Thread 96406675

Why did they fumble making a good licensed AtLA TTRPGame? The setting was perfect for it.

>off-topic nothing thread
>non-/tg/ topic
>sample image instead of full rez

Please kill yourself immediately OP.

>>96406675 (OP)
I wasn't aware they attempted to even make one.

>>96406675 (OP)
Avatar Legends is good though? It actually captures the core theme of the show, which is internal conflict in the coming-of-age characters. The narrative style gaming also allows for creative use of bending and skills to problem-solve, while still giving you a snappy fighting system for short brawls.

>>96406675 (OP)
I am starting to think avatar doesn't work out as a deepest lore setting

>>96406686
>non-/tg/ topic
Are you dyslexic? Are you illiterate?

>>96406675 (OP)
Just play Avatar Legends. As a game, it actually emulates the media it's based on very effectively. I've not only run a couple of campaigns in it, but gotten to play on the other side of the table a bit. It's a very solid system.

Of course, if you want a different style of game, but in the same setting, then it's not going to be for you. Which is fine, but you just gotta own up to whether a game that is like the show is what you want or not.

>>96406675 (OP)
It's easier to fuck something up than to do it right.

>>96406884
always find interesting when people say "its so easy it write itself", but it feels like they under estimate how easy it is to mess things up

>>96406711
>>96406877
>Martial Arts Action
>Powered by the Apocalypse
These two concepts are not compatible. IT doesn't matter how god its presentation is or even how well it handles the narrative side of play, the fighting is shit.

I played it awhile ago so I'm rusty on the details, but the issue is that the disconnect between the narrative first playbooks (balance, drives, emotions etc) and the crunchy rigid combat system makes it a system for no one. People who want the narrative first shit hate the inflexible combat, people who want to optimise the set combat choices don't give a shit about the loose emotional story side. I really liked the balance/principles part, how they give the blurb on how the two sides can push and pull at each other, and am tempted to try and take it to bolt on other systems.

The genesys one is alright.
I personally despise pbta.

>>96407106
That sounds like a kneejerk reaction to PbtA to me. Have you tried playing the system? Or even read the rules?

The actual fights run on a separate mechanic set, where you use learned techniques instead of typical moves in a sort of round-by-round exchange. This in turn is linked to a part of the game that is about you being able to learn techniques under the tutelage of others, and the ease with which you can pull techniques out gets linked to little tasks your characters can do. Learning new techniques can sometimes even feed back into what you can do more interpretively with your moves for non-combat purposes.

>>96407420
>makes it a system for no one
In my playgroups where I've run and played the game, the players actually don't dislike this at all. However, it's very different than what people have generally seen before, so I've also seen people sort of fumble with it at first until they got a grip on how it works and how it fits into things.

One of the things I did that helped crack peoples' thinking open on this was employ NPC opponents who fight in a variety of ways. It's easy to just throw a gaggle of mooks in that try to chip your stamina with the same vague attacks every round, and sometimes there's nothing wrong with wanting to wear them down a little. But that's not interesting, and it doesn't really demonstrate to your players how they can creatively approach fighting. So in the early encounters, I would start introducing them to mini-boss type opponents, each with a technique that helps them stand out, and a preferred strategy where they can use that technique to set something up, or where they can use basic techniques as creative set-up for their attacks on the following turns.

> I really liked the balance/principles part, how they give the blurb on how the two sides can push and pull at each other, and am tempted to try and take it to bolt on other systems.
It's a very cool part of the system, for sure. It's core to Avatar for characters to have these internal desire for living two different ways that do not strictly have to be exclusive, but that it can be hard to recognize the balance between.

>>96406675 (OP)
https://www.talesofxadia.com/

>>96406686
>off-topic nothing thread
The discussion is about OP not believing there is a quality Avatar The Last Airbender TTRPG. On-Topic.
>non-/tg/ topic
Talking about TTRPGs is on-topic. Whining about MUH CULCHURE WAR is not.
>sample image instead of full rez
Learn to use saucenao you lazy faggot.

Please kill yourself immediately, nogames.

>>96407420
Speak for yourself. I want Out of Combat to be simple and open with room for players to be creative and come up with solutions not reliant on modifiers and dice rolls. I am of the opinion that in combat needs to have clear definition because it should be the most mechanically complex part of a system, as it has the most moving parts.

>>96407961
I totally forgot that show existed. I stopped watching around season 3 or 4. It was when the dark magic girl got the trans? gay? boy?friend. Personally I just got kinda bored of it and had other things to focus on.

>>96407790
>Has the stock response to someone noting that PBTA combat isn't engaging or enjoyable for the vast majority of gamers who would want martial arts action
>Cries kneejerk
It's like pottery.
>Citation
I've written a few a moderately popular magical girls games, including one for PBTA.

>>96408253
>Says a bunch of non-specific things and provides no concrete examples while complaining about PbtA
Like ceramics indeed.

>>96407961
Never got the hype around this show.
AtlA was a great story that you could enjoy at all ages.
This one was just a childrens show weirdos started commissioning porn of.

>>96408534
I haven't seen it, but the lead writer for AtLA is one of the creators. From what I've heard though, it's quite good, though as is typical of many shows, it isn't quite as good in the later seasons as it is at the start.

>>96408534
Supposedly the game covers multiple timelines. OP just used Korra because reasons.

>>96409187
It's not "timelines," it's "eras." But terminology aside, it's actually pretty handy. It gives you concrete periods of the world's history, describes a lot of the major goings-on to you, and explains how that would be useful for leaning into games that have particular themes related to the state of the world.

For example, a story that takes place during Avatar's Hundred Year War (while Ozai is on the throne and Aang is in the ice) is more likely to be a bit of a gritty story, trying to salvage hope where you can amidst a disaster the likes of which you can't overturn. A story in Aang's era (after the deposing of Ozai) is going to have themes of the struggles of a world changing and trying to heal after a century of strife. But if you wind back to say, Roku's era, he was a very effective Avatar in terms of helping affect peace, but where there may not be so much open conflict, there's a lot of political intrigue happening in the world that you can get wound up in.

You can also play in Kyoshi's era (of which one of the highlights is the conflicting city-states of the Earth Kingdom), and Korra's era (post-series, so one of the major themes is living in a world that is now being shared with the spirits).

4e would probably be good if you reflavored it to AtLA stuff. All the movement abilities, lines, grids, cones, squares, etc. could handle where the element goes and how.
IIRC the fights in the cartoon are really just a lot of like, doing katas to shoot fireballs or water lashes at an opponent at range. It's less common that there's actually person to person martial arts.

I ran an Avatar Legends campaign that basically lasted most of a real life year. We played in the Kyoshi era, and the focus was on a dark spirit called the Nine Tailed Shadow that had been shattered into pieces by Avatar Kuruk. Players ended up being responsible for dealing with it, because Kuruk never actually solved any of his problems and Kyoshi was busy with other stuff.

Anyway, it was pretty fun. The Balance mechanic turned out to be really helpful for guiding the players in roleplay, the combat was good because it felt punchy and quick, and the way they handled bending worked really well. My biggest gripe with the system was that it didn't have anything built in for investigating stuff, so when I ran a murder mystery arc, I had to import the "Investigate a Mystery" move from Monster of The Week.

>>96407106
There is the problem. You think the show is about 'martial arts action'.
Its not.

>>96410597
This is the correct take. It features mysticism-fueled martial arts, but it's really not a show about fights. It's an adventure series that is about the growth of the personal self in the face of adversity.

The show has a number of protagonist characters, but it has two notable deuteragonists that are frequently compared against each other: Avatar Aang and Prince Zuko. These are people who basically come from different times, and have entirely different approaches to their situations, but who are both burdened by (and are defined by) how they react to a sense of responsibility placed onto them by circumstances out of their control. Each of them has some notable internal conflicts that they struggle against regarding their own identities, and they both take basically the whole series to come to grips with what they think is the right approach.

Avatar Legends, as a major example game, hones in on this specifically. While it does offer a way to do fights outside of the regular constraints of PbtA's common mechanics, the core asset of the game is the Balance mechanic, which is built on two conflicting Principles that the player character thinks matter, being motivated and influenced by both things, but that they haven't yet come to a decision about the kind of person that they're going to be. It challenges you to find out where they'll fall, or whether they'll instead be able to thread the needle and find that hard-to-reach balance somewhere in the middle.

>>96409160
I tried the first season and thought it was kind of mediocre. Felt like the show desperately wanted to have ambiguous morality, but didn't actually understand how to handle it.

>>96411259
I watched up to season 4 and hear it goes to shit at the end, so I won't watch more. It was decent generic fantasy though.

hatesex with korra

>>96411379
no

>>96411259
Not quite sure where you got the impression there was moral ambiguity. The main cast is all clearly good and the villains are all clearly evil, except for Zuko and his uncle who switch sides.

>>96406675 (OP)
Probably because it's ultimately shallow as piss and each installment is worse than the last.

Not that you even play gamea in the first place.

>>96407961
the game that not even its creators bought.

>>96408534
>Never got the hype around this show.
People wanted to fuck the elf girl. That's about it.

>>96411382
why not? I hate that smug cunt, but my dick insists.

>>96409479
Regrettably, Heroes of the Elemental Chaos never got a big print run and WotC still doesn't have POD up for it, so the Elementalist Sorcerer is less than perfectly accessible.

But as a class, they'd be great for it, because they use a small selection of elemental effects in the exact manner that you're describing. Most everything is At-Will, and the class is pretty simple to use.

>>96406877
I'm in the other anon's camp, I thought the game was OK but everything felt just way to "just say what you do" for me for every aspect. My group felt like it rapidly stopped being a game and was just roleplay.

>>96406877
also this game just happened to be the game that (by domino effect) ended an over decade long friendship for me.

>>96413112
This is how narrative-first games work. You describe what you do, and when that becomes mechanically relevant, you do the mechanics. It's supposed to leave a lot of things open-ended, but still give you some means of directing what happens.

It's not to everyone's liking though, and I can respect that. That's a far more real take than "it's just bad, mkay?"

>>96413183
My group is used to very "gamey" feeling games, so it probably just wasn't a good fit to begin with. If they have a specific set of things with specific mechanics they know exactly what they wanna do. But if it's too open they just sorta get confused or feel like they're cheating somehow

>>96409479
>>96413079
Someone made a set of Bender classes for 4e. Earth a Defender, Water a Leader, Fire a Striker and Air a Controller. It also had some new items and feats for Martials. Tbh it was kind of ass like it was written by someone who had played a little 4e but didn't quite get how each role should work or any of the math behind it. Might still be okay for a very short campaign, like maybe levels 1-3, but anyone playing base game classes would end up speeding past the Benders.

The pdf seems to be on 1d6chan if you want to give it a look.

>>96413201
Yeah, I remember having to adjust to these kinds of games too. I cut my teeth on 3.5 and mostly played d20 games or other systems with fairly firm mechanics for a long time. The idea that you can just take a look at your skills and somewhat loosely-defined power sets and improvise all of the time can cause some real whiplash.

>>96406675 (OP)
Because AtLA deserves to die as a franchise. The first series was very clearly lightning in the bottle and the subsequent series is proof that the creators aren't capable of making such a thing ever again.

>>96413563
LoK had a lot of potential, and it shows it in places, but it's clear that it had very poorly executed showrunning. It doesn't help that the network wasn't fully supportive of it in the first place, but they should have put more effort into making sure that each individual season used its limited time effectively so that it could tell a closed story. Instead, it dawdles around wasting time on things like love quadrangles when that doesn't service the development of any of the characters, it doesn't spend enough time exploring the themes that each villain represents and the scope of the problems they relate to, and has to hurry to make up conclusions that then end up don't feel earned.

Notably, the co-producer/head writer for AtLA, Aaron Ehasz, did not work on Legend of Korra. That may not be a coincidence.

The novels are quite good though, actually. The ones about the life of Avatar Kyoshi.

>>96406675 (OP)
lol, go back to your adolescent years in the 90s Old Man

>>96406675 (OP)
I don't remember them being that big in the show.

>>96410963
>Avatar isn't about action/martial arts/mysticism
This is why the pbta game is bad. It leads to braindead takes like this.

>>96414480
A lot of people didn't get brought back in for Korra and then when their writing ended up being shitty and their plots stupid and contrived, they blamed Nickelodeon for jerking their chain on budget/number of episodes. An excuse which does not hold up when they still spent the majority of their limited episodes on pro-bending and shipping shit, and then spent 3 more seasons, which they did not deserve, on increasingly retarded plots that were even worse.

>>96414575
Your lack of media literacy is disappointing.

>>96415049
>media literacy
Nta but you really can't help yourselves lmao

>>96406675 (OP)
>unc thinks Avatar had deep lore
*skull*

>>96415459
Avatar is a modern masterpiece and the only people who disagree are contrarian faggpts who are miserable about everything.

>>96414480
They made their first major villain a lame twist villain, it was there everyone should have known that it is NOT kino

>>96415459
It's :skull: not *
for future shitposting

>>96415325
If you can't understand that the fighting is just a cool extra thing that acts as an extension of the show's looks into philosophy, then you didn't pay attention. It's just that simple. Every character's bending, or their efforts to learn bending, are all dressing to the exploration of themselves and their goals. The climactic battles don't even end up being a matter of "I was stronger or more skilled than you," but "I'm a more balanced person than you, and I experienced character growth that proves that when you didn't change."

>>96415049
>>96417840
Every single time I've seen some faggot quote "media literacy" at someone, they always have the most braindead, pledditor opinions, and you just went and proved that true yet again.

Characters explore their own drama and personal philosophies AS A PATH TOWARDS GREATER MASTERY OF THE SELF AND THUS GREATER MARTIAL POWER. Don't fucking run your mouth about philosophy while overtly misunderstanding that the fights are absolutely the point of a wuxia-inspired epic.

>make avatar rpg
>no bending rules
What were they thinking?

>>96417920
Which game would that be?

>>96417947
Avatar Legends, the bending rules are just
>describe what you bend and then roll it lol
Which is odd for a series that shows characters learning specific moves

>>96417861
This is not strictly the case for character growth. Aang and Zuko are primarily the ones whose exploration of bending actually imparts growth upon their characters. For the others, learning the premises and philosophies behind their bending is primarily incidental.

Katara does not need to learn the philosophies of waterbending to become a better person. Instead, it's her refusal to back down in the face of injustices, the thing that we already saw earlier in the series, that gets her the opportunity to learn from a master. Toph is basically already a master earthbender, and her learning metalbending isn't about the themes present in the story for her growth as a person in learning to understand how to trust and be trusted by others.

While the fights can be checks on peoples' character traits in the moment, they don't always facilitate their growth. Sometimes they're just revealing.

Media literacy is a real thing, and just saying "Avatar is about the special !NotMagic fighting" is not understanding the material, because that's putting the external aspects of the conflicts before the internal conflicts within the characters, which is the actual point of the story.

>>96417995
>Media literacy is a real thing
he says as he tries to cherry pick his way through a losing argument. Literally nothing in the show gets resolved without a fight and you can't even argue around that without explaining how the fights are central to the story.

>>96417959
>shows characters learning specific moves
Sometimes, yeah, but bending is flexible too. It's not like Toph was taught by the badgermoles how to do a million different techniques, she just has such a good inherent understanding of the fundamentals that she can constantly improvise. And it's not like characters can only use bending with specific forms or techniques, though we do see that there's plenty of that going on.

Notably, Avatar Legends DOES have rules for learning techniques, and for using those techniques when you get into combat. You still get to be descriptive, especially for more generic techniques that are based on knowing how to fight, which is loose, and out of combat, the game instead opens up what you can do with your bending in order to problem-solve. Heck, learning techniques tied to advanced forms of bending is your way to learn them enough to also improvise using that kind of bending out of combat.

For example:
>You are an earthbender. You know at least one earthbending technique, and you have earthbending as a training. Which means that when you do moves, you can implement earthbending to facilitate them.
>You find someone who can teach you metalbending, and you actually succeed in having the aptitude to learn it. You gain a metalbending technique.
>Now, you can also use metalbending in the fiction for using your moves.

>>96418013
Aang literally resolves his fight with Ozai by stopping the fighting. The mysticism of energybending is a final check on his own internal conflict, where he wins because he finally found the resolve that he was lacking earlier in the series.

Dressing it up with a fight is dramatic and cool, right? We like seeing the progress and the potential of the Avatar, and it's cool to see how dangerous Ozai is. But it's not ABOUT the fight. It's about what having that fight, or what winning it, means to the person having it.

Zuko doesn't actually finish his fight with Azula either, and she isn't beaten as a matter of force. Instead, its his compassion and self-sacrifice that allows someone else to capture Azula, not to defeat her by force.

Whether you agree with me or not about what counts for what, you should be able to agree that "it's about the fighting" is, on its own, a shallow take. And it's a take that some people, including people in this very thread, have made.

>>96418049
>It has bending! You can know basic or advanced and then roll for it :)
Lame, make a robust system that gives you layers of techniques that can be applied in numerous ways.

>>96418088
Aang couldn't energy bend without subduing Ozai with his earth bending after an episode long bending fight
Zuko and Katara beat Azula in a bending fight

You can completely change the story of avatar but it would still be recognizable as avatar, bending elements in ancient Not!Asia. If you remove bending its just another medieval setting

>>96418175
You can apply techniques in numerous ways though. One of the cooler things about the combat system is being able to strategically use the techniques you have access to in order to seize the advantage.

It's fine if the system isn't for you, though. Everyone's tastes are different.

>>96418192
The elemental fighting creates a level of uniqueness to things, sure. That's how we can have multiple different stories in the same setting, and still recognize it as a part of that setting. But the story of Last Airbender, by itself, is defined by the progression of its characters. The bending acts as a reflection of aspects of the world and its characters. Which is to say, those things are in service to telling the stories of its characters, not the other way around.

>>96418241
>But the story of Last Airbender, by itself, is defined by the progression of its characters
That's every story retard, we are talking about roleplaying GAMES. Games about inhabiting characters in a setting, a setting defined entirely by its elemental bending.

>>96418088
>Aang literally resolves his fight with Ozai by stopping the fighting.
And what were they doing before that moment and what allowed Aang to stop him long enough to try that?
>But it's not ABOUT the fight. It's about what having that fight, or what winning it, means to the person having it.
It's literally all of the above, with the fight being the direct manifestation of all of those elements.
>Zuko doesn't actually finish his fight with Azula either
Because someone else is there to FIGHT Azula and Zuko has other people to FIGHT.
> you should be able to agree that "it's about the fighting" is, on its own, a shallow take
And pretending the fighting doesn't matter or is superfluous to the rest of the entire fucking series is pseudo-intellectual plebbitor drivel.

>>96418088
This retard would want a star wars game with no rules for ship vs ship fighting or force powers because "the space battles/lightsaber duels are just a vehicle for the narrative".
PTBA shitters just have broken brains.

Every action movie/series/cartoon/book tells a story, that doesn't mean the actual fighting isn't as important, if not more than everything else.

Look up "Avatar: The Second Age" it's a GENESYS conversion which is better than the trash official game

>>96418241
Sure, the story and character development is important. But people who are signing up to play an Avatar game still care about the aspects and details of the world itself. Bending included.
It feels lame when the bending itself is treated as a complete afterthought.

>>96418260
This is a dividing point though. Because when people say "I want an Avatar RPG" they can mean different things. This is where a lot of the arguing starts, because the desires of the people having the discussion sometimes don't match.

The two primary camps for this kind of arguing are more or less like this:
>I want a game with elemental powers and eastern-style martial arts and themes
>I want to a game that plays like it's emulating the source material
You might think that these are the same thing, but they're not strictly the same thing. Some people really want to play a game where the fighting resembles Avatar's first and foremost, and they want a mechanically-bound, more combat-oriented game. But some people really want to play a game where the character development and storytelling around that more closely resembles Avatar's as the priority.

When you look at this divide, it's really easy to see why some people like or don't like Avatar Legends, as an example. The people who are more combat and mechanics-oriented dislike the narrative-first looseness of things. The people who are more story-telling oriented tend to like the system, because it makes allowances for the fighting but leaves a lot of room for them to do other things more freely.

>>96418483
>a mechanically-bound, more combat-oriented game
>a game where the character development and storytelling around that more closely resembles Avatar's as the priority
These are not incompatible. The official game could have covered both of these without much trouble if it wasn't using a bad system as its base.

>>96418483
This >>96418527
The things you've praised about the system in regards to the story-telling elements is that it gives each character two opposed motives which they're trying to balance. That's not something remotely exclusive to PBtA. And it's not like PBtA is even good at capturing all of the show's story aspects.

>>96418527
You're right that they're not incompatible. But you can see where the trouble in the discussion is, right? We only have so many systems, and none of them hit the full approval of different types of gamers. But that's kind of inevitable.

Though, I think that too many people balk at the narrative style of gaming that is being done by Avatar Legends and don't actually dig into how the fighting works vs using moves. Let me explain what I'm talking about, since a lot of people in the thread have probably not read or tried the system:
If I want to take my swords and climb a wall to get away from the bad guys by stabbing them into said wall as I go up, I don't need to know a combat technique for that, I just have to lean on my skills. Same thing with using waterbending to freeze a bridge over a stream, it's an application of the general skills available as a waterbender, and doesn't need a bunch of fiddly bits where I have to have "freeze a straight line" as a fighting technique.
When a fight actually starts, I have a bunch of different generic means of fighting that have mechanical definitions, but that I can flavor with my bending, or my other training that can be combat-applied (like martial arts, weapons fighting, or using tech). But I also have some advanced techniques more specifically related to my training that let me do trickier, more specific, or sometimes just downright more powerful things (though it's all balanced out in its own way). Here are some examples (here and in the next post):
>As a new character that's a firebender, and for one of the techniques you start with, you might know Flame Knives.
>In the first round of combat exchanges, you can use Flame Knives and expend energy so that you have this extra offensive threat that will take your opponents more when you attack them on subsequent turns. You don't need to use it as an attack repeatedly, you can assume in the fiction that you are actively using these flames to your advantage.

>>96418660
(continued examples)
>As an earthbender, you might have the technique Ground Shift. This lets you disorient your opponent by messing with the ground under their feet, and it works even better if they've already had a status afflicted. So you can use a generic technique to try to inflict the impaired status on them first describing a way that you're going to knock them off balance, then follow up with your earthbending technique to push them that extra bit towards being stunned. You have the freedom to describe the set-up because it's less defined, but you are still leaning on the techniques you know to get the job done in that case.

>>96418653
No, it's not necessarily unique to PbtA. But it exists in that system, and is a unique version of doing that. It's very well-suited and very deliberately tuned to the themes of the source material.

>>96418702
>It's very well-suited and very deliberately tuned to the themes of the source material.
Not really.

>>96418745
Would you like to discuss why not?

I don't actually mind if people don't like the system, even if I like it and want people to give it a shot. My beef is with people saying that "it's bad, because it's not what I like," or people saying "PbtA is bad, but I won't give any opinions or specific reasons about why I think that." I have been playing TTRPG for enough years at this point to be very aware that not every system or play style gels well with everyone. I just want people to engage with talking about games more honestly.

>>96418660
>>96418702
The problem with this is that you just find the mot effective way to do something (say, if the best status effect you can inflict with this ground shift is impairment"), and then you just do the exact same mechanical thing every fight because it's the most effective way of winning the fight. You have no incentive to do anything else because the game lacks mechanical grounding, it's all hand-wave do what you feel like bullshit.

>>96418794
>Would you like to discuss why not?
I mean the easiest example would be that the game falls flat at representing Zuko's arc. He starts off in a very unbalanced place, and loses his bending temporarily only after he finally decides on a major change.
But the game doesn't actually let you fully lose your balance due to your own choices. Somebody has to push you over the edge, and that severe unbalance is what might cause you to lose control.
The game doesn't allow you to dictate that your own character has a crashout. Only the GM can do that.

All of this works pretty well for representing a character like Aang, you has a more clear struggle between opposed principles, and ends up in those emotional extremes where he loses control and enters the Avatar state. But it's the sort of thing that only really works in the context of Aang.
The game sort of assumes that all characters are actually quite good at staying balanced, because they start in the middle and have ways to reset to the middle. But it also assumes that characters are frequently shifting back and forth.

If you wanted to play as characters like Zuko and Iroh, you really can't. Your Zuko would be too emotionally stable, and Iroh would be having uncharacteristic wild mood swings.

>>96417861
AtLA isn't wuxia or wuxia inspired, retard.

>>96418952
See, I feel like from my perspective Zuko's arc is actually a good example of what the game can represent. The Successor playbook aligns well with much of what he has going on, described as:
>The Successor comes from a powerful, tarnished lineage. Play the Successor if you want to struggle against your lineage as it threatens to draw you in.

Who Zuko is, deep down, and what his family expects him to be, are major conflict points in his character. At first, you could read him as particularly leaning towards his Tradition principle, wanting to live up to his father's expectations and regain his place in his family. He holds tight to his identity, even if that's never really been who he is. Later on in the series, he comes into more conflict with his family, and he starts having something of an identity crisis, which you can extrapolate as his balance starting to shift around the other way from time to time. In Ba Sing Se, he starts to find happiness, and makes a drastic choice against his old ways by letting Appa go, which causes him to basically fall off into Progress, which discards tradition and expectations in favor of finding a new way. But even if he seems more balanced as a result of this, sometimes stuff just happens, and he goes off falling into Tradition again when Azula prods him just right; you can see how this would work by considering how desperate he looks when he helps her fight the gang in the caves. His struggle against his principles gets more drastic, but he eventually starts changing his mind more towards Progress over Tradition in general. At the end of the story though, he accepts that the way to make things right is to become the inheritor of his family's power, to continue the tradition of his family legacy and power, but with the tint of making new Progress by changing how the nation is governed as its new Fire Lord, which suits the way the playbook describes balance.

>>96418952
>>96419686
As to your point about Iroh, they actually built a playbook for that... sort of. He is a man who has already found balance, but some of the themes that he touches on form the push and pull of the Elder playbook from the Wan Shi Tong book. It juxtaposes one's own wisdom and experience that they can offer, against knowing how much growth one person can always do, and how it's important to let others make their own choices. A more Experience-focused Elder can be a great mentor figure to help guide the new generation, but may be too rigid in their thinking by assuming they know best. A more Humility-focused Elder may undersell their own experience, and may not intervene in letting others make choices even if they may not be good ones. Balance is seeing these things in clarity, knowing how much you know and how much you don't know, and when what you can offer would be useful, and when to step back and let the youngin's do it themselves.

>>96419585
You sure about that?

So is this guy just a Magpie employee trying to stealth shill the game, or what?

>>96419904
You can do better than this.

>>96420394
Maybe try speaking with less authority as if you have some special insight into the game and the series at large that others don't. At best, you come off as a pretentious faggot. At worst, you come off as defensive and desperate to stop these chuds from besmirching your work.

>>96420413
NTA, but I think you were assuming that the other Anon was me.

But they're right that >>96419904 is basically a bullshit post. There's nothing I could possibly do to prove that I don't work for Magpie, so it's basically just trying to invent a bogeyman reason to disregard what I have to say. Which, I made my intentions pretty clear earlier, when I said >>96418794. People can not like Avatar Legends or PbtA games or whatever, that's fine. I just want to have a real talk about the contents of the game, and what people like or don't like about the games that they play, and not just some lazy, out of hand dismissal.

>>96419686
Yeah, that's the sort of things I'm talking about.
If you made a not!Zuko in the game, he would start as perfectly balanced. You could then lean towards Tradition, but he'd end up constantly suffering for getting thrown out of balance, losing control of his bending, etc. for playing a more extreme character. And you wouldn't really get to play normally again until you have him take a breather and center himself.

It's not that you can't construe Zuko's arc in the context of struggling with two different things. It's that the aspects of Zuko's struggle don't align with how the game mechanically handles such a struggle.

>>96420536
It really doesn't help that every criticism you've responded do has been argued with an overly pedantic "nuh uh!"

>>96407790
>The actual fights run on a separate mechanic set, where you use learned techniques instead of typical moves in a sort of round-by-round exchange.
It's retarded though because you have two different tracks to defeat enemies that don't interact with each other at all. If you're not going all-in on one track you're just wasting turns and fucking yourselves. One track also buffs enemies whenever you "damage" them on it until you defeat them and the other doesn't, so...

>>96406675 (OP)
But they did! It’s called Avatar Legends and it’s based on the highly successful and fun PbtA engine! It works great and is…pfft…. It’s so good-….pfft… HAHAHHAHAHA. I’m sorry I tried saying it with a straight face. I can’t.

>>96406675 (OP)
Literally everything after the original show was a fubble. Fumbling is on brand for anything Avatar related.

>>96420698
>If you made a not!Zuko in the game, he would start as perfectly balanced.
That's not quite correct either, though it can be the case. You as a player have the right to start one step off-center. in whichever direction you like, just to help get things going. It's not as extreme as how Zuko was in the beginning, but it's something.

The WST playbooks are especially weird though from a mechanical standpoint, so there's one that's even a standout on this matter. The Razor is where you play a character who has previously been used as a weapon and has things to atone for. At the start of the game, half of your balance track is actually unusable. To get it back, you have to start your attempt at a redemption arc first.

>>96420875
I see that you're talking about fatigue vs balance. Most opponents actually can't take being pushed around on their balance very much if you're looking at how the game is supposed to balance itself, nor can they eat a lot of fatigue. It's really the more powerful enemies (read like: more plot important) that take more work to fully knock over either way. Trying to push an enemy off balance is less straightforward than trying to mark all of their fatigue in some ways, even though it can often be done in fewer steps. Here's how I look at it:
>Trying to burn out all of your opponent's fatigue is just wearing them out. It's totally consistent results.
>Trying to push them off their balance can happen faster as long as you're smart enough to identify ways to keep pushing it, but it's riskier since they do more when being off their center makes them go harder, and they can cause consequences when they lose their balance.
I think that having two lanes to approach defeating your enemies like this isn't necessarily a bad thing. GMing the game, I've had enemies who have appropriate story reasons to be tilted in come in hot by being off their center to begin with, which pumps up the intensity immediately, but makes beating them easier.

>>96421534
>It's not as extreme as how Zuko was in the beginning, but it's something.
Yeah, that's sort of what I'm getting at. The structure of assuming that characters start centered or relatively centered ends up as a limitation with regards to how you can actually construct characters.

Zuko is definitely the case where it seems like he's just stuck at an extreme and only eventually starts to resemble a character that could have a balance track at all. Which is why it feels off to say that the system is designed to play out Avatar-esque plot beats when one of the most dynamic characters in the show would need to bend the rules so heavily in order to get a similar progression.

>>96422441
I can definitely see where you're coming from. Though, in this case, I feel like it's meant to be kind of a compromise between the concept and the mechanics. Since there's an emphasis on "finding out" where your character ends up in both the system and in PbtA philosophy, it's less ideal to start with your balance pushed out too far at the start. If your center moves, it gets easier to be pushed off in the same direction again, and if your center gets knocked all the way off, that kind of brings your character arc to a close. You already know what principle you choose over the other one, firmly.

I mentioned that the Razor is an unusual exception, so I want to cover my bases in regards that too. That has the extreme case of only having one principle open at the start, period, and relies on the honest attempts by the player to want to engage in a redemption arc that slowly opens up the track in the other direction. In that case especially, starting with your center actually centered at 0, or not pushed out too far, is kind of protecting you from breaking yourself.

>>96420913
This anon is overweight and hasn't showered in several days.

>>96421534
>I think that having two lanes to approach defeating your enemies like this isn't necessarily a bad thing.
It is when there's no integration between the two. It's just bad, wasted design. If your fatigue targeting party members' efforts helped you against balance or if balance targeting helped your fatigue targeters that would be fine. But they don't. It makes no sense. You're wasting turns and giving the enemy equivalent of ablative armor. You're sabotaging each others actions.

>>96422584
>is kind of protecting you from breaking yourself.
That's the thing I mentioned before though. The player can't intentionally choose to break themselves.
Or more specifically, if you hypothetically started at one extreme in terms of your balance, the only thing that can push you over the top is the GM forcibly shifting your balance that way again to cause you to lose it entirely.

>If your center moves, it gets easier to be pushed off in the same direction again
That's sort of the core of the issue then, isn't it? It's hard to have a character who leans heavily one way early on and then redeems themselves, because the more you lean into a direction the more likely you just end up getting pushed that way again.

And ultimately, I think all of this culminates in the exact issue. The system breaks down with regards to redemption arcs or characters who stay at one extreme and take time to move out of it. The system has protections in place to prevent players from trying to make such characters.
But then why are we trying to say that this system is great for Avatar-style storytelling, when one of the main characters has a major redemption arc? That just sounds like a massive blind spot.

>>96422662
I understand where you're coming from, and I actually used to think this way. But then I realized that because both things are so different, there's no point in worrying about trying to spread out and do both. The players I've run the game for came to a similar conclusion. Against most enemies, targeting fatigue is find. After all, it's easier to wear someone out than psychoanalyze them and then try to push them mentally into crashing out. It's only really worth knocking over weak enemies by throwing them off-balance, or pushing over stronger enemies who have already had their balanced moved off of center. Sometimes, they'll do that themselves with certain techniques, or sometimes they just come into the situation a little tilted already.

All of that to say, rather than try to attack both tracks all of the time, it makes more sense to approach which way you want to down the opponent situationally.

>>96423102
>The player can't intentionally choose to break themselves.
You actually can, to some extent. It's entirely possible to make yourself fall off trying to get a good advantage one more befor eyou eat the consequences, as an example. Though, again, the game is about the journey more than it is the destination. You are playing to find out, and that asks you to have a character who is very unsure and is of two minds. So, while you can still have stories that explore whether you can pull yourself out of bad stuff like your family lineage, or the ways you're used to dehumanizing people (including yourself), you're not really intended to do so from a position where you're already pretty stuck in one of those ways.

It's just one of those nuances where you can tell stories with similar themes, but not necessarily in all of the exact same ways.

>>96423145
>All of that to say, rather than try to attack both tracks all of the time, it makes more sense to approach which way you want to down the opponent situationally.
But then there's the problem of whole playbooks, stat arrays and abilities built towards targeting different things.

>>96423145
To give a point of comparison, in some ways this is just reminding me of games like Exalted which similarly have intimacies and principles like that. Except instead of just two diametrically opposed ones it can detail a lot more beliefs and connections, and each is something that can either bolster your character's resolve, or get exploited, with any of the potentially clashing or overlapping. Likewise, there's also a way to hit a limit and have a character be consumed by anger or grief if they're go against their beliefs too often.

Now obviously there's a couple main differences. The first is that Exalted is about playing demigods, whose stories are going to more often resemble a Greek Tragedy, like Hercules killing his family in a rage.
The second main difference is that I've never seen someone point to Exalted as an example of a robust storytelling system.

Why I bring this up is that I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say that Avatar Legends is doing that makes it so great as a storytelling system, especially for Avatar. It's asking for every character to be evenly split between two ideas, which means there isn't room for any other type of character.
This is what I said earlier, where it handles something like Aang's conflicts well, between his childishness and responsibility, but if it's completely falling flat elsewhere, how is the system achieving its goals?

>>96423210
>It's asking for every character to be evenly split between two ideas, which means there isn't room for any other type of character.
This is aided somewhat by the fact that there are many different playbooks, but I still get what you mean. Playbooks aren't exactly classes (which is something a number of people don't grok easily), but archetypes. You can still play around with the details, but getting what the game is trying to give you out of the whole thing does require that you settle into the confines that it's providing for you.

We've talked about the Balance part of the game quite a lot, but it's just one facet of how the game tries to facilitate making it an Avatar storytelling game. I'll mention that it has all of the dressings as an officially licensed game, and we can set that aside because that stuff is more on the superficial side anyway. But when we look at what it does that relates it to Avatar works as a story, we can find some additional things that it's doing.
>Diverse trainings like bending types, martial arts/weapons, and technology are different, but equally represented and flexible for problem-solving. Something that the series ends up making clear is even characters without bending can accomplish a lot, so the power balance between your "magic" and your "not magic" is all still perfectly valid.
>The process of learning new techniques from others involves mentorship, and a mentor will generally try to get what they can teach you to click in a way that imparts their personal philosophy on the matter (which we see when Aang learns Earthbending from Toph, or Hama is teaching Katara about being resourceful when she's setting her up to learn bloodbending)
There are some other things I could talk about as well, but those are a couple of examples of things that this game is doing specifically. Between the character limit and my need to sleep, I'll leave it there for now, but I hope that these help you see the connection to the material.

>>96406686
/thread
>>96406675 (OP)
You have to go back.
>>>/reddit.com/

>>96422441
>>96422584
Something also of note is that while Zuko only gains a sense of balance much later, it's right around that time when he joins the party. Characters that are dramatically out of balance like that might be more suited to be villains and this is a nudge in that direction.

>>96424607
Since you bring this up, it's notable that NPC characters, unlike player characters, have a balance track that is only built on one Principle, not two. So your allies, randoms, and enemies, are going to have a central ideological concept that they affix to that helps contextualize why they are the way that they are. They can still be centered, but there's no "other way" they can be pushed. You can only manage the extremes to which they feel and respond to that Principle. The very idea of "balance" for them is less something you can mechanically track, and more of something you have to take a step back from and look at what they're doing. Many such characters are not going to be balanced when the player characters meet them (due to the nature of adventurers finding problems), but may become balanced as a result of their influence.

Principles can be all kinds of things too. In a game that I ran, one of the major members of an antagonist faction actually had "Honor" as a principle. With the right influence, it may have been possible for him to flip sides, because "being a bad guy" is just the current state of his life, and he doesn't see it that way. But he always acts on a code of honor, and is motivated by a sense of honor that he thinks has to be restored. This character is not Zuko, and actually exists as an example of "the war is over, and it was determined that we were the bad guys," but you can really draw the parallels in a way that's like what you're suggesting.

>>96417995
>waterbending to become a better person.
Bloodbending
>Instead, it's her refusal to back down in the face of injustices
Bloodbending

If you don't understand what this means you have zero media literacy, but I'll spoonfeed you the answer if you beg for it.

>>96406711
>internal conflict in the coming-of-age characters.
BORING.
>PbtA
Not a real game

>>96424607
What's funny is once he finds balance he gets notably weaker until he learns special new firebending techniques from the sun people, so the game would fail to simulate this as well

>>96427403
My read of this thread is that the pbta game promises a high quality emulation of the themes and arcs and archetypes in the show, but in practice, it can only really do a certain kind of story that is not actually a perfect fit for Avatar (or anything else from the sounds of things) and on top of that glaring flaw, it also doesn't have good combat or anything else to make up for the poorly executed dramatic elements.

I want to hate legend of korra. They wasted lot of potential with the story. Unlike OG avatar its obvious they had no real idea what story they want top tell and how to get there, instead they bumbled along blindly. They had no idea how to use and develop Korra herself. They relide of bunch of pulled out of the ass bullshit to progress whatever little plot they had in mind.

But, still, i cant bring myself to hate that series. Because for all their faults, they did one thing right: Korra's visual design. I simply enjoy watching her on the screen, and my dick draws enough brain from my mind that i cant rally care about all the numerous and obvious flaws of that damn show.

Sex sells. Even if it just slight implication.

>>96427676
I would concede that it can represent Aang quite well. Aang is routinely trying to find a balance, because he's the avatar, and is torn between freedom and responsibility. And when his emotions run high, his bending goes out of control with the Avatar state.
The system represents that, specifically, relatively well. But that lone positive falls apart as soon as you remember that Aang isn't the only character in the show.

>>96427676
It's kinda more like... "a story that revolves around the actual Avatar and stakes that big aren't the intention of the game, so here's a more consistent and rounded experience that still gives you much of the same things."

>>96427915
You can like character designs and still think, rightly, the show was dogshit.

>>96415049
>still thinks its about the show
Your lack of understanding of people who play TRPGs is even moreso disappointing. This is all about the non-venn of people who like Avatar enough to play a branded TRPG, people who like PBTA enough to play a show branded version of it, and people who aren't pogging over punching bad guys with rocks.

Just throwing in my two-cents. I've run one game for a couple friends, most of which have only played a little D&D, if anything before. We had fun. Is it a perfect system? No, but it worked well enough for us. I think the best thing about it for us and probably a lot of other people, was the campaign worksheet. I didn't have to spend hours/days/weeks prior to the game cing up with a plot and NPCs and and everything. We sat down before we played and took 30-60 minutes to discuss how the characters became a group and what the adventure they were on was and then I improvised everything else from there. We didn't have to spend a massive amount of time role-playing the characters meeting for the first time and learning what the adventure is going to be about. You could still play it that way if you want, but it really helped us get into playing the game faster, and really helped me run a fully improvised session.

>>96430155
>Non-venn
That sure must by why the game has an active following then. I guess I'll just re-write the way things are defined because you identified that different people want different things, but couldn't give the benefit of the doubt that sometimes, some of these elements do overlap.

>>96430921
This kind of thing is actually really useful. A lot of people will bitch and moan and say "session zero is unnecessary garbage," but communicating and setting expectations is important in any social hobby like this.

>>96433914
>Doesn't know what a non-venn is
You're not half as smart as you think you are.
It means they're no significant overlap.

Sex with Korra

>>96406675 (OP)
I always felt like Korra underwent substantial rewrites where different versions of her were combined into the version we got, and that is why her story feels like it doesn't mesh well. For example: Korra's attitude doesn't at all match her upbringing. She was raised since she was a toddler by an ascetic group of bending masters who have focused on guiding her development as the Avatar and her maturation into adulthood.

But you'd never know that Korra was raised by elderly mystics from the way she behaves. She doesn't have any of the mannerisms of the people who raised her, and is a confrontational and violent person in general. Which is bizarre because I cannot imagine ANY of her teachers and caregivers in the White Lotus would've tolerated that behavior in her at all and would have taught her discipline and manners at a bare minimum. She was a student of Katara's for a decade. Do you think Katara as an old woman was any less prim than she was as a teenager? That she'd tolerate sass, shirking, or temper tantrums from a southern water tribe girl who ought to know better? It doesn't add up.

Rather than rewrite Korra's personality to match her backstory I think it makes more sense to rewrite her backstory to fit her personality. Namely: I think Korra was at some point designed as being born in Republic City, and grew up in the slums. This means Mako and Bolin can be friends she knew from earlier in life, that her interest in Pro Bending is more significant since it's a means of getting out of the slums for her, it gives her a much easier way to hook into Republic City's criminal element and the plot lines connected to that instead of being a total outsider, and it also I think explains her inability to reach the spirit realm. She's too rooted in worldly concerns, pursuit of money, fame, status, etc, and the day-to-day struggle of growing up poor in a bad environment.

>>96430921
>a rules lite game is easy to pick up and fun for one session
That about tracks, games like this have no real meat to keep a campaign going. Fun for people who play once a month or so with people who aren’t invested in games

For better or worse, people feel weird about saying "we got together and did acting improv with my friends all evening" so they call it game night, despite the "game" being completely accessory

>>96434137
Korra seems like the show suffered from a lot of rewrites and uncertainty, since from what I remember they didn't even know how many episodes they were actually going to get.

Even so, they dropped the ball on a lot of stuff that shouldn't have been impacted by that, like you said. Korra comes across as someone who's never had any proper discipline or teachers at all, rather than a highly sheltered water-tribe girl.

My slightly controversial Korra opinion is that her starting point as a brash dumbfuck moron who's good at all the physical aspects of bending but doesn't even remotely get the spiritual side is a great concept. Like you can take such a character with so many flaws and so many lessons to learn and then you can write the show to be about her learning lessons! It practically writes itself.

>>96434415
I'd like to refer you to this post, so I don't have to repeat myself >>96414581

Production problems aside, they made many bad decisions in spite of episode count, renewal uncertainties, and budget constraints. It was simply a bad show made by two guy who could not recapture lightning in a bottle.

>>96434042
Just because you don't like one of the categories doesn't mean there's no significant overlap there. Your bias is the problem with your description.

>>96434513
>It practically writes itself.
Super true.
Which makes it all the weirder when they didn’t have Korra grow, learn, or understand her shortcomings as the show went on.
Expectations = subverted

>>96434513
I don't even think that's controversial. Someone struggling to learn a certain type of bending because it clashes with their personality is just how we've been shown learning bending works.
Someone brash and worldly struggling with airbending and spiritual aspects makes sense, and having that be the focus should have been easy.

>>96407420
the most popular TTRPG on the market has an incredibly crunchy and rigid combat system and then "lol I dunno you figure it out" for social interactions

>>96434149
I wouldn't call the game rules-lite. Does it have less mechanical representation than D&D? Yes. But if you think about the mechanics in an RPG like a tree diagram, D&D has a lot of depth, that is to say lots of rules and mechanisms that you don't need to concern yourself with as a player/GM because they aren't relevant for your particular character/game; where as a greater percentage of the rules Avatar Legends does have are in the first couple of layers (the ones every player needs to be aware of, to some extent, to play).

>>96437695
I would agree with this description. Avatar Legends is not remotely lacking for rules to guide the action or provide structure. You may not have as many fiddly bits related to actualizing what you want to do, but there is a clear framework.

>>96435535
So your reading comprehension is low as well, you're funny.

>>96437847
No, I just fundamentally disagree with the premise of your statement. Your behavior is goofy, also.

threesome with asami and korra

>>96436697
If anything Avatar Legends is the opposite. Keeps combat simple and loose, but has solidified rules around roleplaying and how your character is allowed to act or feel.

That's part of why PBtA can be hit or miss even for people who like to focus on roleplay or story, because having a bunch of rules around it makes you feel more like actors rehearsing lines rather than a character making decisions in the moment.

>>96438258
I think that the latter matter falls out of concern with time. You gain a sort of mental agility to the idea that "my character feels these things right now, and the opportunity to act on that is available here."

>>96427915
Korra is just about the only really well-designed character in the show, everyone else are just meh.
Asami and metalbending police lady just aren't everyone. And most other characters are men(gay), or children(pedo). Also they killed off a bunch, unlike AtLa. Also gay.

Meanwhile I struggled to watch through the seasons having to pause and facepalm all the time.
So no, I don't think the visuals fully compensate for the show at all. It was just too retarded.

>>96434513
Yeah, a concept. In reality is a dogshit, one of the most popular concepts of all.

You what this actually is? A minmaxed character with gimped socials, discipline, spirituals and so on, who's, by design of vast majority of systems, self-sufficient enough without the *need* for a improvement.
They only come out of the woodwork with GM's narrative to enforce a story.

>>96438468
kek not wrong

>>96427915
>"Because for all their faults, they did one thing right: Korra's visual design."
>posts the downgraded Korra design haircut

>>96438468
I don't even really understand how Korra, a free-spirited, adaptable master of three bending styles could be exposed to airbending and go
>this shit makes no sense!
When it's all the same aspects of bending that she's already mastered. She can master the forms and breathing and coordination and personal level of intense spiritual control to freely wield Fire, Water, and Earth interchangeably, but being asked to breath and center herself for airbending is some absurd hurdle? Fuck off. That's pure contrivance. They needed an excuse for there to be drama with Tenzin, so they just forced the drama. The real hurdle should have been about learning responsibility, philosophy, and the statecraft she'd need to demonstrate as the Avatar in a world that was becoming less spiritual and more materialistic.

>>96442646
I mean, there is a sense that Korra is such a physical person who can't detach from anything, that spirituality is completely out of her reach. She has all of the philosophical potential to master firebending and earthbending, but is too bull-headed and unable to untether herself.

It's still kinda dumb that she just acquires airbending suddenly though, and then can just kinda feel it out. She's missing a character arc where she changed enough to earn it. Between Season 1 and 2, Korra is basically still the same person.

>>96443186
Putting aside the massive problems with Amon being able to permanently take away bending with some inexplicable bloodbending power, there's also the implication that Airbending exists on some special, separate system from her other three forms of bending. And then the even weirder resolution where she realizes she still has airbending, a thing which she'd been unable to use in any way before in a situation totally unrelated to her personal struggles with it or her spiritual education. So instead of learning a valuable lesson about herself and bending as a spiritual practice, it's a last second asspull for a villain just so she can push him out a window and make him spontaneously waterbend in front of a large crowd of bystanders, while his makeup comes off.

God, I fucking hate Korra. What a fucking awful show.

>>96438087
>I disagree with proven facts.
Silly

>>96443186
>>96443573
I always got the impression that it was due to Amon not knowing the right points to block to take away Airbending, or otherwise not thinking to do so because Korra hadn't been able to at that point.

Either way, it's still a really dumb asspull for her to suddenly do it just because she's out of other options, rather than having actually learned any lessons to allow her to do so. Her being stubborn and struggling with airbending works fine, but it means that her learning airbending should come when she learns how to be less stubborn.

Rolled 54, 30, 14, 57, 54, 43, 37, 27, 64, 44, 8, 34, 59, 14, 30, 64, 41, 2, 54, 17, 20, 32, 41, 5, 62 = 907 (25d69)

>>96406675 (OP)
SEX SEX SEX

KORRA OWES ME SEX

DARK TANNED SKIN WITH PALE ONE-PIECE SWIMSUIT TANLINES AND DARK AREOLAS

A LANDING STRIP THAT TICKLES MY NOSE WHILE SHE SITS ON MY FACE

AN ASSHOLE THAT LOOKS LIKE A BLACKCURRANT, GLEEFULLY WINKING AS I BRING HER CLOSER TO THE EDGE

THESE ARE ALL I WANT

WHY AM I DEPRIVED OF IT

>>96443887
why would any woman be interested in you

>>96444033
this kind of attitude is why i rape people

>>96443673
>I always got the impression that it was due to Amon not knowing the right points to block to take away Airbending
I have never once found this to be a convincing idea, whether that's the case or not. But at least we agree that she didn't really earn her airbending.

>>96442646
Eh, well, there are archetypes who are just unable to properly chill.
Air bending having a special touch of chill would make sense for the kind of spunky rebel or a workaholic like police lady to be unable to grasp.

You're also not exactly correct about discipline. At least Fire and Earth bending has a lot bound to the attitude, and even Azula in her crazed state is able to produce lightning. I imagine it could be self-taught easily, and bruteforced, which is exactly what she did. She's not as much adaptable as she is fucking stubborn.

Also while the show is overall dogshit, I did appreciate moments of inspiration, like that bad guy-turned-Airbender being unable to fly until his girlfriend dies. The level of spiritual detachment from everything required is quite notable. Still dogshit.

>>96446904
If you think about Aang's troubles during his earthbending training, it gets really clear. Toph kept saying he had to take it hands-on and directly, and he kept trying to look for indirect means or alternate approaches. The philosophy of the Air Nomads includes pacifism, with Aang preferring to not fight unless he was attacked first. He tends to prefer evasive maneuvers over striking too, which Bumi calls him out on as typical Air Nomad behavior.

Korra in the early part of her series is the kind of person who does everything incredibly directly. She's too stubborn to back down or try to get away from a problem, or to try to resolve it any way other than by use of force. Because she can't hold back and open her mind to new possibilities. The only exception, the only time she earns progress on her airbending training, is during the pro bending match. Confronted with insurmountable odds, she realizes that her way of doing things can't work, and that she needs to pull back and do something else if she wants to make it. So then the bagua-style dodging starts to click.

>>96448059
Aang struggled more with Firebending than Earthbendering because Fire is innately destructive and harmful. It wasn't that he couldn't do it, but that he had a mental barrier about fire, both because of the trauma it caused him, but also because he couldn't see fire as anything but a force of death and destruction, which stopped him from using it or trying to learn it for a time.

Korra, by contrast, practically popped out of the womb able to wield 3 elements for no discernable reason, and then went her entire life without ever once having something try to teach her restraint or anything to do with airbending, and the best they can really do to explain it is that she's just stubborn, and instead of learning to be less stubborn, it's an asspull trump card to resolve a villain's plotline because they had no real idea what to actually do with Amon and the implications an anti-bender underclass would bring to the setting.

>>96448248
No, actually. That description of Aang's relationship with firebending isn't correct. The Air Nomad genocide did not make him averse to learning to firebend at any point in the story, nor did the way that he constantly saw firebending being used.

If you start thinking about it from the episode "The Deserter," Aang didn't have a block with Firebending at first. In fact, he was eager to start learning it and harnessing its power (even too eager). He doesn't gain a block on learning firebending until his lack of restraint causes him to burn Katara, something that he says in his own words at the time makes him not want to firebend again. However, he lets go of this burden on his mind when he's training with Guru Pathik. He doesn't approach the subject of trying to learn firebending again until he has already mastered earthbending, and at that point he isn't exactly against doing it, but thinks that there's no path for him to learn.

It's convenient for him, that by learning from the dragons, that he can take a different approach to firebending at a philosophical level. It lets him skirt around the negative connotations that he's familiar with, even though those things weren't holding him back at that point.

>>96448248
>>96448522
Yeah, compared to Earthbending, Aang picks up Firebending about as easily as he picks up Waterbending. As soon as he actually tries to make and manipulate a flame, he gets it pretty much instantly. The problem is that he treated it the same way he did air or water, hurt someone, lost his teacher in the same episode.

All of Aang's struggles really only serve to highlight where the Korra writers went wrong though. Personality and philosophy can make it harder to learn an element as the Avatar. Growing as a person or learning lessons is how you overcome that and make it easier.
The character arc for Korra to become less stubborn was a valid option, and would have the upside of having her argue with her friends less. But instead she just remains relatively stubborn and learns airbending anyway.

>>96451217
She is a bending prodigy and so every situation that can be resolved by bending does get resolved by bending. Ironically she would probably start approaching the airbending mindset if she was forced to overcome problems without the use of bending whatsoever.

>>96451805
That's still a problem with the writing though. The writers are the ones creating the situations she finds herself in. The responsibility is on them to put her in situations where she has to grow and change as a person.

>>96451217
So was being born a Fire Nation avatar just life on easy mode?
>Starting element forces you to learn control and discipline
>Not tied down by any bullshit like air nomad vegetarianism or pacifism
>Culture is innovative and likely encourages thinking creatively
>You get a fucking dragon as a mount
>You don't have any hang ups that would inhibit earth bending
>You don't have any hang ups that would inhibit air bending
>Maybe water bending is harder for you but water bending fucking sucks anyways

No one wants to play an Avatar TTRPG after Korra killed the lore.

>>96451944
Nah. You can ignore Korra, or just play in the world's expansive historic eras instead.

>>96451961
You could, but that doesn't change the common perception of it.

>>96452011
but anon the new show will surely revive people's interest in the avatar franchise ;^)

>>96452011
>"Oh no, one of the shows was bad. I guess I'll never enjoy interacting with any parts of this franchise again!"
Awful take for anyone to have.

>>96451929
Roku does mention that waterbending was especially challenging for him, so presumably there's something about it that's harder to grasp for someone who starts as a firebender, though I'm not sure we're ever told what that is.
Conversely we also don't really see what would make firebending harder for a waterbender.

>>96452044
I'd agree, but why would you make up a take just to disagree with it unless you're a miserable schizo anyways?

>>96452058
I can kinda see how one could argue that fire bending is inherently aggressive/forceful whereas water bending is more about going with the flow (ignore the tsunami and other aggressive water bender shit).
But even then, there are fire bending moves that work on similar principles. I think it's just part of one of the problems the original setting had: It doesn't keep working very well if you try to dive deeper than what the show offered.

>>96452059
Did you fail to read the flow of the conversation?

>>96452092
The 'flow of conversation' the excuse you're using for just inventing a take to rail against, retard?

>>96451944
The only thing Korra really did to fuck up the lore was the stupid spirit twin thing, but you can just ignore that. It's not like it's the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, it's more like the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, where it doesn't break the original and leaves plenty of interesting material to cut and splice in.

>>96452058
Firebending is a direction of your passion. You manipulate the ki from your own body and you release it as fire, a realization of your own self.

Waterbending is working with the flow. The tides push and pull, water flows with a natural direction. Waterbending it about working with and manipulating what's already there.

Both types of bending are particularly related to ki manipulation, but they take an entirely reversed approach.

>>96452103
I'm sorry you don't understand. If you lack reading comprehension, we can't have a conversation.

>>96452129
Anon, you're the one who utterly lacks reading comprehension and had to invent a quote wholecloth to get mad about. Maybe go on xitter next time you feel the need to get mad at imagined beliefs.

>lust-provoking image
>time-wasting question

>>96452125
I could see that making sense. A waterbender learning firebending might struggle to put enough force into it, while a firebender learning waterbending is going to be struggling against the flow because it's not as internal.

It's just less obvious than the dichotomy between air/earth because we have that one spelled out more directly.

>>96452116
And
>making lightningbending so common/mundane it's used for power plants
>making Bending a spiritual cum packet from the lion turtles instead of something humans learned through observation of the Bending animals
>made more airbenders out of nothing

Probably more I'm forgetting.

>>96452254
How is that a lust-provoking image?

>>96416654
It's also :wilted_rose:, not :skull:. Get with the times, gramps.

>>96453503
>made more airbenders out of nothing
Uhm, that's a good change though.
They only made like like 20-200 of them, which is a pittance.

Having all remaining Air Benders come from Aang wasn't satisfactory for me desu.

Also people were born benders before. I can remember anyone from water tribe bending fire for instance.

>>96455274
In addition to this, take note that the new airbenders who didn't give up their previous lives will probably have their bending dwindle away.

Airbending requires a level of detachment from worldly things as a part of its spiritual nature. This is why being truly detached from all worldly things allows for flight. On the flipside of this, Kyoshi's mother Jesa was a master airbender who left the Air Nomad lifestyle and became a criminal, and fell in love with a man that she carried on a relationship with. Her life became so material that despite her level of skill, her airbending became weak. She had to rely on the use of a pair of metal fans (which Kyoshi would eventually acquire at some point in her life) in order to amplify her weakened airbending.

The former Air Nomad culture was basically all benders. It's speculated that this is because they lived such spiritual and impermanent lives. They lived away from the other cultures and only come to them as travelers, they would migrate from temple to temple rather than have any one temple act as a permanent home, they engaged in simple pleasures, and they sought introspection and spiritual growth rather than physical strength and material development. This is a perfect recipe for being in touch with one's own airbending, and people who live vastly different lives will not be able to maintain their connection with the element.

Hell, if Kai had not been picked up by the crew to join the "new Air Nation" and changed his ways, then he probably would have had his bending weaken eventually.

I tried Avatar Legends about a year back. It was miserable.
>Combat was unfun, to the point our GM had to constantly write outs to cut it short.
>Playbooks are more restricting to character concepts than not and really don't account for as many scenarios are you think. Same deal with the generic moves.
>Mechanics that dictate what you're feeling and how you're allowed to express it are absolute cancer to the roleplay experience. Balance is interesting on paper, poorly implemented in practice.
Having played this and DungeonWorld immediately after, I'm firmly in the "PBTA is shit" camp. What really insults me about it is that for ALL of its pretensions that you can "figure something out" if the given freeform mechanics don't cover a situation, its somehow both very limiting in its flavor and frustratingly limp in practicalities like "how long does [x] last" or "if there's no listed roll-failure effect, does nothing happen or are we obligated to make up our own?". I'd rather have no rules at all than pretend that you have rules but then shirking any responsibility of giving them definition or guidance for leeway on effects.

>>96460985
>"how long does [x] last"
It depends, and most things will tell you. Otherwise, you do what makes sense.
>"if there's no listed roll-failure effect, does nothing happen or are we obligated to make up our own?"
The GM's job is to respond to actions you do. If you fail the roll for something, even if a move doesn't dictate the consequences, it's their responsibility to determine what's happening next. They are suppose to be responsive to what you do as you interact with the world.

If you didn't like PbtA style games that's fine. Not everyone likes mechanics that give direction to how their characters feel, or they don't like how open-ended things can be, or whatever. But don't conflate your bad experiences with the idea that games can't be run effectively or enjoyed. People do actually get how this kind of game works, and they can have fun with it.

>>96461343
PtBA is irredeemable.

>>96453503
I will never get over how metalbending went from
>reaching out to the minute earthen impurities in metal and crudely crunching that shit together
To
>we magneto now
Not only did it make metalbending lame as all fucking hell, but it also made it impossible for non-benders to matter in Korra since metalbenders could just invalidate any weapons they use.

>>96462693
The comics are responsible for having a hand in this cock-up. It turns out that Toph is not a great teacher (though we already knew that), so instead of teaching metalbenders the long way around like she did by teaching them how to sense metal impurities, she just went around with her meteor metal and recruited people any time she felt someone do something that happened to make it react a little. She found people with natural aptitude this way, then went "just bend it." And they got really confused and didn't get how to do it, until they arbitrarily just eventually did.

So she founds a metalbending academy, where the new generation of metalbenders are just kind of doing it by vibes, rather than by building onto skills that fundamentally help you understand how it actually works.

>>96453503
1. Only matters if you're doing Republic City era, and is a useful way to display time advancing.
2. Is just a different part of the dumb twin spirit thing. Pretend those two episodes don't exist.
3. Realistically necessary for air bending to exist in setting as anything other than a bunch of incest babies.

>>96460985
>Having played this and DungeonWorld immediately after, I'm firmly in the "PBTA is shit" camp.
Dungeon World, as its name suggests, is an incredibly shit implementation of PbtA. PbtA is good at player-driven stories with potential intra-group conflict, not dungeon diving with a party. The problem is that it's relatively simple to make a PbtA hack so they're mostly dross by people who don't understand its basic design.

>if there's no listed roll-failure effect, does nothing happen or are we obligated to make up our own?
Case in point. Never played or looked at the ATLA RPG, but this is a very basic part of the Apocalypse World structure: on a miss, make as hard and direct a move as you like. In AW, there's a list of MC moves:
• Separate them.
• Capture someone.
• Put someone in a spot.
• Trade harm for harm (as established).
• Announce off-screen badness.
• Announce future badness.
• Inflict harm (as established).
• Take away their stuff.
• Make them buy.
• Activate their stuff’s downside.
• Tell them the possible consequences and ask.
• Offer an opportunity, with or without a cost.
• Turn their move back on them.
• Make a threat move (from one of your fronts).
• After every move: “what do you do?”

Either the book was written bad or your GM didn't read it.

delicious chocolate (but caucasian) ladies are my weakness

>>96463157
>Never played or looked at the ATLA RPG
As someone who has (and isn't that Anon you're responding to), I'll tell you that it does. The GM moves are as follows:
>Inflict fatigue or a condition
>Reveal a hidden truth
>Shift their balance
>Twist loyalties with tempting offers
>Escalate to violence
>Offer a risky or costly opportunity
>Threaten someone
>Shift the odds, suddenly
>Exploit a weakness in their history
>Provide wisdom in unlikely places
>Turn a move back on them
And in addition to this, each different era that you can play in comes with a page that discusses the themes of that time period, and provides additional GM moves that are thematically appropriate to the progress and struggles of those times.

>>96460985
>"My GM was a useless shit who didn't know what to do!"

Adding onto >>96465559, a GM technically has the 11 GM moves that are always available, plus each era gives them 15-18 more. If your GM has approaching 30 options for what to do, and they can't pick one, that's your fucking GM's fault.

>>96444116
remove yourself from the gene pool

>>96462728
Tie-ins almost always make things worse.

>>96468425
The advancement of metalbending really does still make sense. It just sucks that the principles that made it so hard for anyone to do in the first place, the things that Toph had over other earthbenders who tried and failed, gets ignored in favor of "some secretly had the aptitude, but they just never tried hard enough." It really spits in the face of the setting's history and development.

>>96468456
It'd have made more sense if seismic-sense itself was a necessary step to learning metalbending, where being able to 'see' the impurities was important for knowing how to bend it.
Toph also doesn't seem like she should be that bad of a teacher. She can be rude, but she knew the principles of earthbending well enough to actually explain it to Aang.

If they really wanted to push that angle, then they could have just made it so Toph taught it to her kids, and one of her kids could be the skilled teacher at understanding and spreading it.
It feels like the only reason they made it so widespread is because one of the writers had the 'metalbending police' idea and that only works at all if metalbending has had decades to spread.

>>96443887
>>96444033
>>96444116
>>96466153

>>96468765
first time?

>>96468546
Starting at "metalbending police" and working out really would explain a lot, if that's the case. After all, Toph as the police chief is one of the least sensible things that happened during the time between series. Toph has all the needed skills, but an entirely bad temperament for it. Her deciding to start a metalbending police team happens entirely without given explanation for how she came to that decision, and it's very hard to imagine how it happened. It's not like her arc in AtLA particularly directs her towards this, even if matters of trust and care do get better for her.

>>96412723
>Zuko and his uncle
Wake up sleepy head, wrong show, people are talking about The Dragon Prince.

>>96469226
Pretty much. It's very much a case where it feels like they worked backwards to justify it.
It'd be easier to buy that Toph was the one who started Pro-Bending inspired from her time at Earth Rumble.

>>96443887
I don't no if your 907 is enough to bend her with your cock.

>>96406675 (OP)
>immensely fuckable character design
>fucking unwatchable dogshit series
why is this so common now?

>>96475329
What are some other examples? Korra is the only one that stands out to me. (Un?)fortunately most dogshit I've encountered nowadays has completely unfuckable character designs. Hence "goonergate".

>>96469700
They only concluded it wasn't worth talking about.

>>96462161
This

>>96462161
So is PbtA.

>>96490961
>>96495448
>Bothered bumping the thread twice
>Just to take very lazy shots at a style of play they don't like
I Shiggy Diggy

>>96406675 (OP)
Anima: Beyond Fantasy is right there.

>>96406675 (OP)
>fumble
>8million bux cashgrab
ayylmao

>>96468456
>The advancement of metalbending really does still make sense.
It doesn't. In fact it makes so little sense they had to make a tie-in comic that retcons the entire mechanics of metalbending from "bending the earthen impurities of the metal" to "i dunno, magic meteor metal lololol"

>>96500844
I meant more in the sense of "new styles of metalbending were developed, including wearable armor and tools."

>>96500761
OP stipulated "licensed", so by definition it's not right there.

>>96414486
Hate how everyone portrays Kyoshi as some sort of hardass-get-shit-done avatar when she's actually the opposite. She literally did nothing to stop a tyrant from conquering half the world and only killed the guy by accident while trying to run away from the problem.

>>96507653
People tend to extrapolate this from the thing where she was like "yeah, Aang, sometimes you do have to fucking kill someone to get the job done, and you shouldn't have regrets about that."

She had a very long tenure as the Avatar though, and the expanded material gives her a lot of stuff that she has to do and clean up. Kuruk being a fuck-up who got into bad situations with spirits was actually Yangchen's fault for favoring humans over spirits too much, and Kyoshi has to pick up after him and then do shit like fight roving crime syndicates, defeat the Fifth Nation (which is multinational pirates), etc.

She has her own fuck-ups though. She wanted to not stand in the way of politics, so she let Chin the Conqueror do as he wanted until it became personal. And she also established and trained the Dai Li as some kind of weird compromise to problems in in Ba Sing Se, giving the government a ton of potential to oppress the populace for centuries to come.

>>96457160
>will probably
Ahhh the cope.

>>96469226
>Starting at "metalbending police" and working out really would explain a lot
Honestly the police in Korra were one of the first signs that they didn't think anything through.

>>96509221
Not wrong honestly.

>>96418175
That sounds awful.

PbtA is unironically more complex than D&D5e and less fun. The illusion that it's a "simple" system comes from it using less words, but the reality is that trying to use the rules without guidance is actually harder than just "roll d20 vs number"
And I don't even like D&D5e.

>>96419585
It was literally inspired by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Even movies like Kung Fu Hustle iirc, which isn't exactly wuxia but filled to the brim with wuxia references. It's arguably more wuxia inspired than it is anime inspired.

>>96427915
>Unlike OG avatar its obvious they had no real idea what story they want top tell and how to get there, instead they bumbled along blindly. They had no idea how to use and develop Korra herself
Unironically this is directly the fault of Nick itself.
LoK was supposed to be a short series, then Nick wanted a full season. Then they wanted more seasons. Then they cut back down on that, PSYCH! We changed their mind, we want more seasons.
This caused the writers to meander and have one villain and plot per season instead of building up the plot like in the original show, where they had a set plan played out(but with detailed figured out along the way, like Toph).
The show had some genuinely good idea that weren't given the time to cook and develop, and get rid of the bad ideas too.

>>96418175
That sounds great.

>>96418049
Bending is flexible, but it's obvious that they're based on different martial arts for a reason, and benders are trained like any other martial artists. Learning specific movements, stances, breathing exercises. People like Aang and Toph are very exceptional.
This is what differentiates Avatar's bending from something like a superhero powers or other fantasies with elemental abilities with no logic to it like psychic bloodbending in Legend of Korra
The game just ignoring this in a martial arts show, which Avatar is, ironically goes against its whole character thing. Characters in a show like this develop along with their skill. Zuko is a shitty bender and hothead early on for instance.

>>96515729
>The show had some genuinely good idea
Like?

>>96409479
I agree and am shocked no one has tried to do something 4e esque already. A real Avatar game will have to keep manipulating your surroundings in mind.
>It's less common that there's actually person to person martial arts.
Nonbending still important. Kyoshi warriors are basically samurai, Mai is basically a ninja, you got chi blockers and even Zuko is a skilled swordsman when he's not firebending, etc

>>96515892
Korra is meant to be the opposite of Aang. Aang is very spiritually inclined, Korra is much more physical and hotheaded. I don't think she should've been so skilled straight from episode 1 though.
I think Red Lotus and Kuvira are interesting villains, the era should've been more of a fantasy Chinese Civil War setting imo.
I don't hate mechs, spirit energy, pro bending, or even equalists, etc by themselves. The execution is different.

>>96406675 (OP)
>The setting was perfect for it.
It was not

>>96414550
>>96430943
Bryke would fly to Korea to tell the animators to make her tits smaller
But it will always be canon to me

Some of the stuff in this thread, man.
Yeah Avatar is about its characters, they're a big part of the appeal. But it's still a martial arts show, and when people say they want an Avatar game you fucking know they're talking about wanting to be a Kyoshi warrior, a bloodbender or being a Dai Li agent shooting rock gloves, or a chi blocker. Any other game could be about being the Comic Relief or Angsty Teen. You could just rewatch the show if you want the same characters.
It's like wanting a Star Wars game and you roleplay a dysfunctional dad and siblings kissing each other, and the spaceships and lasers and aliens are an after thought.

>>96515729
This already got discussed earlier in the thread. And while not knowing for sure how many episodes they had to work with certainly didn't help, there are enough problems with some of the core premises and characters that can't be explained by that, and in some cases are more baffling when knowing that they have limited episodes.

Deciding that Korra would be a stubborn hothead but having her grow up in a sheltered monastery is an easy example. Just have her be from Republic City itself. She can learn elements at a young age because there's other kids in the neighborhood of all elements. She can be obsessed with pro-bending because she's in the city that came up with it. And she has more reason to care about the city's politics.
That's a decision that would have gotten made before they knew how many episodes they had, and so it can't be blamed on the network.

>>96434415
>>96434137
I think the uncertainty about how many seasons they had is why they make her learn the same lesson to fucking chill over and over again, ending up with a retard who keeps reverting back to being a retard despite having learned not to be a retard at the end of the previous season.

>>96517171
>Just have her be from Republic City itself.
I've seen it discussed in a /co/ fanfic thread she should've been a street kid that learned on her own, she feels much more like a local.

Anyways, the original Avatar had moments where they didn't know if they were gonna get more episodes. But they kept trucking along without compromising the plot. Episode 13, The Blue Spirit, was almost the series finale. I know people hate cliffhangers, but it's preferable than fucking up the story.

The game itself gives some interesting lore. Post-war there's an issue with piracy because the Fire Nation relied on using them, so you got a bunch of guys going unpaid and just running amok. There's a module involving the plans of the first FN tank during Sozin's era, and apparently primitive Chinese style handcannons were a thing once.
I think that's neat. The creators did care about the setting and lore at least.

>>96406675 (OP)
Because like their other attempts to make Avatar into a larger franchise, the creators have no idea what the fuck they are doing and are just throwing shit at the wall. Like they do not know shit about RPGs so they just licensed it out to the nearest LICENSED RPG FACTORY to make something, anything.

>>96516172
I blame narrativist fags from the Shitical Role school of thought that masturbate over "character arcs" as a pre-planned thing in TTRPGs while thumbing their noses at "roll-playing over roleplaying".

>>96516172
This is people talking past each other, which was also talked about. Avatar's fight scenes are basically superficial compared to the stuff that is involved in the characters' personalities and arcs, and the inherent philosophical concepts related to bending and everything else. They are a dressing and a vehicle for the things the show is actually about. That stuff is important to conveying Avatar as a complete concept, but throwing the other stuff away makes it hollow and unlike itself.

>>96519235
Sure, if you take away the philosophy, you just have a really bare-bones element system. But the solution to that isn't to hand-wave all the bending. It'd be to tie together a system where a character's traits and the lessons they're taught directly unlock new techniques and skills.
A character developing as a person but not becoming any better at bending as a result also doesn't represent the show well.

>>96520074
I don't really know why people suggest that the licensed game is handwaving the bending. It has a combat system built in, and allows bending to be used very flexibly (which is good, because bending can do all kinds of things).

More than that, it has mechanics for learning techniques, which involves interacting with a character who can mentor you through learning. That can be literally teaching you the technique, then teaching you some philosophy to try to tackle in order to help lock that in, or someone who helps you pick up a concept that you then apply to using as inspiration for a physical technique or combat skill.

People who don't like the way it's built can have their opinion, but these things aren't being sacrificed.

>>96516172
SW games used to heavily push you away from being a Jedi and/or made being a Jedi weaker than being a dude with a good gun

>>96516001
>Korra is meant to be the opposite of Aang
Why is this a good idea?
>Red Lotus
The name alone should tell you how awful it is.
>Kuvira
Motivations make no sense, she's le generic dictator and nothing there really works or fits with the setting.

>>96516172
Name two systems that feel wuxia, with different fighting styles that don't feel like wasting time after declaring your attack.

>>96520606
The Red Lotus was conceptually an interesting idea, but the execution was fucking awful. These people are supposed to be White Lotus counterparts who are capable, big thinker types who have honed their philosophy around a different concept. And we're supposed to believe that the anarchist wing is somehow entirely unaware of how power vacuums work? Zaheer not seeing someone like Kuvira coming is literally not believable.

>>96520606
Kuvira could do with better motivations, even if they do make sense. She has abandonment issues and projected that out onto the whole leaderless nation. But also she's a control freak, which exacerbated her sense that what she was doing was righteous.

It should've been fleshed out more, and especially actually discussed in the show, and not just explained in outside material.

>>96520616
>be anarchist revolutionaries
>be utterly convinced that burning the system to the ground will result in your idealized society magically coming into existence in pretty short order
>wtf why why is there a warlord now this isn't what the book said was going to happen
It was the most accurate depiction of anarchism I've ever seen in fiction

>>96518368
>Anyways, the original Avatar had moments where they didn't know if they were gonna get more episodes. But they kept trucking along without compromising the plot
Yeah, the "We didn't know how many episodes we had" stuff was always cope.

The truth is always more complex and behind the scenes, every project is a mess and success is a miracle. But far as I can tell ATLA had been cooking on the drawing board for a pretty good length of time. A lot of the ideas there had been in the nursery for nearly a decade, and they put in the effort to refine those ideas and really narrow in on shit that'd work. For example, you can see in the Pilot episode that the 2 years leading up to the first season there was a lot that stayed the same, but became greatly refined.

I also think there were some beneficial circumstances. The "show, don't tell" approach they took to avoid Nickelodeon censorship, while it made some action scenes look pretty stupid, actually helped a ton with making the audience fill in the gaps without coming off as lazy. Hell, despite being made with a younger audience in mind, shit managed to be pretty dark through implications.
Though it still has some pretty big issues with pacing, especially in the finales.
In the end it was lightning in a bottle, captured by repeated efforts and good fortune. Korra was a poorly thought out attempt to recapture it after it was used up.

>>96520603
>and/or made being a Jedi weaker than being a dude with a good gun
Fucking Bobafags.

>>96520593
>allows bending to be used very flexibly
That's what handwaving the bending means.

>it has mechanics for learning techniques
Are they the sort of mechanics I mentioned, where the philosophy and attitude themselves enable or limit what you can learn? If you learn a technique, can you later flub it if someone puts your character into the wrong mindset to use it?
Or is it a 2d6 roll with a couple modifiers and a list of post-hoc justifications?

>>96520593
Here, I have a quick-reference pic from my old campaign when we were struggling to make our own game work.

>>96520781
meant for >>96520744

>>96520616
>The Red Lotus was conceptually an interesting idea
Were they really? "What if we took a mediocre concept and made it EVIL?" feels lazy and contrived to begin with, but taking it further, the idea of an organization of big thinkers who have honed a philosophy is at odds with the entire theme Avatar's setting is practically built for and around: Growth.

Ask yourself this: What makes someone a bad guy in ATLA? What trait do they tend to share and emphasize? If you ask me, it's being incomplete, lacking personal growth and introspection. It's not understanding themselves or others and not being able to (Or not wanting to) grow up in some way. Zhao has this flaw, Zuko has this flaw, Azula has it, Ozai has it.
Zhao never grows up and remains rash and selfish.
Azula just has something fundamentally wrong with her brain.
Ozai straight up has no desire to listen to others, nor to accept anything but might makes right and force that view upon all others.
And Zuko - Do I even need to bother? We all know his arc.
This even factors into power wanking. The other three never get "stronger" (Unless you count the comet). They're always portrayed at their peak, because they never actually grow. I think part of the reason the ending works at all (Because it's honestly kind of botched) is because Ozai's fate is pretty poetic: He's perhaps the least capable of growing and changing as a person, so he loses his bending entirely.

This would not work if Ozai had some coherent and well-reasoned out explanation for his views. If he was some nationalist who was purely interested in imperial conquest for the betterment of the Fire Nation, he'd just be a guy you either agree or disagree with depending on your interests.
And yeah, Sozin does sorta get portrayed in that way. I think it's a rare instance of bad writing because his given reasons for starting a war and actual actions of literally wiping out entire cultures are in direct conflict with one another.

>>96520716
It's not believable because it's a lazy take on the matter being applied to an extremely meticulous opponent. Yes, it's very common for anarchists, usually in a spur of the moment revolt, to lose control in the ensuing vacuum. But characters who thought that shit that far out, and had so much time to do nothing but think while they were in their prison cells, should've at least foreseen that it was a possible outcome. Even if that meant they didn't think it would happen, because they thought they'd be free and able to shape the outcome differently.

>>96520781
>>96520785
Sure, let's just see here
>roll 2d6
>get a bonus if you're balanced
>get a penalty if you're unskilled
>on a 6 or less you fail and your master comes up with a reason afterwards for why you failed
So exactly what I asked if it was. Though that is just the basic training. Let's see if mastery is more in depth
>GM decides what would give the character an arc
>picks that as something to improve on
Including such riveting examples as "lose your balance", despite how being unbalanced would have made you less likely to learn any technique initially. Because it doesn't matter what technique you're trying to learn, since the technique doesn't decide the philosophy or lesson the character needs to learn.

>>96520744
I don't see how "you can use bending creatively in basically all situations, but you have firmer techniques to use for combat" is handwaving bending. Especially at high levels of proficiency, benders can adapt their abilities on the fly. It's not like they're wizards with exact spells in their books that they can cast, and that's it. It's a compromise between the open potential of bending and the practiced specific abilities that are also used, choosing to apply some of it to more specific contexts for the sake of writing game rules.

And I was referring to the training rules, yes. Most of the time, you are not even locked out of trying to learn techniques that you fail at learning (though they do this for specialized bending techniques outside of a type you already have access to, because they want it to be more special). In fact, failing just says "you need more philosophy up front so it clicks, rather than just later when you're doing mastery."

Also, your picture is for ants, unfortunately. But I can use my own copy. It's a good approximation of learning in the style of the show. Some lessons are hard, and the person teaching you the technique is going to be something of an influence on you, and also be someone who challenges your character's thinking. In a game where you're playing out a kind of self-discovery story, having things like this to play off of is useful.

>>96520887
>Because it doesn't matter what technique you're trying to learn, since the technique doesn't decide the philosophy or lesson the character needs to learn.
It is way more useful, in a world where people do things through different outlooks and philosophies, for the conditions to learn a technique to be more dependent on how the person teaching you the technique can convey a mentality to approach it from.

For example, characters like Jeong Jeong, Iroh, and Ozai are all extremely prodigious firebenders, and they all philosophically approach firebending entirely differently. But they're all more than competent enough to teach you a lot of the same things, and they might all do it differently. But you know it would still work out, regardless of which one is teaching you.

>>96520910
>Also, your picture is for ants, unfortunately.
You're lucky autism compels me to fix it.

>>96520932
Since we're posting book segments while we talk about this, allow me to talk about something that I really like the implementation of in the books: NPC Legends. Not just because it's cool to see these characters drawn up, but because you can use these kinds of entries as inspiration and guidance for other characters (including original ones) you want to include.

Picrel is also a good example of how mastery is not just "I got good at doing the technique good," but in how your personal growth is part of the equation. Piandao can literally teach you sword fighting, but mastering swordplay the way that he teaches it involves learning to use your mind, sharpening it like a whetstone by challenging it to new creative endeavors, and feeding it with inspirational experiences. By becoming a more experienced and capable person, you don't just learn to use the sword technique, you gain a level of personal competence that allows you to make your effective use of it easier.

>>96520910
I would say it makes sense to have bending be more rigid in combat because that's how martial arts work. In martial arts there are certain moves you are taught, and you learn them. You are taught them because they have been proven effective over the years. You aren't going to be taught to improvise your own punches, kicks, and throws; you're going to be taught the moves that your teacher has found the most effective. Of course, everyone has different styles, and that's why we have different martial arts schools. And in this setting, the equivalent is different schools of bending.

>>96522056
And fighting styles are covered by the system too, at a conceptual level. You're supposed to write in a style when you make your character, to help define the general way that they go about doing things. That doesn't invalidate the things they're going to learn later from other people or anything, but it might provide some insight into their background in terms of how they learned to fight. And then if they want to, they can take the techniques they learn later and sort of conform the fluff of how those techniques are brought out around their fighting style.

>>96523092
That's the exact issue.
The styles and techniques don't influence anything. They're fluff and flavor that you jot down and then hand-wave when it comes to mechanics.

>>96523143
Explain how that's an actually honest take. Techniques are expressly the more mechanical side of using bending, and you doing some minor re-fluffs is not really irregular in this hobby.

>>96520962
>on the mastery thing
that's also a very wuxia kind of thing
In movies where a character learns a technique it's not just the technique. Now they can do everyday things differently (fight someoe who is serving you tea while drinking it) or think differently about the world (36th chamber is the iconic one, but I remember a couple more focused on the mongol ocupation). You kinda see it in Sokka and Katara during the show.

>>96522056
>In martial arts there are certain moves you are taught, and you learn them. You are taught them because they have been proven effective over the years.
not kung fu
a few years ago an overweight amateur MMA radio jockey wrecked every Tai Chi master willing to face him. Even the more combat tested styles of Kung Fu like Wu Shu weren't incorporated into MMA until very recently and we a lot of changes because they hadn't been tested in matches maybe ever. And then you have Pa Kua or Shaolin that don't even try to be about fighting, they're not, it's all acrobatics and theatrics and that's fine.

>>96523143
It really feels like a system written by people who were thinking of the show, but forgot that tabletop games aren't tv shows.
That or maybe they were just dumb and lazy (more likely answer)

>>96523239
>"I don't like it when games aren't like games that I like, so I'm just gonna say the people who made it are bad."
Lazy as fuck opinion.

>>96523274
Only thing lazy is your defense of a boring game. Go attach your self worth to something half-decent instead.

>>96523211
>Techniques are expressly the more mechanical side of using bending
Yes, that's what I just said. What we're discussing is how there's no connection between the techniques (mechanics) and the philosophy (flavor), despite the show demonstrating that there are fairly direct connections.
Re-fluff has nothing to do with the discussion, because part of the problem is that the fluff is already completely disconnected.

>>96523309
Part of the difference is that the philosophical side of teaching bending is that it generally is being done from the ground up. If someone is already a competent bender (like you're assumed to be, if you're a bender in this game), you don't really need someone to tell you the fundamentals behind your own abilities over again. What you're learning is what the game refers to as advanced techniques, and the process of learning them is, mechanically, tied to your character learning a lesson.

You're just saying things that aren't correct.

>>96523344
>tied to your character learning a lesson
Exactly like I said here >>96520887
The game just cares that you learn A lesson. It doesn't care if the lesson actually ties into anything. It's whatever the GM thinks would make for good drama.

Because, if I haven't made this clear, there's no connection between the specific techniques and a particular mindset or philosophy.
>You're just saying things that aren't correct.
Then explain where I'm wrong, instead of repeating things I've already pointed out but acting like they're a positive rather than a negative.

>>96523374
>The game just cares that you learn A lesson. It doesn't care if the lesson actually ties into anything. It's whatever the GM thinks would make for good drama.
I think you're being a little too cynical here. But also, this post >>96520962 covers what's meaningful about doing it that way very well. After you spend time literally learning how to do the technique, it's your personal growth AFTER that, which leads to mastery.

>>96523518
>it's your personal growth AFTER that, which leads to mastery.
Again, that's what I already said. The GM dishes out an arc based on your character, not based on the technique. Because there is no connection between the specific technique and a particular mindset or philosophy.

>>96523591
What is bad about that? It is entirely sensible in how it relates to the source material, and as someone pointed out here >>96523217 it makes sense in the related inspiring genres too.

>>96523623
That post directly demonstrates what I'm talking about. The technique is not just the technique in an isolated vacuum. The lessons learned via the technique impact the character's other skills and capabilities.
They are meant to be intertwined. Legends does not have them intertwined. This is a failure in how it relates to the source material.

>>96523685
I think your take is wrong on a fundamental level because the degree of specificity you want in how things mechanically relate together is unreasonably tight. But that this is the kind of thing where we just have to agree to disagree. Stripping the argument down to its absolute basics, we just see it differently and have different takes about whether it's good implementation for various reasons.

And it's totally valid, that you have a different take. But that doesn't mean that you're inherently right either, or that this is bad design, or whatever else. People do play this game and enjoy playing this game, and they appreciate the interplay between how things work in the rules and how those things reflect the source material. And it's okay if you're not one of those people. In the same sense, I am willing to say that just because I think that it's well done, that doesn't mean that I'm objectively correct either; I just have a different opinion than you.

>>96520603
And that's a good thing. The Avatar equivalent would be not playing as the avatar himself, restrictive rules for playing an airbender after the air nomad genocide, or rules that make non bender formidable opponents like the actual show and not like in fans' heads where they're not important

>>96520606
>The name alone should tell you how awful it is.
The name is cringe but they're just an anarchist terrorist group ran by a religious extremist, it's an interesting idea especially for a setting analogous to clique era China, simple as

>>96524363
Given that a lot of characters in the world aren't benders, I know that I've enjoyed using non-bender characters to demonstrate the potential complexities of combat to people. Someone with a hammer or a sword, or with some kind of weird Korra-era tech pack, or just a bunch of jars of era-appropriate substances and chemicals, is a threat even to benders. And also, techniques that are universal (not tied to a specific form of bending or other training) are still good. You just have to treat it with the gravity that assumes that these things are equal, just that some people are more diversely developed and skilled than others.

Piandao is a swordsman who couldn't be forcibly recruited to the military because he could just defeat however many soldiers they sent to go fetch him. He was skilled enough that he could fight firebending soldiers on the same meaningful footing as his fellow White Lotus members during Sozin's Comet. He makes for an excellent example that "not being a bender does not mean being being weaker or less effective." It just means the stuff that you can do looks a bit more mundane by comparison (though you do get into some wild, martial arts movie-esque stunts).

>>96524380
>The name is cringe but they're just an anarchist terrorist group ran by a religious extremist
Which is in general a terrible idea that doesn't jive well with what was already established. But then that describes all of Korra.

>>96524560
You're laser-focusing way too hard on the bending thing and missing the point of peoples' complaints with this system.

>>96524784
Who do (you) think (I) am? To me, reading this reply, it feels like a non sequitur.

>>96524816
I presume you were >>96520962 as you used a lot of similar phrasing and language in regards to Piandao.

After a reminder to post here too rather than just the bunker:

Currently considering companion ideas, specifically a male companion at the 200 price point (likely either non berserk Herc or Prototype Arthur) for the God Slaying Blade Works update. Other added companions (including more waifus) are possible if I come up with or get suggested other good ideas; presently a Guda companion is in the running likely at 100.

>>96525552
I don't think your reminder was set correctly.

>>96525664
You are correct, I normally have another thread open in this pinned tab.

>>96525414
I kind of piggybacked off of Piandao being mentioned in the thread just because I like how he's a great example of a competent non-bender who is as capable as any other bender. The show isn't entirely devoid of characters that fit the same category (like Mai and Ty Lee), but they're relatively uncommon because showing off bending is just cooler. For whatever you think about Avatar Legends in particular, things being simplified so that all the types of skills and abilities are on the same foot is good.

It's probably not a good idea to try to chase specific Anons across posts for arguments, unless there's a direct response chain. Or they're namefagging or something. I think that long, long chain of replies probably had at least three people in it.

>>96413259
Actually playing in a game using those classes, plus some home rules. So far, it's been really fun, but we're early so we're not high enough level to tell about scaling. I also am new to 4e so I don't have a good grip on power levels yet so ymmv. The DM is on the record that if power levels get shit, we'll buff the benders more to accommodate.

>>96406675 (OP)
Avatar lore is boring.

>>96528129
Why do you think that way? What could it do better? Is there a cutoff point where it goes from being interesting to boring?
Personally, I don't think it's boring. Just a little undercooked in the ways I'd like a playable setting to be and way too overcooked in the main character wank. Which makes sense it was made to be a morality play for kids, but as a TRPG setting I wish they'd put more effort into that side of things.

>>96528191
idk. I haven't actually read that much of it. I've just never really been interested in it.

>>96528129
I disagree.
>>96528191
>Is there a cutoff point where it goes from being interesting to boring?
Even Korra has some shit I could begrudgingly accept, the comics too. Even if they feel like less like some ancient world with mystical aspects to it and more like flashy shounen sometimes

>>96528129
It's not bad, and it actually gets more interesting the further into the past that shit gets. Not like, all the way back to Avatar Wan, but following the historic events backwards, one Avatar at a time.

>>96528607
This playbook is so Katara-coded, I swear.

I haven't actually been in a game with one of these yet though. You have any experience with it to share?

>>96528129
Unironically true, the only reason the original show took off is because they skipped a lot of otherwise dumb bullshit and stupid ideas so they could stick to a coherent theme.

>>96528129
The worldbuilding is fairly solid, even if it's not super deep. It gives you the impression that there's a real history to things, and that the central conflict for the plot (the Fire Nation's war on everyone else) has worn on everyone over the past century.

If you want lore, read the Kyoshi novels.

>>96516155
To be fair, they also told them to make her more /fit/

>>96516001
>Korra is meant to be the opposite of Aang
And she very much IS the opposite of Aang. And that's the whole problem, retard.
Aang is a well-rounded character with plenty of flaws who goes on a definitive journey and experiences definitive growth.
Whorra is presented by the narrative as flawless, has zero growth, and just sort of meanders about from random plot point to random plot point.
>Red Lotus
They're dumb as fuck. Both in concept and execution.
>Kuvira
Earth Kingdom reconquista of stolen land was literally the only interesting idea they had, but it shouldn't have even existed because the whole "lets just give this stolen land over to a third party who happens to be best friends with the new Fire Lord so he can make shitty new york" was a fucktarded place to start the series
>mechs
They were lame as fuck and added nothing, especially with the platinum cope they had to invent to address their own metalbending powercreep. All of the more mundane tech in ATLA was far more interesting than the shitty mechs
>spirit energy
Everything related to spirits was awful in LoK
>pro bending
The lamest fantasy sport ever invented, even Quidditch is better. It's also the beginning of Bending devolving from elemental martial arts to DBZ ki blasts
>equalists
Would've been fine as a group of radical terrorists utilizing Ty Lee's techniques, but the faggy bloodbending reveal ruined them.

>>96533974
>Whorra is presented by the narrative as flawless, has zero growth, and just sort of meanders about from random plot point to random plot point.
That's not remotely true. Korra is frequently ineffective, regularly criticized, and actually changes as a person. Her show may not be well-written, but the Korra at the end of the show is a much more balanced person than the Korra at the start of the show. She goes from being too aggressive and brash to losing all faith in herself, and then to trying to resolve things peacefully, to relying on force as necessary as she balances out. That part works, even if (again) it's not a particularly well-written story over all.

>>96534914
>Korra is frequently ineffective, regularly criticized
And then the plot warps around her to make her heckin right all along.
>actually changes as a person.
She doesn't. She's the same impulsive, bullheaded retard by the end as she was at the beginning.

>>96534978
>And then the plot warps around her to make her heckin right all along.
No, not really. She ends up being on the right side, but she makes lots of mistakes. Including that she didn't listen to Tenzin, and let Unalaq manipulate her into getting everything he wanted.
>She doesn't. She's the same impulsive, bullheaded retard by the end as she was at the beginning.
That's not true either. You can see a really clear example of where she is trying to be different as early as when she talks down that new airbender that was up on the bridge. Later on in the story, she confronts Kuvira, but has dropped her "punch first, ask questions later" mentality in favor of wanting to talk things out and get into negotiations. She only fights Kuvira when it becomes clear that it's not going to work.

The best era to play is the first decade or so after the 100 years war began
>airbenders still around, though few and hunted
>fire nation currently invading the southern tribes and the earth nation is more equal to them in strength
>pointy shoulder pads
Would give you a great sandbox to mess around with no avatar janny going around fixing all the major problems for you.

>>96535862
>airbenders still around, though few and hunted
Hypothetically, there shouldn't be any, even at that point. Though, that one comic does suggest that any stragglers would have been, and even baited and trapped.

That being said, I've fucked around with the era placement too. It's not uncommon for people to wind it back a bit, to before the death of Lu Ten. I did this, with the purpose of taking Ba Sing Se off of the map. The siege was too big to get involved in directly, so players were running around trying to put out fires in other parts of the Earth Kingdom instead.

>>96535363
>No, not really. She ends up being on the right side
NTA but its amazing how quickly you contradicted yourself here.

>>96536355
It always seemed odd to me that the airbenders were described as "nomads" but very clearly lived a monastic lifestyle. Maybe if they actually were out wandering the globe, they wouldn't have been so easily wiped out in one blow.

>>96536715
NTA, but just because you're on the winning team doesn't mean you were the MVP or even not the LVP.

>>96536883
Nobody said that.

>>96536765
There are four air temples, two where men live, and two where women live. Members of the culture migrate between the temples from time to time, so they have no single, permanent home. This is why they're called nomads.

Aang was going to be sent to live and train at a different air temple out of concern that his attachments were going to hold him back from the duty he would be needed for. This is sort of a reflection of that. Airbending is spiritually empowered by not having strong attachments to the material world, and migration is one thing that they developed to facilitate that.

>>96536715
It only reads like it might be a contradiction if you stop there.

>>96536994
No it reads like a contradiction regardless.

>>96536999
Except that "you could think that because of this, but actually that," still leaves room to discuss the matter. Do you not understand how semantics work?

>>96537718
It really doesn't if someone is contradicting themselves, no. It just shows they have no awareness and are discussing in bad faith.

>>96537750
Discarding a whole argument because you decided to stop reading partway through the beginning of it is bad faith. I'm sure you're trolling, but it's honestly just fucking embarrassing that you're so insistent.

>>96406686
>>96423275
I'll never understand you wannabe jannies
it's like all you want is generals and nothing else