Initial thoughts

[pawsplay]

Just posting some musings after re-reading it after having purchased it a couple of months ago.

Very nice and lite implementation of Fate. Very cool.
Quirky art style. Cool.
Style agnostic, although leaning toward a Silver Age funnybook aesthetic. Would work fine for modern animated DC or Spider-Man, or even something like The Dark Knight Strikes Again, not so much for gritty, talky, tactically driven supers.
Petty annoyance: In the paragraph that dashes through a non-random approach to character creation, it prices Specialties equal to abilities. That makes no sense, since the majority of specialties are just focused bonuses to abilities, with only a couple having a special utility, and that less so than a full-fledged power.
Curious to see how it plays out for a longer campaign; it seems a natural for a mini-series.

 

[pawsplay]

Thoughts on character creation:

Random generation is fun, but sometimes is surprisingly hard. I just rolled up a Transformed guy with Strength 6, Animation, Force Field, and Telepathy. What do these things have in common? ... I decided he was possessed by out-of-phase aliens.

Equipment... not really handled, unless it's a Device. The Octofather sometimes carries a tommy gun which is not explicitly statted. Police and thugs are breezily assigned damage values. The thing is, if you roll up a high Coordination Trained character with no powers, is it kosher to give the character a bow and make them an expert archer? Or should the bow really be the Blast power?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

So, uh ... What are you talking about?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Huh?

 

[pawsplay]

Icons.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Thanks for this write-up. People keep pushing ICONS on me, but my sense is that it's probably not the supers game I'm looking for. (I need to grab Truth & Justice and check that out, since it sounds closer to my needs.)

 

[Twowolves]

I was under the impression that this was the old Marvel SuperHeroes rules with the serial numbers filed off and the chart replaced. Did you get that impression?

Also, I hate hate HATE the art.

 

[pawsplay]

I was under the impression that this was the old Marvel SuperHeroes rules with the serial numbers filed off and the chart replaced. Did you get that impression?

Also, I hate hate HATE the art.

It's sort of a FATE-y thing, with lots of Marvel Superheroes tropes folded in, like power categories, different damage types, and of course, the named levels sandwiched into more generic suggestions (Feeble, Poor, Typical, Good, anyone?). It's definitely more like the original Marvel Super-Heroes than it is MSH Advanced. I think even the Specialties are largely interpreted from the old Skills/talents from MSH.

Of course, in the original MSR, if you had Remarkable Agility, you could buy yourself a damned bow.

 

[Relique du Madde]

I was under the impression that this was the old Marvel SuperHeroes rules with the serial numbers filed off and the chart replaced. Did you get that impression?

Also, I hate hate HATE the art.

Maybe because it was inspired by MSH.

Steve: ICONS draws a lot of inspiration from prior games like Fudge, FATE, Feng Shui, and Marvel Super-Heroes, to name a few.

 

[pawsplay]

Having spend a little time cuddling with the system, here is my tentative opinion:

ICONS is, in fact, good. I think this distillation of the Fate system is very worthy and smart. I may use it to teach RPGs to my six year old, when he is ready.

However.

This thing needs to be houseruled the hell out of. Rules lite or no, it feels like it's missing about six pages of rules, mainly stuff on minor equipment, as well as actually helpful guidance on running it as more than a one-shot. Somehow, Steve Kenson managed to repeat his M&M 1e blunder wrt to skill costs, here as "Specialties." What's up with that?