Invisible Sun

The Innovation of Invisible Sun, Taken Even Further
over 2 years ago – Tue, Jul 27, 2021 at 10:05:56 PM

Good day, vislae—

It’s been nearly five years since you helped summon the Black Cube, making Monte’s vision for a radically new RPG a reality. I don’t need to tell you that Invisible Sun is a game filled with innovation and careful attention to crafting an awesome experience for the players and GM.

Monte’s been working on something new, and while it’s a very different experience than Invisible Sun, it’s also laser-focused on a unique gaming experience. It builds on some of the elements that make Invisible Sun what it is. If you like how Invisible Sun narratives build incredible gaming experiences, we think you’ll like this new project, too!

In some ways, Stealing Stories for the Devil is almost the opposite of Invisible Sun. It’s stripped down, with far fewer components and light, elegant rules that fade into the background of play. But in other ways it owes a lot to the Invisible Sun vision, particularly in how it calls upon the players to help construct the narrative, allows backstory to come to the fore during play, and gives players moments of narrative control.

The best part: Stealing Stories helps you build complex and compelling stories that come together beautifully in play—all with zero GM prep.

Really: Zero prep; awesome adventures.

We really appreciate your help making Invisible Sun a reality. We hope you’ll take a look at our latest Kickstarter, The Devil Made Us Do It, for further innovations in great gaming experiences!

Somewhere in Satyrine Lies . . . the Darkest House
about 3 years ago – Tue, Mar 30, 2021 at 05:38:21 AM

Greetings, vislae—

Imagine a house, somewhere in Fartown. It’s rumored to have once been a vislae’s house, but the stories are murky, and it’s unclear who may actually have lived there. This much is clear: it’s been unoccupied for a very long time, and it’s sat there for far longer. It’s now surrounded by vislae warning signs, and the local gerent keep a watch over it to prevent anyone from going in. Curious vislea, of course—or those on a mission—aren’t always stopped by such steps.

What happens to a house when it sits alone, shunned and empty, for so many long years? What jealousies and hatreds does it quietly nurture? What whispers echo through its empty hallways? What waits, crouched within its dark rooms, hungering for the return of life?

The Darkest House is a new RPG title coming soon from Monte Cook Games. It isn’t, strictly, an Invisible Sun product—but it was spawned in Monte’s personal Invisible Sun narratives, where it was featured in not one but two campaigns. His players are quite familiar with the Darkest House, and their fears of it are well-founded.

Now you can introduce this dark and frightening feature of Monte’s campaign to your players!

The Darkest House is made to be used with Invisible Sun or any TTRPG campaign. This universality allows it to worm its way into any world, creeping in like an invasive vine, where its horror is based upon, and grows from, the PCs’ existing bonds, ideals, relationships, fears, and beliefs. (You can make up new characters to explore the house, but it really shines with an established group, and when it’s interwoven into an existing campaign.) It can—and does—take root in almost any world, but its deepest taproot is firmly embedded in Satyrine.

Here is where The Darkest House diverges a bit from Invisible Sun: whereas the latter makes the most of an in-person gaming experience, The Darkest House was built from the ground up for online play. In fact, it’s an entirely new form of RPG product, with innovative features that don’t just accommodate online gaming—they take maximum advantage of it for an awesome, and terrifying, experience. If your Invisible Sun narrative has been stalled or slowed because you haven’t been able to game in person, The Darkest House gives you a great opportunity to bring your vislae back together online. (The Darkest House can also be used in person—in fact, it's great for that, too—though the GM will need a laptop.)

You can download and try a free preview of The Darkest House from the Kickstarter. It’s a completely new form of RPG product—as an Invisible Sun backer, you know we don’t make such promises if we aren’t ready to back them up. We think you’ll be amazed!

The Darkest House will be out in May. It’s on Kickstarter now. Your support can help it grow, adding more rooms, content, and features, just as you helped the Black Cube grow to become the astounding product it ended up being. And there’s an exclusive extension to the house—The Devoured Halls—available only through this campaign.

Don’t wait: the Kickstarter for The Darkest House ends this week!

We’re Extending the Directed Campaign
over 3 years ago – Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 05:52:07 AM

Greetings, vislae—

We have some important news about the Directed Campaign. But first:

Last Call for Black Cubes!

In our last update three months ago, we asked you to please redeem any remaining rewards from this campaign. To reiterate: If you have any unredeemed rewards from this campaign, particularly your Black Cube, please claim them now.

This is your last call.

We have a small supply of Black Cubes remaining, and we need to clear these bulky items from our crowded warehouses to make room for new product. Invisible Sun is available for purchase on the MCG Shop, and we will continue to sell Black Cubes until they are all gone. If you don’t redeem your reward before we run out, it will not be available. Act now.

Here’s how you redeem any rewards you still have coming to you:

• Go to the MCG Shop and log in.
• Navigate to Store > My Account.
• Click on Coupons.
• Click the button that says “Add All Product Coupons to Cart.” (You can also add rewards to your cart one at a time, by clicking the coupon and then returning to your Coupon page to add more. Add them all before you check out.)
• Click the shopping cart icon in the menu bar. You should see all of your rewards in your cart.
• Check out, at which point you’ll provide your current address and pay any shipping you may owe.

We’re Extending the Directed Campaign

Back in April we announced an extension to the deadline for launching your Directed Campaign, from July until October. The reason was simple: A global pandemic is a difficult time to start a new RPG campaign, especially for a game like Invisible Sun that’s optimized for in-person play.

That reasoning still applies, of course. So we’re extending it again, by a full year. You now have until September 30, 2021 to launch the Directed Campaign.

If it’s among your rewards (or you’ve purchased it since the Kickstarter—you can get it from the MCG Shop) and you haven’t done so already, you can still log into the Directed Campaign website, to chat with other players and our design team. Then, any time in the next year, you can press the Start button and begin your campaign.

We hope to see you there, vislae!

Have You Claimed All of Your Rewards?
almost 4 years ago – Thu, Jul 02, 2020 at 10:56:23 AM

Greetings, vislae—

As we mentioned in our last update, with the shipment of The Threshold last month, we have completed fulfillment of the Invisible Sun Kickstarter campaign. If there are any rewards you haven’t claimed, please do so now.

This is especially important regarding Black Cubes. Believe it or not, some backers remain trapped in Shadow, and haven’t yet redeemed their Black Cubes. The supply in our warehouse is dwindling, and we want to make sure every backer gets their rewards. But it has been two full years since we released Invisible Sun, and at some point we need to clear our warehouse. We cannot guarantee that the Black Cube will be available to backers much longer. If you have not redeemed your Black Cube, please do so now!

Here’s how you redeem any rewards you still have coming to you:

• Go to the MCG Shop and log in.
• Navigate to Store > My Account.
• Click on Coupons.
• Click the button that says “Add All Product Coupons to Cart.” (You can also add rewards to your cart one at a time, by clicking the coupon and then returning to your My Account page to add more. Add them all before you check out.)
• Click the shopping cart icon in the menu bar. You should see all of your rewards in your cart.
• Check out, at which point you’ll provide your current address and pay any shipping, if any, you may owe.

If you don’t see your coupons, please make sure you logged into the MCG Shop using the email address you gave us in BackerKit. If you’re still having trouble, click the “Contact Support about Coupon” button on the Coupons page.

Are You Running the Directed Campaign?

As a reminder, if you have the Directed Campaign and haven’t launched it yet, you have until October to do so. Once we reach November, you will no longer be able to launch the Directed Campaign. (The original cutoff date was July of last year, but we extended it when we reprinted Invisible Sun, and then again in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.)

If the Directed Campaign wasn’t among your rewards, it’s still available from the MCG Shop! Just remember that you’ll have to launch it by October. The Directed Campaign runs for 12 months, so GMs launch it between now and October will be receiving great monthly content (and physical props and mailings!) through the summer or fall of next year!

Thanks again for making Invisible Sun happen! We could not have made it happen without you!

It Is Time to Cross the Threshold . . .
almost 4 years ago – Sat, Jun 06, 2020 at 05:07:28 PM

We have some great news today—great news, but also bittersweet news: The Threshold is coming. 

In our last update we said that The Threshold would probably be pushed back, and in fact its street date won’t be until late July. But we’re able to deliver backers’ copies sooner—right now, in fact. We’re beginning the fulfillment process today.

If The Threshold is among your rewards, you should have recently received an email with instructions for redeeming your copy. (If you didn’t get the email, you can simply log in at the MCG Shop, go to your My Account page, and click on Coupons. Click each coupon to add the item to your cart—or, if you have multiple rewards waiting for you, simply click the Add All Product Coupons to Cart button. Then go to your shopping cart to provide your shipping information and check out!)

The Threshold is the final reward for this Kickstarter campaign. And it’s the book that fills the last empty slot in your Book M slipcase. But more than that, it’s a book that focuses on the closing chapters of your Invisible Sun narrative. It’s about endings, but, like the Gold Sun, it’s also about transitions. It closes the door on what has been, but perhaps opens a door to what comes next.

And that’s what makes this bittersweet. This reward marks the end of this Kickstarter campaign, and someday you may use it as you bring your Invisible Sun narrative to its conclusion. Invisible Sun has always been about the beauty of great story arcs, and every arc is anchored not just by its beginning, but also by its final chapter. But like your character’s arcs, the end of one thing may well lead to another. . . .

Thank You for Making Invisible Sun a Reality

We here at Monte Cook Games are enormously proud of Invisible Sun. And we’re so very pleased that, with your support, we were able to bring Monte’s audacious vision for this game into its fullest possible form. It was an ambitious proposition, and without your support it could not have been made without big compromises to the original intent. You made this piece of gaming history a reality, and for that we’re all very grateful.

While we have you, here are a few other things we’re up to that you may find interesting.

A Great Adventure, with a Great Match for Charity

In separate news, this week we released an adventure for the Cypher System—and the proceeds are going to a great cause. Heist on Miracle IV was written by Dominique Dickey in their tenure as an academic intern at MCG. If you love hard science fiction, fast-paced heist action, and high-tech mysteries, you'll love this one-shot. Even better, we're donating all proceeds from Heist on Miracle IV to Black Lives Matter—and even more better, MCG is matching the donation on the first 500 sales. Check it out!

Awesome, Kickstarter-exclusive Deals Are Still Available for Ptolus!

If you love detailed, immersive, imaginative fantasy campaign settings, but didn’t get in on the Kickstarter for Ptolus: Monte Cook’s City by the Spire, here’s some good news: BackerKit is still open, and you can make a late pledge to get in on awesome exclusive deals—including loads of unlocked stretch goals.

• Pledge at RESIDENT or higher to get the massive, 672-page Ptolus: Monte Cook’s City by the Spire with its hundreds of pages of extras, along with all eight stretch goal products and a 2700-page library of existing Ptolus-related titles (a $250+ value) in PDF.
• Pledge at HERO or higher to get Ptolus in print, plus the NPC Deck, GM Screen, Player’s Guides, Character Portfolios, and Ptolus: City of Adventure—and all the PDFs! It’s an amazing, Kickstarter-only deal.

Still Staying at Home (Perhaps with Kids)?

Here’s a little something for gamers quarantined, under a shelter-in-place restriction, or just practicing some wise social distancing:

• The entire No Thank You, Evil! RPG line, for families with kids as young as five, is 50% off.
• So is the Numenera Starter Set, for grownups and older kids.
• And for gamers getting into games online for the first time, the entire chapter on Playing Games Online, from Your Best Game Ever, is available for free. We’ve added it, in its entirety, to the downloadable free preview of that title.

We’ll keep this sale open for as long as conditions warrant (subject, of course, to product availability).