus characters take turn into framing the scenes and narrating them? Should the spotlighted player give the initial frame and the others continue from there?
Hi there!
To clarify, in each Lodestar, every player takes turns being the focus when searching for their memento, while the other remaining players would help them in their search!
Just like in a couple of GMless, No dice no masters or Belonging outside Belonging games, scene framing and roleplaying is rather freeform and very much a collaborative conversation between players on how to frame a scene/narrative, where to go next, and how to give voice to certain people that you come along your way. Any player can pick up the mantle of describing a scene and or voicing an NPC if they so wish, including the spotlight character.
That being said, when it comes to the beginning of searching for the spotlighted player's memento, they should establish the vague sense of where/what their memento could be like, and give suggestions on where the table could begin their search.
In other words, the spotlighted player should suggest an initial frame at the start in accordance to the 'vibe' of their memento and the table can play it off from there. Entirely up to you if you'd like to have each player narrate a scene in table order, or have a more freeform roleplaying experience from there!
thanks a lot for your answer, My friends and I try new games together since many years and the first thing we look for in a manual is a paragraph explaining the flow of the conversation, and who get to say what and when.
We understand that in most cases the answer is simply to regulate ourselves according to the simple rules of reciprocal respect and the sharing of the duties and responsibilities of the narration, but we are also worried about playing the game exactly as the author intended, so I thought it was better to ask.
have a nice day.