Its a great book for clarifications of the existing rules and to offer suggestions on how to play the game. There isn't anything "New" per say, but rather pulling together alot of bits from the other books so now they make alot more sense. Also the Archtypes are exteamly useful as either bases for characters or stock characters for pick up games. Got a new player, not sure if they are going to remain in your group or for reasons didn't have time to make a character? Just ask them what superhero they like and give them that archtype. Well worth the price.

A great book if you are running ICONS. While nothing in here is essential, the 13 archetypes and variations will save me hours of character building.

A great add on for ICONS.

Well, Icons is not my main superhero game, this honor goes to another game of the same game designer, Steve Kenson.

But Steve Kenson is a genius and he likes to tinker with different game engines for his superheros games and it gave me the need to read Icons, then Icons Assembled Edition and now Origins.

Origins is I think an interesting book for those who want to have more options for creating characters for Icons, from the archetypes who are more or less the same of M&M revamped quite intelligently for Icons :), from the point based creation which is a bit refined from the core book to the modeling character creation to the knacks. Everything in this book will be useful one way or the other for any Icons GM but also players :).

This is a great book, and an excellent resource for Icons. The PDF is reasonably priced, but $30 for the Premium Hardcover seems a bit steep, now that I have the book in hand. It's a nice little book, for sure, but it does seem a bit...slim for Thirty Smackeroos. That said, the content is great, the art keeps getting better, and it's a fun, useful, interesting read. The Archetypes are super handy, and the Background generator is fun to take for a spin.

Exselsior! Astounding! Amazing!

I love ICONS. It's by far my favorite still-in-print superhero game. It reminds me so much of the classic DC Heroes and Marvel Superhero RPG (T$R d100, not Saga) that I grew up playing. Origins adds another dimension to the game without getting too technical. And as always, the art in this book is phenomenal. Keep up the good work, Dan Hauser.

The Archetypes are perhaps long overdue. It's something I treasured in Mutants & Masterminds (Thanks Steve Kenson...) As a GM. I enjoy having them handy as villains or even rivals that can be thrown together on the fly.The math is even explained for each one, which some games don't do. They're balanced and very well thought out.

A lot of veteran ICONS fans were probably already generating characters in the system described in By the Numbers, but it was nice to see it officially outlined in a book. There were a few things some of us may have been guessing at.

I really enjoyed the Character Modeling section. I've attempted to approximate iconic characters from DC and Marvel before, often with staggering point totals and stats completely unbalanced with regular ICONS characters. Most random or 45 point ICONS pc's are like Peter Parker, any of the Teen Titans, or most of the New Mutants in their earliest fledgling days, which is good for an rpg setting. Lots of room to grow. However, if a full, experienced version of any of the named characters shows up in a regular ICONS game? The pc's may as well put in for vacation. Unless of course, the whole group is built and approved this way!

Thanks again for the benchmarks!

The background generator rocks, especially for players who don't have an extensive background in comics or gaming. It's also a nice idea generator for veteran gamers and GM tool.

It was great having the Specialties and knacks expanded upon. If you don't have ICONS A-Z, this was a great introduction to knacks.

The roles section was proprobably a little old hat for veteran supers gamers and life long comic fans, but again very well written an super useful for demonstrating the concepts to beginners. Good refresher course for the rest of us. I think every game needs new blood, and any way to bring more players in and make them feel at home is awesome.

Last, but worthy of mention and much praise, is the expanded list of supporting characters. I can't thank the authors enough for this time-saving treasure. Anything that makes ICONS, which is already a joy to GM, go any faster or easier, is very welcome.

A+ All around. I can't wait to see what comes next.