In May 2021 we presented two offers featuring the fast-playing and flexible Icons Superpowered Roleplaying by Steve Kenson (designer of Mutants & Masterminds) from Ad Infinitum Adventures. Along with the revived June 2016 Icons Bundle, we presented an all-new sidekick, Icons Universe.
With Icons Steve goes for speed: random character creation (or pick from zillions of premade characters), flexible powers, and abstract, slam-bang 1d6-based combat. Icons works well for both one-shot adventures and long campaigns, and its extensive line of four-color adventures captures the spirit of the Silver Age of Comics and shows like Batman: The Animated Adventures. Icons is a spiritual successor to Marvel Super Heroes by way of Fudge and Fate. You won’t find exhaustive details or situational rules, and there’s no built-in setting beyond “the world of comic book superheroes.” Mix and match heroes and villains from Icons books, other games, your favorite comics, and your own imagination. The Icons system provides a balancing mechanism so any group of heroes can work on relatively even footing.
ICONS [from June 2016]
This resurrected June 2016 Icons Bundle once again provided the core rulebooks and key supplements — everything you need for anything from a pick-up game to a complete four-color campaign. If you’re new to the game, start here. There were eight titles in this revived offer’s Player Collection (retail value $67), including the comprehensive full-color 232-page Icons: The Assembled Edition corebook, the Great Power sourcebook, five Hero Packs with a total of 260 fully statted, ready-to-play characters, and the Game Master’s Screen.
This revival’s Game Master Collection added nine more sourcebooks and adventures worth an additional $62:
- Icons A to Z, 26 essays by Steve Kenson on all things superheroic
- Adversaries, a rogues’ gallery
- Rise of the Phalanx: This five-part adventure compilation replaces the first four adventures presented in this offer’s original 2016 run — and all previous purchasers of the original run also receive the newly added title (and the new Adversaries) on their Wizard’s Cabinet download page and in their DriveThruRPG Library.
- Six additional high-spirited four-color adventures: The Sidereal Schemes of Dr. Zodiac, The Skeletron Key, The RetConQuest, Urban Jungle, Devil’s Night, and Murder of Crowes (that last one is maybe not quite so four-color)
ICONS UNIVERSE [all-new]
Okay, technically there’s no Icons “universe” in the usual comic-book sense — but this all-new Icons Universe offer of recent sourcebooks and adventures let you build your own four-color campaign setting with enough attractions to draw the interest of the greedy Corsair Queen or conceivably even Professor Hominid. There were five titles in this offer’s Starter Collection (retail value $38), including Icons Origins, Hero Pack Annual 1, and three fast-paced adventures in the high-spirited Silver Age style: Gladiator Pits of Gorn, The Terror of Tiki Pterodactyl, and Dawn of the Daikaiju. This offer’s Bonus Collection added six more titles worth an additional $46, including Icons Presents, Menagerie, Rogues, and three more slam-bang adventures: Polar Vortex, Menace of the Man o’ Lantern, and Sins of the Past Revisited.
