My gaming life began not with Dungeons and Dragons but with the TSR Marvel Super Heroes game from the 80’s.  I was (and am) a huge Marvel fan, anyway, so being able to drop one of my characters into that universe was a dream come true.  When other people’s first characters were fighting orcs and dragons and saving the princess, my first characters were fighting Dr. Doom and the Marauders and saving  the world.  While I’ve gotten rid of each version of D&D when the next one has been released I still have almost all my game books from the Marvel Super Heroes game and still have characters I created 20 years ago and would still love to play in a campaign.

Imagine my sense of nostalgia and delight, then when I read Icons.  Many games, especially since the advent of the d20 system are just fresh skins stretched out on the skeleton of a rules system that were not designed for them.  Icons is just the opposite.  Instead of the bones of the Marvel Super Heroes system with a new skin, Icons is the skin of the Marvel Super Heroes system with a new skeleton.  Of course, the creator of Icons, Adamant Entertainment does not have the license to Marvel’s characters but that is almost the only thing missing from the old game.

The similarities between the two games are striking.  Like the Marvel Super Heroes game, character generation in Icons is almost entirely random.  The type of character, ability levels, number of talents (known as specialties,) number of powers, the powers themselves and their levels are all determined randomly.  Obviously, just like the game from the 80’s, this could lead to wildly varying power levels in a group of heroes, but that is the fun of the system.  After all, the Justice League has both Superman and Green Arrow and the Avengers have both Thor and Hawkeye.  It can be just as entertaining for a player character group to have members with just as massively different levels of power. Read the rest of this entry »