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ICONS: Hero Pack 3 $5.00
Durchschnittliche Bewertung:4.4 / 5
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ICONS: Hero Pack 3
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ICONS: Hero Pack 3
Verlag: Ad Infinitum Adventures
von Christopher H. [Häufiger Rezensent]
Hinzugefügt am: 06/13/2012 21:43:05

Hero Pack 3 presents 19 new super-beings for your ICONS game. This pack will activate the nostalgia factor for long-time comics fans, since the tone of the characters and their origin stories, as well as the artistic style, pay tribute to Jack “King” Kirby—himself a true icon of the comics industry. Setting sentimentality aside, the results are mixed.

The artwork clearly evokes Kirby, but Dan Houser doing Kirby isn’t as good as Houser doing Houser (which, if I can utter such blasphemy, I actually prefer over Kirby doing Kirby).

The Tomorrow Squad is a fun team, and holds together well, even if Astral Girl is a warmed-over Marvel Girl, and Astro-Man is a warmed-over Green Lantern.

The heroes who make up the Storm Agents should’ve hired a consultant to help them distinguish their superhero names better from their secret identities. Dr. Seifer is Cypher? Enrique Feeley, Jr. is Dr. Feelgood II? Dr. Shade by day, Dr. Tenebrous by night? How long will take the intrepid local media to figure those three out?

The remaining characters in Hero Pack 3 aren’t connected in a team, but only the Table of Contents and the team picture on p. 13 serve to indicate that the Storm Agents writeup ends with Warden. Another “divider page” would have been nice right before Bella Trix. Elder Brotha is an interesting character, though the spelling of his name smacks of “Blaxploitation” (perhaps that’s intentional, as another ’70s tribute, like Dr. Feelgood?). Illegal Alien and the Immigrant make a “cute couple” (of enemies), but the alphabetization in the third section puts several characters in between them. If Professor Q’s aspects hadn’t specified “evil boy genius,” I would have thought—based on the artwork—that Professor Q was female. For some reason, Professor Q doesn’t have a “secret origin” page like the other characters. Unstoppable Girl provides a great dose of comic relief, though she, too, is separated from her nemesis by several entries due to the alphabetical arrangement.

Unfortunately, Hero Pack 3 is marred by the same sorts of grammatical and stylistic errors and inconsistencies that seem to plague so many small-press products, and that should have been caught and fixed in the copy-editing phase. Sometimes true (“curly”) apostrophes (inverted commas) appear where they should; sometimes, (straight) foot marks appear instead. Often, when true apostrophes are used to indicate missing characters (as in “let’s light ’em up” or in references to the ’70s), they’re printed backwards—indicating reliance on software rather than a knowledgeable human editor. The document varies between British-style and American-style use of quotation marks (i.e., “single” vs. “double”). Poor capitalization crops up occasionally, especially in catchphrases. Where dashes should appear, we get double hyphens instead. Some entries lack the final punctuation mark. The biggest proofreading fail, though, is the document’s indecision about whether Warden’s secret identity is “John Warren” (p. 23) or “John Hill” (pp. 24–25). It’s really a bit heartbreaking to see such sloppiness in an otherwise enjoyable product.

Finally, the fact that only three of the characters (Bella Trix, Illegal Immigrant, and Professor Q) are straight-up super-villains raises the question of usefulness. Indeed, the very name Hero Pack implies that the product is essentially a roster book full of superheroes. While roster books of this kind make good sense for games based in the Marvel or DC universes, they’re less useful for ICONS, where most players will want to play their own heroes, not someone else’s heroes. Sure, the heroes presented in Hero Pack 3 could be interesting NPCs—especially Señor Misterioso, who has built-in alien-related plot hooks—but GMs will want to be careful not to create a “Mary Sue” situation or to make the PCs “bystanders” in a fight between longtime enemies (such as Professor Q vs. Unstoppable Girl or Illegal Alien vs. the Immigrant). If you’re an ICONS GM looking for villains you can drop into your home game, Hero Pack 3 won’t do much for you. If you’re looking for superheroes you can include in your world as NPCs, or just as examples to fire your own imagination, Hero Pack 3 gives you several interesting choices.



Wertung:
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ICONS: Hero Pack 3
Verlag: Ad Infinitum Adventures
von Christopher T. [Verifizierter Käufer]
Hinzugefügt am: 03/19/2012 13:53:53

A great selection of characters. While there are no stats for the Galactus-like dude on the cover that I could see, that doesn't detract from the usefulness at all. I thought all the characters had great write-ups - just enough to give a good feel for how to play, without so much detail that we can't make them our own.

I have to give props to Dan Houser here on the art - he said he was going for Kirby, and he did it. The art is recognizable as the ICONS style, but the Kirby "inspiration" comes through loud and clear, in the character costume design, the features (particularly the faces, Dan got the Kirby face perfectly) and the various character poses. Great work!



Wertung:
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