A campaign starter for ICONS RPG.

I typically use the Hero Creation rules found on Page 202 if ICONS Assembled Edition. For a more grisly, gritty, dark, Bronze or Iron Age game, I would probably not recommend making the Premier Tier characters unless they’re more like a Batman, Spawn, or Wolverine type character. Even then the appearances for those characters are going to be fewer and further between than the Champion Tier characters.

My points breakdown is typically 75 for Premier Tier, 50 for Champion, and 35-40 for Backup. I know this is somewhat high compared to the numbers in ICONS: Origins, but the A-list heroes in my world are like the Avengers, JLA, JSA, and so on. They deal with global or galactic threats almost exclusively. Champion tier heroes work well for a gritty campaign because they can still take a few hits without being out of commission for weeks.

I should also mention that any stat or power level above 6 (Great) is soft capped and probably requires GM permission. The high end of human maximum is fine. I want characters akin to early Batman, early Spidey, or starting Punisher. Most of the Batman family falls into this tier nowadays. That’s okay, because it balances pretty well with the villains.

Let’s discuss what my villains for this game typically look like.

A lot of them are regular humans. Mafia bosses, crime lords, drug kingpins, arsonists, mad bombers, and other things typically found in Daredevil or Batman comics. There might be one or two outlier villains who have powers, and maybe some metahuman help working for the humans.

I think of the Batman Animated Series a lot when it comes to this sort of thing. The supervillains are fewer and further between than mafia bosses like Rupert Thorne. Or I think of Kingpin in the Daredevil and Spidey comics. Yes, Fisk is technically a mutant IIRC from the old days, but otherwise he’s an overstuffed human in a suit with a bad attitude. But as with all good superhero stories, supervillains begin to emerge.

Again going back to early Batman and Spiderman, a lot of the nastier bad guys owe their origin stories to the local heroes. Someone accidentally falls in a vat of dye while being chased by The Caped Crusader and comes out looking like a clown. Acid splashes on the side of the District Attorney’s face during a criminal trial involving one of the heroes’ captures. The same lab accident that gave our heroes radioactive gerbil powers also caused a scientist to grow a cool crocodile tail and scales to match. I think that gets the idea out there.

Only I like my bad guys to be really bad. I don’t just want a guy like the Joker. I want the Joker wearing the Carnage symbiote. I don’t just want the Kingpin. I want the Kingpin mixed with Lex Luthor. (Yes, Luther Rex really is a major supervillain in my main campaign.) I want magic powered bad guys that make Dr Fate cringe. Let’s turn the supervillain dial to 11 without giving them massive amounts of powers that would otherwise catch the attention of Premier heroes. Although it does happen occasionally.

I’ve been sitting on this campaign for ages.

Here’s the starting scenario: The heroes are called into a Top Secret government office. Maybe they have one or two group outings under their belt and solid solo reputations. The equivalent of Amanda Waller hands them a file plus ident key cards to their new secret base near a city akin to Gotham if it were also Detroit.

The public schools are a mess. Drugs and gun violence are everywhere. The cops are overworked. Most major industrial and transportation operations are owned by the mob. The mayor appears to be the first law-and-order candidate ever elected in city history and is begging for outside help. Those cries have reached a major A-Lister, and he has paid for everything. The group is also provided a Team Justice (JLA/Avengers) panic button in case they get overwhelmed. The government office is their point of contact for legal assistance. It’s well known that the judges as well as the District Attorney are all on someone’s payroll.

The group has the deck stacked against them. (Spoiler Alert!) Two other hero teams have sprung up and tried to stem the tide of crime previously. Both had their entire roster killed, sent into hiding, or flee the area completely. One even fell victim to an assassin after moving to a new city and joining a new team. The criminals in this city the group is headed into like to play extremely rough.

Of course, no one knows that other heroes have died in the city except the A Lister and the government coordinator. I’m leaving it for the group to sleuth out what’s really going on with the mayor and the dead/missing hero teams. There’s also the start of an interdimensional invasion going on at the nearby military base if the group gets tired of stomping on drug dealers and want to do something different.

The lethality level of a game like this.

Death is on the table, BUT it will almost always take the form of meaningful and dramatic gameplay. I want the characters to ideally uphold the Code Against Killing. True vigilantes and mercenaries will end up in the middle of the lawful heroes and the evil villains. Guys like Casey Jones from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle series or Deathstroke from DC will pop up occasionally. (Spoiler) I have a Frank Castle style character as well as a Ghost Rider knockoff that can appear as a middle ground to throw even more ethical and moral dilemmas at the group.

It’s cool if the group puts the bad guys in the hospital, but not the morgue. The only time it might turn the other way is if someone close to the group dies and we have a revenge story arc. I’m definitely not above whacking NPCs like crazy to get my point across that the situation is bad. If Big Tony or Diamond Jack want to send a message, it might look like a lawyer’s head in a box mailed to a local TV station. That’s also what the Internet is for. The group is going to have loved ones, family, civilian, and government liaisons to look out for every day.

It’s going to be tough, but the XP will be higher after each issue. The group is already pretty strong starting out. I don’t want the group to feel too overwhelmed all of the time. There will be high points and improvements along the way. Obviously an A Lister wouldn’t have secretly scouted out 4-5 rookie heroes if it was so bad that Team Justice would have to just step in. The crime in the city is too ingrained and requires a lot of time as well as investigation to just call in the big guns to clean house.

Final thoughts for now.

I don’t have stories planned A-Z for this game yet. Obviously I’m taking a lot of inspiration from DCAU, Detective, as well as Spiderman. (and his Amazing Friends! I love that cartoon. Bobby Drake got them a secret government base.) If I ever get to run this thing for an actual group or maybe as a series of convention games someday, I hope the players will embrace the darker side of the game but still have fun busting the bad guys and stopping crime.

Will I ever publish this? Maybe if I get enough of the bugs worked out from the GM side. The goal is to make it kind of intense without being totally overwhelming. We’ll see.