ICONS Superpowered Roleplaying
Tabletop Roleplaying Games
ICONS Superpowered Roleplaying
ICONS Superpowered Roleplaying is a superhero tabletop roleplaying game designed by Steve Kenson, who is also the original designer of Mutants & Masterminds. The first edition was published in 2010. In September 2012, Kenson's new publisher Ad Infinitum Adventures acquired the game from Adamant Entertainment, which said it could not give it enough focus. The Assembled Edition, a revised and expanded core book published under Kenson's Ad Infinitum Adventures banner and printed and distributed by Green Ronin Publishing in 2014, is a 224-page full-colour hardback with art and layout by Dan Houser and Daniel Solis. It combines material from earlier adventures and sourcebooks such as Villainomicon and Team-Up and is described as the most complete rule set for the game yet.
Description
Players take on superheroes, and the Game Master (GM) runs adventures with villains, teams and whole universes, which the book gives tools to create. Heroes can be made from a few die rolls, with abilities described by numbers or by adjectives, and sample heroes and villains are included. Out-of-combat time is organised into chapters, issues and series, as in a comic.
The game asks a table to use the fiction. Qualities, the descriptive phrases on a character, are invoked by players and the GM, and optional rules for stunts, retcons and pyramid tests call for improvisation more than book-keeping. A reviewer thought the power spread is narrow, so it may not show clear jumps from street-level heroes to cosmic threats, and that the artwork and tone are kid-friendly. It suits groups who want a fast, light superhero game, and it is less suited to groups who want a fine-grained power system.