So how are you supposed to play Invisible Sun, as a player? I’m not talking about the usual nonsense of character creation, rolling dice, all those things. I mean, how do you engage with the game in terms of attitude, approach, and so on?
I think basically that Invisible Sun is about weird wizard nerds doing weird wizard nerd shit, and the authors have deliberately constructed the game itself - the physical artifacts such as books, the text, the rules, and so on - to push players into similar experiences as their characters. That is, you are supposed to crawl through mysterious tomes, looking for secrets. You are supposed to make trade-offs for greater power, weighing risk against reward. You are supposed to strike bargains with powerful beings (in this case, the GM), using negotiation and diplomacy.
I’ll demonstrate what I mean by talking through my understanding of the rules for Makers.
The rules for making magical items - what Makers do, really - are in a book called “The Way”. There, you can learn that the process involves passing a lot of challenges, of different difficulty levels. Because we’d like to not explode, or lose our materials, it’s in our best interest to make sure we always pass those checks.
The game’s rules about checks mention that if you have a venture (basically, your static bonuses and penalties) equal to the difficulty, you don’t have to roll. We find these rules in “The Gate”. So okay, we want a venture at least equal to the challenge level.
What’s a venture? Skill plus tools plus bene (an expendable resource, basically your attributes) plus circumstances. Skills you buy with Acumen, tools you buy with money, bene you get back - but you can only spend 1 bene at a time, according to the rules.
But wait! There’s this secret called “Expansive Endeavor”. I can buy it with Acumen. And it mentions another secret, “Magnificent Endeavor”. These raise how much bene I can spend. And there’s an ability Makers get, that lets them raise the level of tools by spending magecoin. How do I get magecoin? I find a thing mentioning that you can sell ephemera for magecoin! How do I make ephemera? Well…
Over time, I built up a map of my progression plans. Not just how to spend Acumen on “leveling up” skills, but when I could buy new things to increase that venture. Higher limits on my stat pools, higher limits on bene expenditure, how to get better tools, what skills I’d need, everything.
Acumen costs looked like they’d be daunting, especially with the limited rate at which Acumen accumulates - most commonly from a story arc. It’s hard to advance five different story arcs in the same session with five players!
Is there an answer? There’s two, really. Long-form magic - rituals, basically - such as “Understanding Through Torment” (spend a week with lower stats but buy things at a 3-Acumen discount) or “Flesh For Knowledge” (permanently gain a new thing but sacrifice 1 point of a physical pool). Both of these can let me bypass Acumen costs for certain things, at varying costs.
Wait - isn’t this cheating? Aren’t we supposed to spend “experience points” at the same rate? Isn’t it supposed to be balanced?
I believe that the message Invisible Sun wants to send to players is, “there’s shorter paths to power, but they come with their own costs”. Which is what it’s like to be a character as well.
The complexity continues. Long-form magic demands checks of its own. Understanding Through Torment is a level 7 ritual. It takes an hour to actually perform, and I have to make a check every hour. This is a Sorcery action, with a challenge level equal to that of the ritual - so 7. The text in “The Way” explicitly says that I can spend either Sorcery or Physicality bene, and that a skill called “magical lore” applies. The text does not say that tools apply here, but the general rule of tools applying to a venture is still in the text, and there’s magical implements called sortirs - basically, wands - that I can obtain for magecoin.
Expansive Endeavor would let me spend 3 Sorcery bene. I’d need 4 more venture - let’s say 2 from skill, 2 from a tool - to complete the ritual without risk of failure.
Rituals can be cast - once per character - from monographs, which are prepared texts explaining the ritual. You can buy monographs with magecoin. If I can learn the ritual from a monograph, then I can buy the monograph, cast Understanding Through Torment from it, and reduce my cost of buying Understanding Through Torment by 3.
Can I learn it from the monograph? Time to negotiate with a higher power (the GM)…
So looking back at this, I have a path to power. Level up to Maker Degree 2 (which requires making an item I can make now), buy Expansive Endeavor (3 Acumen), buy Magical Lore to 2 (4 Acumen), buy the monograph (a few magecoin, which I can earn), cast the ritual via the monograph, then learn the ritual from the monograph (4 Acumen).
The net cost of this is 11 Acumen, but as soon as I’ve bought four things at the reduced cost, it’s paid for itself. All it requires is some periodic self-flagellation…
This was just for a single mid-level ritual. I have plans for much more than this.
Is this more or less satisfying than “you fought some monsters, you got some XP, level up and buy new spells”? It depends on who you are as a player. What I strongly maintain is that this is a more evocative process for what this particular game is doing with magic-wielders. I am doing the sorts of things my character might do - not the same, obviously, but things that feel the same.