Talk:Main Page

With the great deal of affection I have for this game, I've decided that, if maintaining the Miraheze site is a procedure that requires DIY elements, I might as well be the one to get things going.

Thus, I am initiating a Discussion page in the hopes that we can start a wheel turning that will become an active procedure of interaction with each other and - possibly - the individuals who submit, and have submitted, storylines and modules for publication in the first place, and also Steve Kenson and Dan Houser, the gentlemen who inspired the game itself and the site we now involve ourselves in sustaining.

In addition to general ongoing dialogues, my hope is that we can begin differentiating forums for specific discussion purposes, including - big hope - the submission of fan-created adventures and/or characters that may end up populating each others' games, and - who knows? - possibly end up seeing publication in a hard-copy work at some point in future developments.

Right now, my first suggestion for differentiated forums would include a "General Discussion" tab, as well as a "Stark City" one where reactions, suggestions, and who-woulda-thunk-it stories can be traded back and forth. Other forums, of course, will inevitably arise out of continued discussion. Other forums possibly arranged around consideration of the other various supplemental works could be a point of division as well.

One thing I would suggest is that, in line with many other gaming sites' policy, we dispense with real-world political discussion; too much opportunity for offense arising over something that has absolute zero to do with ICONS, along with attracting inappropriately aligned personalities and driving away some good ones. Other than that, I'm very much hoping to see as many of the old site's gang reappearing here as possible, and continuing on our goal of seeing this excellent game given over to the public's hands and seeing what commentary we can make, fun stories we can tell, and adventures we can have.

Black Talon

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''Hi Black Talon! I don't know if using the wiki as a forum is that efficient, but if anyone wants to do it, go right ahead. Seems there are actual forums for ICONS out there (someone put up links if you have them) and this wiki certainly functions well as a repository of useful games material and other results of such forums, but again: whatever works!''

''As far as leaving out real-world politics, I don't think that was a problem before, so I hope there will be no need to make a rule now.

Blue Lightning

Thank you for resurrecting ICONS page
I'm working on some Marvel and DC conversions that I hope to upload soon. Hopefully we can get some more activity here to keep this resource viable.

Thanks so much for saving it.

Jaysin1414

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Thanks for contributing!

Blue Lightning

Icons's Key Strengths
First, thank you Black Talon and so many others for keeping this great resource for fans alive. I was 50-50 on Icons when I first bought it some time in 2012 or so, but really embraced and loved the game after Icons: The Assembled Edition came out. The original Icons wikispaces was a great resource for character ideas and conversions for my favorite characters.

Which brings me to the discussion point, which is Icons' key strengths over other games that I previously played, some of which for over 20 years (Champions, DC Heroes, Villains & Vigilantes, Supers, Prowlers & Paragons, Silver Age Sentinels, Heroes Unlimited, Guardians, Invulnerable, etc.).

Strength #1 - Statistics. I really like how the statistics in Icons cover the main things in a character while not overloading the player or GM. Champions (5th Edition and earlier) and DC Heroes were heavily reliant on the DEX characteristic which combined manual coordination and agility together. By contrast, Icons breaks it up into Prowess and Coordination which conceptually makes more sense to me, since there are plenty of regular or superhero characters that have great natural hand-eye coordination for weapons and attacks, but not necessarily be that agile in terms of avoiding harm through dodging or acrobatic maneuvers.

Strength #2 - Rules simplicity. Well, that's a given, isn't it? As a comparison, Hero System 6th Edition now has 600+ pages of rules. Yes, there's Hero Basic that is less than 200, but the core system is over 600 pages. I've been playing Hero System/Champions since the late 1980s and 600+ pages of rules does not seem like the best approach to retain current fans or attract new ones to the game system.

I've ran Icons at multiple game conventions and have had great success in bringing in brand new players who have never role-played before pick up and understand the rules in a few minutes and absolutely love the game system. It was extremely difficult to perform a similar feat with Champions, and even then, the various rules and textbook-like approach was a major turnoff.

Strength #3 - Product Style and Substance. I really admire Dan Houser's art style that is reminiscent of Bruce Timm which sets the tone for the Icons game. It also helps that he's illustrated most, if not all, of the Icons products to establish a high level of quality continuity that is often lacking across the different superhero games I've played. The printing of the hard and soft cover books have been first rate.

Your thoughts? - Fdw3773

ICONS' Key Strengths, cont.

Fdw3773, Good to see you making the transition over from the M&M boards. Do agree with pretty much everything you've indicated above, but one additional point I'd like to throw in for thought: Stamina calculation. While ICONS owes as much, obviously, to the old Marvel Superheroes game as anything else, one thing I throw the fist of approval up for is not having Fighting/Agility/Strength/Endurance (i.e., the pure physical angle) as the whole of establishing damage capacity; rather, having Strength and an intellectual attribute - Willpower - in combination opens up the diversity possibilities a bit. Sure, easy enough to have your Solomon Grundy-type who's a major mobile physical blockade - he ain't heavy on Willpower, but this can be compensated for with a couple of levels of Invulnerability/Absorption/What-have-you. This also levels the teeter-totter somewhat for heroes who aren't comparatively Strength-heavy (say 3-4 for your Mr. Fantastic to Daredevil types), but can manage to pull themselves along after taking hits that would disable ordinary humans, just because they refuse to quit and keep pushing things.

Have got more to state later, and hoping that we can open up other topics of discussion as well, but again, great to see people active on this resurrected site, and looking forward to more insights and batting the conversation ball back and forth.

Black Talon

ICONS Fan Fiction?
My first interest has been storytelling, which is probably why I started role-playing games as early as elementary school with Villains & Vigilantes (my older brother had to coach me up on the math involved). Creating heroes, villains, and the story lines featuring them was a great hobby that I continue today.

With that in mind, is there an interest to have a fan fiction section on this Wiki? There would have to be some basic guidelines (e.g. PG-rated) and the stories would have to be consistent with the characters featured in ICONS (e.g. Miss Tikal would not go on a psychotic killing spree). I read some of the various hero and villain background files and based on how some of the adventures played out during my game sessions, they generated some fan fiction ideas to add more character depth and for just general entertainment.

Your thoughts? - Fdw3773

ICONS Fan Fiction, con't
Fdw3773, once again have to pass on admiration and congratulations for your thoughts with this; fan-fiction material for ICONS could be a wonderful attraction force for the frustrated "I wanna tell a superhero story" crowd, and I can stick my hand up as one of said crowd in this respect. ICONS has got a ready-to-go setting in Stark City, in which stories could extend from the city's origins up to present day. One thing I would advise, were we to begin online publication of such work, is that we perhaps take a cue from - and I know this isn't the first time I've used this example - City of Heroes. Subscribers to the game could get their own short-story fan-fiction work submitted for consideration and published, and some of those stories fell under the Just Plain Damned Good category, but one point is that they, as a matter of course, eschewed using core established characters, and instead utilized individuals that the writers had either adopted from their own in-game creations or made up whole-cloth for the story. Therefore, I'd advocate that such stories leave All-Star, All-American Girl, Saguaro, Hangman, Miss Tikal and the like as background figures perhaps mentioned, but left out of the actual narrative progression. Another, more practical consideration is word-count; I'd figure that putting matters at the 1,000-1,500 word limit, at least to start, might be a beginning point for a discussion on this. Of course, individual authors could end up doing work as a serial submission, and again, I wouldn't see a problem in this as long as individual word-count per chapter was kept within guidelines.

Otherwise, again, I have to extend the flag of admiration for this suggestion. One final point: To quote Gary Gygax, "Books are books; games are games." The best City of Heroes stories that I recall left the actual game mechanics in the background and concentrated on using settings and character situations to create drama - such points often created conditions in stories that could rarely or never have occurred in the game. Now, I know we're dealing with a pen-and-paper RPG as opposed to an algorithm-based MMPOG, and this creates a world of difference with regard to how stories work and the possibilities offered, but I still advocate pushing for story value over replicating game functionality. I realize this is all a pretty obvious advisement, but just to make a point clear. In any case, I've got a couple of stories on tap - and which I've been itching to tell outside of my own head for a very long time - so we should perhaps see about getting a separate forum going for such work.

Thank you again, Fdw3773.

Black Talon

ICONS Fan Fiction Forum
Glad to hear that there are other fans who like this ideas, Black Talon. Your guidelines are excellent and having the core universe characters in the background instead of the foreground make sense for fan fiction stories.

I'm open to your idea of having a page featuring fan fiction. It could perhaps dovetail with the Settings section as a way to add more depth through context. - Fdw3773

Fan Fiction or Story Hour?
Doc Lemming aka Kipling aka John McMullen

Do we want to make it a requirement that any ICONS stories in a Fan Fiction section take place in some isotope of the ICONS implied universe? Or is it just a place for fiction, albeit one that has rules about presenting the ICONic characters?

re: Fan Fiction or Story Hour?
My recommendation is that it needs to have some type of connection with the ICONS universe. It could feature ICONS characters to give a little more depth or backstory about them, or simply take place in that universe (e.g. Stark City) and the ICONS characters are mentioned in the periphery as Black Talon suggested.

- Fdw3773

Fan Fiction or Story Hour? And On...
Since it appears that we've once again got The Ticking Clock counting down the hours before the site vanishes into that proverbial Google-induced black hole (yeah, they've got a picture of it now - you seent it?...is it big enough to swallow the Earth? Maybe...but this site would be a definite casualty, and we don't want that), it's time to get some discussion moving back and forth on this here forum.

Continuing on with what Fdw3773 stated, I'd have to issue pretty serious blanket agreement. I think Stark City is a flat-out excellent story-telling spot, at least as a start-up point; perhaps other locations can be introduced in particular stories, and points of focus expanded from there. A good example, in my opinion, is in the Invincible comic series - that Midnight City setting shows up on a very occasional basis, but I can see how a really compelling individual story, or series, could be built up in such a place: it has a background and origin vastly different from other settings, a story-telling "ecology" that is a pretty solid 90-degree turn from your standard Metropolis/(Marvel)New York City/Gotham City et al superhero locale. However, getting back to the main point, I do think that using Stark City as a sort of jump-off point would be well advised, to create a link with ICONS as a game proper.

Another issue - and I'm quite serious about this - is that the questions about powers, power levels, and various game points stay in the background as much as possible. Game mechanics are interesting only when you're actually playing the game. To introduce such in a literary setting is to drag the reader into something that he or she has absolutely no possibility of influencing or participating in...and thus compels no interest. Having a general indication of "Dude X has got super-strength and flight - he's a bit stronger than Dude Y, but that's as detailed as we're going to get on this. Why?  Because going in to a serious game mechanics discussion in a story-telling situation is boring." And would remain such unless, possibly, the game-mechanics issue itself was made a point of conflict...in which case the game-mechanics are a proxy through which the story-telling moves forward anyway.

I am very, very much interested in telling an ICONS story, using original characters and employing the Stark City setting - I'm currently involved in another project at current, but will hopefully be able to initiate such in the not too distant future. In the meantime, wonderful to see people contributing to this place, hoping to keep things moving forward and upward, that we'll see more ICONS material released over the coming calendar year; and that, maybe, one day, we can get Mr. Kenson and/or Mr. Houser, or any of the other game/module-creation crew, to put in an appearance here and contribute a bit to a discussion.

Be in contact soon. In the meantime, crush evil wherever it appears...and help that old lady across the street.

Black Talon

Fan Fiction entry
I created my first fan fiction entry in the Settings section. It seemed appropriate as a way to add depth to the overall ICONS setting. Hope that you like it! - Fdw3773, June 13, 2019

Please Include Dates
''Hi guys, I'm glad everyone's remembering to sign their additions here on discussion pages, but I think it would help in making sense of this page and conversations if you add the date after your name. I'm going to look into ways that may already exist for this to happen automatically, but till then let's try doing that ourselves.''

Blue Lightning 06/14/2019 12:27AM

''AHA! Looks like there is a "Signature button" you can use on the discussion pages that will put in the timestamp also! It's at the top right after the Bold and Italic buttons and before the link button. --Blue Lightning (talk) 09:22, 14 June 2019 (EDT)''

Re: Time Stamps
Time stamps?!? We don't need no stinking time stamps! You're talking like this is an actual forum or something, where people discuss stuff, and points of debate might get brought in -

Okay, yeah, I get the idea. Now to see if we can futz with the signature thing and use it to put funny and/or derisive material on that lets everybody know that, whether we get tagged as geeks and nerds or not, we understand where our influence begins and ends.

Again, hoping that we can keep this game and site active. See everybody on soon. --Black Talon (talk) 15:31, 14 June 2019 (EDT)

Rogues: New ICONS publication
Just as a quick update: Steve Kenson's site has announced a new ICONS resource that is available for order, specifically the Rogues supplement, providing more bad guys and/or supporting characters and cast for a game setting. Hoping to be able to get this in hardcover in the very near future, and looking forward to seeing more ICONS work becoming available over the balance of the year.--Black Talon (talk) 23:18, 23 June 2019 (EDT)

Just keepin' stuff going
Been a while since there's been activity of note here, so just popping in to ensure that the site remains ongoing.

With regard to personal circumstances, there's recently been an uptick in terms of resources, so I'm hoping very much to be able to start catching up on the ICONS modules/sourcebooks in the near future. Otherwise, hoping matters are going well for everyone, and also hoping that, at some point, we can get Messers Kenson and/or Houser, etc., to show up in Toronto for a convention or such. Looking forward to more game releases over the remainder of the year, and anticipating 2020's works.

--Black Talon (talk) 10:20, 1 September 2019 (EDT)--

If you click on Recent Changes in the left column, you see anything that's happened here lately, and it seems Fdw3773 and Doc Lemming have continued adding content.

So which conventions are in Toronto? --Blue Lightning (talk) 01:35, 2 September 2019 (EDT)

What's Happened to Mutants & Masterminds?
This is probably the wrong place to even bring this subject up, but it's the only one, from my perspective, that has any connection to the issue at hand.

I am aware that the M&M main page had undergone some changes over the last several months; fine, M&M second edition is a topic of considerable interest and affection for me, third edition markedly less so, but going to the site, over the last several days, has shown only a "register.com" page with "Best Action Games, Top Rated Action Games, 10 Best 3D Games, Brain Teasing Games, Top MMORPG Games, Most Popular RPGs, 10 Recommended Games" listed below that. Clicking on any of these does not come anywhere close to the M&M site. So, inquiring: Has Green Ronin essentially shut down the M&M site, and/or the game as a whole? While I would have my share of regrets at such an event, my primary superhero RPG focus right now is ICONS, and that's the way I'm perfectly happy to let it stay. So, is anyone aware as to what the state of the M&Msite/game is at present, and why it seems to have undergone this shutdown?

All best to the gang, and looking forward to discussing Rogues and ICONS Presents soon.

--Black Talon (talk) 14:29, 9 November 2019 (EST)

Black Talon, I regret that I'm not tracking anything about M&M being potentially shut down. I just visited the Green Ronin website and all the books for Third Edition are available for sale. The Ronin Army discussion boards related to M&M are also active. As far as I know the latest publications are the M&M Basic Handbook and Superteam Handbook that were published within the past year for M&M Third Edition.

M&M seems healthy to me and is faring much, much better than Hero Games. --FDW3773, 11 November 2019

FDW3773, thank you for the reply. I did a search not long after I'd made the post, and found the M&M forum site - duh. However, as I discovered, the ICONS forum has disappeared, and this site seems to be the sole outlet for discussion among the game's fans - Steve Kenson's own site is mostly for his musings and announcements for things like ICONS Presents and so forth. So, if this is our remaining meeting point, let's try to make it a good one, and keep conversations moving forth. Hope to see others on soon. --Black Talon (talk) 09:03, 13 November 2019 (EST)

Notes following an ICONS Campaign
I recently concluded a six-month ICONS campaign where we met about once a month. Although the players started out in the Marvel Universe, adventure scenarios bounced between their home universe with Marvel characters, the DC Universe, and what I refer to as the Core Universe of ICONS involving supporting heroes from Patriot City. After actively playing it for an extended amount of time, there were some definite game design concerns that came up. Granted, I'm only using ICONS: The Assembled Edition and the concerns may have already been addressed in Origins or other publications.

First was character advancement. How much advancement was allowed after a certain number of issues/adventures completed remains vague to me. While this didn't matter when I ran demos at game conventions, this became a problem during the campaign since none of us were really sure how much of a character upgrade was valid before the game balance was significantly thrown off. By contrast, other superhero RPGs allocate points based on adventure success to be used to upgrade powers, abilities, etc. at a known rate so there was a pretty good idea of seeing how a character "leveled up" and was upgraded.

The second was power levels, which seemed limited when it capped off at 10. For example, there really wasn't much a distinction in Strength between She-Hulk, Thor, Colossus, the Thing, or even Superman which ranged between an 8 (She-Hulk, Thing), 9 (Thor, Colossus), and 10 (Superman) in terms of delivering damage, even though in the cartoons and comics there is a HUGE gap in Strength between those characters. It didn't really dawn on us until my wife's character got hit by a mind-controlled Superman and was still conscious, even though she was just a steampunk gadgeteer that was, "just bone and meat" with a force field. We both agreed after the game session was over, "There's no way Gearshot (my wife's character) could've taken a punch from Superman and still be conscious," but with Superman's Strength at 10, Gearshot's force field at 6, she would only take 4 Stamina damage and still generally be up. By contrast, in another superhero RPG, she would have been knocked out cold. --Fdw3773 (talk) 11:57, 16 November 2019 (EST)

Notes following, cont.

Fdw3773, this is something I get entirely, and this is one of the reasons that superhero RPGs have, for me, been a major range of hit-and-miss inside the game engines themselves. Games such as V&V 2E have got limitations with regard to the powers, plus dealing with the early '80s convention of levels, whatall. I honestly believe that it's a serious difficulty, if not damn near impossibility, to work over near-cosmic-level characters such as Superman, Thor, et al in any sort of manner that preserves character integrity and still keeps game engine balance. ICONS covers this - pretty darn well, in my opinion - through the use of Minimal, Moderate, Major and Maximum Success/Failure rolls. A character like Superman would need, I think, some Supes/Thor-Only Extras, like Devastating Impact and so forth, which would force the recipient to roll for Slam or Stun regardless of what the dice indicate. Avoiding this effect would require the expenditure of a Determination Point. Otherwise, Superman and other 9+ Strength-level characters are just handing out big-time hits that can be abraded with a variety of defensive powers. Now, that ain't a problem, as long as that's what the GM/Players are aiming for, but characters such as those discussed exist, I think, pretty much entirely inside their own story-telling dynamics and aren't really supported by translation to game engines. Want a Superman? Create an All-Star type character within the engine confines and try to work things out from there.

ICONS has, as I've noted previously, a greater range of flexibility with regard to character options, so forth, than a number of others I've seen. Regarding specific power levels, in this case Strength, the GM would probably need to work out what the character's specific limitations are - She-Hulk and the Thing may end up doing the same basic damage level per hit, but in terms of how much they can bench...well, that's up for the guy/girl running the game to determine. For myself, I'm pretty content to assign those two characters the same hit potential and still draw some differences in terms of how much they can lift/bench, if required. --Black Talon (talk) 13:30, 19 November 2019 (EST)

''I think in the very specific case of the Gearshot/Superman example there's an old "out" that a mind-controlled Superman is subconsciously never fully using his strength. "Devastating Impact" sounds like a great suggestion for using Superman-like characters in ICONS. I've always had a problem with exponential scale games which almost all standard supers games use because of the wide scale of superhero characters-- how does someone who's by definition 16 times as strong as your defense only do 2 points on you when they could drop a house on you? But I've long since decided that everyone else seems to be okay with it and not to bother trying to fix the issue myself until I'm actually running a game long-term. --Blue Lightning (talk) 08:50, 20 November 2019 (EST)''

House Rule for Assessing Damage
After reading up on some Champions and Prowlers & Paragons rules, a house rule that I'll be implementing is on damage assessment. When an attacker successfully hits a defender, the attacker rolls the number of D6 based on the level (e.g. Blast 5 would be 5D6) and the defender rolls the number of D6 based on the level of defense (e.g. Force Field 3 would be 3D6) to determine the number of successes. A roll of 2, 3, 4, or 5 would equal one success, a roll of 6 would equal two successes, and a roll of 1 would equal no success. The number of successes are then totaled for the attacker and defender. The damage assessed would be the difference between the attacker and the defender. If the defender's number of successes exceed the attackers, no damage is assessed (stunning is still possible, depending on the attack).

For example, an attacker with a Strength of 8 successfully hits a defender that is wearing Armor level 4. The attacker rolls 8D6 and gets a 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6. This would equal a total of 10 successes. The defender rolls 4D6 and isn't so lucky, rolling a 1, 1, 2, 4 for only two successes. The defender gets rocked for a total of eight Stamina damage (10 minus 2) and rolls for being stunned next.

This would replicate how a defender can get lucky from a much more powerful attacker when a blast "just grazes him or her" and not take as much damage or how a weaker attacker is able to get that lucky shot in and hurt a much stronger defender.--Fdw3773 (talk) 16:49, 19 January 2020 (EST)

House Rule for Assessing Damage, cont.

Fdw3773, this is once again a point I can express some serious approval for, and which could get worked into a officially-unofficial ICONS release sometime in the future. The system noted brings up some recollections of West End Games' Star Wars game engine, which relied more on sheer volume of dice rather than any solid, predetermined outcome from "My Strength 7 guy can beat your Strength 6 guy, no problem." The common systems for superhero games that you noted previously tend to get pushed into a bit more of a normal distribution outcome, instead of leaping up the exponential ladder.

That said, I do have a real liking for the Minimal/Moderate/Major/Massive outcomes that the Core system embraces; gives the chance for severe success/failure, as long as the opponents are within at least reasonable proximity to one another's capabilities. Just thinking about it, it might be possible to do a best-of-both-worlds mix: take one system or the other in a given situation, depending on opposing power levels, single vrs. mass combat (James Bond scraps Emilio Largo as opposed to dozens of NATO commandos against SPECTRE low-lifes), group-against-single-Arch-Villain-adversary, and so on. Again, I think it's the flexibility of ICONS in the first place that allows for this kind of house-rule to be suggested and grafted on, and I'd argue that this forms the arrows and archway (sounds like an RPG title) leading toward the genre's future pathway. More and more, I think, we're going to see games moving away from the our-way-or-the-highway set of d20, where things became so strictured that there was no real possibility for the DM/GM/Narrator/What-have-you doing much more than figuring out what would be the most effective pre-published opponents for that night's game. Riding the line between a well-defined system of checks and balances and a free-form carnival will, I think, become the goal for game designers and Devs as we move into the second quarter of the twenty-first century.

--Black Talon (talk) 16:16, 24 January 2020 (EST)

New additions/Any request?
I've recently added some character conversions in recent weeks: Mystery Inc. (Scooby Doo and the gang) along with starting on the Silverhawks. Although I've retired my ICONS campaign, I plan to still periodically do some character write-ups here and there from various animated series within and not too far beyond the superhero genre.

Are there any requests out there? G.I. Joe? Ghostbusters? Transformers? The Galaxy Rangers?