GET A SNEAK PEEK AT THE ICONIC ADVENTURING SYSTEM! COMING SOON TO KICKSTARTER! Welcome to a new addition to the tabletop role-playing genre. Although a role-playing game, the Iconic Adventuring System is vastly different than its predecessors. First, apart from being a role-playing game, it involves deck building, where players create a character deck as they adventure. The character deck serves as their potential to overcome hazards and monsters to advance the storyline forward. Secondly, unlike traditional role-playing games, the Iconic System does not use dice for resolution. Fundamentals is an abridged version of the forthcoming role-playing rules found in the Iconic Adventuring System. While the basic and core rules are comprehensive, this guide offers a general insight into the system and what to expect. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD FUNDAMENTALS FOR FREE and CLICK HERE TO CHECK IT OUT ON KICKSTARTER

Since the beginning of time, many try to harness the supernatural energies to create mystical love potions, divine the future, thwart enemies, bring fortune, or consolidate power. Through arcane knowledge and faithful devotion, one cultivates a key to unlock the gateway into the unknown. For magicians and priests, it begins with weaving incantations and conjuring miracles. In the Iconic Adventuring System, magic relies on mana. With the appropriate talent, either chosen at creation or through advancement, characters have access to mana cards. Mana, when gathered, is placed in a reservoir within the play area of a player. Once used, mana is then discarded to the fatigue pile (discard pile) of the character deck. It becomes available again when drawn into hand from the character deck and prepared, placing it back into the reservoir. There are two ways to use mana. One is instantaneous, performing hedge magic, and the other is invoking a ritual. Hedge magic is simple. Spend mana during a task and create an effect appropriate for the mana used. In this manner, mana act as wild cards, similar to using an experience card. If you use fire mana in an attack, are you launching a fire bolt or manifesting a blade of fire? Combining earth and fire mana, is it instead a blade of volcanic glass? When climbing a wall, do you invoke earth mana to create temporary handholds from the stone or instead, invoke air mana to provide an uplifting gust of wind to reach the top? Using mana in this way, also causes fatigue depending on the amount of mana invoked, which can lead to gaining stress cards. The second is to perform a ritual. Magic from rituals have longer lasting effects or require concentration. If you know the ritual, just discard the required mana from your reservoir to harness its effect. If you don’t know the ritual, you must first spend the mana and then perform a task to see if you successfully cast the spell. Furthermore, you do not need to wait for mana to recycle through your deck. You have the option of evoking more mana. However, this poses a risk. If you have more mana in your reservoir than your body can handle, you could suffer from a mana surge, which can result in gaining one or more wound cards. It’s a little more involved than that, but those are the basics. For instance, rituals requiring concentration go back into your hand, making future task more difficult by reducing your hand size. Also, you can channel and use mana from another player’s reservoir to cast higher level rituals. It's a new and exciting system. We can't wait for you to experience for yourselves. Want to hear more about Iconic? Be on the lookout for our upcoming Kickstarter Campaign and The Fundamentals, a free guide to get acquainted with the system.

In the Iconic Adventuring System, both physical and mental trauma, take the form of either wound or stress cards. When you gain a wound card, oftentimes you place the card face-up in the discard pile of your character deck (known as the fatigue pile). While it remains in your character deck, it acts as adrenaline, allowing you to lose more fatigue than normal and can prevent further stress or even additional wounds. However, once drawn into your hand, both stress and wound cards make tasks difficult to accomplish, reducing your hand size. While you forsake (remove from the game) stress cards at the end of your turn, wound cards remain until dealt with through medicine, natural healing, or miracles. Although, medicine in a medieval fantasy setting has limits, and often binding a wound will allow you to discard it back into your character deck, but not forsake it. This represents an old wound reopening, a festering infection, or some other ailment caused by the injury. Once your hand is full of wound cards, you collapse and begin dying, discarding a card from the top of your character deck each turn. If it is a willpower card, you regain consciousness and can discard one wound card into your fatigue pile. If the revealed card is a wound card, you breathed your last breath. Non-playing characters (NPCs) do not have a character deck. Not as hardy as stalwart adventurers, one wound is sufficient to vanquish a dreaded foe – called a dramatic end. It is up to the vanquisher (you the player) whether you subdue your opponent, run it through, or have them flee to recount their defeat by your hand. However, do not fool yourself that a dragon or some other vile beast is a simple conquest having just one wound. While you may survive an encounter with these horrid foes, even at the start of your adventuring career, vanquishing such creatures is an undertaking of epic proportions. However, with just one wound, Game Masters no longer need to keep track of hit points, or the like, and can instead focus on the titanic battle at hand, weaving a terrific tale for all to remember in years to come.