Do you dream of escape, but don’t know from what, or to where? Looking for a chance to escape the insanity of the world, and immerse yourself into something rich, deep, and fantastical? Something that challenges the limits of your creativity as well as your intellect?
If so, then join us. Escape the Shadow of the real world and find the Invisible Sun. Enter a new Actuality of surreal fantasy where mystical characters wield fabulous powers and struggle to discover the secrets of true existence
Invisible Sun is the new roleplaying game by Monte Cook. Its focus is in deep immersion storytelling. Its mechanics and gameplay are tailored around overcoming the barriers to that immersion. Magic is not mechanical, but truly magical. Character creation and development is based around story arcs. And we’ve gone further than that. Because we know the challenges gamers face in the modern world, with conflicting schedules and sometimes distant players, Invisible Sun does something different. It embraces traditional tabletop play, but enhances it with away-from-the-table activities, rules to deal with absent players, solo play, online play, and more. All the barriers are down. All doors are open.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Production Update—A Quiet Week
almost 7 years ago
– Fri, Mar 30, 2018 at 09:46:31 PM
Hello, wise vislae—
As promised, we’re posting an update every Friday to let you know how things are coming along with Invisible Sun production. We don’t have a lot to report this week—but that’s good news: Everything is humming along according to plan.
As we mentioned last time, boxes (the actual Black Cubes themselves) have entered production. They started coming off the assembly line this week. The Black Cube is exceptionally complex for a game box, so we’ve been back and forth with the factory a couple of times, looking at details and approving the final production. As I post this, thousands of boxes are staging their way through the drying room, where they spend three days while all the glue cures.
The other unfinished elements—the dice and Testament of Suns—continue to move through production. The Testament of Suns is anticipated to be the last item finished, with a large batch due from the vendor late next week. At that point, barring any unforeseen complications, the factory will start assembling, and the first batch of Invisible Sun should then ship within days!
Speaking of which, the arrangement of shipping is a not-inconsequential step that we moved forward this week. We work with a terrific shipping broker, who makes all the arrangements to move the product from the factory to the port, then onto a ship, then through the offloading and Customs process in the US, and finally to our warehouse. This week the weights and dimensions of the cartons were finalized, and we got that data to the shipping broker so they can start making those arrangements.
Production books! It's hard to see from this shot, but we've done something really cool with the page edging. We can't wait for you to see the final product!
A quick peek inside.
The art book, with The Guiding Hand as well.
Your copy of Invisible Sun is still weeks away, but you can get a taste of the game now. Join us for our Friday night campaign, The Raven Wants What You Have. It’s on tonight at 8PM EDT (11PM PDT). (If you’ve missed the sessions so far, you can start with the first one on YouTube.) See you tonight!
—Charles and the MCG Team
Production Update. And Did We Just Sell Out at GAMA?
almost 7 years ago
– Sat, Mar 24, 2018 at 01:37:53 AM
Hello, wise vislae—
As promised, we’re posting an update every Friday to let you know how things are coming along with Invisible Sun production. This week our intrepid art director, Bear Weiter, completed his visit to the factory in Jiaxing and returned to us complete, albeit with a bit of jet lag. He reports that the trip was extremely productive, the city beautiful, and the food sometimes wonderful, sometimes less so, and sometimes, to American tastes at least, a bit weird.
With most of the components under control, Bear spent the last couple of days of his trip focused on fitting everything nicely and securely into the Black Cube. The books were in bindery as he left (their last step), and the other internal print components of the Black Cube are now through production.
What's in the GM's Envelope?
Blister tray for one of the two drawers in the Black Cube. One of the last items to be finalized and approved.
Base of the Testament of Suns. They’re now in production, but they’ll be the last component completed.
The Black Cubes themselves—the actual boxes—are now in production. The process of making them is complex, and they go into a special drying room for three days as they roll off the assembly line. Also still in production are the Testament of Suns—they’ll probably be the last component to be completed—and the mundane dice. With any luck, we’ll have photos of some of these in next week’s update.
Bear also spent a little time on the Vislae Kit. Here’s a short video showing the foil stamping on the face of the box.
Invisible Sun is a unique RPG. With its esoteric setting, new takes on the RPG experience, and high price point, we’ve kept our sales expectations reasonable. Following our trip last week to the GAMA Trade Show, an annual event bringing every major game publisher together with hundreds of game retailers, it looks like we might have been a bit too conservative.
Darcy walking several retailers through the Black Cube as she talks about the game.
Response to the Black Cube (we had a mockup to show off) was incredible! Stronger, in fact, than just about anything I’ve seen in my almost 30 years in the RPG industry. We’re now confident that the entire print run will sell out very shortly after release. That’s great news for the game and for Invisible Sun fans—but it also means that if you know someone who might want Invisible Sun, they need to act fast. Preorders are still open, and are the best way (for people who didn’t back the Kickstarter) to be sure to get a copy before it’s too late!
Will the Raven Get What It Wants?
The Girl From The Other Shore awaits. Who, or what, is she, and will the crew be able to overcome Ommarius, the snail guardian, and Jilamanthica the Ever-Dying, the goddess whose blood runs unceasingly down Gamrose Tower? Secrets will be unlocked this evening as Monte, Shanna, Darcy, Bruce, and Sean play through the next session of our streamed game The Raven Wants What You Have. Join us and get a preview at what it’s like to play and run Invisible Sun. It’s also a great chance to chat with Monte and the crew live in the comments! (If you’ve missed the episodes so far, you can find the first one on YouTube.) See you tonight at 8PM EDT (11PM PDT)!
—Charles and the MCG Team
Production Update—Bear in China
almost 7 years ago
– Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 06:56:17 PM
Hello, wise vislae—
As promised, we’re posting an update every Friday to let you know how things are coming along with Invisible Sun production. This week our art director, Bear Weiter, is in China at the factory, doing final approvals of the myriad Black Cube components as they come out of production, and working on how they fit into the Black Cube.
Bear reports that his travels (he flew out on Tuesday, arriving Wednesday) went smoothly, and he was lucky enough to have a row to himself for the 15-hour flight. He’s in the city of Jiaxing, about an hour southwest of Shanghai. Jiaxing is a city of two million or so, which, apparently, is considered a pretty small city in China. Our vendor isn’t the only manufacturer there—among many others, there’s a Lego factory nearby. We’ve worked with this vendor on a number of other projects, including No Thank You, Evil! and the Exclusive Numenera Boxed Set Edition, but this is the first time we’ve ever gone to their factory, so it’s been very interesting to get Bear’s reports.
Bear sent us some photos from Jianxing—it looks like a very pretty city.
It’s also great to hear how things are coming along. Here are some highlights:
Bear spent almost one full day reviewing printed components as they’ve come off the presses. With a couple of exceptions, all the printed material is done—nearly 100 print elements. (The books are in the bindery now—so while they’re fully printed, they haven’t been made into finished books yet. They’ll be bound over the weekend.) Bear was looking at not just the quality of the printing, and making sure the quantities of each thing are correct, but also checking that they were printed on the right stock. He did find one issue: The paper stock for the character tomes didn’t take pencil well. So he’s having the tomes reprinted on different paper. That’s a fairly minor issue that shouldn’t result in any delays.
Bear has looked at several options for the mundane die. (The magic dice are already awesome and in production.) The original color scheme didn’t have enough contrast with the magic dice, so he explored some different ink and plastic color combinations, ultimately settling on black plastic and a blue ink color.
A big project this week was packing the Black Cube—working out exactly how everything fits into it in a way that’s well organized and secure for shipping. It’s been a challenge—there’s a LOT of stuff in the Black Cube—but Bear and the printer have it pretty much worked out. When all the final components are in place (probably late next week), the printer will do controlled drop and shake tests on special equipment. So it’s possible there will be some tweaks if any problems arise at that point, but so far it’s looking good.
And, finally, they’re working on the outer carton. Normally this is just a corrugated carton that holds several products. In this case, though, special care is being taken to ensure there’s no damage to the Black Cubes in transit. Most products are shipped and stored in “case counts” of 5 to 20 (or more, for small products) items per carton, but the case count for Invisible Sun is just 1.
A press operator inspecting the printing output.
It’s already the weekend in Jiaxing, but the factory is putting in overtime to keep Invisible Sun on track. Bear will be there through Monday, boarding the plane to return to us on Tuesday. There’s still plenty left to do, but so far everything remains on track. We’ll have more to share with you next week!
—Charles and the MCG Team
Bear pretends to do stuff (his words!).
1000+ cards ready to go into a Black Cube!
Envelopes for props, handouts, secrets, and more.
Weaver aggregate cards—off the press but not yet cut.
"I can't remember what this machine does." (Bear's words again.)
Production Update—the Testament of Suns
almost 7 years ago
– Fri, Mar 09, 2018 at 06:52:23 PM
Hello, wise vislae—
As promised, we’re posting an update every Friday to let you know how things are coming along. There’s not a lot of exciting stuff to report this week—things are moving along pretty much as expected, with just about every single component in one stage or another of production. (Next week, when Bear will be at the factory in China, should be much more interesting!)
We did have a videoconference meeting with our printer earlier this week to work out what we hope are the final production and packaging details for the Testament of Suns. This single component is sort of a microcosm of the complexities of this project overall, so let’s take a look at its history.
We’re pretty careful, as we go into any Kickstarter campaign, to make sure we’ve done our homework on the products we’re proposing. In many cases (for example, if the products are mainly books) our collective decades of experience makes it very easy to foresee the production process and costs—but when that’s not the case, we do some basic research ahead of time. So when we launched the Invisible Sun Kickstarter, we already had a design for the Testament of Suns, and had run that design through our vendor to confirm feasibility and get rough costing.
The Testament of Suns mockup we showed during the Kickstarter campaign.
The devil often lurks in the details, however.
We got off to an early start almost a year ago with the first preliminary Testament of Suns model. We then went through several more, trying out a variety of finishes before deciding on the look we liked. We also made a few tweaks to the level of detailing in the 3D model. (If the details are too fine, they don’t replicate well and the surface looks indistinct. But of course you don’t want too few details.) And we made adjustments to the groove in the palm that holds your Sooth card, to ensure that it held the card reliably. By December, we had everything finalized and we were super-happy with it.
Two of the Testament of Suns prototypes, in different materials.
Another version with further tweaks to the finish.
Then in January we got a bit of a surprise: The resin-casting vendor sent us this photo showing the recommended packaging.
That's a lot of Styrofoam.
The Styrofoam block you see there is roughly 13” long—almost two inches longer than the outer dimensions of the Black Cube! There was no way to fit that block in the box, and the vendor strongly recommended against reducing the size of the padding, concerned that the resin would break in shipping.
We examined a number of options. We had a larger mockup box made (even though the Black Cube box had itself been through numerous prototypes at this point, going all the way back to the summer of 2016). But you’d be astonished how HUGE a 14- or 15-inch cube is, and that solution left too much empty space inside. We also had a version of the Testament of Suns made in plastic, which requires less padding to keep safe. But that just didn’t seem as nice, and it was about twice as expensive.
In the end we came to a different solution: A non-Styrofoam padding material combined with placing the Testament of Suns diagonally inside the Black Cube. (That sounds weird, but the way it fits now is actually pretty cool.) That raised a few issues of its own, but we were able to work them out, dotting the final Is and crossing the final Ts to approve the solution just this week.
We’re really happy with the final result, and we think you will be too!
Join the Cast Tonight!
In other news, Monte and the whole cast of The Raven Wants What You Have will be live on Twitch tonight. Join us and hang out with the gang. If you’ve missed any episodes of their surreal adventures in the Actuality, you can catch up on YouTube.
That's this week's update. We'll have another for you next Friday, with photos and news from Bear’s trip to China!
—Charles and the MCG Team
Production Update—A Look at the Dice!
almost 7 years ago
– Sat, Mar 03, 2018 at 12:50:06 AM
Hello, wise vislae—
As we promised last month, starting today and until Invisible Sun begins fulfillment, we’re going to post an update every Friday to let you know how things are coming along. But first:
Step into the Actuality Tonight!
Have you been watching The Raven Wants What You Have? We’re streaming an Invisible Sun game run by Monte himself, with Shanna, Bruce, Sean, and Darcy as players. Join us in the Actuality tonight (and every Friday) on the MCG Twitch channel at 10 p.m. EST (7 p.m. PST) to watch and hang out live with Monte and the players in the chat.
If you’ve missed the episodes to date, the first and second sessions are available to watch now. The game has been incredible fun so far, and a great look at what Invisible Sun is like to play and GM—so check it out!
Black Cube Update
The Chinese New Year festival period has come to an end and business has started back up in Shanghai. Production work has resumed on your Black Cube. The Black Cube has just shy of 100 components (that’s counting each set of things, like the Weaver Deck, or the dice set, as a single component), and many of those components are in production right now. For others, such as the books, this week the vendor ordered paper stock and other supplies. Everything will be in or through production next week.
Since our last update, we’ve finalized details on Bear’s trip to China. He’s flying to Shanghai a week from Tuesday (on March 13th) and will be in Shanghai and at the factory in nearby Jiaxing through Monday, the 19th. We’ll be sure to post a bunch of photos of the factory and the production process as soon as we have them!
Just before things shut down for the holiday in mid-February, we received production samples of the dice. Here’s a look at the magic dice:
These dice are really cool. It’s hard to capture visually, but they’re translucent with an almost crystalline appearance, of smoky purple, inside. Personally, as a gamer of almost 40 years, I own a lot of dice—and these might be my all-time favorites. The mundane dice will be solid black, and have a different surface design and ink color.
That's this week's update. We'll have another for you next Friday, and we should have some pretty cool things to show off!
—Charles and the MCG Team
InKalia, Shanna's character from The Raven Wants What You Have.
