AbdulAlhazred
Legend
The ICONS are definitely different from the traditional deities framework. They all represent actual individuals who live in the world, they all represent actual organizations that live in the world all of them being allied with and in conflict with others.
One certainly COULD create a traditional deities framework with similar features but most campaigns are NOT so structured. The big difference is that the 10 ICONS represent the most powerful active forces and organizations in the world. So, a campaign world where world spanning religions with clear agendas were far and away the most powerful AND active agents would be similar. Never played in that campaign.
Right. I don't think it is exactly like "just having gods and organizations." For one thing the whole relationships thing brings the focus much more onto how the PCs and the Icons DIRECTLY interrelate (even if at a distance for low level PCs most likely). You CAN certainly do that same thing and fluff it as 'gods' (or whatever else) instead of Iconic NPCs. The thing about the Icons is they represent kind of a flexible ground. They are NPCs, but they are all strong archetypes. Each one is very sharply drawn and distinct from the others. IME it is hard to get the same thing from the fairly nebulous organizations, epic NPCs, and generally kitchen-sink pantheons of most settings.
For one thing the setup will tend to draw in the PCs. They have these relationships, so they are going to use them (or be confronted with them by the DM). Since all the Icons interrelate with each other there's a lot of ground there for story interactions of all kinds. While it does impose a good bit of structure on the campaign, it also provides a lot of potential bang for that buck.
In any case it is an interesting and slightly idiosyncratic design feature. Games need that if they're going to stand out at all. While removing the Icons or recasting them as gods certainly wouldn't make 13a exactly 'generic' it would remove an interesting element and make the game somewhat less of an interesting contribution to the current stable of FRPGs.