There are two main modes of play in ICON: narrative play and tactical combat. The two modes have pretty much completely separate rules and character sheets. Narrative play is much like Blades in the Dark or other Forged in the Dark games, while tactical combat is a crunchy grid-based tactical game reminiscent of games like Final Fantasy Tactics (Advance), Fire Emblem, Disgaea, and other Japanese tactics RPG video games. Generally we break out tactical combat when there’s a point of tension that can only be decided through the drama and violence of combat.
ICON characters are adventurers that go on expeditions to accomplish goals. During an expedition they can camp a few times to restore lost health and chill out a minute. After an expedition finishes, there’s an interlude that provides a bit of a break in the action and time to level up, pursue long-term goals called ambitions, etc. Larger goals, called quests, may string together several expeditions.
ICON campaigns are split into three chapters, similar to the notion of “tiers” in recent D&D editions: each chapter comprises of 4 levels (chapter 1 is 1-4, 2 is 5-8, and 3 is 9-12) and represents an increasing scale of power, stakes, and challenges. The timing of when the campaign moves on to the next chapter is up to the players, though they cannot level up past the maximum level of that chapter until they move on to the next (they can use the time to help a character who’s behind catch up, or level up their Relics further).
In narrative play, when the outcome of an action is unclear, risky, or contested, the player names their goal and makes an action roll, rolling a number of six-sided dice equal to an action rating on their sheet and taking the highest (or rolling 2d6 and taking the lowest if their rating is 0). Before the roll, the GM tells them what level of effect they can hope for on a success and how risky the action is. On a 1-3 they fail and suffer the risk, on a 4-5 they succeed but suffer some sort of consequence or complication, and on a 6 they succeed without any qualification or complication. Multiple 6s (a critical hit) mean even better effects than expected.
In tactical combat, you mostly make two types of rolls: attack rolls and saves, both using d20s (plus sometimes damage, etc.).
You make an attack roll when you take a hostile action with the “attack” tag against another character. You roll a d20, possibly adding some modifiers, and try to roll equal to or higher than your target’s defense.
You make a save to avoid or end some harmful ongoing effects. You roll a d20, usually without any modifiers. On a 10 or higher, you succeed, ending or avoiding the effect.
Some abilities given boons or curses, as might favorable or unfavorable circumstances. In both narrative play and tactical combat, boons and curses cancel out one-for-one until you have only one or the other (or neither). In narrative play, you just roll an extra d6 for each net boon as if your action rating were that much higher, or one fewer d6 for each net curses as if your action rating were that much lower. In tactical combat, you roll as many d6s as you have net boons or curses and add (for boons) or subtract (for curses) the highest rolled d6 to the d20 roll.
In narrative play, you can have at most +2 or -2 bonus dice on an action roll.
The above covered the very basics of action rolls. Here’s the further details.
The possible actions that your character is rated for are:
Which action you use for an action roll is always up to you as the player, although it may impact the effectiveness or risk of the action and it should like, make sense for how you’re describing what you’re doing. None of the actions are explicitly magical; whether your hero is performing the action with their skill, their physical strength, or magical power doesn’t matter mechanically.
The risk of an action roll is either controlled, risky, or desperate. It reflects how bad the consequences of a failure might be. On a desperate roll, you might suffer some consequence even on a success, and a failure is likely to be disastrous. On a controlled roll, a failure might just mean the situation changes so that you can try again but it’s riskier.
The effect of an action roll is weak, normal, or powerfull (or, rarely, no effect or superpowered). This determines how much progress a success will make toward your goal or how impactful a goal you stand to achieve. For example, a powerful action roll to escape a maze might get you out in only a single roll, when it might take multiple normal effect rolls to get the same benefit.
When a character is trying to do something that is difficult or has an unclear outcome, but isn’t particularly dangerous, it’s resolved with a fortune roll rather than a normal action roll. You roll dice based on your action rating as normal, but the outcomes are slightly different:
These might be used, for example, when gathering information about a situation or when the GM just wants to leave something up to chance.
You can also make a roll to set up another character’s action: make an action roll, with no effect. You still potentially suffer consequences, but if you succeed, your ally gets either a Boon or increased effect on their action.
Many things can be handled in a single action roll, but some things are more involved, whether due to being composed of several discrete tasks, or because it’s too complex or daunting or taking too long for it to feel right to fit in a single roll. For those situations, narrative play uses clocks. Clocks have some even number of segments (4, 6, 8, 10, or 12), and when player actions further the clock, they fill in segments on that clock based on their effect: 1 for weak, 2 for normal, 3 for powerful, and 5 for superpowered. When the clock fills up completely, the task or challenge it represents is completed or overcome.
Clocks can also be used to track the passage of time (or things that develop as time passes), with the GM occasionally ticking segments. Clocks can also be used to track failures, with the GM ticking segments as a consequence of failure or a complication on a 4-5 and something bad happening when the clock fills up.
One common form of consequence or complication for a failed or partially successful roll is to inflict strain, which represents the mental and physical effort the character must put into either avoiding serious bodily harm, pushing through the pain, or enduring mental stresses. It is generally inflicted 1, 2, or 4 points at a time.
Characters have a limited number of strain boxes on their sheet. If your strain boxes are already full and you take strain, or you ever take critical strain (think things so severe that a normal person just wouldn’t have survived it), you break and are too hurt or overwhelmed to continue in the current scene. A broken character can only act by pushing themselves or receiving aid, and they don’t get the normal benefits from those things, just the ability to act at all. When you break, you clear your strain boxes and take a burden. At the end of the scene you’ll stop being broken but you’ll keep the burden.
Burdens represent longer-term strains on a character. When you take a burden, write down the nature of the burden (perhaps an injury, a scar, a change in attitude, a sickness, etc.). How much it interferes with you and when will be up to you as a player. You can, during narrative play, invoke one of your burdens. When you do so, the GM chooses to either get you into trouble due to it, to increase the risk of your actions for this scene, or reduce the effect of your actions for this scene. At the end of a session, you gain 1 xp for each burden you invoked at least once that session.
You heal all strain when you camp or at the end of an interlude. You slowly heal your burdens during interludes.
If you have 3 burdens already and break again, you don’t get a new burden but you remain broken for the rest of the expedition.
The short version is: challenges or threats have a chapter too, and in narrative play when you go against higher chapter challenges, you suffer reduced effect or increased risk. When you act against lower-chapter challenges, you get more effect and reduced risk.
Your Bond has three Ideals, short sentences describing activities you might do. Check them if you performed them at least once during the session. At the end of the session you gain 1 XP if you’ve done at least one, and 2 XP if you’ve done all of them.
Your Bond has some Bond powers that have various special effects. They say what they do. You start out with one and gain more as you level up, eventually getting to take them from other Bonds as well as your own. Some powers give knacks, which are skills, knowledge, or expertise that provides a boon when it is relevant to a roll.
You have a certain number of stress boxes determined by your bond. You can use it in these ways (plus sometimes additional ones granted by your bond powers):
If you have all your stress boxes ticked, you’re stressed out. You can’t spend any more stress, and some bond powers may have additional effects based on your being stressed out.
You relieve all stress when you camp or finish an interlude.
Combat takes place on a grid and in turns.
TODO pull in some of that stuff, but mostly we’ll learn as we go anyway.