RPGPundit Reviews: Icons

This is a review of the Icons: Superpowered Role Playing RPG, published by Adamant and Cubicle 7; written by Steve Kenson, Gareth-Michael Skarka, Walt Ciechanowski and Morgan Davie.  It is the print edition.  The game comes in a format slightly smaller than the "regular" rpg book size, and clocks in at 128 pages.  Every page is glossy and full-colour.  The artwork is plentiful; unfortunately it is in a very childish kind of cartoon style.  I'm not talking about the kind of art you'd see in a typical DC or Marvel comic here; I'm talking what you might see in a badly-drawn Saturday morning cartoon about superheroes you've never heard of, and probably wouldn't want to hear about.

Fortunately, the art is one of the relatively few downsides of this game.  I'm going to say right here that I quite enjoyed Icons.  So much so, in fact, that unless something unbelievable happens between now and the end of my Legion campaign, I'll probably be using Icons to run its successor, my "Golden Age Supers" campaign. That's high praise considering my previously stated opinions on supers RPGs; which basically amounted to saying I didn't think I'd ever found a supers RPG that was effective enough at Emulation of Genre to make it worth playing.  My opinion on this was so strong, that in fact I used Star Wars D20 Revised to run my famous Legion of Superheroes campaign, instead of any of the possible alternatives.

So I want to preface this review with making a few statements about the state of Supers RPGs up till now.  Essentially, they were all crap.  Let's eliminate off the bat all those which were instantly identifiable as crap in terms of rules, unplayable games, really sloppy design, etc.; everything else, regardless of how coherent the design was, ended up still being crap in terms of Emulation of genre.  What you generally had was games that either:
a) Had a very complex set of rules to try to simulate the near-infinite plethora of superhero powers, with lots of mechanics-heavy emphasis
or
b) were ultra rules-lite affairs that essentially amount to saying "make it all up as you go along".

Even those games that approximated a "rules-medium" approach (and there were quite few of those) suffered from an inability to effectively reproduce one of the essential realities (and paradoxes) of the Supers genre: in the Supers game, protagonism is NOT about the powers.  Batman is the biggest badass in the DC comics world, and regularly confronts opponents who are vastly superior to him in terms of power, and occasionally in terms of intellect, but he defeats them by force of his sheer "protagonism". It was indeed one of my criteria for judging a good supers game (and the criteria by which every other game I'd seen failed) that the game should be able to create both Batman and Superman and make them equally dangerous characters, without making Batman into a superhuman being by default or getting bogged down in mechanical chicanery.

Icons is not perfect, but it comes close to doing that.  Thanks in part to the wonder of the Fudge/FATE system.  Not just thanks to that, but thanks also to the authors' brilliant re-interpretation of that system.  I like other non-Swine Fate games like Starblazer Adventures, but had this game only been "Starblazer Adventures with Tights", it would have failed utterly.  Instead, the authors did exactly what Fudge was made to do: they tailor-made and adapted the system to fit the precise genre they sought to emulate.  The result is a version of Fate so different from any of those other Fate games out there that some of the hardcore (particularly the pretentious Fate-Swine who like all the worst games using that system) have publicly stated on internet forums that Icons is somehow "not Fate".  
It absolutely IS a Fate system game; its Fate done right, being used in exactly the way it should be.  It differs from other games in that the authors took the Fate essentials and carefully boxed it into a much more traditional format using the best of tried and tested RPG mechanics.  Unlike most Fate games, here you have attributes, you have skills, you have powers, and you don't have stunts (in the traditional "Fate" sense of the word).  And your "aspects" are much more focused to be genre specific, rather than bullshit "storygaming" nonsense.

The result is a game that has tight mechanics, structure and playability, while retaining the essential lightness of Fate that makes it perfect for this kind of play.  And everything is framed to emulation: you don't get anything in this system unless it is tied to the "supers" experience.

There's another thing that made me fall in love with this system: random tables.   Too many Supers RPGs try to create a grueling kind of point-buy system in a desperate effort to try to create some kind of "balance". I say that if you try to do that you've lost from the very beginning, because Supers as a Genre is utterly UNbalanced.  There's no way you can make it feel like a supers game and still cling to that utterly meaningless dead weight of a concept that demands that no player character be a jot more powerful than any other.  Its one thing to think in D&D that you could have two equal level characters being close to each other in power or utility (and even that's nonsense as anyone who's played a 1st level wizard or a 1st level fighter, or a 20th level fighter and a 20th level wizard, can quickly tell you); but its absolutely another level of absurdity altogether to try to demand mechanical balance in a game where the genre its based on has teams where a superpowerful Norse God and a "guy that shoots arrows" are grouped together). The fairness of the game has to be in random character creation, random powers, random power levels, and a kind of "protagonism mechanic" (in Icons' case, "Determination points") to balance out not the power but the capability of individual PCs to be heroic.

So, the basic system: Icons uses the Fate basic mechanic as its single mechanic for all actions.  Its iteration is (extremely wisely) one that follows Starblazer's example in NOT requiring the asinine use of "fudge dice"; instead, you simply roll 2 D6s, one adding, the other subtracting, to get a range of results going from -5 to +5, with 0 being the most probable result. You add your value in an ability, power, or modifiers to the roll result, and compare this to either a fixed difficulty or an opponent's relevant value in order to determine success or failure.  If you succeed by more than a certain amount (increments of 3) you have more spectacular successes.

Right, on to character creation! This process is mostly random, and quick and easy. You can create Icons characters in literally minutes; with a minimum level of familiarity with the game, you could probably make a fleshed-out character in under five minutes.  This wins big, BIG points in my assessment; considering that many other supers RPGs require that you spend hours trying to add and subtract points to make a PC.

The first thing you do is roll on the origin table, this gives you the basic background of your hero.  Characters can be "trained" or "gimmick" heroes (in either case they do not have actual powers, but might have items that manifest powers), "birthright" heroes (they were born with powers), "Transformed" (they got their powers in an accident), "artificial" (they are robots or golems of some kind), or "unearthly" (aliens or supernatural beings).  Each option can give modifiers to character abilities, or how many powers can be chosen, or to skills (called "specialties" in the game), or other such things.  The probabilities in the generation system are not equal, and are more or less geared to the "silver to modern" age distribution of powers you see in comics.  This means that the table's probabilities would have to be somewhat altered for other campaigns; for example, a Golden Age campaign would probably want to increase the probability of "trained" and "gimmick" results compared to the others; and a "Legion of Superheroes" style campaign would certainly want to decrease the same.

Players then roll randomly to determine the starting value of their abilities.  The abilities are Prowess (which governs physical dexterity and hand-to-hand fighting), Co-ordination (which handles marksmanship), Strength (which is both physical strength and general endurance), Intellect, Awareness and Willpower.  All of these abilities can theoretically range in value from 1 to 10, though starting characters will usually have a range from 1 to 8. The range of actually human ability is from 1 to 6, with 7 and up being superhuman. Average humans will usually range from 2 to 4 in abilities.  All of this means that if a GM doesn't want his superhero PCs to be utterly gimped at certain things, he may want to modify the table to generate a minimum level of 2; and if he doesn't want characters to be able to start with superhuman values, he could modify the table to make the maximum number a 6. Both origins and powers can modify ability values, making these changes seem even more logical to me.

A note on the range of power levels; the system seems to imply that there can be beings of truly cosmic power that would just be "off the scale" of the levels; if Superman would have a strength of 10, that would mean Galactus would have to be far beyond that. The reader is essentially told that for these kinds of levels, the GM shouldn't even try to make mechanical measurements; there can be certain villains that you just can't beat with a punch. This seems like good common sense to me, though it will vex the mechanics-fiends out there.

Next in character creation you roll randomly to determine your number of powers (the default game gives each player from 2-5 powers; but remember that some of those powers depending on origin could be in the form of special items).  Again, a very low-powered or very cosmic kind of campaign might want to modify that. Powers are rolled randomly by first rolling for the power's general type, then the actual power on a subtable.  Types include "alteration", "control", "defensive", "mental", "movement", "offensive", and "sensory". A character with more than one power will not usually end up with a set of totally unrelated superabilities; instead, each power lists a set of "bonus powers" that you can (and probably ought) to take as your other slots based on your initial power rolled.  These powers are basically related to each other.  For example, a character who rolls up a "mental" power, and then rolls "precognition" as their power, can take "Danger sense" as their bonus power.  The only real nod to balance is that a few particularly useful powers count as 2 power slots.

Characters then get between 1-4 specialties (skills); though characters of certain origin backgrounds will have modifiers to the number of specialties they begin with. There are 29 specialties to choose from, being a pretty standard list of skills that connect to the supers genre.  Again, some skills may have to be changed or eliminated if you are running a campaign not based on the late 20th or early 21st century earth.  A Golden Age campaign probably wouldn't have the "computers" specialty, for example. Specialties usually function as bonuses to ability checks related to their specific area (so the "computers" specialty would be added to one's Intellect rolls for using computers). You can have between 1 to 3 points in a specialty. Some specialties are actually "specialty groups", wherein you have to choose a more specific subset in which to apply your bonus. The "weapons" specialty, for example, requires that you choose a more specific bonus to either blades, bludgeons, bows, guns, or throwing weapons.  You can have specialties in more than one sub-group.

Two other important attributes in the game are Stamina and Determination.  Stamina is basically hit points, and is the simple addition of a character's Strength and Willpower.  Determination is the term for "fate points" in this game, and you get a number equal to 6 minus the number of powers your character has.
The "aspects" in Icons are used to allow a character to spend a determination point, and all aspects are based on qualities related to the supers genre: you start with 2 to 5 aspects (players can choose to leave slots open to choose aspects as you go along in the game, if you don't have a clear idea what you want at first). Aspects are meant to be things like catchphrases, connections to people (youthful wards, aging aunts, girlfriends, boy reporters, etc.), epithets that define the character (like "world's greatest detective", or "12th Level Intelligence" or "man of tomorrow"), elements of one's secret identity ("mild mannered reporter", "millionaire playboy), or one's motivations ("with great power comes great responsibility", "avenge murdered parents", "in blackest night", etc.). Of course, if one really wanted to, one could just get rid of positive aspects altogether; in my experience playing other Fate games, players will almost always find a way to apply one of their aspects to the situation at hand, making them at most flavouring elements rather than truly necessary attributes. There are also negative aspects (called "challenges") that represent flaws, weaknesses, complications or vulnerabilities.  GMs can "tag" these challenges in order to give the PC disadvantages, but in exchange the PC gains determination points to use; players can also choose to spend a determination point instead in order to avoid the disadvantage.
Determination points can be used to give you a +2 bonus to a result after rolling for each point spent (in order to reach a previously stated level of success that you require), spend a point to change the nature of the roll from one ability, power, or specialty to a different one (with appropriate justification, of course), to recover some stamina points (usable only once per fight), to perform stunts (where you use your power in some new and unusual way that goes beyond the power's normal descriptions, ie. using superspeed to create a whirlwind with your arms), or finally to do a "retcon" where you fill in some previously unknown detail or past event (for example, the PC's secret identity had a brief fling with the wealthy heiress they're meeting in the game for the first time).  Retcons are the only use of determination points that aren't strictly regular and are slightly story-gamey, but they do depend on GM approval, and most significantly can NOT be used to alter existing events; the PC MUST apply the retcon in such a way that it does not contradict any previously established knowledge.  This is a world away from the "suddenly the chief villain decides to become good" kind of setting-meddling that you see in actual storygames; so its not a particularly atrocious mangling of RPG landmarks.  Even so, if a GM isn't comfortable with this kind of thing being in the hands of Players, its easy enough to just rule that this particular use of determination points is forbidden (odds are that's what I'll be doing in my campaign).

Rules are also provided for generating superhero "Teams".  These rules allow the creation of "team determination pool" which members of the group all contribute to but can then all collectively make use of. Teams will also have particular qualities (aspects), and challenges (flaws). Of particular interest is the "heroic sacrifice" rule, wherein a character who is defeated in a fight can choose not to use determination points or other methods to recover, and instead adds a determination point to the group pool. Teams can also have special team resources. These rules are interesting, though I would consider them to be basically optional; there's no reason you can't have a "team" of PCs without using the "Team rules".

The superpowers themselves are described in just the right level of detail for my own tastes.  Each power gets a paragraph or two, with some concrete explanation of how they work, and the kinds of things you can do with them, without trying to cover every possible circumstance, leaving the judgment for these things in the hands of the GM.  Some powers are certainly more impressive than others, but since the powers are randomly determined I don't find this to be a big deal (see my comment on "balance" earlier).

About 25 pages are dedicated to the powers, with a total of 71 powers available. They cover most of the expected types of powers you'd want.

Another 20 pages or so are dedicated to task resolution, with lots of detail for how to perform various different kinds of actions.  One little complaint is that there is not a simple outline of combat, instead this is integrated in different bits and parts of task resolution. I understand that this is the hip sort of thing to do right now, and that since conflict uses the same kind of task resolution as anything else its not strictly necessary to have a separate "combat" chapter, but it still would have been a good idea to have at least a kind of summary.

Another little complaint is the cutesy-poo way the authors chose to describe timing in the game.  Instead of "actions" and "rounds" you have "panels" and "Pages" (get it? Like from a comic!).  In essence, this works no differently from actions and rounds, so the whole thing is fairly pointless jargon-making for its own sake. Most tasks are covered under their relevant ability; so for example, the sections on "bashing", "slashing" and "evading" are covered in the Prowess section of that chapter; while "blasting", "catching", "climbing", "dodging", "moving", "shooting", "swimming" and "throwing" are all covered in the Coordination section. For the most part, the ways that task resolution are covered are fairly good, making the GM's job easy as long as he remembers what task is handled by which ability.  There are a few areas, however, where it seems the authors clearly didn't think things through.  One of the egregious examples is in the Strength rules for "bending and breaking".  According to those rules, a totally normal average human (strength 3) stands an outside chance (if he rolls a +5) of punching through 11 inches of solid steel.  I don't know anyone of average strength (or even above average strength) who could do that. This is particularly noteworthy in its stupidity when you see that just one page later, the mechanics for "lifting things" avoids this kind of problem, and these very same rules could have been used to handle "breaking things". It looks like someone didn't carefully review the chapter.

The section in this chapter on "maneuvers" covers special actions like aerial combat, combined attacks, called shots, etc. The section on "Damage" covers the different kinds of damage effects that can occur aside from straightforward Stamina loss: stunning, slamming (where a character is knocked to the ground), or killing.  There are also optional damage rules for common minion opponents, and rules on recovery (including rules on the now-all-too-common comics-chestnut of "coming back from the dead").

The GM section consists mostly of common sense "How to run a supers campaign" sort of advice; there was little here that was of particular use to me, but it could be of use to a novice GM.  I will take this paragraph as the opportunity to mention another little quirk of this game: the "GM doesn't roll" rule. In the default game of Icons, the GM is theoretically never meant to roll the dice; all tasks are handled by the players.  NPCs don't roll to attack, the PCs roll to defend.  When the PCs attack, they have to hit the NPCs' base ability level, there's no roll to defend; etc.  So essentially, if you play the game straight, the GM would never roll the dice.
At first, I almost felt like this was a game-breaker for me. Not for any significant ideological reason per se, but for the simple fact that I like to roll dice!  I can enjoy a diceless game, where no one is rolling anything; but if the players are rolling dice, as a GM I'm going to want to do the same, and it just seems weird to me that the system would be set up so I wouldn't.  However, my friend Alejo pointed out a very basic reality of the Fate system to me that makes this complaint basically irrelevant: the default roll in Fate averages to 0.  Thus, the assumption of the "GM never rolls" rule can be taken to mean that villains and NPCs are just always rolling 0 for a result; and conversely, if you don't like that, you can just roll anyways.  There's nothing in the mechanic that would utterly ruin the game if the GM rolls just like the players do.  In fact, what can make sense to me is if the GM doesn't bother to roll for irrelevant Mooks and thugs, but when the big bad guys (or important NPC allies) get around to doing stuff, he suddenly starts rolling!

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the GM section also contains a very nice random adventure generator, where a GM can randomly roll up a plot for a superhero adventure. I'll probably be making good use of it.
The chapter also has the surprisingly Optional rule for PC advancement.  Yes, optional.  The opinion of the authors, and they're not entirely wrong in their thinking, is that in comics superheroes don't tend to gradually get better as they go along; they start out badass, and they don't so much improve as they change in significant ways (their powers change, or their life circumstances change, or they die and come back from the dead, or they have a costume change, etc.).  Thus, the rules for hero improvement are "optional".  I will be fleshing out these fairly basic guidelines for an advancement system in my own campaign; I understand what the authors were thinking, but the reality of an RPG is that players want their characters to improve, and this is almost a landmark of a regular RPG; its one of the "goals" of an RPG.  You don't necessarily have to do it through a set of rules, a GM could just "wing it" in terms of PCs gaining experience, but having rules is probably easier.

The section on villains gives two pages of very broad guidelines for making and running villains, and then about 20 pages of sample villains, none of which I can really use or even take seriously.  It might just be the awful awful choice of artistic style that plagues the game, but I think its also that the themes of many of these villains is deep in the "Camp" area of the Superhero genre.  I mean, you have stuff like The Octofather (which is basically a low-grade Cthulhu as a mob boss), Confederape (an intelligent gorilla who's basically a Klansman), or Arobas (a villain who's theme is basically the "@" symbol made ubiquitous in the Internet age).

Of more use is the list of 9 "stock characters", giving statblocks for your typical cultist, thug, zombie, ninja, or innocent bystander.  Likewise the list of stats for creatures, ranging from animals like bears or elephants (did common cats really need a statblock, though?), to giant squids or dinosaurs.

There's also a brief 3-page introductory adventure at the end of the book entitled "the Wages of Sin", the villain being a very stereotypical Chinese mastermind named "Dr. Sin". I don't think I'll be using this either.

So to sum up: Icons isn't quite perfect, but its by far the best Supers game I've seen.  And that's high praise indeed.

The Good: the system and most of the choices the authors made in adapting the Fudge/Fate rules is brilliant.  Its just the right level of mechanical complexity (plenty of rules without being rules-heavy, plenty of room for GM interpretation without being rules-vacant). The nature of the rules makes it easy for the GM to additionally modify little details to fit his campaign, without having to worry about "breaking" the system.

The bad: very few things of consequence.  The authors could have double checked a couple of their ideas about task resolution.  The "retcon" rule for Determination is a bit iffy (but not downright Swiney).  The silly use of the terms "panels" and "Pages" for actions and rounds (fortunately one of the only misuses of jargon in the game). The default "GM doesn't roll" assumption (though again, its basically the easiest fix ever). The NPC villains being too campy.

The Ugly: The stupid, stupid art.

In the final analysis, this game is almost certainly going to enter into a very elite list.  I've gotten dozens and dozens of review copies of games over the years, and there's only a small handful of those games that I would ever actually run.  Along with other brilliant classics like Starblazer Adventures, Two-Fisted Tales, the Majestic Wilderlands, and Aces & Eights, Icons is one of those games.   That pretty much tells you everything you need to know.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: lorenzetti solitario Rhodesian + Image Latakia

Nice, thorough review.

I've been having a lot of success with ICONS and my group. They like the "players-only" dice mechanic, and in play it's worked out better than I would have imagined. It speeds play tremendously, which is nice in a supers genre.

I don't mind the "panels" and "pages" thing, although the way we play doesn't really support it, so we usually just fall back on the jargon we know. So I guess I agree with you there.

About the random character generation -- I understand why it's there, and have no objection to that, but I don't care for it personally. I found the concept of the "bonus power" rather confusing at first, as well.

It is too bad about the artwork. I wish I could say something good about it, but I just can't. It's cheesy and adds nothing to the feel or aesthetic of the game. I'd rather have a copy without the artwork, to be honest.

I'm going to give this game a look I think. For what its worth, BASH has exactly the same Panel and Page thing going on. I also find it annoying. Especially annoying is that one of my players has taken to using it.

I will admit to being troubled by the art issue. I'm big on art, and I think it's especially important in a super hero game.


P.S. The Game is $1.00 in pdf  right now.

Nice review. I also have Icons, and I really like it. I would like to see it reorganized a bit, but even that is just a few things.

Quote from: Aos;422711I'm going to give this game a look I think.

The Pundit Bump at work!

RPGPundit

Quote from: Aos;422711P.S. The Game is $1.00 in pdf  right now.

That's what I call a power tip. I don't even like supers but for this price I want to check out for myself.

And thanks for the review Pundit.

Quote from: RPGPundit;422717The Pundit Bump at work!

RPGPundit

I think it's best for both of us if we don't dwell too long on the mental image that post conjures up.



Anyway, I spent my dollar. The art ranges from not good, to complete shit. The over bright colors don't help it either.  It reminds me more of the stuff on something like Dexter's laboratory or Powerpuff Girls than any of the DCU animations.

Thanks for the review!

A quick point to address the art:   Dan Houser, the line artist, did exactly what I asked him to do.   We wanted the product to stand out from the other superhero games on the market, so we went with a very specific art style -- one that wasn't represented by any other RPG:  the art style of the current animated series:





I'm thrilled with the results.   I realize that art is especially subjective (a lot of people want "cooler" looks), but we got exactly what we wanted.

Keep in mind too that the Icons PDFs are still available for $1!! The Character Folio is a must have.

Quote from: AnthonyRoberson;422760Keep in mind too that the Icons PDFs are still available for $1!! The Character Folio is a must have.

I have to say, I bought the Folio and I think there's room for improvement. It feels like alpha software to me. I've gotten some moderate utility out of it, but I think it could be a lot better.

I bought the full spread of scenario PDFs too, and I'm still trying to make up my mind about them. Sins of the Past was pretty decent, and I cribbed some good stuff out of it.

Murder of Crows, on the other hand... if I wanted to rip off the series premiere of "Smallville," I could do it without paying for the privilege. $1 was a good price point for that product.

I've yet to read the rest.

I don't think the art looks nearly as good as either of the linked images.  I'm glad the co-designer is thrilled, but that does nothing for me. It's kind of when someone has to explain a joke, really.


On a related note I went down to the FLGS to see if they had a print copy. I don't know if they did or not , though, because there was pretty epic customer service fail that resulted in me leaving the store empty handed. That is the second time in a row with this store that the person "helping" me effectively blew me off to do something else.
Awesome.
I think I'll get it from amazon.

I think it might have been cooler if they'd either gone for a pseudo-anime cartoon style a la "Teen Titans", or if they had gone for a retro/classic look making the art look like early Silver Age stuff, or even Kirbyesque.

RPGpundit

Yeah, I think a Kibyesque look would have been awesome. I also think that in the case of genre that can be so easily mixed with so many other genres, a unified look to the art doesn't really need to be a priority. Beyond that, there are two things we're talking about here- style and execution. They style selected could have been okay, but the execution leaves something to be desired.

In most other respects, however, the game is absolutely awesome.  Enough to warrant that 9/10 in spite of the art.

RPGPundit

I'm writing a paper whilst reading it, so it's slow going right now, but so far it looks pretty groovy.
One thing that it has going for it that I really like is the single column layout, which is much much easier to read as pdf than the usual double column layout.