Icons & Sorcery

Just a quick note here to let people know about Icons & Sorcery (link fixed!), my swords & sorcery hack for Adamant Entertainment's Icons Superpowered Roleplaying. It strays a bit here and there from the way Icons works, but not dramatically so. The idea was to retain the random character generation of Icons, but for a typical Howardian/Lieberesque fantasy setting -- so instead of Origins (Trained, Birthright, Artificial, etc.) there are Cultures (Great City, Decadent South, Frozen North, etc.), and since only shifty sorcerer-types actually have powers, there's a greater emphasis on Specialties, although these two rely heavily on the roll of the dice. "Equipment" in the conventional sense is practically a non-entity for the superheroes and villains in Icons, but not so in Icons & Sorcery. And so on.

Incidentally, I'm running Icons this weekend at Gamex, in case I hadn't already mentioned that. Icons hits the e-market June 1st, with a print edition coming soon after.

Comments

  1. UnknownMay 28, 2010 at 10:29 AM

    You had me at "Lieberesque fantasy setting". I've got my weekend reading now! The Spirit of Greyhawk campaign got put aside for a few weeks pending completion of one player's coding project, so this might be an interesting side-jaunt.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mike OlsonMay 29, 2010 at 12:29 AM

    If nothing else, you should have fun rolling up characters. I know I have.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bonus Actions: Not So Fast

Image
  "We've had one wind, yes. What about second wind?" I am, admittedly, a rules-as-written kinda guy when it comes to 5E. I don't typically use houserules -- due in no small part to playing and running so many Adventurers League games -- but there's one pretty common houserule that's always bugged me. I've never really thought about why it bugged me so much, but I figured it out, and the answer involves something I don't think I've really seen anyone talk about online. The houserule in question: allowing a PC to drink a potion as a bonus action. And the reason it bugs me is that that's not what bonus actions are for. I think there's a lot of unspoken confusion about that, what the bonus action represents in the narrative, and consequently it seems like there's also a lot of people who've silently agreed on what that is . The question "Can I do that as a bonus action?" with regards to opening a door or drinking a potion imp
Read more

D&D's New Weapon Mastery Is from the '80s

Image
From left to right: Rules Cyclopedia, One D&D Playtest Packet 5 I'm a big fan of the D&D Rules Cyclopedia .  Published in 1991, it compiles the Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, and Immortal boxed sets (aka BECMI) into a single chunky book, complete with Darlene-style hex maps of the "Known World" of Mystara in the back. It may be the best single-book edition of D&D . It may also be the only single-book edition of D&D , but that's neither here nor there. The RC has a lot going for it besides the form factor, like non-weapon proficiencies, something like prestige classes or subclasses, and... weapon mastery. Yes, weapon mastery, the cool new thing in the most-recent One D&D playtest packet that has everyone abuzz! And for good reason; it's a little something extra for the martial classes that doesn't come close to addressing the power discrepancy between casters and non-casters, especially at high levels, but still. (In addition to being
Read more

Dungeon23 X Dwarf Fortress

Image
  Dungeon23 ! Cool idea. One room a day, one level a month, culminating in a 12-level, 365-room megadungeon.  It's also... a lot. Fortunately for me, only a few days before I saw the posts about Dungeon23, I started playing Dwarf Fortress for the first time. Even more fortunately, I am bad at it . Let me explain why that's good. If you're not familiar with the game, it's an extremely complex world-simulator with no real endgame other than having fun. What that means is up to each individual player. You could train your dwarves to be killing machines, raiding their neighbors and conquering the world. Or maybe they're farmers instead of conquerors. (Full disclosure, I still don't really know how to do either of those.) You can tunnel deep into the earth and establish a home surrounded by subterranean wonders, send your dwarves up into the trees to contend with giant squirrels, cut down a forest of trees to build a floating town on a lake, or whatever else you ca
Read more