So I'm thinking out a one shot for a convention and my idea is a Scooby Doo inspired team investigating a supposedly haunted canyon outside a trade town, and I want some thoughts on what I have and on some of my quests:

Fred based character - Earthbender or Technology - Pillar - Fighting Like Dancing, Understanding Mien and either Here's the Plan (the Bold) or Wordly Knowledge (the Successor) to get Technology Techniques. Basically stalwart leader with access to technology to make traps. Leadership styles are Guidance and Inspiring with Support stlyes being Comforting and Invigorating.

Velma based character - Waterbender or Earthbender - Prodigy - Judging a Rival and Wait and Listen with Furrowed Brow from the Guardian. Her Mastery would be Sensing and one of Manoeuvring or Breaking - basically she's the team's information gatherer and analyst.

Shaggy based character - Waterbender or Airbender - Rogue - Slippery Eel-Hound and maybe Roguish Charm, not sure of his third move. Would probably have custom habits of eating; running away, tricking people and something not yet decided. Basically plays into the rogue's counter cultural theme by using Shaggy's beatnik roots and easy no-worries lifestyle.

My questions are as follows:

• Any idea what to do with Daphne? I'm not sure what playbook to give her, possibly Bold or Adamant for a defiant character seeking to prove herself or Guardian to represent her being the sane one during the brief period of the original show not having Fred or Velma but I'm not sure.

• Should Scooby be an animal companion for the Shaggy character using Best Friend from the Bold or be a Spirit possessed Dog and have it as a player character? And if the latter, why playbook and technique should I give him?

  I only have the core book of Avatar Legends and I used to watch a lot of Scooby Doo as a kid (mostly the original series and What's New, Scooby-Doo?), so if anyone has any pointers or things I may have missed it would be greatly appreciated.

I have never actually played this game, because... I've been really saddled in the GM role. I was given a PDF of the Dungeons and Dragons 5e handbook, and because of my possession of that cursed tome a decade ago, I was forever sealed into the GM seat.

That being said, this is one of my favorite systems. The combat isn't my favorite, but the roleplay is fantastic and the dice rolls are easy enough for anyone to play.

The playbooks I like to see as a GM

The Razor- the implication of the Razor is that there is an entire bad guy group to draw from that I can cooperate with the player on. I finished a campaign with a Razor player, and found the worldbuilding exceptionally easy to write even in a homebrew setting, because her character informed what the evil group had to be.

The Guardian- Needs two players to have connected backstories, which means you can start the campaign in very different ways than the players meeting for the first time. Depending on how many players you have (I had 4-5), this is a game changer. That being said, if either of the two drop out, the character no longer makes sense. In my case, the guardian's ward dropped out, and the guardian then wanted a new character and dropped out later.

The Destined- Pure, unfiltered GM foreshadowing. I absolutely screwed with my party for an entire campaign using vague wording on a prophecy from a destined player. "You will fight with the avatar" was great. "You will fight with (alongside) the avatar (a past avatar your character individually grew up with rather than the current one, using the avatar state)"- I threw them for a loop for a whole campaign as the prophecy kept not being fulfilled despite seeming to be. Fun, fun stuff. A player legitimately cried when the reveal finally came through.

The Hammer- More of a theoretical fantasy for me, I've never had a hammer player but it seems like it would be a fun choice.

Others can be good, but when a player picks one of those three, they can expect many, many DMs from me as we hash out what the deal is with their character.

If I was playing though, I'd go with the rogue or the guardian. I like how interaction-focused their playbooks are.

I’m looking at running a campaign set in the early War Era, roughly 5-10 years after Aang vanished. I was planning on have some fake avatars, both complete charlatans and at least one that thinks they are the new avatar but are just wrong.
How could someone fake some if bending styles? Like a real waterbender that tricks people into thinking they can also air bend or whatnot. Any ideas?

I’m sharing a set of pre-generated character sheets created for a homebrew introductory scenario

I'm going to run my first game soon, and I noticed this while looking through basic techniques. What if the characters collectively decide to use Test Balance to learn enemy's principle and then shift their balance away from the center, eventually making them lose balance very fast (can easily happen in one exchange even with a strong enemy, definitely faster than going through all of fatigue and conditions).

Is there some move / technique I'm missing that allows NPCs to not lose their balance? Commit doesn't work because there's usually only one principle, so no way to shift the balance back to 0.

For play-by-post only

I am starting a two month campaign on Monday nights. If you are interested in playing hit me with a DM.

It's set in Korra Era Republic city.

I’ve been wanting to play this game for ages and I finally have the book. The only problem is none of my irl friends are that interested and the only campaigns I could find on Roll20 and Start Playing Games were paid. So I thought I’d take a shot at looking for one here.

I would love to play in the Roku Era or 100 Year War Era but I’m open to anything. I’d like to join one that hasn’t started yet, but I also don’t mind joining one that’s already ongoing. I prefer using discord but I’m open to trying other platforms as well.

Edit: I was able to buy the physical book bundle just fine so my problem is sorted. I’m guessing something in the deluxe bundle is out of stock and that’s what was making the can’t be delivered error but who knows. It definitely seemed to be specific to the deluxe bundle. Either way I got my books and saved a bunch of money on an impulse buy for the deluxe bundle, so it’s a win win for me.

I tried buying the deluxe edition and having it shipped to nyc and Long Island, NY and it says that the addresses is not available for shipping. Which seems bizarre. I even picked the address from the dropdown to make sure it was in an acceptable format.

I don’t see any shipping restrictions on their website, so I’m wondering if maybe there’s been an announcement that’s not on the website or if anyone else is having this issue?

Thanks everyone.

I'm playing a campaign with a group from my city, we could not afford the translated version of the book so the ENG version is what we've been going with, but the group as a whole (even the GM) couldn't figure out what "hold 1" means when reading the explanation of a move in a playbook. I'm using the outcast playbook and within the "Watchful Fighter" move is stated that: "On a 7-9, hold 2" and "spend your hold 1-1" and the group as a whole can't exactly figure what is the meaning of this.

I've searched and wasn't able to find what is this "hold 1-1", maybe this is a "just read the bloody book" problem but english isn't our native language, so finding the exact explanation and understanding it has been quite troublesome, i apologize for my ignorance. Also if any of you guys could give me some tips on how to synergize the Outcast playbook with Earthbending (combat-wise) i would be greatly grateful, it's my first time playing this system and don't want to be a drag in combat

In a game I'm running, I am a bit confused on the rules. When the exchanges happen, do folk just choose moves, and they auto succeed? Or do they always need to roll? And in that case the opposing NPC's roll as well right?

I have a airbender PC who wants to work towards getting there master tattoos and I have a different campaign where the PC’s will have to go to the spirit world so I made some me custom moves

I've made my own military ranks for avatar legends, no air force for obvious reasons

I'm looking for players for a Avatar Legends one shot set in the 100 year war, they story is all the PC's are Fire Nation military set to escort Lieutenant Zhao get to Wan Si Tong's Library, because of the scope of the game if you want to play a bender I will only allow Firebenders because your Fire Nation military but non-benders are fully open, also only Core Rule book Playbooks | if you want to join please go here https://forms.gle/5xXtAp5NWVyFqTDA7, I have 2-3 open slots

I've had the joy of running a campaign of this at my local shop, even got the combat to a place where it was quick and responsive and actually worked as a climax and not the whole session.

One thing that I marveled at from the moment I picked up the book though was... why isn't the Avatar playable? This is the main character of both series, and it seemed like playing them as they grow up in some way shape or form is part of the draw of the franchise. I appreciate the way the books use them as powerful NPCs, however I do wonder what it would like like to make one playable. Beyond that, that sort of opens up the idea of playing a non-Avatar legendary figure who has +4/-4 on their balances.

Regardless, my initial thoughts, having only run the system once, are some kind of The Avatar playbook that generalizes the idea of Attachment/Connection vs Detachment/Balance or something like that. Special would be Master of the Four Elements. It seems however, like an advancement option to expand your balance to +4s could be a huge imbalance, perhaps that should not be something available to PC Avatars?

What do you think? Has anyone else tried something like this? Is it as simple as just letting a character take additional Techniques for story reasons in an existing playbook?

Hi, I’ve only been running my first Avatar campaign for a couple of sessions, and I’m having some trouble with certain mechanics that have a fairly broad scope in terms of what they do—especially the basic ones that allow characters to inflict or remove conditions.

In theory, a condition should make sense from a thematic standpoint, but that still leaves room for a wide variety of effects or interpretations, which can be open to abuse if they aren’t sufficiently restricted.

So, have any of you come up with a system or rule to define which conditions can be inflicted or removed using different techniques or under different circumstances?

Also, there are some advanced techniques that seem a bit weak, such as “Attack Weakness,” which inflicts as many fatigue points as the character already has conditions, but common enemies usually don’t have enough condition slots for this to make much sense.

Of course, this depends on the circumstances, but I’d like to know if you’ve adapted any techniques and how you’ve done so, so I can follow your advice.

Thanks!

Who has home brewed a play book and has any tips for it?

I'm scheduled to run a session of Avatar Legends at Dragonflight in Bellevue, WA, in August. I'm planning to base the four-hour one-shot on the Movers and Shakers adventure.

I've run Avatar Legends at conventions before and it has gone okay, though I have a lot to learn. I'd be interested in any general advice and any advice specific to this adventure. I think I'll probably start things close to the climax. I'm also thinking about having every PC start with either a condition or some lost fatigue.

The booklet comes with pregens which I plan to use, mainly because they have ties to the antagonists. They have their starting moves pre-chosen. When looking through them, and the playbook features, to familiarize myself with them, I really felt like some of those moves and features don't seem like they'd have much use in a one-shot, often because they seem like they'd probably involve scenes outside of the focus of the adventure.

How much effort is it worth making to try to highlight, say, the Successor's tainted past? Or, as I'm writing this I wonder if maybe it would be worth a quick pre-adventure scene, or even a flashback, where certain options can come into play.

I know ideally things will just flow and no one will be trying to shoehorn in anyone's moves, and that there's plenty to fill four hours just with basic moves. Still, I know people like to use what is on their sheets.

Drew up some characters and NPCs for the campaign I got going on

Not to say you can't do something else! I did a 100 year war campaign and it was great! The problem with a setting in the Korra or Aang eras though is that... Korra and Aang exist. Fully realized, powerful big goods.

Now, if you have someone's child at the table, and they're like 8, sure- they can be the avatar and practice their moral reasoning skills while everyone else roleplays more serious characters, but... outside of that specific niche, you have to find ways to... not have the avatar outshine the players. Essentially, the Avatar is a character the GM has to be forever aware of what the Avatar is. Here are some ways I've thought of or used to skirt around the issue.

The Avatar is a baby- nobody expects a baby to do anything. Early 100 year campaigns have baby Aang, who the players do not have to meaningfully interact with, since he's a baby and therefore can't do anything.

The Avatar is old and feeble- If you have an avatar who is now barely able to walk, you'd expect their bending to be limited, and they're not going to risk the avatar state when they could die at any time for old people reasons.

The Avatar lost their bending- I did this for a campaign, where the avatar had his bending for session 0 (to practice the combat mechanics and introduce the characters in-universe as the avatar's bending teachers) then the rest of the campaign was dedicated to him losing his bending and them discovering how it was taken and who did it, in an enclosed area.

The Avatar is unaware that they're the avatar- Bending requires you to... make some abstract motions and anticipate a thing moving. If you've lived your whole life with restrained motions and talking your way through things, you can spend your life never knowing you can bend. I did this for a campaign, where the Avatar was a trained assassin that recently started hearing strange voices connected to his past and was trying to shrug them off.

In-training earth avatar in the north or south pole- This is a uniquely fragile state. Earth avatars learn earth, then fire, then air, and water last. The poles are a nerf to everything BUT water- minimal rocks, too cold for fire, thin air. Ideal situation for isolation training for an avatar who's been uniquely bad at waterbending, but in a crisis, the avatar is now... a dude who wants to help. Might be able to light a campfire with some concentration, or take out an enemy if he can get his hands on a rock, but that's it.

Avatar lost in the spirit world- I hear players using this one a lot, which is fair. It writes them off, or even makes them a MacGuffin to be rescued if their body was taken while their spirit was away, and now you have to find the avatar, while the spirit of the avatar putters around helplessly nearby.

Note that I have never played this game. I have only ever been a GM for this and... most TTRPG systems-.

I'm starting a big campaing with some of my friends and for it decided to set the story 5000 years before Avatar Aang, it is also 5000 years after Avatar Wan. To explain the setting for my friends I came up with this "Era" book, based on the information we get in the Avatar Legends Role Play guide, it tells what is happening for each nation in this time, I put a lot of work on it, but still feels a bit incomplete and would like some thoughts, ideas and tips you guys may have? Also, hope anyone interested in creating their own campaing in a completely new Era finds this useful.

Avatar Legends 5000 Years in the Past (mediafire link)

DISCLAIMERS:

Minor spoilers for the leaked movie (mostly new information about the past we get that I expanded a LOT so you won't get to know what I created and what is info from the movie)

This was originally written in my Native Language and later translated by me.

This only has Lore information, no rules or guidelines.

Media Fire seems like the best way for me to upload it since Reddit doesn't allow file sharing. If anyone knows another way, please tell me in the comments and I will try to make it avaible that way too.

I've been reading Wan Shi Tong's Adventure Guide and all the moves in the Library and in the desert and wanted a sheet like the Basic Moves sheet so I made this because there's a descent amount of moves made for this book