Invisible Sun Play Aids

I recently decided to get the Invisible Sun roleplaying game to play with my family. I’m still waiting for the Black Cube to arrive from it’s trip through shipping hell, but I have had the chance to read both The Key and The Gate, and look at a wide assortment of other files. I may write more about the game and how I’m prepping it later, but right now I want to show a couple of play aids I’ve been working on to help at my table.

Stat Pools board with insets and character “wallet” board with inserts.

My family has some experience with roleplaying and a lot of experience with board games. I’ve got a fair amount of experience in both realms, and I’ve made some play aids for my board games in the past.

Pool Board

One of the first things I wanted to improve is the sheet use to track bene and enhancements in stat pools. Basically, you’ve got 8 different groups of tokens that you need to keep separate while in close proximity to one another. Don’t know about anyone else, but at my table, it’s a guarantee something is gonna get bumped and those tokens are getting mixed together. I’ve seen with board games that this can really be helped by, instead of just a sheet of paper, having a board with insets to help hold the tokens.

So my initial plan was to just take the official pools sheet, put some cutouts for each pool, and mount that to some chipboard with matching cutouts. Then I started looking at the pools sheet a little more closely. At first glance, the only information recorded on the sheet are the values for Certes and Qualia. This seemed strange to me. First, these don’t appear to be used much in actual play, and they’re already recorded in the character tome. Second, I noticed that the form-fillable version of the sheet included space inside each pool to record the starting/refresh values for each pool. This is actually needed so you know what each pool refreshes to when you rest – but bizarrely it’s not recorded on the character tome (back to that in a minute).

I decided I still wanted the pool refresh value on the pool board so the players don’t have to look it up when they rest. But since this is a board with insets, it’s not exactly disposable, so I don’t want to write on it. So instead, I decided to make some quick disposable inserts you can just drop into the bottom of each pool inset to indicate the normal value of that pool. (I gotta stop using insert and inset in the same sentence…)

A Second Board

I still wanted to record the starting pool numbers somewhere. Those inserts could come out some how, and there needs to be a record of these values from one session to the next. So I need somewhere to write these values, and it’s not in the character tome.

Speaking of the character tome, I noticed that even with all of the tokens used in the game, things like injuries, wounds, anguish, and rests are still recorded on the character sheet. One thing I look for with tabletop game design (which I dabble in) is minimizing repetitive written record-keeping. Invisible Sun seems to recognize that’s a good idea, but somehow still doesn’t have a quick way of tracking these things mid-session without writing it down. So I wanted to fix that.

Deciding to continue with the board with insets, I figured the same approach would work here. There are slots to place a cube/token for injuries, wounds, anguish, and rests – designed to mirror the section on the character tomes. Since the center of each space will be cutout, I moved the reminders for Scourge and death to the space between insets.

I also figured it would be a good idea to have a visual reminder of what each of the Acumen, Joy, and Despair tokens looked like. And I had a large open area towards the bottom – more on why in a minute – so I figured designating that area to hold tokens that might be received during play was a good idea.

Now, this seemed like a perfect opportunity to have a different theme for each Order, rather than just a generic board. That meant that I would either need to make a LOT of these, depending on how many players chose which Order… Or it meant I needed to come up with an alternative. So I created the board itself to be generic but able to hold a paper insert which slides in from the bottom. Now I can just make a small number of the boards and print out a bunch of the inserts for each Order. Add a place to put the character’s name, and it’s done. Except…

Character “wallet” inserts for each Order + Apostate. (Printer turned on me, so the Maker version is a little off in this picture.)

Remember that I wanted a place to record starting values for each pool. But there’s one other thing that needs to be recorded somewhere…

The Soul.

Invisible Sun tells you not to record information about your character’s soul in the character tome. It’s supposed to be a secret, so that makes sense. But you need to record it somewhere, because it’s not used often, and you don’t want to forget. The Key suggests just putting it in an envelope. But since I already need a place to record starting pool values, why not provide a place to record all this in one place?

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So my solution was to create a flap at the bottom to record the pool starting values on one side. You record your soul information on the other side of the flap, fold it under, and seal it. Using tape or a sticker is easiest, but since one of the ideas floated with the Invisible Sun Prop-Making Kit is a wax seal (and I like props in my games), I wanted a wax seal to be an option as well. So there’s actually a wide groove inset into the board to accommodate a thicker seal material like wax. So seal it how you like, then you just slide the insert into the board, and you’re ready to go.

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Think that covers all of the highlights and explanations behind them. I’ll probably come up with more once my Black Cube shows up and we start playing, but I feel like I’ve made some progress getting ready. What do you think?