SAT-01: Icons

[xenopulse]

I participated in the Donut on Saturday morning and ended up in an Icons game run by John Powell. We decided to randomly create characters and then play one of the short adventures from the book.

My character was a frail geek who implanted a chip into his head to gain time control powers. He could also wirelessly interface with computers. Then we had Leonardo DaVinci's long-lost android; a car mechanic who liked to kick things and self-promote at every opportunity; Jumping Jack, a claustrophobic escape artist who'd built himself super leaping boots; the Badger, a feisty fighter; and Devon's amazing Unspeakable Worm, a monster that could burrow and had emotion control over humans.

We played an adventure where we had to bust out of a maximum security prison; we were hired to test it out, but the Mad (?) Game Master took it over and tried to wipe us out in a Running Man-like show. We bludgeoned, interfaced, and burrowed our way to the control room, where the Unspeakable Worm saved the day by making one of the villains worship her and then have her lead her directly to the Game Master, who fled.

John ran the game very well, and many of the character interactions were awesome and funny. That said, I think the game system is not my style anymore these days. While it had some neat things like Aspects, the base mechanic was a hit-or-fail roll. Waiting for my turn to come around, only to roll and fail, and then nothing happens until I can try again next turn, just doesn't gel with me anymore. The Aspects (or qualities or whatever they were actually called) helped here and there by letting one succeed in an otherwise failed roll, but that was based on a sparse Determination resource, so it didn't come up too often.

Still, I enjoyed the game because of the players and GM involved, their sense of humor, and the crazy random characters we made. Thanks everyone!

[John Powell]

Thanks for playing!

I was a bit rusty with the system, and six random characters was a lot to handle. As such we didn't really get into tagging/compelling Qualities and Challenges (Aspects). A _lot_ of folks house rule Icons to run more like other FATE games, letting you spend a Determination and tag an Quality for +2 after a failed roll. That's the way I like to play. However I stuck mostly to the rules as written (at least as I remembered them), since we had only one veteran Icons player.

I feel the system really shines in the following areas:

1. Fast and fun random character generation.
2. Loose rules that allow/depend on player interpretation.
3. Super compatible with old Marvel Supes (FASERIP) modules, for nostalgia gaming with a modern system.

The Villains were the substitute robot guards and the members of the Critical Hit Squad, all headed by the malignant and cowardly Killer Game Master!

I have at least some of the character sheets at home, and can post more PC details later.