Avatar, the Last Air Bender: A True20 Setting

[Anime]

Avatar: the Last Air Bender has been one of the greater shows to recently air on tv. I love the show and wondered how the show would be as a True20 setting. The whole bending arts would fit perfectly with True20's power system. If one didn't want to deal with Aang and his journey they could set their campaigns in the 100-year gap, during the fire nation invasion. What do you ll think? Have any of you done this already? Could it work well with True20?

[Father of Dragons]

I think that would be a good fit. At the simplest, each character (including ordinaries!) gets a background power of Fire, Water, Air or Earth Shaping, and those particular powers can only be obtained from your background. Additionally, probably only Air Benders could use Wind Walk (and maybe Weather Shaping) and only Water Benders could use Cold Shaping; but there might be balance issues in that.

A bunch of people tried to adapt D&D 3.5 to that universe on the Wizards boards, but it didn't look like a very good match to me. I would think True20 would handle it a lot better.

[Stareyes]

I would disagree, Father of Dragons -- there are plenty of characters who are unable to bend (Sokka, Suki, Jet, Ty Lee and Mai of the regulars/reoccuring cast, plus a lot of the one-episode characters), so it wouldn't work as a background feat. Perhaps it would work as a Favored Feat (each background has the basic power as a Favored Feat). You could also restrict the powers by background (Water Shaping, Cold Shaping, Cure and Plant Shaping is Waterbender only; Energy Shaping and Fire Shaping is Firebending only; Earth Shaping is Earthbender only; and Weather Shaping, Wind Shaping and Windwalk is Airbender only) with a few (the Elemental *blank* powers) as being for everyone.

One thing I would think about is the Adept role. On the one hand, Adepts in the Avatar world often are good fighters. On the other hand, it's not necessarily true: a lot of the Northern Water Tribe's healers didn't seem to know how to fight, for example -- and a game might not be that fun if the benders won everything (despite the fact that it kinda seems to be canon). I'd have to look up hwo the people doing Star Wars conversion handled it, since they would have the same problem.

Actually, I was thinking about coming up with a conversion. It's an excuse to rewatch the series, and it would convert easily.

[True20Chick]

One thing I would think about is the Adept role. On the one hand, Adepts in the Avatar world often are good fighters.

This is easily handled by mix-roling with Warrior, and/or taking the Combat Sense power.

[Father of Dragons]

I would disagree, Father of Dragons -- there are plenty of characters who are unable to bend (Sokka, Suki, Jet, Ty Lee and Mai of the regulars/reoccuring cast, plus a lot of the one-episode characters), so it wouldn't work as a background feat. Perhaps it would work as a Favored Feat (each background has the basic power as a Favored Feat). You could also restrict the powers by background (Water Shaping, Cold Shaping, Cure and Plant Shaping is Waterbender only; Energy Shaping and Fire Shaping is Firebending only; Earth Shaping is Earthbender only; and Weather Shaping, Wind Shaping and Windwalk is Airbender only) with a few (the Elemental *blank* powers) as being for everyone.

It's clearly too long since I watched the show -- I should have asked my kids before posting!

I just asked the dragons, and they agree with you. My son estimates that maybe 10% of the population are benders. So, Favored Feat would work well.

We also had a brief discussion of the casting attribute, and decided on Cha or maybe Cha plus Wis.

[Anime]

I tend to agree with True20Chick on the benders being multi-role adepts. If I remember right, that is how the Star Wars write-ups for jedi are.

Another thing I want to know is can a bender be able to manipulate two elements? Like say fire and earth? Or is it just a single element? From what I've seen on the show, it looks to be only a single element per bender. Though this would be a good thing in my book, as it seems the benders tend to dominate the Avatar world already.

[Stareyes]

It seems to be single element, with the Avatar as a notable exception. Which would allow most benders to take feats that aren't Powers -- already I wonder how high a level Aang needs to be, since he's got a vey heavy list of powers he knows.

[Durand Durand]

Been a bit busy to look at the forums for a while, distracted elsewhere. Funny thing is I've been thinking of this one myself, having just started watching season 2 and all, and thinking of buying the DVD's for season 1.

I was hoping somewhere I'd find some maps of the world with major cities and features added in and a few fan sites that have a lot of material on them. So far I haven't looked really. I'll run it by my group and see what they think of playing a game in this world.

DD

[bento]

I've been sorta-kinda doing this for the past year with my campaign.

I've used D&D 1st Ed box set of Kara-Tur as the backdrop (lands, cities, interesting characters) and the setting is actually much further back - at the rise of the fire empire.

So far my players have been in only one spot - Kozakura, which has a group (Red Fog Cult) that is an off-shoot of a much larger Shugenja group. I've modified the classes so that the Shugenja are the primary benders, with perhaps Monks playing a secondary role. I created spell-paths for each type of Shugenja (Fire, Water, Earth & Air) with the True20 powers list. I've also used the Warmage class from D&D as a basis for the Red Fog Cult's growing group of warriors.

Eventually the Red Fog Cult will make their move, in both throwing over the larger Fire order, and taking over some islands of Kozakura. Eventually I'm having them continue to grow their power base while the players are travelling to other nations to convince the other Shugenja groups to combine to attack the new Fire Nation.

None of my players have picked Shugenja class, so they are essentially outsiders (Samurai, Spirit Shaman, Ninja) working for groups trying to prevent this from happening.

I started the game last year and put it on hold when I felt I was having too many problems with the DnD 3.5 system. It just didn't engender itself to the kind of game I wanted to present to my players. True 20 is a godsend in this regards because my players are now focused on slowly developing their abilities while completing important story arcs. It was flexible enough that I could easily translate the classes I liked from DnD, and craft new ones that I thought would work better.

I just wished we had more time to play!

[GGHolochwost]

I request stats for Momo and Appa!

[Anime]

The only Avatar site that I found that has a good amount of info is Distant Horizon. And of course there is also the offical site, Nick.com.

As for my bender/element question. If it is a single element then how would that affect the Adept's core ability? As for the level of Aang... I would figure him to be fairly mid-level by now, but with some sort of "Avatar" template applied to him.

[razorwise]

Hello!

I think you guys are definitely going in the right direction with the concepts of benders, etc.

I, too, thought about how cool Avatar would be as an RPG just the other day. Usually, my time is filled up with writing, but I record certain shows, such as Avatar, on my dvr and watch them when I'm eating.

Now, on to your question.

I would make variant Adept roles for each and delineate their particular lists of powers. I might note that Caliphate Nights has some suggested breakdowns of mystical types in it, if you're looking for inspiration, otherwise, just go with your instinct. It shouldn't prove too difficult.

If you wanted, you could also give each of the different Bender roles a core ability relevant to your vision of them.

Regards,

Sean

[Stareyes]

You could just say 'You can only manifest powers that you could learn'. So, Aang could experiment with Firebending without having really learned to control it yet, and Katara could heal the burns from said failed experiment when she hadn't even known that Waterbenders could heal. (The Adept's core ability definitly has a place in the setting.)

[Grim Luck]

As a thought:

One might allow bending powers to operate differently from regular powers in the True 20 system.

Specifically, why not allow the power's effectiveness to be based on the character's total level as opposed to Adept level.

This means that most benders would begin with one or two levels of adept and would continue from there with different rolls.

Some would focus solely on the adept role, and these might be the ones who develop the more esoteric uses of bending.

Perhaps a group of esoteric Adept bending feats could be developed for those who want to "master" bending. I.E. A water bender with just one level of water bending may be just as strong at bending as any other water bender, depending on their key attribute, but may not know all the tricks. Like when Kitara learned to create walls of ice to block attacks, or how a firebender might learn to rechannel lightning.

Someone like Zuko might only have a single level of Adept (bender), which would explain his focus in weapons training, two weapon fighting, two weapon defense, etc.

[ValhallaGH]

Someone like Zuko might only have a single level of Adept (bender), which would explain his focus in weapons training, two weapon fighting, two weapon defense, etc.

Point of order. All of those feats are General feats that any character can acquire at any time, as long as they aren't gaining levels in Orindary or the monster roles (which grant feats never or every third level, repsectively).

That he's focused on being good at combat does imply that he's spread out into Warrior levels.