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This set is ideal for a WW1 game involving trench warfare at miniatures scale, but you might also find uses for them in other settings. The tiles use PDF layers and LZW’s beautifully-illustrated controls to provide an amazing variety of trench pieces. The English instructions have been much improved since Rich Crotty started editing the material, though there’s still a way to go for the text to reach the excellence of the artwork.
| Puntuación: | | [5 de 5 estrellas!] |
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This map pack provides a downtown intersection, useful in a variety of modern RPGs. Skyscrapers stand on three corners, with a parking lot on the fourth corner. The artwork is very good, although the skyscrapers are drawn in a perspective view rather than a strict top-down view. This may be slightly disorienting at first, but it's great for wall-crawling superheroes and the like.
| Puntuación: | | [5 de 5 estrellas!] |
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Would you rather tell your players that they looted a “fancy pewter badge” or a “marquetry-enameled, satin-finished, pewter enseigne, ornamented with six silver baubles”? If the latter, then you’ll find Gemerator II: Jewelry a rich resource. A little less than the first half of the book presents a series of tables on which you can roll to produce a piece of jewelry as simple or complex as you’d like. A little more than the second half of the book consists of an illustrated glossary of all the specialized terms used in the book. The PDF is thoroughly indexed, right down to every single entry in the glossary. Obviously, a lot of work went into Gemerator II, and GMs running many different types of games can get considerable good use from it. The product does have some weaknesses. The alternation between “portrait” and “landscape” pages is annoying, the typography is both drab and inconsistent (several different serif typefaces—very similar, but not identical—are used), and the illustrations are photos from a variety of sources and in a variety of styles. The price strikes me as a little high as well. If this review system used half-star values, I’d give Gemerator 2 three and one-half stars; since it doesn’t, I’ve rounded down to three (because four stars just feels like “grade inflation” for this product).
| Puntuación: | | [3 de 5 estrellas!] |
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A large (14 x 32 squares) arena surrounded by bleachers (including box seats and space for concessionaires to ply their trades) awaits your fantasy RPG miniatures in this product. The tiles are not modular; you can really only build one layout. The product’s origins in Dundjinni clearly show through: all of the repeated elements are exactly the same, and the shadows are relative to the individual elements, not to a “global” light source (you can perceive both elements most clearly by examining the concession stands). On the other hand, Dramascape has included a textual description of the arena, along with suggestions for traps and such (though there are a number of grammatical and stylistic problems here, and map viewers don’t need to be told that corners are corners). The weaknesses don’t seem terribly significant, though, when you consider the very low price tag. Also, the product includes several “overlay” pieces that change the arena, with suggestions for how to use them, expanding the scope of the product’s usefulness.
| Puntuación: | | [4 de 5 estrellas!] |
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In my judgment, Whiteout! is the best ICONS adventure that Adamant has published thus far (as of July 18, 2012). Author John Post has covered pretty much all of the bases, giving GMs sufficient guidance to easily respond to a wide variety of PC responses to the freak blizzard conditions besetting the northern hemisphere. The first two chapters are very free-form, almost “sandbox” in the latitude given to the PCs, while the last two chapters are fairly linear, although even here the PCs could take a number of different approaches. Lots of excellent GMing advice appears throughout this adventure. In particular, the “Running an Investigative Adventure” sidebar on p. 9 ought to be required reading for any ICONS GM (especially beginners) planning to run an investigation scene. The blizzard conditions and exotic locations are used well. The primary villains are interesting and have good synergy, but some of the supporting villains don’t add much to the central plot and seem to be included just to provide a superteam with a reasonable combat challenge. GMs running for smaller groups could easily leave out Kavik, Baba Yaga (whose artwork, apparently reused from Danger in Dunsmouth, doesn’t really fit her), or both without injuring the plot. The text isn’t absolutely free from grammatical errors and inconsistencies, but they’re few enough not to annoy too much. Whiteout! offers numerous and varied in-game experiences, and it’s suitable for both beginning and experienced GMs.
| Puntuación: | | [5 de 5 estrellas!] |
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TEXT_PUBLISHER_REPLY |
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Thank you for your kind words. -- John Post |
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This adventure is rather dark for ICONS, beginning as it does with the murder of a small-town teenager. Imagine a blend of elements from Smallville’s first season and Children of the Corn, and you’re somewhere in the neighborhood of Murder of Crowes. There’s a good bit of investigation involved here, with action scenes sprinkled in at strategic moments, before you eventually get to the showdown with the main antagonist. Even there, the antagonist’s motives and nature remain ambiguous enough to allow for multiple approaches. The adventure is very well designed and presents a compelling series of events. The proofreading lags well behind the adventure design in quality; mistakes like “Jacob Crowes remembers him mom” and various instances of misused punctuation crop up more often than they should. There’s not much coaching for GMs, so this probably wouldn’t be the best choice for an inexperienced GM; due to the subject matter, I also wouldn’t recommend it if you’re playing with grade-school kids. A relatively inexperienced GM planning to run Murder of Crowes would do well to read the “Running an Investigative Adventure” sidebar on p. 9 of the ICONS adventure Whiteout! by John Post. For a relatively more mature group (by which I mean middle school and up, probably), you should be able to get a good night of slightly macabre fun out of this module.
| Puntuación: | | [4 de 5 estrellas!] |
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Originally released to promote disaster relief for the Christchurch earthquake of February 2011, this adventure offers a delightful “change of venue” for superheroes not normally based in New Zealand. The module offers several suggestions for why the PCs might find themselves in New Zealand when the story begins. One of this adventure’s most appealing innovations is the use of three parallel events all happening at the same time. Novice GMs might find these events difficult to run, if the heroes split up, but more experienced GMs should be able to deliver an exciting, fast-paced series of cut scenes reminiscent of many comics and movies featuring superhero teams. The villain in this piece is interesting, and might even be a little sympathetic if he weren’t so crazy. GMs can probably get more of a dramatic sympathy factor with the Green Man, one of the “lesser” villains. His scheme makes a kind of twisted sense, within the bounds of comic-book logic (or that of James Bond films). The final resolution, listed as a separate subpoint in the adventure outline on p. 5, is sort of “tucked away” without its own subheading in the last two paragraphs on p. 14, and feels rather anti-climactic. GMs may wish to spice this part up to make it a bit more dramatic.
A significant number of grammatical and spelling errors remain in the final product, including inconsistent spellings of the main villain’s names (both civilian and super). For some reason, the numbered lists on pp. 5 and 7 are set in a different sans-serif typeface (Calibri) than the one (Skia) used for the rest of the body text. Some, perhaps most, of the copy-editing oversights might be attributed to haste in getting the adventure to market in time to participate in the earthquake relief fund-raising; on the other hand, it shouldn’t have taken more than about an hour’s proofreading to fix these problems. Such errors noticeably weaken an otherwise fine product.
| Puntuación: | | [4 de 5 estrellas!] |
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A lunatic curator has taken hostages in a museum, and wants to transform himself into an Egyptian-inspired demigod. Can the heroes prevent the ritual and save the day—or, if necessary, take down a new demigod once the ritual is complete? That’s the story behind “Museum Mayhem,” the first “Action Scene” product from Vigilance Press. As the singular “scene” implies, the product essentially presents one encounter, although the players’ choices and the heroes’ actions could actually stretch it out to two or three distinct encounters. The authors have taken care to anticipate a variety of possible player responses to the situations presented, and they’ve given the GM several ready-made options for adjusting the encounter on the fly.
A substantial number of new NPCs populate this adventure, from the big bad guy (in both “superheroic” and “demigod” modes) down to his lowliest minions (who include cultists, animated museum mannequins, and mummies). The module also includes stat blocks for three clusters of NPCs—government troopers, robots, and ninjas—that aren’t involved in the actual adventure but that illustrate the possibilities of the new Summon power presented in the module. The Summon power alone is worth the purchase of this product, and I’m sure that the Summon power will find its way into the ICONS campaign world that I share with my sons.
Unfortunately, the copy editor(s) let a number of errors and inconsistencies slip by. Those errors (including subject-verb disagreements, extra or duplicated punctuation marks, missing punctuation marks, missing space between paragraphs, slight capitalization and spelling mistakes, and a single, initially confusing reference to the “Minion” power rather than the “Summon” power) don’t inhibit use of the product for gameplay, but when you’re averaging one to two such errors per page, you need better proofreading. Also, I was perplexed by the positioning of the coat check at the opposite end of the museum from the front entrance. A coat check normally goes near the front entrance; you don’t want patrons traipsing through the museum in soggy raincoats to get to it (never mind the potential for theft). But these are minor annoyance rather than serious problems, and I enthusiastically recommend “Museum Mayhem” for all ICONS GMs, and even players interested in the Summon power.
| Puntuación: | | [4 de 5 estrellas!] |
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This product is basically a stock art book featuring ten alien (from an Earthling’s point of view) planets. Each planet has been given a name and a brief description, though of course you need not fee bound to these. The pictures are attractive, but the author seems to have emphasized an exotic feel rather than realism or verisimilitude as far as habitable planets go. Also, you’d think that proofreading a product with so little text would be easy, but even the “front cover” exhibits very odd if not outright erroneous capitalization, and the abbreviation “RPG” becomes “PRG” after the front cover. The low price is a point in the product’s favor, though.
| Puntuación: | | [3 de 5 estrellas!] |
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This product is basically a stock art book featuring twenty-one space scenes, usually of a planet with some kind of natural or artificial satellite. The scenes are colorful and most are attractive, although the rendering of the artificial satellites/spaceships is “chunky,” resulting in 12-sided polygons where you’d expect to see circles. Also, several of the space stations are nearly identical, although presumably developed by different cultures, while others are obviously rearrangements of the same basic components as one another. These weaknesses are counterbalanced by the low price, though.
| Puntuación: | | [3 de 5 estrellas!] |
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The maps are well drawn in Jonathan Robert’s signature style, and I want to like the set, but the map confuses me. I just don’t know what I’m looking at. This is one printable map product that really needs a key of some sort.
| Puntuación: | | [3 de 5 estrellas!] |
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The term “gangbusters” conjures up thoughts of organized crime, while the term “gang” by itself evokes street-level crime. Bring these two realms together, toss in some super-science weaponry, and you have the ingredients for this ICONS adventure by Chris McGroarty and Dan Houser. The plot unfolds in three straightforward acts, which together offer opportunities for action, interaction, and investigation. It’s a pretty linear adventure, with fairly blatant use of NPCs to keep the PCs on track. This makes the adventure a little “railroady,” but also makes it a good adventure for an inexperienced GM to run, since the plot, though fun, is linear and uncomplicated. It’s also a fairly short adventure; the actual storyline only requires only twelve pages, with the villain’s stat blocks accounting for five more and five presenting the pregenerated characters.
The frequency of grammatical errors (mostly related to punctuation) is embarrassing, as is the inconsistent reference to “magical artifacts” on p. 14 while the rest of the adventure focuses on super-science tech. Dan Houser’s vibrant artwork brings the adventure to life, though I wish more of it depicted the bad guys than the pregenerated heroes (the Storm Agency, who also appear in Hero Pack 3).
In the end, this adventure is good, but not great; I recommend it, but I can’t really “rave” about it.
| Puntuación: | | [3 de 5 estrellas!] |
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Weighing in at a whopping 137 pages, this sweeping book outlines an entire world history for an Earth populated by metahumans. It’s really the only product of its kind for ICONS. The first part of the book presents a timeline of metahuman activity in the world. It’s a lush, detailed history, although there are some inexplicable (even by comic book logic), such as Menagerie’s use of electronics in 14,000 BCE; this isn’t just an issue of knowledge (which can somewhat be waved away using superpowers) but of manufacturing infrastructure. Even so, the timeline is a fun read and a great background for a superhero campaign set in the players’ present or near future. I especially enjoyed the incorporation of developments on other planets and the way they are drawn into contact with Earth events. Naturally, the timeline incorporates material from Vigilance Press’s “Amazing Stories of World War II” series (but not its Cold War “Wargames” series), and even incorporates Jason Tondro, author of Vigilance Press’s “Field Guide to Superheroes” series, as a character within the storyline. The timeline ends in 2007, two years after the world’s known superheroes have driven off a briefly-successful alien invasion. That timeline, by the way, occupies over half of the entire book.
The second part of the book surveys a number of organizations composed of and/or relevant to metahumans. Naturally, USHER receives the most attention, and is pretty thoroughly explored.
Time travel and parallel dimensions have become standard tropes of superhero comics, and the USHER setting book includes a list and discussion of “known alternate timelines.” This does not, of course, preclude the existence of “unknown alternate timelines” for the GM to create!
The last 25 pages or so present character stats and stories for significant metahumans in the USHER setting. For some reason, this part of the book indulges—quite unnecessarily—in an abundance of profanity. The sudden explosion of expletives in this section really turned me off to the product. I can see no good reason why Old Glory and the Savant, two very important characters in the setting, should drop almost a dozen F-bombs between them over the course of half that many pages. With the turn of a page, the book goes from typical comic book fare to a Lewis Black routine. As the parent of two sons (ages fourteen and eight, as of this writing) who want to take turns GMing ICONS, I wish publishers would put some sort of warning label on products that go this direction, in sort of the same vein as the Marvel/MAX and DC/Vertigo distinctions, or like the voluntary “explicit” labels on music and podcasts. This isn’t enough of an issue to impact the star rating below, but a “heads up” to parents (and prudes) would be helpful.
Occasional glitches mar the production values here and there, or seem to. The note “Pic -- two b/w hero pics (photo style)” on p. 4 (of the PDF; the pages aren’t actually numbered) is confusing, and seems to be an editorial instruction to insert a picture—an instruction that wasn’t actually followed and ended up in the final edition. Such a long work presents many opportunities for grammatical errors and such; sure enough, it’s hard to go a page without encountering a misplaced comma, an appositional phrase lacking its final comma, an adjective used where an adverb is needed, a dangling modifier, inconsistent or incorrect capitalization, an anomalous line break (or missing blank line between paragraphs), an incomplete sentence, misspellings (even of proper nouns unique to the setting), and that sort of thing. Probably the most embarrassing mistake in the book appears in the organizations chapter, where USHER’s name is given in the relevant page title as the “United Headquarters for Emergency Response”—leaving out the “S” for “States.” On the other hand, Dan Houser’s artwork is excellent, as always, and other artists contribute some good material to the book as well.
| Puntuación: | | [4 de 5 estrellas!] |
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This expansion set, done SKG’s new “2e” style (with stone walls instead of thick black lines, for example), focuses on a large circular chamber about 60 feet in diameter (on a square grid, at 5 ft. per square). It takes nine tiles to build a circle using these layouts; there are ten different “side” tiles, two different center tiles, and eight different “corner” tiles (although there are two pairs of “corner” tiles in which the differences are so minimal that they make no difference). With the number of variations given, you can create a wide variety of circular chambers. Four of the “corner” tiles and four of the “side” tiles include exit points. One of the “side” tiles features a dragon statue (?) on a pedestal, and one of the “center” tiles features a kind of altar or something with dragonic motifs. The tiles are well done, as usual for SKG, and it’s a good addition to your SKG library.
| Puntuación: | | [5 de 5 estrellas!] |
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As the product name states, author Jason Anderson gives us here 43 adventure seeds for “space opera” games. Almost all of them could easily be adapted for Star Wars, Traveller, Star Trek, even Serenity or Farscape. If you run any game where travel to various planets is common, you’ll find something useful here. Editor Sarah Badcock let a noticeable number of grammatical errors (mostly having to do with punctuation, such the apostrophe that went missing from “planets starports” on p. 1) make it into the finished product—enough of them got through to annoy a careful reader, but not enough to impede the product’s usefulness.
| Puntuación: | | [4 de 5 estrellas!] |
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