Role Playing in Avatar.

[Username17]

The Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon is probably the greatest fantasy adventure show of this century. It is loaded with backstory, has dozens of loose ends, a vibrant world, an entertaining bestiary, and in general seems like the kind of place people would like to adventure in. Also, the world itself has a clearly and not insultingly defined class system to go with distinctive and impressive power sets. And perhaps most importantly of all: the show itself presents a clearly realized heroes journey for several characters where they rise in power from children who get scolded by family members to bad asses who fight epic battles with the fates of continents in the balance. Avatar is, in short, almost exactly what we want a D&D campaign to be. So it is natural to ask "Why not make Avatar into an RPG setting?"

Fighters Can't Have Nice Things. Or Can They?

OK, make no mistake: the high end of benders and spiritualists do things in Avatar that no mundane person is capable of equaling. By the end of Book 3, Aang, Toph, and even Katara are ridiculous. Able to crush whole boats and cities with all the fighters of any possible level in them from the horizon in the blink of an eye or the wave of a hand. Any game which extends to the point of actually playing characters at that level would necessarily leave warriors of any skill level as comic relief.

And yet... the world demonstrably has a lot of overlap in power levels between benders and non-benders. Mei and Ty Lee are on the upper end of what badass normals can achieve, but they do kick the crap out of a lot of low and middling grade benders at one point or another. A basic fire acolyte is a pretty minor challenge to Suki or a late series Sakka.

What this means is that you can make a party where one of the player characters could be Suki, or you could make a party where one of the players could be Aang. You can't really do a game where boh are player characters. That is why ultimately in the final battles they had to put Sakka, Suki, and a tremendously de-powered Toph (her "must touch ground" limitation kicks in hard on an airship battle) on a completely separate quest far from anywhere that people who had access to city leveling power would be.

The game system could cover people who were simple competent normals like Bato and go all the way to primal forces like Koh, the Lionturtle and The Avatar. But within what has been shown in the show, there is no way for a character without bending to get to those top levels, while a character with bending can progress from wherever you set first level all the way to the top.

Setting Accuracy

You won't ever be able to make a game system that perfectly generates the setting of Avatar. The Avatarverse is way too detailed for that. And that's fine. The amount of thought the designers of the show put into things is amazing. Even tiny details like how in Fire Nation the greeting of respect is the ancient sun warrior hand gesture for turning off their fire is just an anthropological marvel. Each nation's bending and martial disciplines are based on identifiable and distinct styles of Kung Fu leads to some incredibly well thought out interactions between characters, their environments, and each other. However, in an actual game, you do not have time for a Wuxia master to run through a series of test kata for the animators to go back and interpolate on every action. You do not have time to go back and check your references to make sure that the poster for a play that was on the wall 13 sessions ago is the one that a character mentions having seen in this adventure. That kind of continuity and consistency is amazing, but in an actual game you don't have a team of proofreaders running fact checking on things.

You are going to have dice and they are going to produce results that are not smooth and don't perfectly align with narrative desires. It's something you have to live with. It also means that having PCs of wildly different power levels isn't going to work out terribly well. You can't decide ahead of time that th weaker characters are going to consistently get saved ex Machina, nor is it an acceptable compromise to have them split off and fight easier battles. You're going to have to make something where the PCs are more balanced than they are in the show.

Resource Management

Most resource management systems correspond to either charges or a rage bar. And the "look" of those are both pretty distinctive. In a charges system, people do their big deal move at the beginning of battles and then fall back to spamming their basics after that. You can see that in action in the Star Wars prequels, to the point where they actually announced that is what they were doing in Episode 2 (to build up to declaring their attacks of opportunity and combat modifiers in Episode 3). Rage bar resource management systems involve people doing their standard stuff over and over again until they build up to bad ass super moves. You can see tha in action in Sailor Moon, and a lot of other monster of the week material like Ultraman. It is important to realize that characters in Avatar do not do either of those things.

Characters in Avatar use a vast array of powers over and over again with seemingly little in the way of usage limits. Earthbending is fatiguing, but only in the way that throwing punches is. Characters do not run out of firepower by using said firepower in combat. At all. Nor are there any restrictions in place to keep Sparky Sparky Boom Man from simply beginning battle with a fucking block leveling psychic explosion. What can cause characters to run out of juice is entanglement (which keeps them from using their abilities until freed) and injury (which keeps people from using abilities until healed). That's not a drain system, because seriously until someone punches back you can apparently throw fire punches all day.

What that points to really is a WoF system. You could model it with dice or cards, modified only by injuries and conditions limiting your number of options each turn until you had none at all and had to surrender.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

Any chance of mixing in the d20/3d6 condition-based system we were going to use for one of the TNEs? I'd love to see that in action.

[Username17]

Any chance of mixing in the d20/3d6 condition-based system we were going to use for one of the TNEs? I'd love to see that in action.

Sure. This is actually where you can get into crazy complexities if you want. Because in world, the things that imprison one character are not the things that imprison another character. Put a Firebender into a freezer and they are powerless - unless they have Breath of Fire like Zuko does, in which case it just makes him do some breathing exercises to tell your ice prison to go fuck itself. Tie a fire bender's hands together and he can't do dick - unless he is someone like Azula or Zuko who can generate fire with circular foot motions. Similarly, slapping an Earthbender into a metal box seems to work pretty well unless they someone like ridiculous like Toph who can simply metalbend anything she touches, or Bumi who can telekinetically hurl rocks and buildings just by looking at them. You could get pretty fucking complicated wondering what kind of bindings are actually going to use to keep someone from invoking motions reminiscent of Hung Gar (like most Earthbenders) or Southern Praying Mantis (like Toph). Ultimately some kind of simplification is going to have to be made - whether that simplification is chakra based or levels of restriction based or what.

When you're talking straight wounds it's easier to hand wave. Take a grade one Firebender soldier mook and hit them with a major attack and they won't be shooting fire at you for the rest of the combat. A powerful named character would just be impeded - game mechanically having less options to choose from each round.

But yeah, action impedance as conditions inflicted by attacks rather than hit point thresholds after which powers become unusable seems like the way to go.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

So would you use a graded WoF that matches your would levels, such that taking one wound kills your 1's, two kills your 2's, and so forth? Or would you simply use penalties on the 3d6 RNG to make higher-powered abilities much less likely to work?

[Username17]

So would you use a graded WoF that matches your would levels, such that taking one wound kills your 1's, two kills your 2's, and so forth? Or would you simply use penalties on the 3d6 RNG to make higher-powered abilities much less likely to work?

There are a lot of ways you could do it. For a card based system, the solution is fairly obvious: wound conditions reduce your "hand size"causing you to draw less cards and have less options. Characters reduced to a hand size of zero are out of the fight.

Dice based WoF systems are essentially like deck and card systems where the available hands have been pre-determined and then are selected on a turn by turn basis via die roll. As such, you'd probably want to approach it the same way - essentially ripping columns of powers out with each injury condition. You could randomize which columns were removed each time you got injured (or even each round), or you could start removing powers from the right or left of the list every time. It's one of those "how many complicating details are you willing to put up with?" deals.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

The card draw mechanic does seem more straightforward.

This thread convinced me to take a look at Avatar, and I've got to say: it's the little things that really make the show. Like the pirates of episode 9 that happen to be ninjas.

[Ryan_Singer]

The Fate RPG mechanics in the new Dresden Files RPG seem well suited to Avatar. I haven't played with them in-game yet, I'm organizing a group now.

[CatharzGodfoot]

The Fate RPG mechanics in the new Dresden Files RPG seem well suited to Avatar. I haven't played with them in-game yet, I'm organizing a group now.

Dresden Files RPG? This I have to see.

[Korwin]

The Fate RPG mechanics in the new Dresden Files RPG seem well suited to Avatar. I haven't played with them in-game yet, I'm organizing a group now.

Dresden Files RPG? This I have to see.

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=51068

[Koumei]

Like the pirates of episode 9 that happen to be ninjas.

In Disgaea 2, there are about 13 different groups of pirates that can attack you when you're out power-levelling. Drifter Pirates, Prinny Pirates, Mage Pirates etc. One group is indeed Ninja Pirates. I lol'd.

I was tempted to try Avatar out, but it doesn't seem to be my sort of show (need I mention NSFW?)

[Username17]

While there are reasonably attractive girls in Avatar (even "distressingly attractive" considering their supposed ages) in the show, it's really magic and kung fu centric. Like Naruto or Sailor Moon more than a lechery parade like Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou.

-Username17

[Mask_De_H]

The Fate RPG mechanics in the new Dresden Files RPG seem well suited to Avatar. I haven't played with them in-game yet, I'm organizing a group now.

I agree with this man. Dresden Files/Legends of Anglerre have a pretty tight yet open ended magic system that would map to bending well. DF's Evocation allows for Blocking, Attacking, and Manuvers, which add temporary wound equivalents. The wound equivalents can be something like "can't bend" or "Jesus fucking christ did he just shoot fire out of his forehead?"

Sadly, they all do the same thing mechanically ( force a reroll or give the person who invoked it a +2 to a 4d3 or 2d6 curve depending on the version of the FATE system you use).

[Lago PARANOIA]

One thing I do wonder about Avatar is, if you're not interested in the metaplot of a giant kung fu war then what is there for you to do?

The Avatarverse is very stable. People don't worry about random packs of wild animals attacking them, a ghost attack is so rare that people can make an episode about it, magic is so well-integrated into peoples' lives that they use it as a technology base and have fewer problems with it than Star Trek, with very rare exceptions people can't establish themselves as sole superpowered overlords over anything than a handful of people, and the technology level is low and established enough that there aren't any major outstanding projects like 'settle this new continent!' or 'bring in a new green revolution!'.

While the cartoon is very well-designed, there just isn't much to do outside of the metaplot. And while I've only seen the first two seasons, less than half of the episodes have anything directly to do with the metaplot and they mostly have to do with universe-building or character-development.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Dude, anyone who can't build a campaign around the owl's library by itself just isn't trying.

That aside, most martial arts stories are just personal drama with action scenes. As long as someone is in a position to be a dick to someone else, you can kick them in the face for justice; it doesn't matter if they're the Cobra Kai or the Sherriff of Nottingham.

[Username17]

One thing I do wonder about Avatar is, if you're not interested in the metaplot of a giant kung fu war then what is there for you to do?

Well, there are multiple kung fu wars going on. The happy ending is that Zuko is going to spend the next twenty years fighting fire ninja assassins sent to put an end to his plan of restructuring the entire Fire Nation in a manner where feudal lords of prison colonies don't exist instead of having whole islands in their burning gauntlets of oppression. Back in the Earth Kingdom, the Dai Li controlled everything and the Dragon of the West came in and set fire to their shit and told them to fuck off. But they were actually a ninja order who used assassination, kidnapping, and mind control (and a leader voiced by Lex Luthor from the Superman Animated Series) to keep order in the Earth Kingdom - so you can fight as many rogue agents of those guys as you want too.

Also: pirates are still a major problem, as are bandits. And outside the major kingdoms of Earth and Fire there are straight up tribes hidden in the wilderness. Some of them are secret, and some of them attack outsiders. The Sun Warriors and Plentbender tribes are xenophobes, but the Sandbender tribes are straight up cutthroats and thieves. Truly, if you want to fight humans who may or may not have bending of one type or another, you can do that as much as you want.

The Avatarverse is very stable. People don't worry about random packs of wild animals attacking them, a ghost attack is so rare that people can make an episode about it, magic is so well-integrated into peoples' lives that they use it as a technology base and have fewer problems with it than Star Trek, with very rare exceptions people can't establish themselves as sole superpowered overlords over anything than a handful of people, and the technology level is low and established enough that there aren't any major outstanding projects like 'settle this new continent!' or 'bring in a new green revolution!'.

What? People who leave towns do so under armed guard or stick to patrolled roads, because the wilderness is full of platypusbears, buzzardwasps, and sabertooth mooselions. The spirit world is full of crazy, but all full of danger. Koh steals people's faces for his giant face collection and no one thinks this is weird. The Great Divide is an actual dungeon filled with canyon crawlers. Truly, if you wanted to have a campaign where you ran around in the wilderness and tunnel complexes and fought chimeric monsters, you could totally do that.

As for the technology level, as of the end of the series, people had invented war zeppelins, submarines, and the tractor. The new Air civilization they are building is powered by natural gas and steam. The new "age of peace" that the gAang is issuing in is going to be one with a lot of change in it, and there is still plenty stuff to explore, and a lot of people who are going to be having a wildly different life in a new untamed land in the very near future.

While the cartoon is very well-designed, there just isn't much to do outside of the metaplot. And while I've only seen the first two seasons, less than half of the episodes have anything directly to do with the metaplot and they mostly have to do with universe-building or character-development.

You just contradicted yourself tremendously. The entire point is that there is lots to do outside the metaplot. Really a lot of the shows involve showcasing some place or another and having surreal adventures there. You don't need to be getting ready for a showdown with the Fire Lord to have stuff to do.

It's not just grinding Catgators and Pirates until you get your Epic Mount. Although of course, you could do that.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

When you put it like that then there is a lot of danger to the world.

I guess it just didn't seem particularly dangerous because we saw things from the Avatar's point of view and that the show put a light-hearted spin on most things? I mean, even in the first season events that didn't directly involve the metaplot (like the raid on the Air Temple or the attack on the Northern water tribe) didn't seem very threatening or challenging. But that just might be because of their entourage (they just FLY over most obstacles).

But when you put it that way and didn't give people an Appa to bypass obstacles the setting becomes more adventurous. I mean, they travelled across the world in a matter of months in the first season and made plenty of stops.


Speaking of which, I know this is kind of a churlish and whiny complaint, but that library owl in Season 2 when they visited the desert really pissed me off. I can't quite articulate why his character inspires more revulsion in me than genuine bastards like Zhao, Azula, and the Dai Li, but I really hate that guy.

[Username17]

Yeah, between the fact that it's a kid's show, the main character is the Buddha, and the thing where the PCs travel around by air, it really adds up to the PCs bypassing or powering through a lot of obstacles that would be a pretty big deal for a party consisting of ex-Fire Nation Naval Ensigns and Earth Kingdom Militia.

Speaking of which, I know this is kind of a churlish and whiny complaint, but that library owl in Season 2 when they visited the desert really pissed me off. I can't quite articulate why his character inspires more revulsion in me than genuine bastards like Zhao, Azula, and the Dai Li, but I really hate that guy.

That's reasonable. Wan Shi Tong embodies Taoist philosophy, and is even named after the Taoist aspiration to know all of creation in the very personal and secretive manner which classical Taoists aspire to do so. He is the spiritual manifestation of the greedy accumulation of knowledge at the expense of interaction with the world.

His philosophy does not advance knowledge, and indeed in the story he literally buries the wonders of the past. An adventure into Wan Shi Tong's library to kill that fucker would be a pretty hard core quest. And quite a rewarding one, both for the individuals and for the world.

-Username17

[Thymos]

The fact that Aang and Toph are literally on another level from most benders in the world makes me really think this would would be a good candidate for a two tier system.

Basically have two different tiers for character creation, and when characters move between the tiers they basically have to build their character again.

The show actually displays this with Kitara and Sokka. Both of them are only o.k. until they train under their masters (and even then sokka isn't that good in the end, but that's more of a fighters can't have nice things point).

[Username17]

The fact that Aang and Toph are literally on another level from most benders in the world makes me really think this would would be a good candidate for a two tier system.

Basically have two different tiers for character creation, and when characters move between the tiers they basically have to build their character again.

The show actually displays this with Kitara and Sokka. Both of them are only o.k. until they train under their masters (and even then sokka isn't that good in the end, but that's more of a fighters can't have nice things point).

Not a bad plan. At adventurer tier, it would be perfectly plausible to play a bender like Haru or a warrior like Suki. But at Avatar Tier, you get to play a bullshit powerful bender like Toph or a warrior like Hakoda and all those Water Tribe troops.

Like Ars Magica for the upper tier. If you aren't able to personally challenge a dragon, you get to play a whole squad of mundanes.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

An adventure into Wan Shi Tong's library to kill that fucker would be a pretty hard core quest. And quite a rewarding one, both for the individuals and for the world.

note to owl-dragon-spirit hunters: The only thing that phases Wan Shi Tong is not any of the bending that gets thrown around - it's when Sokka clocks him in the head with a book. I'm pretty sure that weirdo has an innate vulnerability to books.

Yeah, the library's value is incalculably high. Anyone who claims it from its current owner will be beset from without by buyers, thieves, and probably armies; exactly as if it were Smaug's hoard. The best answer is to defend it while setting a legion of scribes to copy and disseminate the contents, which is quite the long-term endeavor.

[mean_liar]

That's reasonable. Wan Shi Tong embodies Taoist philosophy, and is even named after the Taoist aspiration to know all of creation in the very personal and secretive manner which classical Taoists aspire to do so. He is the spiritual manifestation of the greedy accumulation of knowledge at the expense of interaction with the world.

His philosophy does not advance knowledge, and indeed in the story he literally buries the wonders of the past. An adventure into Wan Shi Tong's library to kill that fucker would be a pretty hard core quest. And quite a rewarding one, both for the individuals and for the world.

He buries the library because the knowledge isn't to be used for violence. He used to share it back in the day, then people went all fucked, and then he hid it to keep it from being misused. He grants access in exchange for a promise of peace and a token granting of knowledge to the library. Killing Wan Shi Tong and freeing the library is awesome for a short while and then, apparently, people misuse the knowledge and blow shit up.

I am not surprised in the least that you overlooked this.

Also, in Taoist philosophy, secret Taoist knowledge isn't just secret in the sense that you hide it, it's also secret by nature of it being experiential rather than purely teachable. It's mystical, not empirical. In fact, much like Western alchemical texts, it's supposed to be hidden precisely to keep it from being misused.

[CatharzGodfoot]

It's mystical, not empirical. In fact, much like Western alchemical texts, it's supposed to be hidden precisely to keep it from being misused.

Ah, yes. The eternal claim of elitists who, of course, are the only ones you can trust with all that dangerous knowledge.

[mean_liar]

They do like job security and secret handshakes.

EDIT - In Avatar-land, similar to most mystical secrets, the knowledge is only shared among the worthy. Wan Shi Tong seems to think you have to be a pacifist to be considered worthy. Frank's assertion that Wan Shi Tong just wants to selfishly sit on the knowledge for the sake of sitting on it is incorrect.

[Ryan_Singer]

DF's Evocation allows for Blocking, Attacking, and Manuvers, which add temporary wound equivalents. The wound equivalents can be something like "can't bend" or "Jesus fucking christ did he just shoot fire out of his forehead?"

Sadly, they all do the same thing mechanically ( force a reroll or give the person who invoked it a +2 to a 4d3 or 2d6 curve depending on the version of the FATE system you use).

They also are new aspects describing the character they apply to. This allows the GM to compel them. For example:

"Azula blasts Aang with lightning. Azula rolls well, getting a roll of +6 with a Weapon:4 attack. Aang only rolls +4 to Dodge, so he would take 6 physical stress. He takes "Can't Bend" as a moderate consequence and only takes 2 stress.

Now, Since Aang can't bend to hit her with an airbending blast, he has to engage her with fists! uh oh...."

Any other scene where Aang's inability to bend sets him back (until he gets it taken care of) will gain him a Fate point. This consequence will also gain him a fate point when he inevitably has to concede the battle and run away like a little girl (known as "cashing out").

[Username17]

They do like job security and secret handshakes.

EDIT - In Avatar-land, similar to most mystical secrets, the knowledge is only shared among the worthy. Wan Shi Tong seems to think you have to be a pacifist to be considered worthy. Frank's assertion that Wan Shi Tong just wants to selfishly sit on the knowledge for the sake of sitting on it is incorrect.

Uh no. He doesn't just demand that people be pacifists, because Aang is a pacifist. He demands that people who accept the knowledge do not use it in a manner which will give one person an advantage over another. It's literally impossible to actually use the knowledge in any concrete manner and live up to his demands. The moment you use an engineering text to build an irrigation system you have given one group of cabbage merchants an advantage over another. The moment you get some meteorological data together and find out whether the cabbage growing season will be long or short next year... and so on.

He's a fucking Taoist. Of the classical loathsome sort that held back China and Korea for a thousand years. As soon as he found out that people were using knowledge in economics and war, he took his ball and went home. Because commerce isn't worthy and he's a monster.

-Username17