Invisible Sun

The Raven Wants What You Have–Streamed Game
almost 7 years ago – Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 12:35:14 AM

Tomorrow, Friday February 16th at 7 p.m. PST, we’re launching a streamed narrative of Invisible Sun called The Raven Wants What You Have! 

Monte will GM for players Shanna, Bruce, Sean, and Darcy. To get a look at everyone's characters and character art, like The Cicatrix below, check out the announcement article.

In this first episode, the players will be showing off an Invisible Sun First Session–get ready to meet the characters and their neighborhoods, and lay the groundwork for the issues, locations, and NPCs you'll encounter through the rest of the narrative.

The cast of The Raven Wants What You Have will be watching along and reacting with everyone in chat! We'll also be live-tweeting with the hashtag #TheRavenWantsWhatYouHave.

Get ready and excited–take out your Rules Primers and dive back into the What Has Been Revealed So Far index of all the lore we’ve unveiled, especially that of Satyrine, where we’ll be establishing the players’ neighborhoods. 

See in you the Actuality!

News about Invisible Sun timing
almost 7 years ago – Sat, Feb 10, 2018 at 12:44:45 AM

As you all know, last year we announced that we were delaying the release of Invisible Sun. We wanted to make the game as good as we possibly could in terms of design, editing, art, and layout, and we realized we needed two more months to do that. It was a bigger project than we’d ever done before—even compared to mammoth projects like our corebooks or even our boxed sets—and we really wanted to get it all right. This game is extremely important to us, and we kept reminding ourselves that if something is late, it’s late for a couple months, but if it’s done badly then it’s bad forever. That decision is on us, and in particular, on me.

We negotiated with the printer to get a new deadline so that the game could ship to you backers in February. And I have to hand it to the MCG team. We worked long hours right up to the new deadline to get this thing done, and we did. And the art and the layout and everything is amazing. In my estimation, after having been in this business for 30 years, everyone really knocked it out of the park.

Unfortunately, that’s not the end of the story. The printer did not get a quick start on this like they should have, and worse, when they started to send us samples there were problems. Their implementation of our box design took numerous iterations. We had to make sure that objects like the Testament of Suns would be well-packaged to ensure it would arrive safely. We had to make some judgement calls on whether to put the quality of this project in jeopardy in order to get it out by the new release date.

And in that difficult space, we chose quality over timeliness.

But you’ve heard all this before from other Kickstarters. We’ll well aware of that. (We back a lot of Kickstarters too.)

However, it’s not like us to be so late. We have had a good track record in the past and we intend on having one going forward. Here’s what we’re doing to help assure you that this delay isn’t something we are taking lightly.

1. We’re sending our graphic designer and art director, Bear Weiter, to the printer in China on March 15 to personally oversee the final stages of this production and to make sure that it is up to our very high standards. When he’s there, he’s going to take a lot of photos and we’ll share those with you when we get them so that you can see it all happening as we do.

2. I am creating a set of 17 incantation and 9 ephemera object cards that will get shipped with every package going to a Kickstarter backer or a preorder customer. These cards will be exclusive to just you—they won’t ever be available again. These cards are a thank you from me personally to you, to show my appreciation for your patience and to hopefully mitigate a small portion of your inconvenience.

3. Starting in March, we’re going to do a new update every Friday to keep you informed about our progress. You’ll see photos that Bear takes at the printer, we’ll track the shipment as it makes its way to the warehouse, and you’ll see the black cubes get unpacked in the warehouse and get ready for fulfillment.

We want Invisible Sun to be the best game it can be. A confluence of events, some in our control and some out of our control, has come together to make it so that in order to get the game we want, it’s had to take much longer than we ever expected or wanted it to. We apologize for that, and I personally take full responsibility.

Invisible Sun will begin shipping in the first half of May. Thank you so much for your support. We really do think you’re going to be happy with the end product.

~Monte

A Light in the Darkness
about 7 years ago – Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 11:14:13 PM

The end of the year finds itself steeped in mystery and magic so deep that it can be felt even in Shadow. While the Grey is indeed a distorted shadow cast by the Actuality, sometimes the truth can be seen with greater clarity. Such a time comes during the Holidays.

Everyone in the Actuality knows that magic, mind, and life itself come from the sun. The sun lies at the heart of the universe as well as within the heart of every mortal creature in the form of a soul. All the aspects of color—Silver for beginnings, Indigo for truth, Red for destruction, and so on—are fundamental in both the sun overhead and the sun within.

At the end of the year, the sun’s power grows faint, weary with exhaustion. Thus, since the earliest days, people have devoted their own energies into rituals to sustain the sun to ensure its renewal and return. Eventually the festival known simply as the Holidays, centered around the year’s shortest day, grew out of these rituals. There may be many holidays in the Actuality, weird and wonderful, but the Holidays are truly special. It is a time when people recognize the cycle of life, the importance of connection, and the importance of the sun (both within and without). Most give gifts to loved ones and seek to display a generosity and warmth of spirit.

The patron of the Holidays is an august being of vast magic, responsible in part in rekindling the sun and setting it on its path toward majesty once again. He takes the form of a giant draped in a flowing red coat. The exterior of this coat shows intricate and sophisticated embroidery representing art and culture but the interior is lined with the fur of ancient savagery and menace. The head of a white bear hangs down from each cuff and from beneath the hem drip shredded white pelts still bearing claws. He wears his long white hair and beard in careful braids, but woven with the antlers of eight northern deer forming an imposing halo of menace around a face that can show great joy, or terrible, smoldering danger.

This being is the Nikalaus. The Saint of the Solstice. He is the keeper of the light in the time of greatest darkness, and thus a dichotomy himself in every way. In the waning, tenebrous moments of the year, the Nikalaus can grant wishes, but first he brings judgement. While those deserving of his generosity are never disappointed, those found wanting may be carried away by shadowy spirits at his command. Though he speaks in a bellowing voice, he prefers to communicate in simple signs and gestures, ancient in origin.

During the Holidays, join the other vislae and light a candle for the Nikalaus in the darkest moments of the darkest day of the year. Dwell upon the meanings of all the suns upon the path. As within, so without.

The Testament of Suns, Medallions, and an Actual Play
about 7 years ago – Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 09:30:53 PM

Much has happened since our last update. At that time we showed you the final version of virtually all of the print components going into the Black Cube and the Vislae Kit. Those items have been making their way through the pre-press process over the past few weeks.

For the most part, there’s not much new to show for these items—the proofs don’t look very different from the images in the last update. Here are some actual prototype cards to look at, though:

While these printed components have been moving toward the press, the manufactured components have been nearing full-on production as well. Here are several of the medallions—they are now all through the prototyping phase and are in production as you read this.

But perhaps most exciting of all: The Testament of Suns has been casting images of itself into the Actuality. Soon it too shall leave Shadow behind, and join us in the Indigo sun. These shadows have taken the form of several prototypes, in different materials and finishes. Here’s the current (and likely final) version:

One last thing: The ONE SHOT network is going to do an Invisible Sun actual play streaming series, and they’ve recruited MCG’s own Darcy Ross to GM it for them! This isn’t an official MCG production, but we’re working with ONE SHOT to let them launch the series in January. It’ll be a great chance to see Invisible Sun in play. They’ve already done their character generation session (a very influential process for every Invisible Sun campaign), and it, like the whole series, is free to view. If you enjoy that first session, check out their Kickstarter campaign, through which they’re funding upgrades to the production of the series.

The Ritual Is Complete
over 7 years ago – Sat, Oct 14, 2017 at 12:42:46 AM

When a group of vislae get together to perform a long-term magical working—a ritual—they labor to create all the required elements, some physical, some spiritual, and some mental. They work together to assemble everything that’s needed, and perform the actions required.

In that light, the Ritual of the Black Cube is complete. All the components are designed, all the art completed, every word written, edited, and proofed. The whole mammoth thing is off to the printer.

Now, producing and shipping it all will still take a lot of time—there’s a lot in this box—but this is still a huge and significant accomplishment. I am so proud of all the vislae at Monte Cook Games for making this all happen. Invisible Sun was just a collection of weird ideas I had two and half years ago, and thanks to Herculean efforts on my team’s part, it’s now going to be what I believe to be the most ambitious, deluxe, and monumental roleplaying game product ever produced.

Let’s just talk numbers. Four hardcover books totaling over 630 pages. More than 1,000 cards (and to be clear, the content on those cards isn’t also in the books, so that’s like another 100–150 pages of content). A 64-page GM’s notebook that guides one through creating and running a narrative. A 48-page art book. A pad of pages for the players’ grimoires. Five copies each of five four-page character sheets (we call them character tomes), 16 useful handouts, 23 individual props, five fully realized pregenerated characters, four dice, a Path of Suns board, a cloth map, a double-sided poster map, a resin Testament of Suns figurine, dozens and dozens of tokens and counters.

Plus secret things hidden within. Oh, so many secrets.

The people who worked so hard on this are many. I wanted to call out the following, however:

• Bear Weiter, who designed most of the components, managed all the art and artists, and toiled really long hours to make this utterly gorgeous.
• Ray Vallese, who worked overtime and then some to edit and proof all of the approximately half a million words in this box.
• Zoa Smalley, who not only aided Bear in his work, but also created some of the last-minute and very crucial artwork and design elements.
• Bruce Cordell, Sean Reynolds, Tammie Ryan, Darcy Ross, and Charles Ryan who playtested, offered advice and assistance, proofed and checked, and worked long hours at the end to ensure that Invisible Sun was exactly what we wanted it to be.
• Shanna Germain, who managed the entire project, and quite simply provided the energy, coordination, and love behind it all to make it all work.
• And of course, all of you. By backing the Kickstarter, you made Invisible Sun happen. So thank you. I think I can safely say you will be really happy you did. When the Black Cube materializes in your vislae’s house, you will really have a remarkable artifact in your hands.

By the way, if you’re a Numenera fan—or think you might be—we have a Kickstarter for that game going on right now as well. Numenera 2 offers a whole new way to play that game, with a revision to the core game and a plethora of new options.

—Monte