>Wanted an official Avatar RPG for nearly 20 years
>Finally get one
>It's Powered by the Apocalypse
So, how is this game? Have you played it? Are there better games? Also AtLA thread I guess.
>Wanted an official Avatar RPG for nearly 20 years. >Finally get one. >It's Powered by the Apocalypse
PBTA is okay, but the game is too proscriptive about what kind of characters and story you're "meant" to be playing.
Try this Genesys conversion instead
The appeal to me was just always getting to play as a kyoshi warriror or some fire nation grunt, not Comic Relief, Abandonment Issues, or Prince Emo to recreate character arcs
That and some system that actually describes bending/non-bending combat
>The appeal to me was just always getting to play as a kyoshi warriror or some fire nation grunt, not Comic Relief, Abandonment Issues, or Prince Emo to recreate character arcs
Do you mean that you want to tell a story relating to those things, or just that you want to play a D&D fighter who can also cast fireball? Because it's PbtA man, creating custom playbooks is extremely simple by design, and Avatar's Balance track makes it even easier because you write out a thesis statement of a story at the top. Make a Fire Nation soldier who's torn between Nationalism and Revolution, wondering if conquering the other nations and dragging them into a technological golden age is actually what's best for them after seeing the costs of war. Have a Kyoshi warrior unsure if Tradition is enough to win without Outsider tactics, even if that means doing something as insane as encouraging men to fight and lead. Figure out a big question of who this character is and set it as your Balance. That isn't deciding what happens to your character ahead of time, it's signposting for the DM and other players (and yourself really) what kind of conflict and drama you want to have.
NTA but I'm just not a fan of PbtA for a few reasons.
For one, the dice are almost all random. The miniscule bonuses, when they exist, suck. That's not limited to PbtA, but in most other systems the bonuses matter at the higher end. The highest I've seen PbtA go is +3, which is the minimum of what it should be. So your character isn't really good at anything. He's just slightly average at a few things and bad at the rest.
For two, the static TNs make it so that nothing is harder or easier than anything else. I've seen some PbtA books suggest giving minuses to rolls, which ultimately is the same, but so few do it, and I don't even think the original Apocalypse World did it. I'll still give it half a point there.
For three, it really can't do a lot. ATLA tried to do combat, but PbtA is not good ad combat. Which isn't a negative per se. CoC, my favorite game of all times, is horrid at combat. But in CoC combat is also the LAST thing you should ever do. Many PbtA books try it and it doesn't work. So, again, half marks, since that's something that's dependant.
The Balance tracker I stole for my games. It's a nifty tool that allows for character development. I also stole stuff from other PbtA books. But I really don't like any of them as a whole.
You like it? Cool. Enjoy what you enjoy. I just don't.
>https://paulgestwicki.blogspot.com/2020/06/comparing-dice-of-d-and-pbta-with-math.html
Pbtas have problems, but the math isn't one of them. IME /tg/ cares so much that systems fiddle with probabilities to account for the vagaries of position, gear, or advantage, when those are such boring elements to spend game design space on. My big problem with most Pbtas is that they're too wordy. Fellowship is an incredible game with excellently captured themes and play structures, but to roll any of that shit out at the table you have to flip to the move and read a short story, and there are SO MANY gd triggers and moves to keep track of. Half of them would work better as a simple visual gauge or as an asterisk next to another move--mark this bond track, the overlord makes more dangerous cuts, etc.
>You like it? Cool. Enjoy what you enjoy. I just don't.
This is the crux of it. Pbtas are kind of a rorschach test. Some people just want to play simple games with minimal math focused on delivering well-scripted narratives and pushing their characters to embody those narratives. Ain't nothing wrong with that. There's a lot of improv theater kids running 5e that are absolutely dying to play dungeon world if they knew it existed.
>but DW is like the worst one eveeerrr--
Nah it's frickin' fine. System matters, but not THAT much.
The link is wrong on two things.
1) Stat bonuses. On a d20 roll 18+ could be full successes, but in 5e (not my game but let's use it because the link), you add the +3 from your stat, +2 from proficiency, and +1 from item. You're not looking at an 18+ on the die, 15%, but at a 12+, 45% to succeed. Or maybe you're bad, so you add -1, or 10%.
In PbtA, if you have a +3, the highest I've seen, you have a 27.78% chance. At the HIGHEST LEVEL of competency, your character only has a +11.11% chance compared to someone who has no benefits, as opposed to 5e which can go up to +11, or a 55% higher chance, or +17 or a +85% chance with Expertise. 5e has issues as well, like no negative and smaller numbers not mattering.
2) TNs in 5e can be changed. In PbtA climbing a tower, rope walking over the canyon, or deciphering a magical script, have an equal chance of complete success, plus up to +11.11%. In 5e one could be a DC: 17 Athletics, the second DC: 20 Acrobatics, and the third DC: 12 Arcane. Which the link and you ignored. Because no, you don't roll an 18+ on the die to succeed. TNs are of a different difficulty because not everything is equally hard. Also, in PF2, you have crit fails, fail, success, which is often partial, and crit success.
>well-scripted narratives
>System matters, but not THAT much.
Again, your preference.
PbtA and CoC ,my system of choie, both fail at combat and travel. PbtA because equal chance of success, and in CoC there's no real way to do travel, and combat is completely avoided, but sucks when done. Ryuutama is the best travel game, but combat is mid, and there's no skills so you can't be better in areas. 3.x and older have better skill systems than 5e, but combat in any edition takes so long, exploration is mediocre at best or doesn't exist (5e).
So saying PbtA has "well scripted narratives" is correct, but any RPG can have that. Some prefer quick 2d6 resolution, some don't. But don't lie about PbtA being better than other systems for it.
I think you fundamentally misunderstand that a partial success is still a success. You have a 58% chance of rolling a 7+ on 2d6, and that goes up to 91% chance at +3. The 10+ is supposed to be a better success, one without complications. But the game is built off of getting partials because those lead to complications and ergo, more game. A partial doesn't even mean you frick up, it just means the GM gets to do a soft move. Shit like "You climb to the top without issue, but peering over the edge you see a guard coming your way, what do you do?"
What is your issue with that? You want to min-max so you never fail or something?
Why is my dice roll creating reality by zapping a guard into existence? Why can't it just take me longer to climb? Why can't I ruin my clothes by tearing them on the rocks, or break a foothold and have it fall onto people climbing up behind me? Why do Pbtbuttholes always go to "uhhh well you didn't roll good enough so you make a bad guy appear!" His existence and my climbing skill have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Bro have you never heard of a narrative game before?
>His existence and my climbing skill have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
You are rolling dice. The dice represent the random components of the universe that are not entirely within your power. That is why you do not roll dice to perform tasks such as copying a line of text or climbing a staircase.
Additionally, of course, the guard could hear your ass knocking a rock loose, or you could have wound up picking a bad place to come up over the ledge and if you'd arrived a few meters to the other side you'd be safely behind a wall or shrine, or a million other things that actually do relate your actions while climbing to the guard, but anti-PBTAtards are incapable of imagination and just shout "QUANTUM OGRE!!!" the second anyone suggests a consequence that might be interesting.
There is no reason a failed climbing roll should result in an antagonist manifesting whole-cloth. It would be like having a failed research roll spawn ninjas, or a failed jumping roll zap into existence a tornado. There is no cause and effect. The world shouldn't be at the whim of your skill checks. You are compromising everything for the sake of coming up with some ham-fisted, left-field "complication" that has no connection to the issue being tackled. It's hack writing for bad television.
>There is no reason a failed climbing roll should result in an antagonist manifesting whole-cloth.
Ah, yes, that's what the idea is. You're climbing a mountain devoid of human life and then you roll bad so there's a guard at the end of it.
Not that you're, like, climbing a fortress's walls and obviously there are going to be guards up there and it's significantly down to luck whether they're where you pop up or not. The obvious actual case of such things actually happening in play.
Obviously, climbing a well-guarded cliff is different from the scenario presented that I am arguing against:
>"You climb to the top without issue, but peering over the edge you see a guard coming your way, what do you do?"
Nowhere is it mentioned that there exists a fortress, an outpost, or even a training campsite. We are climbing a mountain devoid of any description whatsoever, which seems to be highly desirable to PbtA fans, given how dogged you are to defend verisimilitude-compronising consequences of dice.
As was stated earlier, in the scenario of a blank mountain devoid of danger, you wouldn't roll dice, you would just climb the mountain.
Why does it break people's brains so bad that you don't have to roll dice constantly?
Mountain climbing is not devoid of danger, and the scenario I responded to was a blank mountain. The post also outlined how these partial failures are the point of the game, ergo you should be rolling to get more game. A mountain you don't roll to climb betrays that philosophy.
Did you not know the blank mountain was actually a hidden fortress for the Dai Li, Geeze I guess their earth bending really did fool you.
Try not to derail the conversation please, this thread is about how much we hate certain games.
lol My bad. Back to the shadows. also boo hiss having to use imagination in a rpg boooo
No, I was pointing out that your idea of needing a +5 bonus minimum to play a character was moronic because the game doesn't come from rolling 10+s, but from rolling 7-9s. There's plenty of game to be had in constantly doing things you can't fail at, if you've ever done smart play in OSR you'd know what I mean, but there isn't much game to constantly rolling for risky scenarios and then succeeding because you have a literal 100% chance of success. That's some min-max in 3.5e "gameplay". You "won" because it's impossible to fail. "Congrats" on your "skill".
They're just morons, anon. They aren't trying to have a discussion with you, they just know that they need to hate a product because people they don't like may enjoy it.
Yeah, you're right, it's just funny to me that these dudes always come up with the exact same kind of argument to """prove""" that the game doesn't works and the solution is super simple and right there in front of them.
This hobby has been around for 45 years. It's like if everybody only played mario, and the moment someone talks about playing final fantasy, they cry 'Where did those 9 goblins come from! They weren't there on the world map before! The existence of those goblins has no bearing on whether or not you were walking in a forest! You just pressed a button and made a number appear, you didn't even jump on his head! How can he be dead now! You can't kill goblins unless you jump on their heads!'
That's what you guys sound like. These are different games that do different things and serve different audiences.
>but it makes no sense to MEEE
Just let it exist. It's a book. It can't hurt you.
Then don't have that happen, 4hd.
>There is no reason a failed climbing roll should result in an antagonist manifesting whole-cloth.
You climb so shittily it attracted attention from the resident mountain liongoats.
Roll to not get mauled.
>Why can't it just take me longer to climb? Why can't I ruin my clothes by tearing them on the rocks, or break a foothold and have it fall onto people climbing up behind me?
Those are literally things that can happen when you roll a 7-9, why the frick would they not be things that happen in PBTA?
>this is your brain on D&D
The world in a tabletop game isn't a simulation, stop pretending it is and have fun. If your autism can't take that a complication will let you succeed without straight up falling to your doom, maybe this isn't for you and you should return to playing 3.5 alone in the dark with other boring people.
>>this is your brain on D&D
D&D has random encounters which magically pop monsters into existence as well so if he really is D&D brained it's just a double standard
Does your handler know you're on the computer?
>Why is my dice roll creating reality by zapping a guard into existence?
So you wouldn't approve of RPGs with summon spells?
>Why can't it just take me longer to climb? Why can't I ruin my clothes by tearing them on the rocks, or break a foothold and have it fall onto people climbing up behind me?
You can do all of those things, are you on drugs or moronic?
Consequences can be whatever the GM pleases. Saying it's always summon guard is just strawman bullshit. That's like saying "why would anyone play D&D? It's just a bunch of fat moronic coke addicts cheating on their wives with uglier women".
>Why do Pbtbuttholes always go to "uhhh well you didn't roll good enough so you make a bad guy appear!" His existence and my climbing skill have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Again, nobody does that, you're either moronic or were raped by some fat goth b***h who had no imagination and was running your game shitty. Consequences are whatever fits the narrative. You might summon guards if the players are trying to flee the guards who are currently in pursuit... at which point, failure or whatever would result in some of them having already positioned themselves behind the door you're trying to go through. But there is absolutely zero obligation to make every single die roll a summon guard action, and I've literally only seen someone use the opportunity of a consequence to make someone appear that the players didn't know about once in all the time I've played.
You're like some DEI hire talking about sexism in planes. Get out of your own head.
You misunderstood me. Again.
1) I'm a CoC player.
2) I get how partial successes work.
3) The article is bad because it assumes 18+ is the same as a full success because of math, but fails to account for bonuses.
4) We can then extrapolate that further. If it's 58% then the D&D equivalent is 10+. 55%. Or a 4+ with the +7 bonus, or 80%. The better example would actually have been PF2, where if you roll 10 over the DC you critical succeed, while a normal success is good, but not the best. The equivalent of a partial in PbtA. You don't deal full damage, you see something but not everything, you see he's bending the truth but now what part was bent.
4) You are not better than someone else. This has NOTHING to do with min maxing. Simply that you, as a character, cannot, as the system us written, be good at something. You're average at the best of times.
5) Climbing a canyon wall or climbing a building, freehand or with rope, or doing anything else, is equally hard.
You want to fix that? You want most to be partials, right? Sure. It makes being good at things harder, but sure. Make the max be +5 and rare. With a +5 you have a 100% chance of partial an 83% chance of full. With +4 that's 72%. Those are impactful. But give negatives. Assuming a cyberpunk splat, maybe your hacker has a +4 to hacking instead being the only one able to even attempt it. +3 to fixing, -3 to talk, and -4 to physical activities. There. Game fixed. You're good at some stuff, bad at other.
You want to know how CoC handles this? By giving you percentages. You're an occult detective? Add +25% to your success rate. Equivalent in PbtA to +3. How does it handle partials? You fail by 15% or less and you still succeed at a price (depends on the edition, there have been changes). How does it handle stuff being harder? Subtract 25% or 50%.
I don't even mind the whole "guard spawns". I mean it's a really bad example, but I'm fine with it.
I hope this explains it, and if it doesn't... Learn to read.
>game is broken because you don’t have a 100% chance of success
You're missing the idea that, at a certain point, if the task is that easy, you just wouldn't roll at all. Rolls are for situations where there are stakes, and failure "or success at a cost) would change the situation in an interesting way. If you're climbing a wall with a bunch of climbing gear and no one is chasing you and there isn't any time pressure, you just cob the wall, you don't need to worry about giving a bunch of fiddly mechanical +1s and +2s. This is how the game is supposed to work.
>a normal success is good, but not the best. The equivalent of a partial in PbtA. You don't deal full damage, you see something but not everything, you see he's bending the truth but now what part was bent.
Not the same thing. Most pbtas have a problem with inaccurate terminology. The minutiae may vary, but for most pbta moves, there are 3 results:
>You do what you wanted to
>A dangerous thing happens
>Both of the above
The roll is about generating a success, or a consequence, or both. Pbta games aren't trying to do the same thing that trad games with partial successes are. So it goes with your other complaint:
>you, as a character, cannot, as the system us written, be good at something. You're average at the best of times.
These aren't games about measuring how good people are at theoretical tasks in a blank environment. You're not rolling to see if you can do something. You're rolling to see how a complicated situation with many variables turns out. That's why monsters don't have to take turns in pbtas and their derivatives. Their turn, and all threats, environmental pressures, and oppositions, are incorporated into the player's roll. This is the reason why bonuses never go past +3. The opposition has to have a chance to turn things around on the players. 1+1+4=6, so you'd have a 2.78% chance for a disaster result. The game requires that the chance for dangerous outcomes remain within the realm of possibility. If there's no chance of a disaster, there's no need to roll (you get the same advice with DnD and taking 20 on checks without time pressure or w/e).
Anyway, this all goes to illustrate that pbta is just not a good fit for many players, which is totally fine. Some people need to see that their game is measuring the outcome of simulated interactions with at least some degree of specificity. Just keep in mind that not everybody needs a game to do that to have fun.
>4) We can then extrapolate that further. If it's 58% then the D&D equivalent is 10+. 55%. Or a 4+ with the +7 bonus, or 80%. The better example would actually have been PF2, where if you roll 10 over the DC you critical succeed, while a normal success is good, but not the best. The equivalent of a partial in PbtA. You don't deal full damage, you see something but not everything, you see he's bending the truth but now what part was bent.
Except in D&D enemies get turns, so it's moronic to compare "partials" in those kinds of games to something like PBTA.
A 10+ in PBTA translated to D&D would mean you hit your attack on your turn and the enemy failed their attack on their turn, not just that you hit once.
>You are compromising everything for the sake of coming up with some ham-fisted, left-field "complication" that has no connection to the issue being tackled. It's hack writing for bad television.
Your entire argument boils down to a moronic GM can declare a space ship shows up to fire rockets, but a moronic GM can declare that in any system with or without a rule
Good explanation and I'm with you, anon. The math in PbtA games is poor.
>For one, the dice are almost all random.
Why are rpg people so bad at math and statistics?
Humans are almost all bad at math and statistics but RPGs make people think they aren't.
>So your character isn't really good at anything. He's just slightly average at a few things and bad at the rest.
Now I must admit I have only played BitD but my impression of the system there is that instead of characters starting weak and getting godlike later they start as elites and become extremely powerful later on.
>For one, the dice are almost all random. The miniscule bonuses, when they exist, suck. That's not limited to PbtA, but in most other systems the bonuses matter at the higher end. The highest I've seen PbtA go is +3, which is the minimum of what it should be. So your character isn't really good at anything. He's just slightly average at a few things and bad at the rest.
You're literally moronic. With a +3 on a 2d6 you have a 92% chance of success.
>Make a Fire Nation soldier who's torn between Nationalism and Revolution, wondering if conquering the other nations and dragging them into a technological golden age is actually what's best for them after seeing the costs of war. Have a Kyoshi warrior unsure if Tradition is enough to win without Outsider tactics, even if that means doing something as insane as encouraging men to fight and lead. Figure out a big question of who this character is and set it as your Balance.
What if I don't need some writing prompts to rp and just need a system that accommodates throwing rocks/fire/water with boomerangs and other martial arts shit
Maybe D&D is more your speed?
Then you might ask yourself what attracts you to Avatar? Was it the cool combat? Exalted might be your speed.
I wanted to explore the world as it was, not recreate a TV show. Basically
But if I need to consent to death, that ruins it a little.
Then isn't the Genesys book he posted ideal for you?
>PBTA is okay.
Absolute fatherless take. It is everything wrong with class-based rulesets stapled to an anemic core mechanic that makes even those one page 1 stat systems seem deep and meaningful.
Meh, I can respect what PBTA is trying to do. The idea of facilitating narrative play by making the vast majority of rules GM facing is a neat idea. They just failed at that and forgot to add the rules too.
It should make a lot of sense in a setting like avatar where most of the rules are innate. Should.
>blocks your Path
Frick that looks like shit. Why is PbtA so bad?
Because it was written by improve actors who thought Amber had too much dice rolling.
Your mother looks like shit
I'd be surprised if she didn't. She's been dead since 1996.
Ironsworn is peak though. Apart from needing to roll to finish quests, hate that.
>core mechanic that makes even those one page 1 stat systems seem deep
Sounds based. Tell me more about pbta.
Why does firebending get healing too?
It's something that happens in one episode in Korra. Fire sages do it
Man, that feels like something I would have remembered. Then again, there's probably a lot about Korra I didn't bother remembering.
If I remember that specific scene correctly, it was a fire sage waving some flames over her and identifying that Korra was possessed or something, but they didn't actually cure her via firebending. I think they lower her into a special pool or spring instead.
I always assumed it fell into the vague spiritbending category that Korra expanded on. Season 2 also has waterbending being used to purge evil spirits, for example. It leans far more towards the magical side of Avatar's world with spirits, but but bending is supposed to have a spiritual side, so having some sages/mystics with spirit-specific techniques makes at least some sense.
>If I remember that specific scene correctly, it was a fire sage waving some flames over her and identifying that Korra was possessed or something, but they didn't actually cure her via firebending. I think they lower her into a special pool or spring instead.
It was some kind of spiritual healing more than physical healing that waterbending does. Though technically everything in Avatar has some spirit stuff in it. I think waterbending healing works by letting chi flow, and chi-blocking canonically originates from the water tribes.
This is the episode where Korra sees the Wan the first Avatar and the origin of bending. Honestly, for me everything after the original series is a pick-and-choose situation for me.
>Honestly, for me everything after the original series is a pick-and-choose situation
Boy do I feel that. Had the Wan episodes been some stand alone wuxia cartoon story I would have liked it but as an expansion of the Avatar mythos it bothered me. It gives me major midichlorians vibes: an unneeded explanation that actually undermined what it explained. I liked the idea the Avatar was an ancient, primordial force from the very beginnings. Finding out it's just a lawful good kite ghost bodyhopping across millennia--with a fricking Waluigi evil doppelganger no less--really cheapened it for me.
I agree with you here, i choose to ignore that whole season. the season after however... who knew an airbender could be so cool as a villian. I recommend the kyoshi books too.
It made me realize that I always subconsciously assumed the Avatar universe was this setting with no clear beginning. Like Aang looking at his previous reincarnations and they just go on into the horizon. Korra kinda took that magic away, but that's kinda appropriate since things are much more modern.
>who knew an airbender could be so cool as a villian.
yeah that was cool though, Korra did expand on airbending and I heard the Kyoshi novels were alright too
>Why does firebending get healing too?
Creator here. Partly for balancing the number of forms [initially] available to each element, and supported by the Fire Sages in Korra (with some very bold creative liberty, I admit)
>PbtA
I don't even have to read it to know it's absolute shit, even worse than D&D 5e, and that's already an incredibly low bar.
Avatar Legends isn't a bad game, but it certainly isn't anything special. Unfortunately it manages to be both too safe, and take big swings that miss, at the same time. Magpie deserves a lot of praise for Masks, it's a tight, thematic system that everyone can easily understand the rules and dramas of; if I had to recommend a system to a stranger that I don't know anything about, it would be Masks. Avatar is mostly an asset-swapped version of Masks - in multiple cases they just took moves from Masks, replaced the playbook and stat names, and called it a day. Meanwhile the brand new bell and whistles they added, especially the full on 'combat system' could be described as clunky at best. People who DO like the game will tell you that it should only be used in special circumstances (not just because you're in combat, the basic moves can handle it just fine), that you should remember you don't need to keep using the system until you fully defeat the opponents (they can retreat, surrender, etc), and that at the end of every exchange/round you should all ask yourselves if it makes sense in the story to stop using the system now.
I'm not opposed to adding more structure and tactics to combat in a PbtA game, but this one is a real whiff. Armour Astir: Advent has done a much better job of it with Approaches, tiers, and tags on equipment. Avatar's system encourages you to feel like combat is a separate part of the game (and thus story) than everything else, because you're no longer just using basic and playbook moves as part of the conversation. I think that, like Dungeon World, they wanted the game to feel more similar to D&D to encourage those people to play it, but made the critical mistake of forgetting that D&D players don't look at other systems and judge how it plays, they only want to play D&D because they play D&D. Meanwhile PbtA players will focus on how it is like D&D and how that makes the game worse. Attempting to please everyone and ended up pleasing no one.
Where can I learn more about this pentagon?
I wish we could have one thread about a PbtA game that doesn't become infested with homosexuals who don't play PbtA talking about why they assume it must be bad. Not giving him a (you), but holy shit this is advanced moronation.
This is Armor Astir: Advent, a PbtA magitech mecha game where you and your mech are powered by one of those 5 Approaches, which are strong against one other approach and weak to another. AA has a bunch of added mechanics from FitD games and general tabletop, including things like Advantage (roll an extra die and take the 2 highest of all rolled) and Confidence (any 1s this roll become 6s). If you attack someone and your approach is strong against them (Elemental is strong against Mundane) then you have Confidence on the roll, and if your approach is weak (Elemental is weak against Profane) then the opposite is true, you have Desperation and any 6s you roll become 1s.
Armour Astir really embraces having Player Characters be powerful, "Let the players make a difference" is one of your three GM Agendas. If you have Confidence on a +3 roll then it is literally impossible to miss, the lowest you can roll is 2+2+3=7. It's a game where the GM needs to use the extra toys it gives him too, because otherwise players will full succeed so often it's hard to add in consequences. I know the creator put out a new version lately that buffed the Authority during the Faction Turn, so maybe he agrees with me that it was going too easy on the players. You can find the game in the share thread, but it's probably an older version.
Someone launched a kickstarter for an AA:A hack last week, and I think this is going to become a new arm of indie ttrpgs. The same way John Harper made Blades in the Dark and it became a whole new breed, even though it started as a PbtA hack. This is a synthesis of PbtA and BitD, which refines elements of both.
Thank you very much for the elaborate explanation, anon! 😀
>I wish we could have one thread about a PbtA game that doesn't become infested with homosexuals who don't play PbtA talking about why they assume it must be bad. Not giving him a (you), but holy shit this is advanced moronation.
To be fair, this thread is more about what systems work with Avatar. And honestly that hinges on what exactly you like about it. It's like Gundam, people either want extremely autistic detail on the robots and weapons, or they're people who wouldn't have given a shit if it wasn't for the politics and personal dramas. Avatar is basically that but with bending instead of robots
That’s fair, I guess I just don’t get why people want the autistic detail in Avatar. In the show bending is all very woo woo and spiritual, and we don’t get much in the way of how exactly it works, or its limits. It’s like the force. You just need to train and practice techniques and if you work hard enough you could hypothetically do anything relating to your element.
>I just don’t get why people want the autistic detail in Avatar. In the show bending is all very woo woo and spiritual, and we don’t get much in the way of how exactly it works, or its limits.
It's martial arts, with a real world martial art generally corresponding to a bending art. Sometimes they crossover, I think lightning bending uses water bending(tai chi) movement. There are some moments where it's just generic punches, but bending in general has that martial arts basis. Korra though basically does just revolve it to generic punches a lot.
And bending is just one aspect of autism people would want out of Avatar. I personally like seeing the game canonize hand cannons and people in Ainu outfits. I don't know what it says about vehicles, ships, or animals though, I'm just flipping through it.
>It’s like the force.
For perspective, anon, Star Wars video games and RPGs very often give a fair amount of attention to force powers because they know people will want to use the cool force powers if they're playing in the world.
>you need to train using the force
Not anymore!
>Are there better games?
Seconding the Genesys version.
I ran the starter set adventures at a local gaming con last year and it was fun. Everyone else was running D&D and this attracted people that were tired of D&D, intimidated by all the parts of character creation and other moving parts of the game, and younger players interested in the avatarverse. I plan on running for a friend of mine and his kids that just murderhobo through his D&D game. And there is a local comiccon that I plan on running it at.
Also this is my first PbtA game so I had no expectations one way or another going into this.
>Whines like a b***h all his life
>Produces nothing of value on his own
>Just wants to consoom
I go to work, I pay my taxes, I wash under my foreskin, I'll b***h and consoom what I want
>Jordan Peterson went on spontaneous rant about tabletop roleplaying games in the street today
>"OSR games, they... enable the soul to go on a journey that men don't have a physical outlet for anymore. They make us desire a better world. PbtA? No.. No that's a cruel machine. A story where the ending is already decided, where you must conform to someone else's plan for you."
>He was last seen yelling "Mork Borg" at random women, which we assume is some sort of racial slur
the starter set is under $20 in most places. just pick it up and give it a shot. I personally like that you're not playing a class (bender, etc) but its focused on a personality and inner conflict more, really pushing the role-playing with its mechanics. The people who made it really understood the source material more than anyone else I've seen for a licensed game. people on here can b***h about PTBA all they want, but in the end it's just a resolution mechanic like any other game has.
>draw Zuko's face just off-model enough that it looks like fan art instead of official art, on your official licensed product
Why?
It almost looks like azula crossdressing as zuko
>It's Powered by the Apocalypse
Shovelware. Every PbtA game is shovelware. PbtA games are like Unity engine asset flips on Steam.
>PbtA games are like Unity engine asset flips on Steam.
Neat, I like Palworld.
>It's Powered by the Apocalypse
>So, how is this game?
Do you even have to ask? You already know the answer.
The best system for avatar would be 4e
i use a slightly modified QIN: the warring state system with the "shaolin&wudang expansion".
works well.
When I cribbed bending for my steel donut Asian fantasy game a while back I used Savage Worlds. I made Bending an Edge you take at character gen and you made a Fighting roll to use it. You also used Fighting to defend against it like you would a normal melee attack, regardless of you were a bender. I figured the show more or less says it works like that.
It worked out pretty well. I'm sure if my players tried they could have found a way to cheese my homebrew rules to break the game but they were too enthusiastic about getting to be firebenders to actually try any meta shit
>QIN: the warring state system with the "shaolin&wudang expansion".
Okay this might just be what I personally need, cool
Oh boy, an Avatar thread! I can't wait to read about people's campaigns and what era they're playing in an-
>it's just people arguing about PbtA
>it's just people arguing about PbtA
You know if it wasn't for that it would just be posts about either Toph footjobs or Ty Lee acrobatic sex so the /tg/ quality of the thread has not really changed.
Give this place some credit, it's not as bad as Ganker. You still get actual conversations here
Honestly I've just been using Avatar d20 cause I just like the d20 system and its easy enough to homebrew. Of course change a few things around myself cause god damn the system must've been made in like 3 weeks just to see if they could even do it and its obviously still on the 3.0 side rather than the pathfinder side.
Playin PBTA is like playing a plug n play rather than a full fledge game. You get personality, backstory and the like on you from which playbook you choose. TLoK was a blight to the series but I mean I was cooking up a "even more in the future" idea where the whole overarching theme is that the world is becoming less mystical and more mundane even the spirits becoming mundane. Artificial benders and the like, most likely going to be the next game I run after my current one.
I'm just sad that The Last Airbender didn't have an epic water vs earth bender fight...
Again I have no prior experience with PbtA games, but this system seems to really work for Avatar. The pregens all seem to run really well and I'm excited to help my players to make a party for the Korra era.
> I have no prior experience with PbtA games, but this system seems to really work for Avatar.
>a party for the Korra era.
That explains it.
Explains what?
That the Korra era is the latest in the timeline?
That it's one of the few eras you can play airbenders?
That it has the most options for tech users?
That currently has the most printed adventures for it?
Korra is a bad show, almost as bad as the live action movies. The only people who like it are mouth-breathing morons. PbtA is a bad ruleset, almost as bad as D&D. The only people who like it think saying "I'm LTBGXYZDWEFASD++" is a valid defense against being called a pedophile.
His brain has a hole in it and he associates both PBTA and Korra with tumblr/SJWs/blue team in the culture war
Pissbaby samegays is samegayging like a pissbaby.
Or you know, that TLoK is an objectively bad disjointed uneven mess that has very little value outside actually making TLA worse and it would be better for it to be forgotten.
And pbta is an objectively bad, disjointed uneven mess that has very little value outside being easy to hack, because you actually don't need to have any designer skill at all. Thus you can rewrite a few moves superglue an IP name on it and call it a day.
I am not an amerimutt, your culture war means nothing to me. It's invasion in my culture has been contained in university campuses.
I was thinking smooth brain, like no ridges at all
lol you can't see different posters
I just like it, always have, not sure how to justify it
Still samegayging. Pathetic and homosexual.
I thought you were being uncharitable but then I read the post above you. Pretty much.
>That it's one of the few eras you can play airbenders?
Aang is the only era I would out and out tell players they aren't allowed to play airbenders, but also I don't think enough people are open to the idea that you can just make your own era to play in. The established lore is good (mostly, the Korra writers have put a lot of effort into making it retroactively gay and lame) but I would never play a game where we're interacting with notable characters from the shows/comics. The timeline is so open, you can say that this is the age of Avatar What'shisname and tweak the setting however you want, saying that's how things were at the time.
Pathetic moron. Go back to your DnD containment thread.
>The timeline is so open, you can say that this is the age of Avatar What'shisname and tweak the setting however you want, saying that's how things were at the time.
Couldn't agree more, it's been 10,000 years canonically
Yeah I can get behind that, 10,000 years of timeline to play with. The Uncle Iroh Adventure Guide seems promising with the generational adventures. I'll be honest the whole reason I picked up this game is because it's not D&D. I'm a long time D&D player and have a complete collection of 5e, but the handling of One D&D as left a bad taste in my mouth so I started looking at other RPGs. I always loved the Avatar series and this game appealed to as the system seem to handle benders and non-benders really well. I also picked up the Marvel Multiverse RPG and Call of Cthulhu. But CoC seems to attract a worse crowd than D&D does, and while the Marvel RPG corebook has a robust power selection I feel like it really isn't gonna find it's legs till the next couple supplements come out. But those are coming out at a glacial pace so we'll see. Also a point in Avatar Legends favor they release the PDFs alongside the books so the share threads usually get them pretty quickly so if you want the check them out hoist the colors matey.
And there's still some years where humanity lived on a lionturtles before that too
>That it's one of the few eras you can play airbenders?
The only era were you CAN'T play an airbender is the 100 year war. Even then, if you played early in the war, you could excuse an airbender on the run.
I think one of the stupidest parts of the canon is that all airbenders are somehow absolutely dead because the fire nation was just that good or something. No survivors, they attacked and then died. Even the card game thought there was at least some last remnants somewhere, fricking Korra has air bison that Sozin kept in a fricking personal zoo
I like it as a meta decision if nothing else, because otherwise you could be ABSOLUTELY sure that someone would eventually pull a secret Airbender our their ass in an official licensed product. Then within a decade you'd have the star wars problem where ALL the Airbenders were killed, except for these 800 different sole survivors. Also nice quads.
That's not strictly true. My suggestion for a renegade airbender was informed by one of the early side comics. Even then, the few airbenders who survived to propagate did so with members of the less spiritually inclined nations, significantly lowering the chance of the child being a bender. After 100 years, I can believe they'd all died out.
>members of the less spiritually inclined nations
Hearty kek for airbender supremacy. I understand why Magpie did it, but I wish they would have been willing to give airbenders even a little bit of bite in one of the eras, instead of saying they've all always been super duper nice pacifist mediators of the world. Give us an airbending warlord who leads his mongol horde through the skies until they crash down inside your walls to pillage everything of value. But as soon as you do, you get people on the internet making "Based Sozin did nothing wrong" "Air nomads had it coming" "It wasn't genocide, it was clearing out an infestation" jokes about Nickelodeon's golden goose kids show; their lawyers would go on a war path. I guess that's why I need to make a custom era lol.
>The playbook system is always the worst aspect of PBtA.
>There's no reason, for example, why players cannot make their own contrasting values for Avatar, for instance.
Wow, if only PbtA games used intentionally simple stat and move systems that allowed people to easily create custom playbooks where they could make their own contrasting values for Avatar, for instance. Imagine, the book could have a whole section covering how to create good custom moves to make it even easier for people to make an interesting playbook about whatever kind of thematic characters they want.
Do you cry sour grapes about PbtA because it exposes how even trannies and homosexuals are far more creative than you are?
>want to homebrew in FATE or even Genesys
>use the system to describe the character
>you're done
>want to make a character in PBtA
>either pick a playbook and paint by numbers
>or homebrew a playbook, which involves planning out an entire level-up path
>which also runs the risk of being entirely prescriptive about what character arc they're going to have
That's pretty much DnD homebrew. Don't really fancy doing that.
Why are you trying to get so tribalistic about this? I'm currently in a Masks game and having a good time. Playbooks create a significant homebrew overhead and kneecap running other games.
>pick a playbook and paint by numbers
What do you mean by this? Playbooks are typically so open-ended they're basically just archetypes. Like the superpowers in masks are just shit like "super strength" or "cosmic energy" and how it works in game is vibes.
I ran one short-ish campaign of Avatar and made it a big globe-trotting adventure. Travelling around gave us lots of opportunities to show off strange parts of the world and easily introduce local problems for them to solve as an adventure. If you're playing a Republic city focused Korra era game I hope you can find the space to keep introducing new locations with new people and spirits. If I want a city-focused game I'd stick with Blades or Spire.
I would build on Legends of the Wulin. You'd have to write your own loresheets and probably some of your own kung fu styles, but mechanically I think it's chassis would be a good fit.
>wanted an avatar rpg for years
Why? The setting seems so limited. Like Harry Potter but with fictional chinks
Ah so you're moronic
Those are two different posters, anon. Now answer the question. I find Avatar a boring setting for a game. Why do you disagree?
This is the most fricking moronic statement ever, just say you didn't watch the show.
Settle down, 3rd chair tuba.
There's a whole world with a history in Avatar and you can piece shit together with some basic Chinese history, Harry Potter's worldbuilding falls apart when you leave Hogwarts
So it's a scale thing. I can see the difference there
The playbook system is always the worst aspect of PBtA. Way too pre-scriptive. PBtA should help you make thematic characters of your own and have the Paint-by-numbers as a fallback.
There's no reason, for example, why players cannot make their own contrasting values for Avatar, for instance.
I'm actually gonna run a Burning Wheel game in the Avatar universe at some point after my current BW game is over. Burning Wheel fits the series pretty well, just need a couple of custom lifepaths and to figure out how I'll incorporate bending into combat. Luckily some others have done some legwork before on this front.
>bitches to play something other than D&D
>plays another system
>No! Not that one!
Then I beseech oh great gatekeepers of RPGs what should I play then or am I just supposed to a friendless incel like you?
I'm going to say it
Avatar was a garbage show and doesn't deserve the fanbase it has. Much like Steven Universe. It is over hyped garbage and rots the minds of all who consoooomed it.
What's so bad about it or is it something you personally just didn't like?
What might I have personally disliked? Can we get some thoughts about that?
Your opinions are wrong and there is no further conversation. Sorry.
So I've been running this game for close to a year now.
I read the canon novels and enjoyed them, so I drew on them for a lot of my inspiration. My setting ended up being immediately after Avatar Kyoshi kills Chin The Conqueror in that flashback in the Avatar Day episode. Chose the Kyoshi era because there's no "you can't be an airbender" or the like, and only metalbending and bloodbending are truly off the table.
Due to the Earth Kingdom having just been mostly united by a single ruler who was suddenly killed, the whole continent is in chaos. The King of Ba Sing Se is just barely regaining power over the lands around his city, and the King of Omashu is dead, his Prince yet to emerge from hiding. We're focused on the north and northwestern area of the Earth Kingdom. The story was initially just an homage to The Seven Samurai, and the players are now opposing one of Chin's generals, who's trying to set himself up as a third King around Cranefish Town(the place that will become Republic City in about 400 years)
It's pretty fun. One of the players has a fragment of a dark spirit bound to her body(using the Destined playbook) and a Air Nun has been trying to prove that she and the party are dangerous villains because of this. She captured two of the players trying to sneak into the Northern Air Temple and used this to essentially put the party on trial in front of the temple's monks. During the trial, the game's Balance mechanics kicked in and our groups waterbender lost her balance. The rules say you "lash out destructively" when this happens, so what she ended up doing was getting so incensed by this air nun trying to frame her friends that she stabbed her in the back with a set of ice claws.
In front of everyone.
So yeah, players are wanted criminals now. Whether the air nun is alive or not is unclear.
Bump
have a nice day