So I want to mess around with creating an RPG based on Nickelodeon's excellent show Avatar: The Last Airbender in my free time, and I turn to the paizo boards for feedback.
Disclaimer: I'm fairly new to RPGs and have definitely never constructed one, so some of this may seem amateurish.
First concern: System
-Besides the d20 system, what is out there that people like? Does anyone have any suggestions of free RPGs that I could take a look at for inspiration? I like the idea of using 3d6 + modifiers as a core mechanic (I saw this in the Dragon Age RPG) to smooth out averages. I also have some rough ideas for how stats work and how advancement works, but other than that, I'm a bit lost.
Second concern: Setting
-When should the RPG take place in the world? Obviously, people could place it at any time/place they wanted, but for the setting I work on, I want to have lots of options for monsters and conflict. My philosophy is that you need lots of conflict to make the setting interesting. My idea is to have it take place at an unspecified point in the past where there are still dragons, there is a rift in the spirit world (allowing for a much bigger variety of monsters), and there is tension between all four nations.
Third concern: Classes
-Besides the four obvious choices (Airbender, Earthbender, Firebender, Waterbender), what class options should I have? This is tied to the setting choice obviously. If technology is on the upswing, something like an engineer/bomber class might be viable, but my setting seems to suggest a lower technology feel.
Right now I have this for non-bending classes: Martial Artist (general monk like class without bending), Chi-blocker (martial artist who specializes against benders), Swordfighter (melee weapon based fighter), Archer (ranged weapon based fighter), Infiltrator (sneaky skill type guy).
I'm thinking of having it so that you can multiclass, but you can't be more than one type of bender.
Fourth concern: Combat
-Here are some general things I want from the combat:
1) Reactive feel: Something like a defend/attack cycle every round should work.
2) Resource management: Chakra/Action Points or something. This should recharge though to allow for long days of adventuring.
3) I don't want lots of fiddly modifiers where you have to keep track of their duration. I want buffs/debuffs to be either mostly 1 round or permanent until some condition is met.
4) No having to rebuild your character during combat.
5) Some sort of advantage/disadvantage mechanic.
So what do people think? Does this sound interesting? Any advice on specific topics? Any general advice/feedback?
Well someone already did an element bending monk in the conversions forum, so thats a start.
I think you should check out Avatar World, an excellent hack of Dungeon World and Apocalypse World.
Use the Mutants and Masterminds rules. Martial Artist plus Elemental Control. Boom. Bender.
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Second concern: Setting
-When should the RPG take place in the world? Obviously, people could place it at any time/place they wanted, but for the setting I work on, I want to have lots of options for monsters and conflict. My philosophy is that you need lots of conflict to make the setting interesting. My idea is to have it take place at an unspecified point in the past where there are still dragons, there is a rift in the spirit world (allowing for a much bigger variety of monsters), and there is tension between all four nations.Third concern: Classes
-Besides the four obvious choices (Airbender, Earthbender, Firebender, Waterbender), what class options should I have? This is tied to the setting choice obviously. If technology is on the upswing, something like an engineer/bomber class might be viable, but my setting seems to suggest a lower technology feel.
Right now I have this for non-bending classes: Martial Artist (general monk like class without bending), Chi-blocker (martial artist who specializes against benders), Swordfighter (melee weapon based fighter), Archer (ranged weapon based fighter), Infiltrator (sneaky skill type guy).
I think allowing for games set during the 100 years Aang was trapped in the ice would be interesting. However, it would probably be easier to go far enough into the past in order to avoid overlap with the history points mentioned in the series. However, this starts to get you before some of the cool steampunk stuff. If you want to incorporate the steam punk stuff from the newer series might want to go later on in the timeline (and consider it a branch from the series and not try to fit this world into the canon timeline as it evolves).
Would also be nice to see some of the rarer aspects of the benders (e.g., healing for water and metal bending for earth) not try to get shoved into the base build for that bender and be left as a specialization from the norm.
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You should be wary of the bender/nonbender disparity. It's something that's actually mentioned a lot in both series - Soka has a tough time finding ways to be awesome amidst all the benders.
And while this is not so much a problem for animated characters, for PCs it matters a lot more that every player feels relevant and important.
You might look at the Hero System. It is 3d6 based, has a heroic feel and would be good at balancing benders vs. non-benders.
Oh, it's not free, but still a good system.
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You should be wary of the bender/nonbender disparity. It's something that's actually mentioned a lot in both series - Soka has a tough time finding ways to be awesome amidst all the benders.
And while this is not so much a problem for animated characters, for PCs it matters a lot more that every player feels relevant and important.
It's as big as the difference between a Sorcerer and a Mage in Mage: the Awakening. Non-benders can easily be skill-boxes or able to be far better with weapons than benders could be (think of those archers in season 1).
It might be better to try and remove the 'monk' portions of the class. Some benders are as good as monks in d20 but lots of others are not nearly so. The association comes from the movements they use to control and guide their bending.
You may also want to limit starting skills and have each element give additional skills.
Along those lines you could divide the bender into three separate 'classes': the martial bender (who could have some monk abilities), the more caster bender , and then a mixture of the two or something completely different.
Thanks everyone! This is some good stuff. I'm going to respond to some individual comments in just a bit. More feedback is also welcome!
psionics. Lots of abilities that can be keyed to elemental effects, they up point system instead of vancian. I'm contemplating making am Umbral Witch, but I'm doing this slow. I want the class to look like bayonetta by 20th lvl, but want the abilities to be distributed smoothly amonth the levels. I will definately be using the psionic abilites to do this, bayonetta was spam-tastic, so no vancian.
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I had also wanted to create an avatar RPG and was a little disappointed when I couldn't find any created yet.
My thoughts...
System:
Base on D20, likely change up the core stats, remove alignment but keep saves. Keep combat very similar in terms of movement and actions, but change the "magic" system.
Base your bending ability on an alotment of points per rest, but you can exceed this number but with fatigue and penalties to your rolls, etc.
Setting:
Write a timeline up, allow players to play in any of those timelines by giving them all the information (so there will be stats for satomobiles as well as stats for carriages and so forth)
Nationality:
Choosing your nationality would give you bonuses and detriments like choosing a race would in pathfinder and the like. There is also the option of having no nationality (or merely, you did not adhere to your nationality, and thus you get to choose a small benefit of your liking)
Classes:
Warrior (fights with melee/ranged weapons), Martial Artist (fights with hand to hand, chi abilities, chi blockers), Beast Tamer (Uses animals in and out of combat), Engineers (They build their weaponry/devices), Benders and even Avatar.
Sokka, Jet and his freedom fighters, Mai, etc, would be examples of warriors, though they specialized in different things.
The Kyoshi warriors, Ty-Lee, etc, would be Martial Artists.
June and Nyla, Aang and Momo/Appa, King Kuei and Bosco, Korra and Naga, etc, would be examples of beast tamers.
Asami, Equalists would be engineers (and martial artists, but w/e)
Multiclassing in this system should not be penalized like I feel it is in pathfinder.
Other stuff:
Benders gain very few new abilities when they level up, and rely on meeting masters or finding scrolls to learn more techniques.
The only healers in the game are water benders, and if they learned the healing techniques. There is ample usage of chinese home remedies in the shows to build a system to counterbalance the constant requirement for a waterbender with healing.
Comets, full moons and other natural phenomenon would give benders temporary boosts to their abilities. (though there seems to lack one for earth and air)
Playing the avatar might result in outshining your friends, but I believe most groups would like to run with that. Making it so that the avatar still only learns a few new abilities and must get lots of training, and requires him/her to master an element by meeting certain criteria before they can move on to the next element scales that back a bit. Having the same point pool for bending unless in the avatar state (which they learn at a certain level, or storywise at a certain time) would also help.
Every element has some special technique (Fire: Lightning, Water: Healing & Bloodbending, Earth: Metalbending) except for air? Figure something out for them.
Say a character starts off as a warrior but wants to multiclass as a bender, there is a precedent they set there, as most benders learn their abilities early on in their life it seems. There has been mention of an avatar test, where they have a table with the 4 elements on it (see the ATLA movie), you could use that to determine (likely via rolling a percentile) if they are a bender or not, and what element.
The setting has alot of spiritual stuff in it as well, having another spiritual plane that the characters can eventually reach would be neat.
Hope this gives you some new ideas.
I had also wanted to create an avatar RPG and was a little disappointed when I couldn't find any created yet.
My thoughts...
System:
Base on D20, likely change up the core stats, remove alignment but keep saves. Keep combat very similar in terms of movement and actions, but change the "magic" system.Base your bending ability on an alotment of points per rest, but you can exceed this number but with fatigue and penalties to your rolls, etc.
Setting:
Write a timeline up, allow players to play in any of those timelines by giving them all the information (so there will be stats for satomobiles as well as stats for carriages and so forth)Nationality:
Choosing your nationality would give you bonuses and detriments like choosing a race would in pathfinder and the like. There is also the option of having no nationality (or merely, you did not adhere to your nationality, and thus you get to choose a small benefit of your liking)Classes:
Warrior (fights with melee/ranged weapons), Martial Artist (fights with hand to hand, chi abilities, chi blockers), Beast Tamer (Uses animals in and out of combat), Engineers (They build their weaponry/devices), Benders and even Avatar.Sokka, Jet and his freedom fighters, Mai, etc, would be examples of warriors, though they specialized in different things.
The Kyoshi warriors, Ty-Lee, etc, would be Martial Artists.
June and Nyla, Aang and Momo/Appa, King Kuei and Bosco, Korra and Naga, etc, would be examples of beast tamers.
Asami, Equalists would be engineers (and martial artists, but w/e)
Multiclassing in this system should not be penalized like I feel it is in pathfinder.
Other stuff:
Benders gain very few new abilities when they level up, and rely on meeting masters or finding scrolls to learn more techniques.The only healers in the game are water benders, and if they learned the healing techniques. There is ample usage of chinese home remedies in the shows to build a system to counterbalance the constant requirement for a...
Thanks for the feedback! This project kind of got put on the back burner because I started working on a campaign setting. I can't really respond in depth right now because I'm on my phone, but I will when I get home. Thanks again :)
I thought about making one a while ago and I figured white wolf would probably be my best bet. It would be easier to figure out powers and for the specialized bending (blood, metal, void, lightning), you'd need to have a certain amount of points in your bending ability and then something else, then be able to specialize. We thought about multiple specializations; healing/blood, metal/lava, lightning/lava, void/we never came up with a second one for airbenders.
Also, Avatar-1 why don't you endorse the show?
Original series seemed to have more traditional bending. The new show has evolved quite a bit with the 4 nations mixing and cultures influencing one another. This partially started before hand when uncle iroh created lightning redirection technique, based on water bender movements
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Thanks for the feedback! This project kind of got put on the back burner because I started working on a campaign setting. I can't really respond in depth right now because I'm on my phone, but I will when I get home. Thanks again :)
Sounds like me, a million projects and no time to complete any of them :P
I'd really like to make this into an RPG, but ideas are all I can ever really contribute these days I'm afraid.
I had also wanted to create an avatar RPG and was a little disappointed when I couldn't find any created yet.
My thoughts...
System:
Base on D20, likely change up the core stats, remove alignment but keep saves. Keep combat very similar in terms of movement and actions, but change the "magic" system.Base your bending ability on an alotment of points per rest, but you can exceed this number but with fatigue and penalties to your rolls, etc.
I like it. Especially the ability to push past your limit. Not a bad place to start.
Setting:
Write a timeline up, allow players to play in any of those timelines by giving them all the information (so there will be stats for satomobiles as well as stats for carriages and so forth)
That'd be ideal, but I'd probably focus on one time period before branching out to others.
Nationality:
Choosing your nationality would give you bonuses and detriments like choosing a race would in pathfinder and the like. There is also the option of having no nationality (or merely, you did not adhere to your nationality, and thus you get to choose a small benefit of your liking)
Seems good to me!
Classes:
Warrior (fights with melee/ranged weapons), Martial Artist (fights with hand to hand, chi abilities, chi blockers), Beast Tamer (Uses animals in and out of combat), Engineers (They build their weaponry/devices), Benders and even Avatar.Sokka, Jet and his freedom fighters, Mai, etc, would be examples of warriors, though they specialized in different things.
The Kyoshi warriors, Ty-Lee, etc, would be Martial Artists.
June and Nyla, Aang and Momo/Appa, King Kuei and Bosco, Korra and Naga, etc, would be examples of beast tamers.
Asami, Equalists would be engineers (and martial artists, but w/e)
Multiclassing in this system should not be penalized like I feel it is in pathfinder.
I'm not sure about the Beast Tamer idea (I'd probably just have stats for animal companions), but the other classes sound perfect. I like the idea for the distinction between Warriors and Martial Artists especially. I think it's an improvement from what I had. Also, I think the engineer class would be timeline specific.
I agree that multiclassing shouldn't be penalized. I kind of want to develop the game without worrying about multiclassing just to make designing it simpler, but I'm worried that if I try to add it in later that it won't work.
Other stuff:
Benders gain very few new abilities when they level up, and rely on meeting masters or finding scrolls to learn more techniques.The only healers in the game are water benders, and if they learned the healing techniques. There is ample usage of chinese home remedies in the shows to build a system to counterbalance the constant requirement for a waterbender with healing.
Comets, full moons and other natural phenomenon would give benders temporary boosts to their abilities. (though there seems to lack one for earth and air)
Playing the avatar might result in outshining your friends, but I believe most groups would like to run with that. Making it so that the avatar still only learns a few new abilities and must get lots of training, and requires him/her to master an element by meeting certain criteria before they can move on to the next element scales that back a bit. Having the same point pool for bending unless in the avatar state (which they learn at a certain level, or storywise at a certain time) would also help.
Every element has some special technique (Fire: Lightning, Water: Healing & Bloodbending, Earth: Metalbending) except for air? Figure something out for them.
Say a character starts off as a warrior but wants to multiclass as a bender, there is a precedent they set there, as most benders learn their abilities early on in their life it seems. There has been mention of an avatar test, where they have a table with the 4 elements on it (see the ATLA movie), you could use that to determine (likely via rolling a percentile) if they are a bender or not, and what element.
The setting has alot of spiritual stuff in it as well, having another spiritual plane that the characters can eventually reach would be neat.
Lots of good stuff in here.
I like your ideas for bender advancement, healing, natural events affecting bending, special techniques, and the spirit world.
I think I'd have a section for how to represent the avatar, but I would advise players to make him/her an NPC. They could have a character be the avatar if they wanted though.
Hmm...maybe to be a bender, you have to take it for your first level? It fits the show, but I'm actually not sure how much I'd like it in the game.
Thanks again for all your ideas! They are much appreciated.
You can check out this d20 project. https://sites.google.com/site/avatard20/
Has a very nice free form bending system.
Hmm, I like some parts of it (the ideas for how to represent the Avatar especially), but it also makes me think that d20 isn't the best system for this.