After two years and a lot of excuses I'd all but given up on my ICONS Team Up pre-order but it finally arrived yesterday and I have to say, it's pretty awesome.

What is Team Up? Well if you think of ICONS main book at the Player Handbook and the Villainomicon as it's Monster Book then Team Up is ICONS GM Guide. But unlike some GM Guides which can feel like pure fluff, Team Up is all substance,  It's packed with clarifications, examples, optional rules (lot's of really cool ones), vehicles, sidekicks and hero HQs and a section on campaigns.

The latter is quite interesting because till now ICONS has been very much pitched as a pick up game. And it's also the most intriguing section with it suggested 'Universe style play' which is explicitly modelled on Ars Magica's troupe style play.

Anyway I figured there enough ICONS enthusiasts round here that it was worth mentioning.

Will be taking a look at it when it's available to buy. I think GMS is to be credited for seeing the thing through to completion. For a long time there it looked like the book would be added to the growing list of failed kickstarters, but he grafted on through some flak (yeah, perhaps rightly so - this is peoples money being played with, but on the other hand it's not a life and death thing, more a question of trust) to cross the finish line.

From what I see on the Yahoo group the book was worth waiting for?

I need to give Icons a serious whirl one of these days.

Quote from: APN;677221Will be taking a look at it when it's available to buy. I think GMS is to be credited for seeing the thing through to completion. For a long time there it looked like the book would be added to the growing list of failed kickstarters, but he grafted on through some flak (yeah, perhaps rightly so - this is peoples money being played with, but on the other hand it's not a life and death thing, more a question of trust) to cross the finish line.

From what I see on the Yahoo group the book was worth waiting for?

I need to give Icons a serious whirl one of these days.

Well, it wasn't a Kickstarter, for one thing...(that would be Far West, Team-Up just did straight preorders).

I'm glad he saw it through. I've always been fairly lukewarm about ICONS and I was really impressed with what actually made it into the book (ESPECIALLY Universe-Style Play).

It's available in pdf through RPGNow as of this morning. Print version in September supposedly

Sigh and its 15 bucks. I'd love to have it, but I can't justify that much for a PDF at this time.

I'll have to wait a while.

Yeah couple of months and it'll be half price, once the initial surge of interest dies down. Got some bargains lately Pendragon and something else (uhm... can't remember but it was a good one) for a few quid

I take it you guys are already aware of Great Power and the upcoming Stark City setting book?

There's a number of previews of the latter up on DTRPG. From what I understand it will consist of 5 separately released parts in pdf format, the first of which just came out. Later on these will apparently be bundled into a print (on demand?) version.

Links:
ICONS: Great Power - Ad Infinitum Adventures
Stark City Campaign Setting and City Building Toolset - Fainting Goat Games

Quote from: HombreLoboDomesticado;677651I take it you guys are already aware of Great Power and the upcoming Stark City setting book?

There's a number of previews of the latter up on DTRPG. From what I understand it will consist of 5 separately released parts in pdf format, the first of which just came out. Later on these will apparently be bundled into a print (on demand?) version.

Links:
ICONS: Great Power - Ad Infinitum Adventures
Stark City Campaign Setting and City Building Toolset - Fainting Goat Games

Yep. I own Great Power and have a review copy of Stark City waiting to be cashed in. ICONS, on its face, is not my favorite game system...but it sure is getting some impressive support.

So, to be clear, Team Up is still going to see a physical print run? I kicked myself for not pre-ordering this, then congratuled myself when it looked like the whole thing went south. Now it looks like it's back to self-flagellation...until I can get my hands on a copy.
EDIT: never mind, I see I can now order it on Adamant's site. Off to do so. Thanks for the heads-up!

Quote from: HombreLoboDomesticado;677651I take it you guys are already aware of Great Power and the upcoming Stark City setting book?

There's a number of previews of the latter up on DTRPG. From what I understand it will consist of 5 separately released parts in pdf format, the first of which just came out. Later on these will apparently be bundled into a print (on demand?) version.

Links:
ICONS: Great Power - Ad Infinitum Adventures
Stark City Campaign Setting and City Building Toolset - Fainting Goat Games

 - hey - thanks for mentioning Stark City. I'm Mike Lafferty - the guy who ran the kickstarter and shepherded the project to completion.

Yes - the original plan was to release Stark City in chapters. The bright idea was that it'd be modular. If you just wanted to do gritty vigilante adventures in the Hell's Kitchen area (called Geartown in Stark City) - you could just get that. If you just wanted to run Iron Man-esque adventures in the city's tech district, you could just pick up the Tesla Park neighborhood. and so on...

Well - the kickstarter backer feedback was pretty unanimous in that people didn't really care for the modular approach. At all. They wanted the whole city in one big dose.

So - the release we've got RPGNOW  - is the whole shebang in one pdf for about 12 bucks.

As for print - we've got the POD files uploaded and waiting for approval. Once we get the greenlight, Stark City will be available in Print On Demand format as well. (we will send the KS backers their copies first before releasing POD to the general public. It's only fair.)

ICONS creator Steve Kenson wrote some interesting Icons Setting Creation rules for Stark City - I'd be interested in hearing how they contrast with the Universe Style Play that GMS come up with for Team-Up.

Quote from: mikelaff;677688ICONS creator Steve Kenson wrote some interesting Icons Setting Creation rules for Stark City - I'd be interested in hearing how they contrast with the Universe Style Play that GMS come up with for Team-Up.

Contrast?

Not so much. Universe style play first focuses on creating heroes, then villains, then campaign features that are linked to the heroes. From my reading of the Setting Creation Rules, you could use those to further codify the Campaign Features. Seems like the two would dovetail nicely, in fact, from my reading.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;677695Contrast?

Not so much. Universe style play first focuses on creating heroes, then villains, then campaign features that are linked to the heroes. From my reading of the Setting Creation Rules, you could use those to further codify the Campaign Features. Seems like the two would dovetail nicely, in fact, from my reading.

Cool. Thanks, Tommy.

Quote from: mikelaff;677699Cool. Thanks, Tommy.

A deeper reading or someone more well versed in ICONS may disagree, but right now ICONS, Villainomicon, Team-Up, Great Power and Stark City all look pretty damned complementary to one another (other than Great Power rewriting large swaths of ICONS, but in a much more effective way than the similar book did for Marvel FASERIP).

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;677707A deeper reading or someone more well versed in ICONS may disagree, but right now ICONS, Villainomicon, Team-Up, Great Power and Stark City all look pretty damned complementary to one another (other than Great Power rewriting large swaths of ICONS, but in a much more effective way than the similar book did for Marvel FASERIP).

I haven't got Start City yet, I'm just forcing myself to wait for the print version lest I end up buying it twice; it's happened before. But I am very interested in the town building rules. I imagine the collaborative town building rules from Stark City should complement the collaborative villain creation rules from the Villainomicon and the troupe style play suggested in Team Up. It's sounds all made to work together, almost as it were planned!

The rest of Team Up is very impressive. The chapter on Clarifications I expect will be very handy to anyone who is still new to the system - it really should have been in the core rule book. The Options chapter is pure gold. There are options for the more traditional players (removing Aspects and the "player only rolls") and there are option bring ICONS more in line with Fate (with Maneuvers and Consequences). The section on Pyramids Test alone is worth the price of the book (though admittedly that was already available on the ICONS Wiki). Then there are Bases, Battelsuits, Sidekicks and Vehicle rules.  

As for the other books, I've got a lot of mileage recently out of The Villainomicon so it's risen in my estimation. Villains like Paper Tiger or Harlequin who did not make much of a first read turned out to be quite memorable during play. I still feel the book could, and possibly should, have been better but I can see myself getting a lot more use of it going forward.

Great Power is perhaps the book I've been the least excited about. I never had a issue with how vanilla ICONS deal with super powers. We've always been been pretty flexible in how we describe and customise powers. As such while generally the material in Great Power makes a lot of sense and is tidier than the vanilla rules, I'm not sure it adds that much extra value to my games. Also, while this is just minor quibble, Great Power does introduce backward compatibility issues with the rest of the range that just feel a little messy.

I've found that I play ICONS just fine with just the core book.  I would consider any of these sourcebooks if I were sent a review copy (like I was for the villainomicon), but I don't feel an urgent need to get them or anything.