ICONS vs Night's Black Agents
Compare ICONS and Night's Black Agents side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| ICONS | Night's Black Agents | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Superhero, Modern | Horror, Modern |
| Play Style | Superhero, Heroic, Cinematic, Rules-Light, Random Character Creation, Tag-Based, Theater of the Mind, Beginner-Friendly | Investigation, Espionage, Character-Driven, Gritty |
| Core Mechanic | Effort vs. Difficulty. Each side adds a single d6 to a 1–10 ability level (acting Ability + d6 for effort, opposing Ability + d6 for difficulty); subtract difficulty from effort to find the outcome and its degree (marginal, moderate, major, or massive success or failure). Qualities are short narrative descriptors (titles, drives, catchphrases, weaknesses) that any player or the GM can activate to gain an advantage or create trouble. Activating trouble against your own hero earns Determination Points, which fuel stunts, retcons, ability boosts, and other player-side narrative interventions. | GUMSHOE engine. Investigative abilities auto-succeed: if you have the skill and there's a clue, you find it. General abilities (combat, athletics) roll 1d6 + spent points vs. difficulty 4. Point pools refresh between sessions, creating resource-management tension. Four play modes (Burn, Dust, Mirror, Stakes) tune mechanics to your preferred espionage tone. |
| Dice | 2d6 | d6 |
| Complexity | Low | Medium |
| Accessibility | High | Medium |
| Runnability | Medium | High |
| License | OGL 1.0a | GUMSHOE SRD (CC BY 3.0 / OGL) |
| Cost | $$ | $$ |
| Publisher | Green Ronin Publishing | Pelgrane Press |
| Year | 2014 | 2012 |
| Best For | Groups who want fast superhero campaigns where heroes can be rolled up in minutes, freeform qualities drive both advantages and complications, and the rules stay out of the way of comic-book pacing. | Groups who want spy-thriller action fused with supernatural horror: burned agents unraveling a vampire conspiracy through investigation, chases, and tradecraft. |
| Highlights | Hero creation runs through a handful of dice rolls: origin (Trained, Transformed, Birthright, Gimmick, Artificial, Unearthly), six attributes, number and type of powers, and specialties. It produces a complete superhero in minutes, with the random results functioning as creative prompts for backstory rather than constraints on concept. Qualities act like Fate aspects: any side can invoke them for in-fiction advantage, and accepting compelled trouble against your own qualities is the primary way to refill Determination Points, so personal drama directly feeds the metacurrency. Pyramid tests resolve complex challenges by stacking smaller successes (two moderate successes equal a major, two majors equal a massive), letting investigations, chases, or skill montages play out across multiple rolls and abilities with optional modifiers like Timed, Escalating, Collapsing, and Competitive to shape the challenge. | Investigation never stalls: clues flow automatically, Conspyramid campaign structure is a well-designed GM tool, four tonal modes let you dial in the spy genre you want, highly modular vampire creation system, works stripped of vampires for pure espionage |
| Considerations | Default hero creation is fully random (origin, attributes, and powers all come off 2d6 tables), so groups wanting a planned concept need to use the alternate 45-point buy or rely on attribute swaps and re-rolls. Combat resolves against a single Stamina pool (Strength + Willpower) with no grid rules or status conditions beyond a handful of effect powers, so brawls play fast but lack tactical positional depth. Powers are intentionally broad rather than deep (about sixty powers cover the genre), and exotic builds rely on stacking extras and limits rather than the granular menu of effects found in crunchier supers games. | NPC combat math can feel unbalanced against PCs, multiple point pools to track can bottleneck play, narrow genre focus limits reuse, requires significant GM prep for conspiracy networks |