ICONS - First play impressions

So, yesterday I got a chance to play Icons! for the first time, since our regular gaming was interrupted. The group was all experienced players, but we were all new to Icons! (to be expected, really..) Two of us had played in fate-like games before and had some idea about the principles behind it.

Icons! playtest review

Some Space to Think: Nerdy Saturday: "This weekend ended up having the right combination of scheduling openings to allow for a bit of pickup play, so I gathered some friends to try out some newly acquired games, one RPG and one board game."

These words is the beginning of a well written review of the new Icons! rpg. The sum of it all is that it's a fun game that has its' issues. Go read it, it seems to give a good impression of the game.

ICONS! - My first character

A couple of days ago, the Preview PDF of the game Icons! was released. Since I'm always interested in a new super hero rpg, I preordered the game, and downloaded the pdf as soon as it was released.

My impressions so far is that it's a fast, loose game that strive to avoid getting stuck in details. If you want to know exactly how fast your character can run or how many tonnes he can lift, this is perhaps not the game for you. However, if you want to build a character quick and have a story-focused game open for improvisation, this just might be it.

When I had the game downloaded, I tried to make a character. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I had a finished character 15-20 minutes after the download was finished. For your pleasure, here he is:

Fox Tail

The latest generation in an old line of gifted or blessed persons, Jacob Robins was given powers from the familiys patron totem, the Fox. At first he was given the task of protecting his tribe, but he later realised that his duty was also outside the confines of his own people.

The Fox has given Jacob incredible speed, the ability to read minds and produce illusions, and finally to sense his surroundings even in pitch black darkness. He is trained in the ancient martial arts of the tribe and is superhumanly strong, and can lift about a ton.

Origin: Birthright

Prowess  - 5; Coordination - 2; Strength - 6
Intellect - 5; Awareness - 6; Willpower - 5

Powers
Super Speed - 5 (abt the speed of a sports car)
Telepathy - 6
Illusion - 7
Supersenses (Radar) - 5

Specialty - Martial Arts

Stamina: 11
Determination: 2

Aspects:
Quality - Find peace
Challenge - Weakness (Telepathy Overload)

The year of the super hero

If you, like me, enjoy a good super-hero game once in a while, these last couple of months, and the rest of this year as been a gold mine... or a flood, depending on how you look at it. Let's see.. a while ago Wild Talents 2nd edition was released in print. This was followed by BASH Ultimate edition, Supers! and Icons! As if this wasn't enough, Green Ronin has announced both a DC Heroes license and a third edition of Mutants and Masterminds, to be released this fall.

Man.. so many games, so little time..

My gaming-budget this year

Darn... it's only May (and beginning of May at that), but it seems my gaming purchases for this year are already planned. It has been an interesting year so far, and there are a number of games that will get my hard earned money (and some already has).


Games and game-books already purchased are

• Wild Talents 2nd edition + Wild Talents Essential Edition
• the Day after Ragnarok
• Reign Enchiridion
• add to that a small number of PDF's to the Gumshoe-system and savage worlds (mostly)

In addition to that

• I've preordered Icons! (the new super-hero game by Steve Kenson)
• I will preorder the Dresden Files
• Purchase Legends of Anglerre as soon as possible.

It seems like my new systems of choice are the ORE-system and various Fate-incarnations. So far, I consider them elegant, nice and modern systems that are open to swift and easy playing, without to much preparation time, at the same time as they cover a lot of ground/ areas. 

Random characters

The other day, me and my gaming group started of a short campaign using the game Reign. Since I was the only one that had much knowledge about the system, we decided to use the random character generation system instead of designing the characters with the points-buy system.

It was a blast!

There is something with random character generation systems. They can lead you in directions it wouldn't occur to you to pick otherwise. They might add a twist to your character that you would overlook.


In this case, the characters became different, but with some really nice connections. It didn't take long for the group to decide that they wanted to have a company that dealt with information, basically a spy-network. It all fit together very nicely, the process added a couple of both patrons and enemies, and gave me a number of sub-plots to incorporate.

Why do I mention this? Thing is, I think that the last couple of years, random character generation has gotten kind of a bad rep. Different kinds of point-buy systems are the norm, as is different kinds of class-picking (and often a combination of these). And, while I definately see the charm in custom-building your character sometimes it's just as fun to roll the dice, and then use your creativity to make sense of whatever was rolled.

One game I remember fondly was the old Golden Heroes superhero-game from Games Workshop. You rolled up all your powers, and then you had to come up with a background and theme fitting those powers. The powers you couldn't fit into that background you hade to forfeit. A couple of my most memorable characters was made using that system.

That's why I'm glad that there are a couple of games that return to random chargen. One of these is Reign. If you are using Wild Talents, there is an official webb-download with a similar random generation system for superhe.. sorry... talents. The upcoming game Icons! also uses a random system.

So, consider this post a small praise for the interesting, challenging and wonky characters you can get from using random character generation.