Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel series The Legend of Korra are some of the most influential shows to come out of Nickelodeon. Avatar: The Last Airbender and Korra earned all kinds of praise in their time for telling intricate stories for all ages, developing heartwarming and inspiring characters, and creating a brand-new fantasy world. It's no surprise that it's generated tons of side content, from video games to graphic novels. Many fans have always liked the idea of immersing themselves in the world as directly as possible, and that'll be much easier thanks to Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game,a tabletop RPG in development at Magpie Games.
Avatar Legends got some attention when it was first announced in early 2021. In July, Magpie Games released a quickstart guide to Avatar Legends that provided a ton of insight into the game. The quickstart guide shows that Avatar Legends is a Powered by the Apocalypse-style game that enables adventures in many different eras of the Avatar universe and opens the doors to bender and non-bender characters. Magpie Games has done well designing an RPG that's built around the character-focused storytelling that made Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra so successful.
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There's tons of interesting ways in which Avatar Legends helps player characters star in a story like the show. For instance, unlike the class-focused Dungeons and Dragons and similar classic TTRPGs, Avatar Legends doesn't use job-like classes. Instead, players choose a set of skills and traits called a playbook. Playbooks provide some unique abilities similar to a class, but they're just as much a manifestation of the character's backstory and relationships. In other words, they're mechanical versions of character archetypes similar to the kinds of characters that star in Korra and The Last Airbender.
Avatar Legends also introduces a unique perspective on morality. Dungeons and Dragons' alignment system is a famous example of how a character's goals and ideals manifest in a certain type of morality that sometimes has mechanical implications. Avatar Legends eschews the concept of alignment in favor of the Balance track. Each playbook gives a player character a certain Balance track, which represents the character's struggle to maintain balance between two contrasting ideals they believe in. Avatar Legends GMs are encouraged to introduce NPCs that test each player's balance track and explore their ideals, shifting players' balance tracks around to create mechanical impacts for moral struggles.
These mechanics, on top of a simple set of player actions called Moves and a dynamic combat system that's easy to drop in and out of, show Avatar Legends is heavily designed to play just like the shows. In The Last Airbender and Korra, the bonds between characters and their personal journeys are often more important than the overarching plot. In the same way, Avatar Legends is designed to encourage interactions between NPCs and PCs that explore each character's beliefs and backgrounds, while encouraging them to learn about themselves. Playing a session of Avatar Legends is bound to feel similar to watching an episode of an Avatar show.
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Character-centric design in Avatar Legends isn't just significant for Avatar fans, though. It could also mean a lot for the tabletop RPG industry in general. Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, and other classic RPGs are designed much more with combat in mind than character building. D&D offers plenty of tools for cutting down monsters, but character arcs are up to the DM and the players. Avatar Legends is designed to appeal to players for whom individual character development is more important than constant action and titanic monsters. Magpie Games is well on its way to creating a compelling relationship-focused TTRPG.
Naturally, a lot might change about Avatar Legends over the next few months. The game is set to release in March 2022, so there's plenty of development time left. Even so, many of Avatar Legends' central concepts will surely remain in place. Magpie Games' Kickstarter for the game show that there's more playbooks in development than those that appear in the Avatar Legends quickstart guide, and other elements like the Balance track are set deep into the gameplay. It's great to see such a new look at TTRPGs, especially one that encourages Avatar fans to explore the world they love.
Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game releases on March 22, 2022.