...and it was pretty fun, even if short (about 3 hours of proper play - not counting chargen - since I ran it for people at one of the local gaming clubs)!

We played in The Tick universe, which probably also helped, as I could've just let my imagination run wild.

The Team consisted of:

The Hydrant Man - a genius janitor who constructed himself an armour that resembled guess what.

The Toxic Avenger - Demigod of Pollution, born due to his mother giving birth in spoiled water - unlike the original however, this one was walking in a biohazard suit, with an exhaust pipe on top. Also a son of Jewish industrialist (see the SS reference for the spot of hijinks that ensued)

The Negator - The Most Unlucky Man in the World by night, a Psychiatrist by day (Highest Suicide Rate In the City).

Tick - o - Bot - the Robotic version of the Tick, jealous of the original's talents.

The Reverse Werewolf - anyone who read Prachett's Reaper Man knows the idea. The player was a bit of a pisser, and his leave in middle of the game raised the spirits a bit - he wasn't horrible, just one of those inexperienced players that tend to piss the players off by going into pvp. Note to self, put him into place if he'd like to play next time (I think the guy wasn't even 18, so give him some slack).

The Team's name...well this'll be hard to explain. Sąsiedzka Straż, which translates to Neighbourhood Watch...but in the original Polish, as you might've noticed, the short for it is SS. It needn't be said that many jokes were had at the "SS never gives up!" jokes. Needless to say, I've also milked the comedy cow for what it was worth, making the party suffer constant "odd" glances from various people as they noticed their team's insignia, and being routinely kicked out of public places.

The hook:

Tick and Arthur are going out for the vacations, and so they called in a "Z - Team" of heroes to take over their duties. Fun fact - of course Arthur's apartment was totally trashed by our inept superheroes, including just breaking of an entire wall as Hydrant Man got into a little PvP.

The Comic itself:

The original adventure was supposed to feature Chairface Chippendale as a mobster behind Repairman, Roofer and Builder's Union, who of course benefited greatly from the spree of destruction the Tick's daily patrols caused (seriously, the guy crashed like 1 roof per minute in the cartoon), so wanted to kill the Team so that the Tick'd have to return from vacations earlier.

Of course, those stupid Gits, after turning on TV and listening to the "Random Funny News", decided said Funny News must've been  the main adventure of the day (or just decided to push my improv buttons ), and so they went...to the place of frying The Greatest Potato Pancake in the world. While there, the Negator declared to trip over and cause the machinery mixing that Potato Pancake to pour soda into it. And then the adventure was on.


The Pancake of course started to grow to epic proportions, not helped by the fact that Hydrant Man tried to stop it by firing water into it (yes, I know Potato Pancakes don't grow, but considering we had a guy dressed as a hydrant, I don't think that was the biggest realism issue of the day). Hydrant Man and Werewolf stayed to combat the pancake, the rest of the team went to find the only man who knows how to stop huge cakes.

The Breadmaster

Of course,  the Breadmaster wasn't exactly willing to comply out of civic duty, so he asked to bring him the one recipe he could not get his hands on - the Robert E. Lee's Banana Soufflet. Those who know the stock villain of ICONS know what comes up next.

Meanwhile, Werewolf and Hydrant Man managed to figure out that vinegar could neutralise the soda and Pancake's growth. Though Werewolf was knocked out, the Hydrant Man managed to stop the Pancakes' growth with vinegar...

OR SO HE THOUGHT!

Because as it turned out, the Soda added to the Potato Pancake mixed caused the awakening of Yigothsiothoth (honestly I have no idea what name I came up with), the Fryer that Dreams, the Lord of Potatoes, the Fried and the Baked. Yes, that's right, it was The Tick versus Cthulhu Mythos (sort of). Hydrant Man, though he ultimately lost to the Great Fried One, held his ground long enough for the other heroes to carry the burden of saving the city.

Speaking of which, the other set of heroes, thanks to TIck - O - Bot's data banks, realised that there could be only one villain to posses the recipe - Confederape. And so they went to the City Zoo, where Negatorman sacrificed himself to refill Tick - O - Bot's batteries, by rubbing his allergy - causing sweater against his metal frame.

As the heroes met the dastardly gorilla and were surrounded by his monkey minions (including "Forrester*", who was carrying the boombox playing "Dixieland" of course), the Toxic Avenger managed to persuade Confederape that there'd be a non - violent method to settle the issue...and so, a banjo duel commenced, ultimately won by the Avenger. After returning the recipe to the Breadmaster, he told the party that to seal back the ancient evil they'd need to pain a pentagram made out of vinegar on it's bloated, pieey corpse. Using his industrial connections, Toxic Avenger quickly got the team a large vat of vinegar.

It turned out that Negator actually had a level of specialisation in Piloting ("I thought it'd be useless"), and so they managed to save the day, even managing to blow out the very core of Evil (TM) with a grand dive by Toxic Avenger, who also pulled out Hydrant Man before he collapsed into another dimension.

The adventure of course had to end with a classic comic telephone from Arthur, telling the guys, grouped in his devastated apartment, that his flight delayed and he and Tick will be back home in two hours. And to quote one of the players "In the finest tradition of SS - let's get out of here!"

Thoughts:

1) I think I'll  give FASERIP a read none the less, but I really like this mechanic, as it's very, very quick, especially hero generation - we generated each hero in like 15 minutes, except Qualities and Challenges, but that was on the players' shoulders purely. I'll admit however I miss "hitting" PCs with my villains, and rolling for them .

2) I think I might change the Determination mechanic, to just be giving +2 to the roll per a point spent, in case of Determined Rolls. The players didn't seem to entirely grasp the concept of "Say how good of a success you want" - that was probably my fault as much as it felt a bit meta.

3) I can't wait to get the lads together again - we've settled for a monthly game for now.

4) Running superheroes is definitely challenging, but fun. I think having it in a very joking universe of The Tick also helped me.

*Unfortunately, nobody got the joke. Can't blame them though, I'd not myself if it wasn't for my mate who introduced me to the Civil War history on a proper level.

Sounds like fun Congrats. Icons sounds pretty good (apart from the 'players only roll' thing, anyway).

sounds like a good time, and also that it was good you got rid of the painful player

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;750826Sounds like fun Congrats. Icons sounds pretty good (apart from the 'players only roll' thing, anyway).

FWIW, 'players only roll' is going away with the new edition of ICONS due out in a couple of months.  GMs will now roll against the players.

Quote from: Celestial;750854FWIW, 'players only roll' is going away with the new edition of ICONS due out in a couple of months.  GMs will now roll against the players.

Sounds good, though at the same time the "players only roll" has it's charm - it basically means every villain is a walking DC so to speak, from mechanics' standpoint, which allows me to focus more on describing how they attack.

Any particular traps I should be wary with the system anyone knows of? And of course, always up for more ideas what sort of adventures could happen in the TickVerse .

Quote from: Rincewind1;7507661) I think I'll  give FASERIP a read none the less, but I really like this mechanic, as it's very, very quick, especially hero generation - we generated each hero in like 15 minutes, except Qualities and Challenges, but that was on the players' shoulders purely. I'll admit however I miss "hitting" PCs with my villains, and rolling for them .

FASERIP is very good too, ICONS being in large part based on it. I prefer ICONS as I find that bit more character focused and smoother but they both very good games.

I was a big fan of "players only roll" even before ICONS. I like the way it keeps the focus on the players which in turn I feel keeps them more engaged. I also find the less mechanical things I have to do when running the more attention I can devote to the important things.  As others have said as of the new edition "players only roll" will get demoted to optional rule but I will be sticking with it.

Quote2) I think I might change the Determination mechanic, to just be giving +2 to the roll per a point spent, in case of Determined Rolls. The players didn't seem to entirely grasp the concept of "Say how good of a success you want" - that was probably my fault as much as it felt a bit meta.

 I found the same thing. Some groups get it immediately (especially if they had played the old TSR Marvel Heroes). Others just don't. In those instances switching to a flat +2 for DP works just fine.

Quote4) Running superheroes is definitely challenging, but fun. I think having it in a very joking universe of The Tick also helped me.

The superheroes genre is ideally suited to roleplaying games. Out of the box you get a huge of variety character types and situations as well clear and direct sources of conflict. And of course you get the very best villains.

Quote from: Soylent Green;751341I found the same thing. Some groups get it immediately (especially if they had played the old TSR Marvel Heroes). Others just don't. In those instances switching to a flat +2 for DP works just fine.

I'll probably go with that, yeah.

QuoteThe superheroes genre is ideally suited to roleplaying games. Out of the box you get a huge of variety character types and situations as well clear and direct sources of conflict. And of course you get the very best villains.

[/QUOTE]

True, true - as I said, I felt oddly...liberated to be just able to pull stupid hijinks without caring too much about laws of magic or sense of the setting. Not a thing I'd like to run all the time, but it's definitely going to be my beer & pretzel game from now on.

Sounds like great fun! I've really come to appreciate the Icons system. Glad you guys had fun!

Good stuff!