Okay, I didn’t like the presentation of the book, but what about the actual game? It’s an exercise in FATE-powered super hero gaming driven by mechanics that are based on GM fiat and player-controlled narratives. Seriously, hunting up anything specific is more painful than it should be, especially for a game that feels so mechanically light. The only saving grace for the layout is that the book is so short and so light mechanically that things don’t take too long to flip through and find, but even that can be a pain if you’re hunting more obscure rules since things are kind of scattered around in an almost train of consciousness way. There’s no index, and the Table of Contents is a bit of a joke. There’s hardly any wasted space for margins, which is a plus, but everything feels badly crammed. And while I don’t like all of Houser’s work (a few pieces are just bad), I think he succeeds in creating the desired atmosphere of something gamers of all ages might enjoy. This appearance is quite intentional though, with artist Dan Houser trying to channel the style of super hero cartoons like “Danny Phantom” or “Ben 10”, in order to capture the feel of more “family friendly” super hero cartoons and comics. I’m not saying everybody will hate it, but I know it certainly scared me off at first. Normally I save discussions of Style until later, but here I’m going to reverse things because if anything is going to chase off potential customers who happen to glance at ICONS, it’s the Style of the book.
No witty banter to set the review up, no establishing of my “reviewer cred” here, just an in-depth look at Steven Kenson’s new superhero RPG, ICONS.
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