A Dark Blight Lurking in Satyrine
about 3 years ago
– Sat, Apr 03, 2021 at 02:43:35 AM
Greetings, vislae—
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 experiences are laced with nightmare.
Now you can introduce this dark and frightening feature of Monte’s campaign to your players!
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 have actually lived there. This much is clear: it’s been unoccupied for a very long time, and it’s brooded, a blight in its neighborhood, 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 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 draws strength 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.
The Darkest House diverges a bit from Invisible Sun in one big way: 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 together online.
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 today!
We’re Extending the Directed Campaign
over 3 years ago
– Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 01:32:20 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
– Fri, Jul 03, 2020 at 08:08:16 PM
Greetings, vislae—
As we mentioned in our last update, with the shipment of The Threshold last month, we have completed fulfillment of the Return to the Actuality 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 almost a full year since we began fulfilling the reprint of Invisible Sun to backers of this campaign, 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 launching it between now and October will be receiving great monthly content (and physical props and mailings!) through the summer or fall of next year!
Thank you again for your help reprinting Invisible Sun and bringing so many additional vislae out of Shadow and into the Actuality. We could not have done it without you!
We Have Arrived at The Threshold
almost 4 years ago
– Fri, Jun 05, 2020 at 10:12:35 PM
The Threshold—the final reward for this Kickstarter campaign—is fulfilling to backers. In our last update, we mentioned that The Threshold would probably be pushed back, but we’ve been able to regain some time in the production process. So while the street date won’t be until late July, we’re able to deliver backers’ copies sooner—right now, in fact. We’re beginning the fulfillment process today.
(If it’s not among your rewards, look for preorders opening on the MCG Shop next week. We’ll ship preorders right after we’ve shipped backer rewards, so you can get The Threshold weeks ahead of street date!)
Thank you for your support in reprinting the Invisible Sun Black Cube and extending the line with products like Enchiridion of the Path and the Invisible Sun Prop Set 2. We’re really proud of Invisible Sun, and your support helped us bring this groundbreaking RPG to thousands of additional gamers.
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 brings this Kickstarter campaign to a close. It fills the last slot in the Book M slipcase. And it focuses on the closing chapters of your Invisible Sun narrative. In all these ways, it’s a book 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. 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. . . .
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).
Coronavirus Impacts on Your Rewards—and Other News
about 4 years ago
– Thu, Apr 16, 2020 at 07:18:41 PM
These are difficult times for everyone, and many businesses are struggling to remain functional. While nobody can predict the long-term effects of this pandemic, we here at Monte Cook Games are fortunate. We are all healthy and safe, Monte Cook Games is operational, and we believe we’re in a position of relative security for the foreseeable future. Because we all work from our homes (except for our shipping warehouses), our internal operations have been largely unaffected by the pandemic.
Unfortunately, although our internal operations have been humming along, we’re seeing delays both upstream and downstream of our product releases. This means there will be . . .
Changes to the MCG Release Schedule
Our manufacturing vendors have slowed or stopped operations, and the hobby game distribution system has all but shut down as well. For these reasons, we expect to push some of our mid-year release dates back by at least a few weeks—and quite possibly more, if, as seems likely, factories and distributors don’t reopen within the next month or so.
What does that mean for your rewards?
If you backed for the Directed Campaign, but have not yet launched your narrative, you now have more time. The final month for launching Directed Campaign narratives was originally July of this year. Knowing that this is a difficult time to start a new RPG campaign, especially for a game, like Invisible Sun that’s optimized for in-person play, we’re pushing that back to October of this year.
The only remaining reward for this campaign is The Threshold. This title is complete and in layout, but with our printer closed we don’t know how soon we can get it on press. Originally slated for June, it looks like The Threshold will be delayed by a month or so. But there’s still a lot we don’t know at this point, so further delays are not out of the question.
We will, of course, keep you up to date as things progress. Be sure to read our Kickstarter updates and emails, and make certain they aren’t going into your spam folder. These are our only channels for getting critical information about your rewards to you.
Did You Miss Ptolus?
The Kickstarter for Monte’s legendary campaign setting, Ptolus: Monte Cook’s City by the Spire, came to an incredible end last month. But with all the uncertainty and anxiety of the growing pandemic, it’s no surprise that many gamers missed it. If you love detailed, immersive, imaginative fantasy campaign settings, but didn’t get in on the Kickstarter, don’t fret: BackerKit is now 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.
We’re Taking a Couple of Weeks Off
We’re going to take advantage of this unplanned slowdown to take a little time off. MCG has given our entire staff a couple of weeks of extra paid vacation in April. The entire company is taking a break this week and next. For two weeks we won’t be responding to Kickstarter messages or comments, email, or other communications. We’re all going to focus on relaxing, keeping ourselves and our families safe and healthy, and generally unwinding in this very uncertain and anxious time. And then we’ll be back, at the end of the month, hitting the ground running!
There are a couple of exceptions. We will fulfill your 3e PDFs next week. And our warehouse will remain open, shipping store orders (and Kickstarter rewards, for backers of past campaigns).
Speaking of store orders. . .
Stuck at Home (Perhaps with Kids)?
Here’s a little something for gamers practicing social distancing, quarantined, or under a shelter-in-place restriction:
We’ll keep this sale open for as long as conditions warrant (subject, of course, to product availability).
