As long as we’re exploring the lighter side of gaming, let’s go into a genre that is near and dear to my heart: super-heroes. Last year at Gen Con, I picked up a copy of Steve Kenson’s latest super-heroic role-playing game Icons. One of the big Gen Con releases (for me at least) was a new edition of the game. While I liked the fundamentals of the first edition of the game, it came across as rushed and unfinished, so I was excited to see what would happen to the game if it had a bit more polish put to it.
I wasn’t disappointed. Icons: The Assembled Edition was the game that I had hoped that the first edition would have been. The book grew in size as it took material and new powers from supplements to the first edition, and incorporated them into the core rules. Icons: The Assembled Edition was produced by Kenson’s Ad Infinitum Adventures and is published and distributed in print through Green Ronin Publishing.
Let’s start with addressing a couple of points that will likely be made by readers.
The art in Icons is by artist Dan Houser. The progression in Houser’s art from the first edition of Icons, through the supplements and into this edition, demonstrates a great deal of progression. Houser is a stronger, more confident, artist than he was when the first edition. The art is very much in the style of Batman: The Animated Series, which for some gives the game a “cartoony” feel. While it is definitely more cinematic (as befits a generic super-hero game), there is no default assumptions in the rules that would keep you from running grittier games. While the art may not be for everyone, the rules do not assume that you have to run an animated-style of game.
Second, both the Fudge and the Fate rules were thrown into the mix for this game, but Icons isn’t a Fate game, and it doesn’t play like Fate. Qualities, which are Icons’ equivalent to aspects, have more of mechanical backing to them, than do aspects. Where Fate is more freeform in the use of aspects, “I have an aspect of ‘Big Science Brain,’ can I invoke that for a bonus to this roll?”, Icons has a process that works almost like the stunts in Fate Accelerated that you have to go through to “activate” a quality. You basically do a “Because I have [quality], I get [advantage/trouble],” and then the GM and player determines if a point of Determination is spent, or if there is another mechanical criteria that will activate the quality.
It sounds more complicated when typed out than it actually is in play, but I also wouldn’t be explaining it in play by comparing it to Fate either. One thing that I like about the changes made to the game between the first edition and the Assembled Edition is that Kenson distanced the Icons rules from the Fate rules. I like the Fate rules, a lot, but the two games were similar enough, but different enough, to cause confusion
Determination is the game’s equivalent of Fate points. But, the mechanic draws inspiration not just from Fate points, but also from the Karma mechanic from the classic Marvel Super-Heroes role-playing game.
Character creation is fast and easy, and while the base assumption is that characters will created randomly, there are optional rules scattered throughout the character creation section that help out those who may not want random characters. I don’t have the same problem with random character creation in super-hero games that I have in other games. You are more likely to get some of the weird character combinations that you can find in super-hero comics through random character generation, so for this sort of game this is a feature for me.
It won’t take much to realize that Icons is an homage to the classic Marvel Super-Heroes RPG that TSR published back in the 80s. Icons isn’t a clone of that game, in fact much of the older game is rephrased with newer mechanics, and the classic Universal Table isn’t used, but Stunts in Icons are very much the old FEAT system, and the column shifts of the Universal Table are replaced by degrees of success. However, in play, these differences are cosmetic and the feel of play between Icons and Marvel Super-Heroes is remarkably similar.
Resolution in Icons is pretty simple. The player rolls a d6 and adds it to the appropriate Ability (what Icons calls attributes), and the GM rolls a d6 and adds it to the appropriate Ability. The GM’s roll is called the difficulty, and the result is subtracted from the player’s roll, which is called the effort. This will give you the outcome, or your degree of success of the roll. Then, like with the colored FEAT results on the Marvel Super-Heroes Universal Table, you will know how well (or poorly) that your character did. Specialties (Icons version of skills, or talents from the classic Marvel Super-Heroes game) can modify the roll, as can the expenditure of Determination. People who have previously only played the first edition of Icons will notice that the default assumption of “only players roll” has been changed in the Assembled Edition to the popular optional rule of both the player and the GM rolling. I think that this is a change for the better, even though nothing has changed mechanically (just who rolls one of the dice).
There are no automatic successes, no “narrative control,” or any other newfangled gaming technique to “interfere” with your gaming. No Fate dice are used in the playing of this game. The scale of abilities is more compressed than with some other super-hero RPGs, compared to Kenson’s Mutants & Masterminds or the DC Adventures RPG based upon it (both from Green Ronin Publishing), so that lack of granularity may be a problem for some, but I think that is a minor issue and it fits with the emulation of the classic Marvel Super-Heroes game as well.
From a play perspective, you end up getting an equivalent feel from Icons that you would have had during play of the classic Marvel Super-Heroes game. This was a huge selling point for the game to me. I put in a lot of hours of play with the classic Marvel Super-Heroes game in college, and finding an in print game that can give me a similar play experience to that is a good thing. Converting from the classic Marvel game is pretty simple, too. While the numbers in Icons are different, the scale for the benchmarks are similar enough to be able to run classic Marvel adventures and characters in an Icons game with just a little squinting on the part of the GM. If, like me, you have a lot of material for the classic Marvel game, this is helpful.
All in all, Icons is a strong competitor in the super-hero gaming niche. Play is fast, and reminiscent of the style of play from the classic Marvel Super-Heroes RPG. If these are the "qualities" that you are looking for in a super-hero RPG, I suggest checking the game out.
There are also a number of Icons adventures and character resources available from Kenson’s Ad Infinitum Adventures available on the DriveThruRPG sites. Great Power also expands the character creation rules, and offers more powers for your Icons characters. I think this is definitely a “must have” for groups wanting to play Icons.
I also suggest the Stark City Campaign Setting and City Building Toolset from Fainting Goat Games for the GM starting an Icons game. Having a ready-made setting helps the harried GM out immensely, and Stark City is designed in such a way that customizing it for your individual group’s needs (and to help fit your group’s super-heroes into the setting) is pretty easy. Like Great Power, Stark City was designed for the first edition of Icons, so it will take a little work to convert between the two. Kenson has provided some guidelines for conversions between Icons and Assembled Edition material at his blog, so that will make a good starting point. Even with the conversion work, Stark City is a great city supplement, and would help to greatly cut down on the work of a GM.
Last, but not least, if you are a fan of the Hero Happy Hour web comic from GeekPunk, you should check out their Hero Happy Hour: Barroom Buddies & Bad Guys supplement for Icons up at the DriveThruRPG sites. It gives you some quirky heroes and villains that fans of the DeMatteis and Giffen Justice League comics from the 80s will enjoy. Plus, it’s a buck.
