Avatar / Korra game considerations

[Coin]

@Songtress said in Avatar / Korra game considerations:

I would actually like to see a universe, where post-Korra, the Avatar is gone for good. There will not be another -buit the nations are rebuilding themselves.

I would prefer a setting in which the Avatar exists but has essentially become an oddity; a relic; superfluous.

[GreenFlashlight]

If the Avatar is unplayable, then I don't really care what they're doing, but I do wonder how canon purists will react to the Avatar being removed from canon. It might save more effort to just say "oh the world's pretty much fine so the Avatar is off doing Avatar stuff and will be back if Sephiroth or whoever pops up."

[Coin]

@GreenFlashlight said in Avatar / Korra game considerations:

If the Avatar is unplayable, then I don't really care what they're doing, but I do wonder how canon purists will react to the Avatar being removed from canon. It might save more effort to just say "oh the world's pretty much fine so the Avatar is off doing Avatar stuff and will be back if Sephiroth or whoever pops up."

Well, that's why I suggested it be set after Korra (or an Avatar) has just died. It answers every question: why can't anyone, even staff, play the Avatar? Because they are a baby. What is the Avatar doing? Probably eating their own boogers.

[Wizz]

@Coin said in Avatar / Korra game considerations:

why can't anyone, even staff, play the Avatar? Because they are a baby. What is the Avatar doing?

[GreenFlashlight]

I could see Aang doing that.

[Cupcake]

I am generally in favor of a post Korra timeline. Either after her death, which means the new Avatar hasn't been found or has only recently been recognized and thus still in training, or during her life, but she's on an extended tour of the spirit world.

I think there are far too many opportunities post-Korra - post-Aang, even - that are enticing and can draw RP. Pre-Aang, female waterbenders are limited to learning healing, and the Fire Nation is default the enemy, and there are no air nomads. Technology is less a thing, robbing non-benders of a potential hook.

Also, post-Korra - how did we forget pro-bending?! If folks wanted to form a Bending team and do RP around that, it would be incredibly fun. Now add adventures in the now easily accessible spirit world...

[fatefan]

@Cupcake I'm definitely sold on the post-Korra timeline, in part for the reasons you laid out.

[Waller]

Pro Bending. So I could app a descendent of The Boulder and be the most Exciting Earth Bender in Pro Bending Entertainment?

[Jeshin]

Pro-bending post-Korra by enough time means Pro-bending with airbenders.

Assuming they don't all choose to be ascetic monks.

[Roz]

I have a half-baked idea but it involves -- if there's gonna be sheets, and stats for bending expertise, it would also be cool if people could spend XP on the other bending styles (other than their own) as an indicator of how well they've studied those styles to counter. (I thought of this after being reminded of a scene early in S1 on TLA where Aang is chatting with the Fire Nation guards while captured and is all "Huh you guys have probably never fought an Air Bender, huh." A big part of Aang's effectiveness in the series ended up just being that people had totally lost the experience of studying the styles of air bending.)

[Coin]

@Roz said in Avatar / Korra game considerations:

I have a half-baked idea but it involves -- if there's gonna be sheets, and stats for bending expertise, it would also be cool if people could spend XP on the other bending styles (other than their own) as an indicator of how well they've studied those styles to counter. (I thought of this after being reminded of a scene early in S1 on TLA where Aang is chatting with the Fire Nation guards while captured and is all "Huh you guys have probably never fought an Air Bender, huh." A big part of Aang's effectiveness in the series ended up just being that people had totally lost the experience of studying the styles of air bending.)

My custom-baked Avatar system has as its core Attributes the four elements + Spirit, and each one governs something different (Fire is Power; Water is Change; Earth is Temperance; Air is Freedom ...) and when you bend you roll the appropriate Attribute, but having the others is part of everyone; everyone has a little bit of each element; Benders just channel their main one into their Bending Art. What you're suggesting would be represented by having better levels of the others to better understanding the theory behind other Bending techniques.

[GreenFlashlight]

Savage Worlds seems like it could handle bending pretty well.

[Roz]

@Coin said in Avatar / Korra game considerations:

@Roz said in Avatar / Korra game considerations:

I have a half-baked idea but it involves -- if there's gonna be sheets, and stats for bending expertise, it would also be cool if people could spend XP on the other bending styles (other than their own) as an indicator of how well they've studied those styles to counter. (I thought of this after being reminded of a scene early in S1 on TLA where Aang is chatting with the Fire Nation guards while captured and is all "Huh you guys have probably never fought an Air Bender, huh." A big part of Aang's effectiveness in the series ended up just being that people had totally lost the experience of studying the styles of air bending.)

My custom-baked Avatar system has as its core Attributes the four elements + Spirit, and each one governs something different (Fire is Power; Water is Change; Earth is Temperance; Air is Freedom ...) and when you bend you roll the appropriate Attribute, but having the others is part of everyone; everyone has a little bit of each element; Benders just channel their main one into their Bending Art. What you're suggesting would be represented by having better levels of the others to better understanding the theory behind other Bending techniques.

Mm, I guess. My line of thinking would be more about the skill end of things. Like if you have the elements as attributes, I feel like you'd want to also have skills to represent developing the actual techniques. Like how Katara had plenty of waterbending potential from the start of the show (attribute, in your example), but she had to learn how to use it (skill, in mine). What I'm talking about would specifically be about learning technique.

[Ganymede]

@GreenFlashlight said in Avatar / Korra game considerations:

Savage Worlds seems like it could handle bending pretty well.

The elements + spirit sounds like L5R to me.

[Runescryer]

@Waller Mick Foley spoofing the Rock was highly entertaining

[fatefan]

I know that the Fate SRD has the Stormcallers example mechanic that could be reshaped just a bit.

Or maybe take some of the basic work of World of Elements to build on?

[Wretched]

@Jeshin said in Avatar / Korra game considerations:

Pro-bending post-Korra by enough time means Pro-bending with airbenders.

Assuming they don't all choose to be ascetic monks.

[Ominous]

@Ganymede said in Avatar / Korra game considerations:

The elements + spirit sounds like L5R to me.

A lot of L5R's systems are purpose built for the setting, so I'm not sure how easily it will be to extract them. Also, the elemental magic system is more akin to D&D than a freeform system like Ars Magica's. Though, Ars Magic comes with its own problems, mainly how tightly tied the system is to the setting.

Maybe Tenra Bansho Zero? Or what's the one anime RPG where you can pool rolls to build up your dice pool for a devastating action using all of the dice? That always struck me as very anime-esque with its "powering up" and leading the opponent on until they have blundered into your trap where you can unleash your devastating ultimate attack.

[insomniac7809]

@GreenFlashlight said in Avatar / Korra game considerations:

@Kanye-Qwest said in Avatar / Korra game considerations:

man it would be cool if someone made an ATLA movie!

I'm only about halfway through the first season so far, but I gotta say, I feel like this property is brilliant as a series and wouldn't quite work as a movie.

It just gets better from there! But

***=Tangent, Also Shitty Movie Trauma***

click to show

you could probably do a movie inspired by AtLA, but the one they made was absolute dogshit. Plenty of directors can do great work in all sorts of styles and genres (Jackson went from no-budget gross-outs to Lord of the goddamn Rings) but M Night is not one of them. He tried to film AtLA as one of his washed-out 90-minute low-key thrillers, and tried to cram in the S1 highlights in at such a rush that it's just a lot of things happening with no connection except bad voice-overs.
And that's besides the bad child actors and truly baffling decisions, like camera work and editing bad enough to end up on Folding Ideas as "how not to cinematography" and changing up the pronunciation on the characters' names.

[GreenFlashlight]

@insomniac7809 I've never seen the movie, but I've seen all the reviews savaging it for robbing the characters of their distinctive personalities, butchering the plot, and some really unpleasant racebending subtext.