A lesson learned: Magic and Gadgets

Icons

So that adventure with Professor Destiny taught me that without extras the powers of Gadgets and Magic are very versatile but only useful as a backup. A solo hero is usually busy in the middle of the fight, so it's tough to adjust the spells or gadgets on the fly.

So if you're planning to use a primarily Gadget- or Magic-based hero solo, then consider adding an extra like “Instant” so that they still have the Performance aspect but can get the spells off or the gadgets out in time.

That doesn't apply if there are two magical or gadget-based heroes; Batman can always say, “Robin, run interference while I check the utility belt for the Bat-mind-control-protection device!”

I tried the magic character again with the Uncanny Justice solo plays, but in this case, the magic character is part of a team, and that seems to work better.

That Silver Age Feel

Any Superhero Game

Someone on Facebook asked about running a Silver Age-feeling game, and it so happens I've been thinking about it. Now, I greatly respect Dr. Christopher McGlothlin's work, but I think his Silver Age supplement for Mutants & Mutants misses the mark because it assumes you're going to set the story in the time period (about 1956–1984). Running an historical game assumes that people know about the time, which makes it a heavier lift.

So what do I think?

Less heavy continuity. Even when there were continuing plot elements—usually the soap opera elements—the event plots were one-and-done. The Ringmaster is here with his Circus of Crime! Lois thinks Clark is Superman and Metallo is out again!

A lot of the Silver Age stuff falls out of three factors: The Comics Code, the belief that the audience was kids, and the belief that the audience rolls over every four years.

• The Comics Code means there’s a lot of invention (not necessarily good invention) to get around what was forbidden by the Code. (You can find a copy of the 1954 version of the Code in a number of places, like here.) The Code had a couple of requirements that seem to be relevant to me: No horror, no crime; crimes are always punished in the story; no one can profit from a crime.
• The idea that the audience was kids streamlines the stories to (for the most part) down to: “Here is the problem or mystery; here it’s elaborated as they try to solve it; here they make a last attempt that doesn’t work; using the knowledge from that attempt, they solve the problem or puzzle.” You don't do a lot of continuing plots, even though you might have continuing elements. They tend to be more devices or tropes than plots, right. Lois Lane is a bundle of plot engine tropes: she wants to marry Superman, she is terribly jealous, she is nosy about Superman's secret identity.
• The belief that the audience rolled over lead to many versions of the same invention, because the audience wouldn’t know about the earlier stuff. Some of that was already being subverted in the “See ish 255” or whatever captions, and I was astonished at the nascent continuity in Supergirl Vol 2 trade paper. The author was clearly paying attention to the other Superman mags.

So it’s largely SF because the Code outlawed horror/magic stuff — Marvel danced around that later with “zuvembies” and Morbius, the scientific vampire. The Code also required the bad guys to get their comeuppance by the end of the story.

Now, how to translate that into a game.

1. Bad guys don’t kill the heroes and generally don't kill. Mostly they want to get the heroes out of town/the country/the planet.
2. Fun! The stakes tend to be high or miniscule: A comet will destroy the earth or help the young girl who hates superheroes without her knowing it!
3. Real world problems need not apply.
4. Sidekicks were huge, either formal (like Robin) or informal (like Jimmy Olsen). Possibly the best way to handle them in a game environment is to make them NPCs, because they function as a replacement for internal monologues (and well-meaning lectures) and as hostage-of-the-week.
5. Relatively little carry-over from session to session: a criminal’s plot is hatched, seems overwhelming, and is defeated in a single session.
6. Science fiction, not horror or fantasy. (The Code specifically forbade crime and horror comics.) It doesn’t have to be plausible, but it’s got to have an SF veneer. Even Batman spent time on alien planets (see “Robin Dies At Dawn!”)
7. Steal from classic SF for ideas. Robots. Evil twins (oh, man, there are like six ways to be an evil twin of a player character, and if I could come up with an overarching idea, I'd run an adventure with all of them, kind of the Superman Revenge Squad). Alternate dimensions. Psionic powers. Miniaturization. Aliens. Throw in some mecha, too.
8. As a trope, think about including talking gorillas, motorcycles, Atlanteans, an undiscovered forgotten land with monsters.
9. Anything can be a problem to be overcome.

   You want to do Lex Luthor stealing 40 cakes? Okay. The 40 cakes were accidentally made with formitium, which looks like flour. (Miss Tessmacher was making birthday cakes for the gang.) It’s also exceedingly rare, which is why Lex needs those cakes instead of other cakes. He’s going to re-extract the formitium to build a device that will destroy Superman!

More as I think of them. I don't feel like these are actual tools to create a Silver Age feel yet, just suggestions.

Strength and the ICONS benchmarks

SYSTEM: ICONS

I went looking for this information because I was sure I had put it here, transported from my old LiveJournal account.

I had not. I looked up the numbers in 2013, and can no longer remember what, specifically, they represented. So this is ballpark only.

If you're playing ICONS, you're not really concerned with hard numbers, but I played Champions for years and years... So I went and dug up things that the Strength benchmark lists as an example. And these numbers make it easier to eyeball conversions from other systems.

In the spirit of casualness, I always rounded up (I mean, I have a heavy sack as 20 kg, and a couple of heavy sacks as 50 kg). Still, I figured folks might like the numbers. (ICONS does not necessarily map to the real world; it's not meant to. This is so you can make judgements on the fly.)

Some of it is just, what? Weight of a building—what kind of building? Since superhero stories generally take place in New York or a New York analogue, I used the weight bandied about for one of the World Trade Center buildings. Since the next entry is 2x107 bigger, I think that works.

Again: I have no idea if these numbers are even in the one significant figure accuracy, but hey...

Rank	Example	Mass (kg)	Comments
1	Heavy sack	20	Yes, kilograms. I'm Canadian.
2	Child	35
3	Couple of heavy sacks	50
4	Adult man	100
5	Motorcycle	200
6	Car	2,000 (2E3)	These days, a small car is half that, but this is a good value for a large car.
7	Tank	60,000 (6E4)	I think I looked up the weight of an M1 Abrams for this.
8	Jet or train	500 tons (5E5)	A fully-loaded freight train weighs much more than a passenger jet. I think I went with a train here. A fighter jet would be vastly lighter, but you know that's not what they're talking about.
9	Building	500 kilotons (5E8)	Empire State Building? Football stadium? Big, anyway.
10	Mountain	Lots. A hundred million kilotons (1E16)

Investigation in games

SYSTEM: ICONS

This is actually specific to ICONS but it could be adapted for any game with a degrees-of-success mechanic.

Investigation is sort of odd in games. For some games (the various GUMSHOE games, for instance), it's their jam. For other games, it's a roll to give people the info so they can get on to the next encounter.

So you can roleplay the investigation, with the players talking to various characters and hours of playtime can go by, and that's great, if everyone's on board with that.

On the other hand, you can reduce it to a roll or a series of rolls and have a handout or handouts for the players, and it's done quickly. "You spend two hours researching shipping companies, and this is what you get."

Sometimes you want one, sometimes you want the other. And if you're writing an adventure to be played by anyone other than the group you know, then you have to take both mindsets into account.

I don't know if anyone else produces adventures with areas where there are investigation or similar tests. What I've noticed that I have started doing is this:

Topic (whatever the test is about
Difficulty	3 or 5 or whatever
Pyramid test?	No or Optional or Required
Time	How long is this test going to take? Sometimes the time is implicit in the task.
Everybody Knows	This is the background information. Bombs are bad, the Noble family has three kids. You barely have to ask this stuff.
Marginal Success	Do they get information on a marginal success?
Moderate Success	Anything for Marginal Success, plus whatever is here.
Major Success	Anything for the previous two successes, plus whatever is here.
Massive Success	Anything for the previous successes, plus whatever is here.
Consequences	This might be obvious. (Boom or no boom, when disarming a bomb.) But that goes back to something else. If there aren't any consequences, why are you making them roll? If you've got the information listed here, it means two things: There's a consequence to not getting some of it You're okay with them having all of it. Sometimes players roll well, and if you don't want the info to change things, don't make it available. Have it show up only after the computer contacts the alien probe or something.

And...here's an important point...where possible, I list the source they find stuff from, so I can improvise a roleplay investigation if the players are into that. So some stuff is just in the records ("Ten minutes of Googling tells you the basic rules of cabotage in Canada"), some could be tied to a person. ("Mrs. Johnson was the one who saw the ghost.")


Also, I've been looking at Encounter Theory and trying to use that to guide some of the adventures I'm writing now. Anybody else heard of it (Plot Points podcast)?

Thor Ragnarok and being off the scale

SYSTEM: ICONS

Yes, Thor Ragnarok is a fun film that doesn't take itself seriously while demolishing huge swathes of the Thor mythos. There are spoilers galore ahead, as there will be when I finally write up the characters...even though this is mostly about writing up the characters.

This is a movie that moves the scale... so much of it is off the scale. Hela's Strength. Surtur (who is clearly a plot device with a weakness, which Thor takes advantage of at the beginning of the film).

See, when you have these characters in a movie with normal people, then you kinda have to fit them into the range of 8-9-10. Hulk is the strongest one there is, so he's a 10...except Thor generates lightning that knocks him on his butt, and Hela...well, Hela catches and crushes Mjolnir.

Maybe that will get retconned in a later movie as special power that she had over artifacts commissioned by Odin, or she's special because she was the original owner of Mjolnir. Maybe not. But on a normal 1-10 scale, she's probably strength 13 or more (the amped-up Thor is still less than she is). She is just off the scale, and when she gets into Asgard, her power grows (we're told). So Hela might have certain abilities that are just off the scale.

We could just redefine the scale, which you can certainly do: re-define Asgardian nobility as "normal humans" and suddenly Thor becomes a 6, so Hulk is an 8 and Hela is a 10 in Strength...except you don't do bunches of characters like this so they can't interact with characters from other movies...you want them to interact. So redefining the scale doesn't help our ultimate goal of putting all the toys in play. We have to say that she and Surtur are off the scale, or we give them numbers over 10.

For ease of play, I'd probably just say that her Strength is 10, and she has the Quality "Goddess of Death, First-born of Odin" that lets her accomplish things like catching Mjolnir and crushing it.

Her other powers—generating weapons from nowhere (a Slashing/Shooting pair of powers, plus the axe she gives poor Skurge) probably fit into the scale. The giant spike she generates to hold back the spaceship seems to me like a stunt, some kind of Quality like "She and the land are one" being activated and used.

Oddly enough, for a Goddess of Death, she has to use the Eternal Flame to bring the dead back as Minions—she can't just snap her fingers and do it. And I rather expected (with Christopher Yost as one of the scriptwriters) that there'd be some of "every warrior I kill becomes one for my side"...but no.

We probably have to put down a generic Asgardian warrior package, which we can then augment for the Warriors Three. In this movie, they're cannon fodder, but we've seen them in previous films and they're dang good. So your average Asgardian warrior is probably Prowess 5, Coordination 5, Strength 7: Captain America or some other member of the Avengers can out-do them, but they will mow through humans pretty easily. Asgardian nobility are incredibly long-lived, but that doesn't really affect gameplay except when you throw in someone with aging powers.

Whatever that package offers, we up it for Valkyrie: she's strong, her Prowess is high, as high as Thor's or higher, and she's within a point of his Strength, wherever you set it.

Thor swaps out Mjolnir (well, flight, really) for a kick-ass electrical control power that does not seem to include immunity to electricity. (I'm presuming the little control disks are effectively tasers; the jolt they deliver is pretty clearly electricity, so maybe there's a double-talk reason why it works. On the other hand, his lightning fries the Hulk in mid-air, so scientific accuracy isn't at the heart of this film.) When he decides to really be the God of Thunder (well, Lightning), he gets an Aura and some darned powerful Blast...it takes him a turn to re-set his multipower, as it were, but then he's good to go. But that power could be off the scale as well; I choose to believe it was a great roll by Thor's player,

Fenris is probably Growth 9. His main power is being big and intimidating; Growth 9 gives him that and a little space where Hulk can slowly beat him down. (Hmmm. I never thought of Hulk as having Fast Attack, but the thing he does in repeatedly whipping Asgardians around like rag dolls would certainly qualify. Maybe he can only use it when he's established a hold on someone.)

Anyway: when my Thor Ragnarok builds appear, there will be a number of items marked OTS. Hela's off-the-scale powers represent a 15, if you need a number, and Surtur's a 20.

Unless I change my mind by the time I actually write them down.

A Bad Guys Campaign

SYSTEM: ICONS

I know that Steve Kenson has said that Determination is for heroes only. And in general I'm against the idea of a villains campaign. Morally ambiguous, sure, but out and out villains...? Even though there have been good villain things (like Necessary Evil), they tend to be about bad guys being forced to be good guys.

And this weekend I read the first volume of Gail Simone's Secret Six. And a bunch of more broken but still functioning individuals will be hard for you to find. I immediately thought of doing it as a roleplaying campaign, with a similar setup: All the bad guys are forming a coalition. You don't want to. That puts you in their bad books.

Trivial to do in Hero, but I haven't run Hero for a long time. You could do it in Mutants & Masterminds but there's be fluctuating power levels to contend with. You could do it in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying but my guys don't like MHR. Savage Worlds, of course, but I don't have the super powers supplement.

And then I circled back to ICONS, even though I'd dismissed it. Because Steve said that bad guys don't have Determination; he didn't say that they can't get Advantages or Trouble.

So if you were going to use ICONS for a villain campaign, you just don't give them Determination. Any time they need an Advantage, the players have to use a Maneuver or a Tactic.

I haen't thought about how that would affect a campaign, but I'm willing to accept suggestions.

It's something to think about, anyway.

"There are too...many...of them..."

SYSTEM: ICONS

Over in the G+ ICONS community, Hallam Rickett asks about overwhelming numbers, such as Captain America attacking a Hydra base, where there are too many and the heroes end up captured. Steve Kenson already answered but I get to be both more orthodox and less orthodox, so I'll repeat and expand on my answer here.

First of all, what do you want narratively? (I don't think you should dictate everything that happens to your players, but sometimes you want to skip over some non-essential stuff or avoid having it send you into the weeds.) If you really want to do an adventure about how resourceful the heroes are without their gadgets or whatever, then you essentially set the terms and let them go.

In ICONS terms, you narrate the capture ("There are too many of them. When you wake up...") and give them each a Determination point to sweeten it. This sort of thing is (in my experience, as a person who has made many many of the mistakes that gamemasters can make) best done to begin the session or end it. You're framing this session or next session.

However, sometimes you're okay with them winning ("There's only like 200 agents on the island...") but you want it to be unlikely.

The fastest way is to use a pyramid test or two. If you're trying to model the experience of it being tougher after the alarm is sounded, maybe you use two pyramid tests, one representing before the alarm and one representing after. You figure the average difficulty of hitting an agent is 3 or 4, so that's the difficulty of the first test. The second test is harder—the agents are fighting smarter now, so the difficulty is 6 or 7. Everybody can contribute to the pyramid tests, so each one is probably a page or two.

But as variations:

• Use a single long test (requires two massive successes) but it escalates: the difficulty goes up by one every time failure, or every attempt.
• Use a long pyramid test for each player character, rather than having everyone contribute to one pyramid test.
• Use a pyramid test for each area they want to clear out, difficulty determined by the level of the opposition and whether the alarm has been raised.

Another way is to model the agents as a character that represents a horde. Fights take longer than tests, however, so this eats up more of your session.

Look at your individual agent, and fold any weapons or Martial Arts skills into Coordination and Prowess, because we're going for something like speed here even though we've decided to use a fight. Ignore body armor, which you might have lovingly crafted for individual agents, because we're going to abstract it all into Alternate Form Fluid, using the Damage Resistance in that to represent both body armor and that there are many agents.

A horde of agents might be:

Horde of Agents
PRO	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA
4	5	4	3	3	4	8
Powers
Blaster Rifles or whatever they have to attack						6
Alternate Form Fluid Represents that there are lots of agents. Brings Damage Resistance 6, Stretching 6 to represent agents being in lots of places and how destroying some of them doesn't get all of them. Adjust level based on strength of hero attacks and number of agents.						6
Fast Attack, because there are lots of these agents. Assume they can attack twice more; that's a compromise between lots of attacks and time spent rolling dice						8
Regeneration Every 10 pages, the number of agents replenishes because more agents show up						10
Qualities
Horde of agents; every part is a minion but the whole isn't The "Alternate Form Fluid" attribute can be nullified for a page by smart tactics or moves Some quality reflecting the nature of the agents or a special ability

First, unlike what it says in the rules, in this case the Fast Attack doesn't have to be used to Coordinate attacks. You can, maybe you should, but I would say that in this case it doesn't have to be a Coordinated attack.

Second, maybe they have some equivalent to Growth or Wrestling when they get down to grappling with the heroes...individually they might not be strong, but if you get twenty agents hanging off you, well, it might get treated as a much stronger foe.

Third, if you want the agents to be unbeatable unless something smart is done, you say that the PCs have to use Advantages to neutralize the Alternate Form Fluid...the heroes do something smart, it counteracts the damage resistance of the Alternate Form, and the attack can do Stamina damage. Otherwise, the agents are nearly unbeatable if the Alternate Form is set at the same level as the highest PC attack or higher. (I might not count Combining attacks to increase effort as smart on the part of the PCs...depends on the players.)

Again, you might vary it by having each area of the base as a "horde" character, so you have the Lab horde, the Living Quarters horde, the Airfield horde, and so on. And this has the advantage that if some player does something clever, like using the security system to lock various agents in place, you aren't forcing yourself to a fiction that if the one horde character is defeated, they all drop unconscious. Really, you'd claim that the other agents surrendered or something in that case, but this way lets you have them if you need another fight later.

Mystery Men...in ICONS

SYSTEM: ICONS

Someone over in the World of Supers group on Facebook, someone asked for a suggestion on how to do a Mystery Men style campaign, and what system you'd use. I spent some time thinking about what a Mystery Men campaign is. Here's my description, because it bears on how you bend ICONS (or Supers or Mutants & Masterminds) to it:

Heroes with only one or no powers, who strive to do good anyway.

If we look at the movie Mystery Men (who I dimly remember), they were something like:

• The Shoveler, who had a weapon, and probably some skill and a low Super-Speed or Fast Attack related to, uh, shovelling.
• The Bowler, who had one blast that wouldn't miss, but just the one
• The Blue Raja, who could throw silverware
• Mr. Furious, who had super-strength (maybe), keyed on being angry
• The Spleen, who could create, as I recall, a noxious smell
• Invisible Boy, who could become invisible, but I don't recall what made it useless

(I have to work from the movie; I never read the comic.)

In most cases, there's a single power or no power, and some kind of personality defect that makes them, well, largely useless. (A step up from Mystery Men would be the Awesomes, who would be characters with more powers...and personality defects that make them, well, largely useless.) So requirement one is that one of the character's qualities has to describe some personality defect that turns what might be a useful ability or super power into something less useful. I think that's the most important part: it doesn't matter what the powers are, if the personality isn't actually, well, heroic.

Now, those are not particularly strong powers on that list. The strongest is The Bowler's bowling ball, and that's probably at best a level 6 blast. It might be lower, because most or all of the people it knocks out are minions, but we'll say that it's a 6. It has a number of limitations (it's a device, so that might be the Source limitation; she doesn't seem to get Determination for it, so it might be a limitation).

It's relatively easy to say, oh, only zero to one powers; additional powers have to be extras on the first power. (It's kind of like a theme, which is an idea I explored earlier.) You have to change the character creation process, but that was pretty much a given as soon as we tightened the kind of campaign it was. So most characters have zero or one power. If you need extras, you take limits. A limit can offset an extra or add 2 to the level or offset the power's "cost" when figuring determination. There are two possibilities on power level: the power level is restricted in the game, or it isn't, but the benchmarks have been changed.

If there's a limit on power level, the limit seems like it might be level 4, and there's only one power. Higher levels are possible by taking limitations. So the limitation Source turns a level 4 into level 6. The super-speed that the Shoveler has is level 1, but the limitation might raise it to level 3. (Or maybe it's Fast Attack level 3.) Or maybe the benchmarks have been changed...each level does, oh, half of what it normally does.

The last thing that might need to be changed is Determination. In regular ICONS, Determination plays a large part in letting characters with fewer powers be as effective as characters with more powers...you figure your Determination by subtracting the number of powers from 6. Well, since these characters are actually less effective, you have at best one power. Instead of figuring the determination as the result of a subtraction from 6, what you subtract from is 2. You never have less than 1 Determination, so it's not awful if you have an extra. (Well, I suppose for a true loser experience, you could have less than 1 Determination, but I'm not going to play with that rule today.) Instead, if you have extras, maybe you have to think about limitations that offset the Determination cost.

What I might do in ICONS, then, is:

• The character requires a quality that makes them ludicrous
• Powers are limited to 4 at best, though higher levels are possible by applying limits
• A character has only one power, though additional powers are possible as extras to the main power
• Determination is changed.

Pyramid tests

SYSTEM: ICONS

This post is inspired by gaming the other night, but it also harkens back to a post by Hallam Rickett in the G+ ICONS group. (I am, in fact, quite blatantly stealing my answer there as part of this post.)

A pyramid test is a series of tests whose results add up to a massive success. In the default case, marginal successes don't count. Two moderate successes add up to a major success; two major successes add up to a massive success. There are changes that can be wrung from it (failures take away successes, marginal successes count, somebody's competing against you, you need two massive successes, and so on) but that's the basic idea. Little successes add up to a big success.

When you're the GM setting one up, it's important to remember that these are successes adding up. The pyramid test is not a place where sixteen failures add up to a major success. (There might be a place for that mechanic, but Steve Kenson hasn't written it yet.) No, a pyramid test calls for:

• something the characters can succeed at
• where normally there would be a series of rolls
• for a single objective

If it's just a task where you're going to call for a series of rolls to see if they find the girl, the gold watch, and everything else in the adventure, why not make it a single roll, with the extra stuff for extra degrees of success? Or, if all that stuff is independent or in different locations, have a series of rolls, or if the stuff is actually necessary, ask them to pay an Advantage or take Trouble for each one.

No, a pyramid test has a clearly-defined objective or goal. You need to get into the high-security building, or win the hearts of the townspeople, or defuse the nuclear weapon. You might know what the different parts of the task are or you might not; the pyramid test abstracts them a bit so you see whether the characters achieve it.

I think of a pyramid test as being all one kind of roll, but it doesn't have to be. It might be like a challenge in 4th edition D&D, where you describe what you're doing and how it helps the chore. Maybe it's a pyramid test to get into the high-security base, but first Psimian uses his illusions power to make the gate keeper open the gate, and then Vi uses her hacking abilities to disable the sensors, and Typeface imitates the general to get the patrols out of the way, and whenever the successes add up to a massive success, they're in.

The one thing you have to be prepared for in a pyramid test is a fabulously successful roll (a massive success in one roll) or a fabulously awful roll (a massive failure doing something that ought to have repercussions). Let's say that Psimian above gets a massive success right away...well, then the gate keeper gives them security passes, under the impression that the player characters are different people. (Which could never happen with a character named Psimian... Okay, tongue out of cheek.)

Here are some other ideas.

Stopping that swarm of killer bees

A swarm of genetically enhanced bees is loose, and the players have to collect them (or squash them). The difficulty for this is 6, because the bees are small and dispersed. Normal pyramid test and each success is bees trapped. No real penalty for failure. All can participate in whatever way they can contribute. Some will find butterfly nets, others coffee cans, still others will use their powers stunted for burst.

Finding where they're holding the kidnapped President

This test is difficulty 5, but it's timed. If this takes more than 5 pages, SKULL will know and the difficulty for security will be +2 higher. Some players find contacts and try Willpower tests of intimidation, others work together for hacking specialty tests, and still others follow the payments and use Business skill. The players don't see any failure, but if it takes more than 5 pages, getting into SKULL headquarters will be difficulty 7 instead of 5.

Getting into SKULL headquarters to rescue the President

An alternate way to make it tough to get in. This starts at difficulty 3. The players have to disable or evade outer security, defeat electronic security, get inside, and avoid internal security. Because of the chance that SKULL will notice, this is an escalating test: every failure notifies SKULL that there's a problem, and adds +1 to the difficulty.

By-passing the mental traps left by the evil psionic

There are a number of traps, but the mind is resilient, and the President's psyche is more aligned to the new direction, so this is deep. Even a marginal success helps.

Clearing the town from the oncoming flood

If you have a speedster, maybe this is just a straight pyramid test. Each test represents finding a group of people and getting them out. If you don't have a speedster, maybe it's tougher than that. Perhaps it's a collapsing test: every other page, they lose the equivalent of a major success. One person can't do it—so the team has to work together. Or maybe it's just a way to get into the story, so the test is short .... it only requires a cumulative major success. If the town is very large, maybe it's long and requires two massive successes.

Running a foot race

The speedster and the paragon decide to have a race for charity. Because this is opposed (and it's for charity), this test will be competitive. Whoever gets to a massive success first, wins.

Finding the plans on the computer system

The players need to find the plans that describe what the evil organization is doing. The GM has determined that they'll only get a certain amount of information; success lies in not triggering the "self-flagellation protocol." So even if they do really well, it just means they haven't triggered the protocol, which will wipe out all information in the system, including the controls necessary to open the doors and get out. A set number of failures will be a real failure.

Training the monster

One player character adopts the genetic experiment they found in the bad guy base (PURITY88, why not) but needs to train it. It's got a mind of its own, and as played so far it isn't really amenable to training. It's difficult, difficulty 5 (which happens to be the genetic experiment's Willpower), and the character can only make one Willpower roll a day to represent a training session. (The character might want to claim that it takes twice as long for a training session, if the GM will give a +1 bonus.) If the GM wants to make it even harder, every failure by more than 2 increases the difficulty by 1.

Romancing the stone

Most players don't want to act out the whole romance thing, especially when both of them are sweaty hairy men who don't find each other attractive. (If they do find each other attractive, that's different.) Instead, you can abstract it with a pyramid test. "In your secret identity, you embark on a series of little things to make Dana be willing to date you. This is just a subplot, so you can do two each session."

Disasters in ICONS

SYSTEM: ICONS

Here's the setup for Wednesday's episode of the ICONS Drop-In:

According to the 911 calls, a few minutes ago someone picked up a city block and then dropped it, snapping things like electric lines, water pipes, and gas lines. Emergency vehicles are on the way--injuries, fires, and floods. Was it done by a supervillain, old or new? Or someone who just got powers and hasn't learned to control them?

I haven't run disasters in the Assembled edition of ICONS before. After reading through the advice in ICONS and in ICONS A-Z, here's how I figure I'm going to run it.

There are really four large-scale emergencies on the block:

1. Fires from the ruptured gas mains
2. Flooding from the broken water pipes (and that will also impede attempts to fight the fires)
3. Power blackout in the area
4. Medical emergencies from the previous

Other things might be there, too, but we're not spending the whole night on rescues...only the first of three hours. So yes, I'll toss in a couple of vehicular accidents or the possibility of someone driving into the dark area, but I am not trying to give an encyclopaedic article on possible disasters for superheroes.

I'm going to ignore the electrical stuff, and count that as something that makes the other tasks more difficult. (It's night-time, the only light is the light that seeps from the surrounding blocks in the direction of the transformer station or from fires. That makes the first problem finding people for rescuing.

Also, I'm going to take a hint from ICONS A-Z and offer players multiple "rescue panels." Mechanically, this is a lost panel of Trouble, but frankly, it feels much more heroic to get Determination by helping than to say it was paparazzi.

Medical emergencies I'm going to handle on a case-by-case basis, depending on who shows up and what they play. (If someone chooses to play the speedster, there might be medical emergencies.)

Floods will be straight pyramid tests, difficulty 5. There are torn mains on all four sides of the block (which is eight pipe ends, but only three of them are currently gushing water; there's a main feed and two side feeds. Restoring water function is worth more than just stopping the flood, but I'm not going to penalize anyone for not doing either: it would take inspired thinking on the part of Hawkeye, Shang-Chi and Daredevil to do it.

Fires are a more complicated pyramid tests. Because the heroes show up fast, the fire test starts at difficulty 4, and escalates: every failure increases the difficulty by one, up to a maximum difficulty of 7. (A really clever idea or result could lower the difficulty, I suppose.) The test is also costly: Any failure causes an Affliction test (heat and smoke inhalation) at the same level as the fire's difficulty. (Making them costly is an idea that comes from ICONS A-Z.)

I'm going to let the session guide me as to whether or not other people need to make Affliction tests, or need to make them more often than the players.

I don't care if characters collaborate on the pyramid tests or not.

Now, what the tests actually represent will come from the session. The main thing is rescuing people. Maybe they'll also be about fixing things, but maybe the whole pyramid test is about finding people trapped in the rubble before the water gets to them. Fires, same thing: it's great if they have the powers to stop the fire, but I'll settle for rescuing people.

Team Hero!

SYSTEM: ICONS

Team Heroes, a team of super-powered teenagers

If you need them, a set of rivals who are all teenagers (all have the extra quality “Teenager”). You can calculate Determination if you want to use these as player characters. EDIT: Amended to add some details about the characters.

Team Qualities

• Like We Practiced!
• Ready Or Not, Here We Come!
• We Get No Respect (From Old Folks)

Membership

Aria started the group with Gateway. Growth Spurt joined after that, and then Identity Thief and Argus. Backspace came last.

In a game, they can either shame your players into developing maneuvers and team qualities, or provide relief to be rescued. (Team Qualities are rather a new discovery for me, despite them being in the rulebook from the very beginning. But I wanted to do something on the lines of "the lesser-powered heroes who work together." I haven't actually come up with tactics for them, but the "Like We Practiced!" Quality can generate advantages they can all use.)

Aria (Chloe Simpson)

Chloe is straightforward. She is the child of..."supervillains" would be too strong a word; her current view is "powered losers." (Family problems are a theme here.) She has family members who were heroes, too, and has a strong connection with her aunt, the former Slinky Siren ("the stretchable seductress!"). Unfortunately, her aunt lives in New Zealand now, so they can only communicate over the internet.

Expect trouble if her parents ever pull on the old Spandex (and Spanx) and show up at a crime scene to take her home.

Aria (Chloe Simpson)
PRW	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	8
3	4	3	4	3	5	Leadership (+1)
POWERS					QUALITIES
Sound Control (Blast) 5 Extra: Burst Extra: Flight Limit: Exclusive Extra: Force Field 5					"You can't stand idly by!" Family history of parahumans This is the family I always wanted Teenager

Identity "ID" Thief (Laverne Bostich)

Laverne is named after her uncle, Laverne. She is confused about gender and sexual attraction, a confusion that's only exacerbated because as a shape-shifter, gender and shape are conveniences for her, and she has switched her look for school to be more androgynous while she figures things out. Or rather, she doesn't want to be whatever she was born as, but she's not sure what she wants to be.

She doesn't try more extreme body modification yet (like Stretching or other kinds of Transform) but I could imagine a sequence where those become addictive until she figures out how she wants to live her life.

In the group, she tends to be the infiltrator, having the ability to absorb Specialties also, and a kind of utility player. No, she never duplicates anyone strong (she just doesn't have enough Mimicry for that to be worthwhile), but she can grow along with Spurt if they need some extra muscle, or something that seems useful from the other side.

ID has also been known to change into someone from the opposing side, take their powers as well as their identity, and sow disruption that way.

Identity Thief (Laverne Bostich)
PRW	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	7
4	3	3	4	5	4	Performance [Acting] Expert (+2)
POWERS					QUALITIES
Transform (Humanoids) 4 Stunning vs Strength 6 Power Mimicry 5 Extra: Specialties Limit: Preparation					Doesn’t like to be herself Family problems Gender confused Teenager

Backspace (Stan Joseph)

Stanley Joseph Lieberman was a scientist whose specialty was temporal mechanics. (With superheroes around, that's a heck of a specialty.) His best days (which, if he admitted, were not that great) were behind him, and the Valentine's Day before he turned 65 and faced mandatory retirement, he was sitting there, depressed, about having ruined his life.

And then he realized that there was enough confiscated supervillain technology in his lab to fix that.

He was actually trying to go back and change history, but that's not what happened. Instead, he came out of it as a fourteen year old, as he had been fifty years before, but with powers. Time researchers set up contingencies in case they're transported to another era, or turned into babies, so he had access to his money. He withdrew it and disappeared, to become the new Stan Joseph.

He has some trouble remembering the place of teenagers in the social hierarchy; there seem to be a lot more restrictions than it looked like from age 64. And he loathes teachers lecturing him about physics.

He can now "undo" certain kinds of damage or some powers (GM's call as to which) but once he undoes a certain amount of damage, he has to get rid of the accumulated "alternate reality energy," generally as an Affliction. At the GM's discretion, the use of Neutralize might "fill up" the Affliction tank as well, but that seems a bit restrictive. An appropriate trouble when needed, though.

In combat, he's more a thinker than a fighter, but he heals his teammates or bystanders as soon as he can, and then he's able to do some actual help. When someone needs to puzzle out the evil bad guy device, it's usually Argus and Backspace who do it.

Backspace (Stan Joseph)
PRW	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	7
4	4	3	5	3	4	Science Expert (+2)
POWERS					QUALITIES
Time powers ("Undo"): Healing 5 Limit: Healing "fills" the Affliction tank; after healing 10 Stamina, can't do any more until Affliction is released. Extra: Neutralize (to “undo” powers like Duplication or Affliction) Affliction 10 Limit: Level of Affliction limited to amount of healing done Immortality 1 Extra: Regeneration 1					Problems with authority Secret: Old person reborn Temporal scientist Teenager

Gateway (Franz Guttierez)

Since he was about ten, Franz has had this problem: if there's a problem, he appears there....with everyone who was near him. He can't turn that part off; everyone in range comes with him. He gets around it by running to be alone at the first intimations that it's going to happen.

Given that he never knows where he's going, Franz is actually pretty easy-going. He can get along with lots of people, even if he doesn't speak their languages (he's gotten pretty good at miming things) and he's a killer at trivia nights. He's also a novelty hog, always looking for something new to do, read, see, or be.

He doesn't have a choice about whom he takes with him (that's why the extra is Burst instead of Passengers), but he doesn't get teleport-sick, and he's mastered he part of teleportation where he lets just his hand apport into someone and then bounce out, while they get hurt. The group generally uses him for transportation, but he can defend himself.

Gateway (Franz Guttierez)
PRW	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	8
5	4	4	4	4	4	Performance[Acting] (+1), Athletics (+1)
POWERS					QUALITIES
Teleport 7 Extra: Burst Extra: Accurate Limit: Extras always Limit: Troubleseeker Stunning (vs Will) 7 Limit: Close Range (+2, figured in)					People person Knows something about everything "Hey, try this!" Teenager

Growth Spurt “Spurt” (Dylan Connor)

At thirteen, Dylan is a scrawny small kid. But Dylan can grow...not in an adulting way, but rather get big. And when Dylan gets big, Dylan is tough and strong. (Dylan usually chooses to go full growth, but sometimes that's not advised in the current area. They've already had the scene where Dylan sinks into the marsh and has to shrink back to normal and be teleported away.)

Raw strength is fun for Dylan.

Growth Spurt (Dylan Connor) or "Spurt"
PRW	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	12/6
4	5	8/2	3	5	4	Athletics (+1), Performance[Music] (+1)
POWERS					QUALITIES
Growth 8 Get -2 to Defense & hiding, Damage Resistance 8, Str 8, "Large" quality Alteration Resistance 6					Short & scrawny Trying to impress Clumsy Teenager

Argus (Tori Vivaldi)

Tori has always, always known about machines. In fact, Tori had to study computer programming harder than anyone else because it was so easy to just make the computer do the right thing. Machines are Tori's friends.

People... well. Tori discovered Team Hero while cruising the Internet and looking through people's webcams (Tori has an amazingly broad knowledge of human behaviour and is somewhat cynical because of it). Tori arranged for them to get some money and have the truancy warrant on Backspace reversed (Tori figured out who Backspace is, but hasn't told Stan) and then set about doing favours for the group in order to join.

Tori is more comfortable staying behind and being the "guy in the chair" but that isn't always possible. (Tori should probably also have Gadgets. Maybe in the future.)

Argus (Tori Vivaldi)
PRW	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	7
4	4	3	5	3	4	Computer Programming Expert (+2)
POWERS					QUALITIES
Technopath: Machine Control 5 Extra: Interface 5 Extra: ESP (Limit: Medium, video systems) Force Field (Device) 4 Limit: Level Duration (+2, figured in) Invisibility 5 Limit: Machines only (+2, figured in)					"Privacy" and "ownership" are foreign concepts Nerd, for good and bad "I need...friends." Teenager

A clarification about stunting in ICONS

SYSTEM: ICONS

So over on Facebook, I asked, in a long-winded way, this:

Looking for a clarification here.

Do extras on a stunted power cost additional Determination points or Advantages? (That is, stunting a power with an extra costs 2 DP, and requires two Qualities activated.)

The situation is that I was playing a phased character, and I wanted to simulate the gag of "hurt someone by turning solid inside them." I figured I needed to stunt the Blast, so that was fine--I had one Determination point, so I stunted off the Phasing and had a Quality that was appropriate. But I needed the "Affects Solid while Phased" extra, and I would have liked the "Burst" extra as well. (I was looking for a way to destroy an item from the inside.) So I needed to stunt a complex power: a new power with two extras.

• Does it require three DP/Advantages to do this? Or just one, stunting a power will the extras involved?
  
  In the moment, I spent the DP, did a maneuver, and took Trouble for the last one (because I failed the second maneuver roll--I stunted Slashing instead of Blast, and took damage from the explosion.
• Do Limits offset Extras when stunting a complex power like this? (Normally, a stunted power lasts until the end of the chapter, according to my imperfect memory, but I guess you could make requiring a new stunt/DP into a Limit for this purpose.) Inventing Limits didn't occur to me in the moment.
  Also, if it requires multiple DP/Advantages, they have to activate separate Qualities in order for them all to go off in the same panel, right?

And Steve Kenson answered back:

Generally speaking, the answer is no, stunts involving powers with extras generally don't require a character have advantage more than once or cost more than 1 Determination Point, although the GM is free to make exceptions for extremely powerful or unusual stunts. In my opinion, worrying about balancing all of the "moving parts" of a stunt is more work than is needed in the midst of game play.

Unsolicited advice

Over in the G+ ICONS community, Jonata Sodre asked a question about novice heroes and adventures. I mis-interpreted the question and provided this, which might be of interest to others.

In ICONS, the Determination Points mechanism overcomes most of the problems from point imbalance. (I have not played enough Supers! REd to be sure if competency dice do the same thing, but I suspect they might.)

If you want the opposition to be easier and more suitable to beginning characters, I might consider doing some or most of these. Some of these are specific to ICONS, some are general to superhero games.

1. When looking at the characters before-hand, try to guide them away from things that will require lists or designing on the fly. So Transformation (Animals) is not great (though you can use the list of animals in the rulebook), Summoning (from Great Power) might be a hassle (because you have to design the summoned beast). Summoning is much easier to use when it's duplicating Animate....you guess at the stats of the animated thing, and go.
   
2. Use minions. If there are bunches of disposable henchpeople with the minion rule, the heroes can clean them up, and be demonstrably effective (good for player morale).
3. Make sure that the opposition has no damage resistance or force field, or if there is one, it's very low...level 1, 2, or 3. That's enough that no one will ask why the police didn't handle it, but low enough that a Strength 4 crimefighter who is punching should still do a little damage every hit.
   
4. Make the final fight with a single opponent. Then the players act once each and the villain acts once (on each page). That makes it much easier for the player characters to win.
   
5. Try and have something for every player to do, in the adventure. If the characters are created with point-buy, the abilities are hints as to what the players want to do. Somebody who bought Investigation as a specialty probably wants to investigate something at some point. In the same way, look at the Qualities as hints about the story things they want. The character design isn't always a clue—some people put stuff in there for completeness' sake, or "just because"—but it might be a clue.
   
6. Remind the players that they can try and find out the villain's Qualities, and that those Qualities can help bring down the villain. (If they can't figure out how to do it, give them more hints, and don't charge them Determination for it.)
   
7. At the same time, don't go nuts with creating Qualities. Sometimes, just rolling some dice to do it (technically, a maneuver) is sufficient. Sometimes you don't even have to roll dice: "Okay, your fire blast sets it on fire. The propane tank explodes." Or, "I want to hit him and knock him off balance." "You're stronger than he is, so just roll Prowess, and if you do, he's off-balance. Everyone can take advantage of that this page."
   
8. If you can't think of how to do something in the game, say, "Sure, it'll cost you a Determination Point" and charge them a Determination Point, rather than stalling the game by looking it up. (I mean, it's better to know the stuff, but it's okay to have been wrong if everyone has fun. You can do it right next time.) If the player doesn't have a Determination Point, trade them Trouble or have them roll something.
   
9. For beginning players and characters, simple is usually better. The thief is stealing hawk things, they there's a display of Egyptian hawk jewelry at the museum tonight, and the villain turns out to be an Egyptian god who is seeking the Staff of Horus. Fight ensues. The players lose or win; if they lose, they've learned Qualities that will help them win; if they win, that's great. Adventure's over. Yes, you can complicate it by having the villain be an  assistant to the Egyptian god and now they really have to face him, but do you need to?
   
10. I always find the secret identity stuff fun. If you do, too, have a little bit happen for each secret identity. Someone important is leaving, someone has arrived and the hero has to look after them, whatever...but not too much. That kind of stuff is the most fun for the player, and other people are just watching.
    
11. Something I found useful when playing online was to have everyone make old-style ICONS rolls (1d6-1d6), apply that to the power or ability, and get some idea of it relative to the villain. Then the GM (me) doesn't have to roll dice often (you don't have to go all the way to "players do all the rolls") and can pay attention to other parts of the game. So as GM I'd roll for a surprise attack, or for some NPC using a specialty or attacking, but I don't care if the player rolls for the NPC they're attacking. Just saves time for me, but you might not find it so.
    

That's not so much about making the adventure easier as it is general tips, but I hope it helps. Those work for me, and I hope they work for you.

Things I forget in ICONS

Hey, folks. Sorry I've been away; chemotherapy is really busting my butt these last couple of weeks. What I thought was that it was like antibiotics...I'd start, and I'd feel better and better, and eventually we'd be done. Unfortunately, chemotherapy is more like they're trying to kill you and they hope the cancer dies first. So until you're done, you keep getting worse. Still, past the midway point.

SYSTEM: ICONS
Anyway, there are a couple of rules in ICONS that I rarely act on, mostly because I skimmed them on my first read and didn't catch them until recently.

• Automatic hitbacks So when anyone tries to hit your character with Prowess or Coordination and the result is a massive failure, you automatically succeed in hitting back, if that's plausible. (ICONS Assembled, pages 43, 138, 139) In the case of a Dodge (using Coordination), it's a bit more limited...throw back thrown projectiles...but it's there. Your high Prowess or Coordination hero can attack multiple heroes in this way without stunting Burst.
• Villains spending Determination When a villain would spend a Determination point (from a power or usually from stunting; Steve Kenson is quite clear on the fact that only heroes have Determination, but some power descriptions include Determination), the affected player gets the Determination. That I remembered. But if the villain uses a maneuver or a tactic to get the Advantage, then the player doesn't get the Determination, because the villain has already paid the "cost" of the Advantage. Good to know.
• Buying vehicles When I looked at Vehicles and the Vehicles power in the various Justice Wheels supplements from Fainting Goat, I realized that the Assembled version of a vehicle would be a reskinned Servant power. While Servant grants you a pool of points to buy Prowess, Strength, Coordination, and any powers, a Vehicles version would give you a pool of points to buy Handling, Speed, and Structure, a movement power (Flight, Aquatic, Burrowing, or Super-Speed), and any other powers. Stealing from the Justice Wheels power, the default number of passengers is 2, and you can spend a point for each extra five passengers. (No, you don't get points for saying 1 passenger only.)
• Old Elemental Control vs. New Element Control As originally written, Element Control had five possible descriptors; you got two and the rest could be bought as Extras(we would call them now): Attacking, Defending, Moving, Creating, and Shaping. Creating is now assumed (that is, it's a Limit if you can't create your element or energy). Attacking, Defending, and Moving are usually obvious Effects (probably Blast, Force Field or Resistance, and Telekinesis, but certain behaviours might call for something different). But that darn Shaping has always been an issue for me. However... There are two options:
  • Just call out Shaping as an Extra. You're the GM, of course you can do it.
  • The book Great Power contains the extra "Force Constructs" for Force Control, and I see no reason why you couldn't apply the Extra "<Material> Constructs" to your power to signify creating earth walls or water walls or force walls or darkness walls or whatever. (The Extra is also how you might do the old Champions power "Force Wall".)

ICONS as you go

System: ICONS

Had a weird idea yesterday. What if you created your pseudo-random ICONS character as you played the game? Like, the first time you needed to punch someone, you rolled to see what your Prowess and Strength were for the rest of the game?

Here's how I imagine it would work. Until the character is created, you can't swap specific powers for generic ones.

1. Pick your origin. You could roll it, too, but this is still going to have lots of randomness and less chance to fix it.
2. As you need an ability, such as Strength or Coordination, you roll for it using the levels chart. (When you get hit, you have to roll Strength and Willpower if they don't exist yet, because those determine your Stamina.)
3. When you need a power, you roll for it. You don't roll the type of power; that's decided by the situation. "I'm about to be hit; I need something defensive" or "Can I change form?"
4. Instead of the Number of Powers table, you have a Number of Powers target number. When you roll over that in rolling for the type of power, then you have no more powers. The Number of Powers target number starts at 14, and drops by three every time you roll for a power. Your origin modifies the number, not the number of powers you have, so Birthright adds 3 to the target number. So the first power has a TN of 14, then 11, then 8, then 5, and then 2. So you're almost guaranteed two powers, but have to be lucky to get six.
5. You get 2 Specialties  by choice, but you can trade a lower Target Number for 2 specialties.
6. Qualities are created as-needed or at the end of character creation.
7. You get to trade one power for a more generic power.
8. You can trade a power for an extra when you roll the power.

How does that look?

Point buy in ICONS

SYSTEM: ICONS

ICONS isn't really a point-buy game--it's a random-roll character creation game. But it does include a point-buy option that isn't terrifically well explained. But point-buy is useful for some online games, at least until the GM is comfortable with how Determination Points balance things.

So I thought I'd give a shot at explaining point-buy. This is based on information I've picked up from Mr. Kenson's posts on the ICONS Yahoo group and G+ and elsewhere. The caveat is that I might be wrong, and I hope someone more knowledgeable will correct me. I'll try to keep this post up to date as I'm corrected.

If you don't have a copy of the rules, you might want to pick up a free copy of the hero character creation quicksheet, from DriveThru or RPGNow.

The Basics

Everything costs one point per rank. Prowess 7 is 7 points. Specialty Law (Master: +3) is 3 points. The Power Danger Sense 1 is 1 point. With the exception of Extras and Limits, to total the point cost of a character, you add up all the rank values.

Bob Average
Prowess	3	Specialties
Coordination	3
Strength	3	Powers
Intellect	3
Awareness	3
Willpower	3

So Bob Average costs 18 points. Bob Specialist (the same guy with one specialty) would be 19 points.
Here's Bob Guard, who has some points in powers as devices:

Bob Guard
Prowess	3	Specialties
Coordination	3	Law
Strength	3	Powers
Intellect	3	Pistol (Shooting)	3
Awareness	3	Nightstick (Strike)	4
Willpower	3

He's a whopping 26 points: 18 for the attributes, 1 for the specialty, and 7 for the powers.

The catch is Extras and Limits. They add a lot of versatility, but they muck up the accounting some.

Extras

An Extra is something you add on to a power. For the most part, Extras are the same rank as the power they're based on. An Extra on a power that's rank 1 is also Rank 1. An Extra on a power that's rank 9 is also rank 9. For many of the extras, rank doesn't matter, because the benefit of the extra is binary: it affects phased items or doesn't, for example. Still, in point-buy, that means that it costs the same as the original power. Leaping 9 + Extra: Defensive is 9+9=18 points.

Here's Bob Extra:

Bob Extra
Prowess	3	Specialties
Coordination	3	Law
Strength	3	Powers
Intellect	3	Shotgun (Shooting) Extra: Burst	5
Awareness	3	Nightstick (Strike)	4
Willpower	3

Without the extra, he'd be 28 points (18 attributes, 1 specialty, 9 powers). With the extra, he's 33 points. Yup. With extras, your character can get expensive, fast. But you can't really do Burst other than as an extra. (Okay, you can stunt the extra if you only need it occasionally.)

For convenience in calculating, I generally put the rank of the extra beside it, so it becomes Extra: Burst 5.

The Extra: Effect adds a power, and the rank is still the same as the original power. Force Field 4 + Extra: Telekinesis 4 is 4+4=8 points. Now, in point buy, there isn't so much reason to use a power as an extra....you can just say you have the power at whatever level you can afford....unless the power also has a limit.

Limits

A Limit is a limitation on a power. When you apply a limitation to a power, you have a choice. The limitation has one of these three effects:

• Raises the rank of the power by +2
• Reduces the cost of the power for figuring Determination
• Cancels the cost of an extra on that power

We'll concentrate on that third one for now. (When you're submitting your character to your GM, please let them know which use of a limitation you're going for. Otherwise, they might do the math differently.)

Why?

Why would you do this? Given that you have pretty much total control in a point-buy situation, why would you make any power an extra?

To cancel out the cost with a limitation.

Back to the Topic

A couple of things to note:

• You can put limitations on an Extra: Effect
• If the power has no extra, then you can't cancel out the cost of the extra.

That is, it's okay to do this:

Telekinesis	5
Extra: Force Field Limit: Temporary

The cost for the kit and caboodle? 5 points, because the Limitation cancels the cost of the extra.
Clear it with your GM, but I think this way of writing makes it clear that the Force Field has the Temporary limitation, not the TK power.

To be clear: If you wrote the power this way, the limitation would still cancel the cost of the extra:

Telekinesis Limit: Temporary	5
Extra: Force Field

The rules aren't clear, but I'd interpret that as meaning that the Temporary limitation applies to the Telekinesis and pretty much every Extra on it, including the Force Field. (Feel free to correct me, and if you get agreement otherwise from your GM, that trumps everything.)

More Examples

Telepathy

4

Cost: 4

Telepathy Extra: Rangeless 4

4

Cost: 8

Telepathy Extra: Rangeless 4	4
Telekinesis Limit: Close Range	4

Cost: 12 (8+4, and limit is given to making the Determination cost 0 on Telekinesis)

Telepathy Extra: Rangeless 4	4
Extra: Telekinesis Limit: Close Range	4

Cost: 8 (because the Limit cancels out the cost of the Telekinesis extra)

I don't think that's a complete discussion, but it includes a number of areas that seem to cause difficulty. I'll expand as necessary.

The Cornucopia Powers

Sometimes you are looking at a character with something in mind, and you think, "Hey, five powers (six if you got lucky with your origin) aren't enough!"

Yes, there is stunting, and frankly, all you need to stunt is an Advantge and there are several ways to get those. But there are a couple of powers that are meant to duplicate any other power that's reasonable for your fictional description.

Now, I'm not talking about Cosmic Power. Cosmic Power was a pretty wide-open power when ICONS was first released, but with the Assembled Edition, it's mostly just a slutty power description that will take any extra. "I have Cosmic Power...and I'll take Aquatic as an extra, and Animal Control." No, once upon a time, Cosmic Power was truly an opportunity for every power, but not now.

No, the two powers that really are meant for duplicating powers are Gadgets and Magic. (A slight change to Magic has made it encompass the "old" Cosmic Power.)

One of the things I liked about Mike Lafferty's Recluse write-up was the use of Gadgets to cover the web-shooters: Swinging was Gadgets 3, Binding was Gadgets 7 (I'm making up the ranks), and it allowed the web-shooters to do all the things they do in the comics.

Obviously, if you spend a Determination point, you don't need the attribute test. (It's not clear, but I suspect an Advantage works here as well as a Determination point. The rules only call out Determination points, though.)

The biggest disadvantage to both of them (I think--I don't have the rulebook handy) is that you don't pick a power that they emulate by default. (You do for Cosmic Power, for instance.)

Both require a page of preparation, but you can buy that off with an Extra: No Preparation.

Gadgets requires an Intellect roll against the rank of the device you have or are building. Swinging 2 is an Intellect test against 2. Binding 4 is an Intellect test against 4, and so on. Obviously, if you're naked on an island with nothing but fish skeletons and sand, the GM might deny you the use of your Gadgets ability.

Magic is a little more versatile and a touch more complex. When you get the power, you define the attribute that you roll against (Will is common, but it might be Awareness; Flex Mentallo might use Strength) and you get to define a specialty that will help, such as Occult, Power Ring Usage, or Muscle Mastery. However, Magic also has the Performance limit: you have to speak the spell, gesture with your ring, or pose magnificently. (You can buy that off with another extra, if you want.)

Magic offers Mastery, which Gadgets does not (officially): Mastery essentially means buying the power as an Extra, and then you don't have to worry about preparation or performance for that Mastery. Still, it's expensive from a point view, and it starts to look like Cosmic Power is a reasonable bet, then.

So if you're thinking that the problem with ICONS is not enough powers, try Gadgets or Magic.

• Gadgets: Intellect roll, page of preparation.
• Magic: A [choose one] attribute roll and a Specialty, page of preparation, and performance.

Endurance

In one of his blog posts (https://adeptpress.wordpress.com/2015/05/10/a-hero-gets-tired/#more-871), Ron Edwards talks about have fighting is tiring, and how he doesn't see that in comic books after 1980. (Read the post. I found it interesting.)

Champions used to emulate that by having powers and Strength cost END, 1 END per 5 points of power or strength used. A normal person (hah!) had enough endurance to punch ten times, more when you counted recovery in. As a Champions player, I used to find ways to work around END cost, even if I couldn't buy it to zero, I had lots of things on charges or whatever.

Edwards' main argument seems to be that END is realistic--fighting is fatiguing, which I remember from Days of Yore, when I practiced karate. But while comic RPGs don't need to deal with realism (Hello? Flying guys and telekinetic women?), they do need to deal with verisimilitude.

Comics as they are today mostly ignore endurance. ICONS ignores endurance.

But...

If you would find the game more interesting if there were an Endurance kind of stat that made you tired in a linear way, rather than as an arbitrary "He gets away because you're exhausted, have a Determination Point" way--maybe you're playing an all martial artist game--here are some ideas. (This scenario is interesting to me only in an abstract way, so I can't guarantee that the ideas are good.)

Tiring by Default

All powers (including Strength) have the limitation "Tiring." Using a power costs two stamina. If you can fly with chi powers and punch, that's four stamina right there,

It's not linear, but it has the advantage of being right within the rules as written. It also means that fights are going to be short, unless everyone's going to be saving their determination to refresh stamina (or buying Healing or Stamina, if you allow that).

New Stat

The easiest way is to go for a new derived stat. ICONS has two, Stamina and Determination. We add Endurance to that, and make it five times your Stamina. So Dim Mak has a strength of 5 and a will of 6, he has a Stamina of 11 and an Endurance of 55. But the cost for a power has to switch. Instead, the cost is the point cost for that ability. So if Dim Mak is just punching (strength 5), that's 5 points of endurance. But if he's clearing out the room of mooks (strength with the Burst extra, to get all of them), that's 10 I points of endurance: 5 of strength, 5 of Burst. (Limitations would take away, but the minimum cost for using a power is 1.)

The extra "Zero End" might exist in this version of the system.

New Limitation

This combines them, and lets you roll dice, as well. It is not as linear as the new stat--I haven't worked out the math yet--but can be considerably more punishing than the "Tiring" limitation. You put a limitation--call it "Uncontrollably Tiring"--on the power. Whenever you use the power, roll 2D6 versus the number of ranks of power. If you roll over the number of ranks, you're fine. If you roll under, you lose that many ranks of Stamina, double that many ranks on an 11 or 12.

It behooves the GM not to allow this limitation for powers that have only 1-5 ranks, or to change it to 1d6 in that case.

Qualities and the Grizzled Gamer

While I lay here with Mystery Illness...

I've been thinking about Qualities lately, Advantages, and Maneuvers. It seems to me—and I hope I'm not repeating myself too often here—that the whole business of putting Qualities on things can just be a framework for interpreting what our group always did, back in the early days of Champions.

Again, if you're comfortable with the "I create the Choked and Can't Recover Quality with a Prowess maneuver and immediately pass the extra Activation to my teammate," then don't bother to read this. You don't need it. But among my group of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, we had trouble figuring out how to frame it in terms of things we know.

So I figured that I'd present a situation or two, how we would have handled it in the olden days, and how it might be handled in ICONS.

Situation: You want to create a patch of ice that's slippery, so the villain skids allong the floor and falls down.

Olden Days: Fine, you do that (the hex is DCV 3, remember). The villain will have to make a DEX roll to stay upright, modified by--how much Ice Blast do you have? 8d6? Sure, -5." (For stuff like that, I used to use -1 per 10 active points. House rule, I think, but few game systems that I used really handled that nicely until Champions got into the territory where it was so fiddly that I didn't want to touch it.)

ICONS: You have an Advantage? No? Okay, use a Maneuver to lay down a patch of ice. It's fine motor control to make it Treacherously Slippery, so make a Coordination roll against, oh, this isn't hard, 2 plus...I rolled a 3. Five, then. You have Coordination 3 and rolled a 5, so you have 8, so it's immediately activated. Sure, I'll call it Trouble that delays them for a page.

Essentially the same physical action (somebody rolls against Dex or Coordination), different explanation.

Situation: The jury-rigged electrical panel throws off a spark that sets the area ablaze.

Olden Days: Well, you just made the roll to re-wire that electrical panel to feed all the electricity to the Chronosyntastic Infundibulator, so I'm going to say that a spark leaps free from your jury-rigged wiring and sets the cheap indoor-outdoor carpet on fire. You try to put it out with your foot while aiming the Infundibulator, but you have to stand essentially still.

ICONS: You're out of Determination? A maneuver might..oh. Right. Your Intellect sucks. How about tactics? I'll give you the rewiring if you accept some Trouble. Fine. One more thing to deal with...a spark leaps off the rewiring job and sets the cheap carpet on fire.

So the big difference here is that in the old way, I just imposed the fire as a fun consequence (for some value of "fun"...I know there are nights when the players just joke about making their "Catch Villains" roll). Here it's actually a trade, where I suggest it, and the player gets to choose whether they want the advantage, want to roll the maneuver, or just want to take a different route.

Situation: You want to impress everyone in the room and get all the normals out.

Olden Days: Okay, you make a Presence Attack. Oooh. Sorry, man. The normals pause for a phase. Oh, Storm King, you're going to try, too? (or) Good roll on the Presence Attack, and the normals walk out in an orderly fashion.

ICONS: Impressing people is Willpower. You want to impose a Quality on them so they leave...call it Orderly Dismissal. We'll do will versus Will as a maneuver. You have a 5, they have a 3, but I rolled a 5 for them, so versus 8. You have to have a Moderate success for the Quality to be Activated, unless— Oh. A 3 is just a Marginal success. The Quality is there, but it isn't Activated. Oh, Storm King, you're doing to spend a Determination point and Activate it. Well, you're next, so you bark, "Now, people!" and they start filing out.

Yes, using the whole Qualities/Advantages thing means claiming a little extra number fiddling, but the end result is pretty much the same. The difference is that if the original player's attempt is Marginal, then some later player can spend a DP and activate this new Quality on the same page. We used to use cumulative Presence attacks in the same way.

Just looking at it now, it seems to me that in the old way, we accepted the rolls and made the narrative conform to the rolls without hiding anything ("His presence attack sucked, so we had to fight with the waitstaff in the kitchen") or consequences were imposed by the GM. In the ICONS way, there's more of an effort to create narrative as it's going on, and to barter about consequences.

Doesn't mean I'm any better at it. Old habits are, you know, old.

Problem Powers 3: Astral Projection

Random power creation is a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing when it forces you to think in new and creative ways. It's a curse when your particular mental well is more like a puddle.

Astral projection is one of those, for me. I see it, and it is itself, a much of a muchness, and what else is there to say?

Don't know. So let's look at it. Here's the power description for Astral Projection, from ICONS: The Assembled Edition.

Astral Projection can send your astral form (the vessel of the mind and spirit) out from your physical body, allowing it to travel elsewhere. Your astral form has Flight and Phasing at your power level and full Life Support. It can observe, but not affect, the physical world and cannot be detected by physical means, although Spirit Detection and Telepathy reveal it and you may choose to be seen and heard, when you wish. You can use mental powers against non-astral beings, but with +2 difficulty. Your powers work normally against other astral beings. Your body remains in a coma-like state, although you are aware of any harm befalling it. Should your body perish while your astral form is away, you remain trapped in astral form.

First thought: I didn't realize it, but Astral Projection is pretty good for a ghost, actually. (Kinda like it's made for them.) Flight and Full Life Support and Phasing? In a ghost, the fact that your body has perished away is taken for granted. Next time I have to actually design a ghost for ICONS, I'm heading for Astral Projection. I can still think of situations where it wouldn't work, but they're rare. (And add a possession power and you have Deadman.)

Second thought: It and ESP have a fair bit in common. If you have, say, Astral Projection and Mental Blast, you might well get a closely similar effect from ESP, Mental Blast, and Rangeless. The ESP version is easier but Astral Projection has more range, though: you are limited in how far your ESP goes, but not your Astral Projection. (It's a plot device if either ESP or Astral Projection goes to other worlds.)

So you could use Astral Projection as a gadget that places your "awareness" (not in the game sense) in a different place. That would be a non-mystical way of doing it.

You could also have a Dimensional Travel that teleports you to the Astral Plane. Anyone with Astral Projection can get there using the power, but the Dimensional Travel ability moves your body into the Astral Plane. (Presumably there's some doubletalk explanation why astral selves sent out via Astral Projection work with the real world, while the Astral Plane starts out looking like our world but gets weird as you need it to.)

In fact, maybe the Astral Plane and the Dream Realm are closely connected: dreams sometimes leak over into the Astral Plane and vice versa. Something like that would make Astral Projection a little more dangerous: the astral self is in danger of being attacked by a rogue nightmare.

Like decking, travels on the Astral Plane read great, but they can be a solo event that the others only take part in. Be wary of that.