From Introduction:
GOALS AND OVERVIEW
The aim here is to take the fun and simplicity of Icons and transfer it to a sword & sorcery fantasy setting. We’re talking guys like Howard and Lieber here – someplace Conan, Kull, and the Grey Mouser would feel right at home, but without being so focused on these archetypes that a wide variety of appropriate character concepts isn’t possible.
Powers are reserved for sorcery, and sorcerers aren’t exactly commonplace, so there’s a greater emphasis on Specialties; in Icons terms, you can think of Sigils characters as all having the Trained Origin, although it’s implemented a little differently here. Moreover, Sigils characters aren’t superhuman, so rolled Ability levels top out at 6.
Personally, I love the minigame that is character creation in Icons, so that’s been preserved, as has most of the existing system. The assumption is that all PCs are human. To that end, Origins are reflavored as Cultures, and Specialties are randomly determined according to a character’s Backgrounds in his or her Culture, as are starting Resources. This is a system geared toward randomly generating S&S characters, but if you’re not into that, the point-buy option from Icons should work out fine… probably. As a fan of randomly generating things, I really wouldn’t know!