Avatar Legends gives the future of Last Airbender and Korra over to fans

Flameo, Hotman! Avatar Legends: A Roleplaying Game, Magpie Games’ tabletop role-playing game set in the Avatar for The Last AirbenderAnd Legend of KorraThe universe is available now for pre-order. The Kickstarter campaign launched it and raised over $16,000 in 16 minutes. You can now buy a copy.

If you’re a fan of Avatar And Korra but not as familiar, or even completely unfamiliar, with TTRPGs, don’t fret. Avatar LegendsThe game is meant to welcome new players while providing depth for those with a lot of experience. Players have freedom to express their creativity — from bending or weapon style to time period and objective — all within the wonderful world and themes of Avatar.

Nickelodeon Animation Studio

A session of Avatar LegendsYou may feel as if you are creating your very own episodes of AvatarOder Korra.

The game utilizes Powered by the Apocalypse which was designed by Vincent Baker (Meguey Baker) and puts group storytelling first and foremost. The dice roll doesn’t determine whether something will happen, but HowYou will get there. Maybe you’re trying to hide from Dai Li agents, or perhaps lob a rock at an airship. There are lots of ways your attempts might shake out — and negative outcomes have consequences. Maybe the rock fails to make contact, or hits in a spot you weren’t expecting; the benders on board can see you now and are throwing projectiles your way. What will your reaction be? Think of it like a protracted game of “yes, and” where you’re always thinking on your feet.

Avatar is an era-based universe that spans many decades. You can have a campaign run in either Kyoshi or Roku. The era dictates the power struggle, and the canon characters (called Legends in the game) you’ll meet along the way. Are you looking to help in an age of technological progress and reconstruction? Magpie, who worked in the Roku period, knows very little. Avatar creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko to write never-before-released canon material.) Stories can be lighthearted or serious — or local or regional in scope, or on a global scale.

Image: Magpie Games

Finally, players agree on a “focus” — fertile ground for generating a story set in the Avatarverse. You can rescue someone like Sokka and Zuko who rescued Suki from Boiling Rock, or Tenzin, Kya and Bumi searching for Ikki. Will you attempt to learn, like when Team Avatar wrested secrets from Wan Shi Tong’s Spirit Library? Or perhaps you’d rather take down an intimidating foe, like when Korra and friends fought Kuvira’s massive metal-bent mecha.

What are my options for making my Korra or Avatar characters?

Image: Magpie Games

Avatar Legends, you’ll make your own new characters, with the help of playbooks. This means play can start fairly quickly, compared to a traditional Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Playbooks focus on archetypes — for example, the Prodigy has prolific mastery of technique, a clear nod to Toph, the Blind Bandit whose superhuman Earthbending made her a difficult rival. These playbooks give characters a narrative compass guiding their emotional arc, helping the group determine the types of stories they’d like to tell.

“By choosing the Successor, you’re not just saying, ‘Hey, I have this powerful family,’” said Mark Truman, co-founder and CEO at Magpie, and core designer for Avatar Legends. “You’re also saying, ‘These are the kinds of things I want our game to be about.’ And now the [game master] can say, ‘Cool, your powerful family is going to show up all the time, and it’s going to be a huge part of the story that your powerful family matters.’”

Avatar LegendsClasses, also called Trainings are a way to create characters with one of the four types of bending, or to focus on technology or weapons. It’s all mix and match. You might build a Guardian archetype who fights with technology like Asami’s electric glove, intent on protecting another player at the table, or a trusty boomerang Prodigy. This ensures benders aren’t just given pride of place. “Sokka’s journey is as important as anybody else’s,” Truman said.

Each playbook also includes a balance meter, which guides a player’s beliefs, evolving as the character’s ideology shifts. The show is premised on the importance of balance — balance between the bending nations, balance between personal extremes. A Moment of Balance is a moment when a character, such as Zuko (or Mai), finds himself torn in between tradition and advancement. Zuko’s decision to leave the Fire Nation for the Avatar Gaang will be a great example of this. Players can modify playbooks under certain circumstances. This gives them even greater customization.

The players can be as creative or as nimble and create a story that is compelling. Several qualities are important to the show’s spirit. Each of you is a hero who has “answered the call willingly” (according to the rulebook), which means your friend group won’t fracture or completely fall apart under stress, just like the Gaang. Because the game is focused less on “fighting” and more on “heroism, tough choices, and balance,” Truman said, the door is open to possibilities.

“We want players to come to the table and say, ‘OK, I’m an Earthbender, but I don’t bend big chunks of Earth, I always bend crystals,’” Truman said. “That might not be a great fit for a canon story, but within the story you’re telling at your table, we want to embrace that, and be like, Yeah, that’s awesome.”

A changing world requires cultural competency

Avatar LegendsThe story is set in a setting inspired by North American Indigenous cultures and Asian culture, much like the original TV shows.

“One thing Mike [DiMartino]Bryan [Konietzko] did that was really smart was make it just an Asian and Indigenous world, and treat it the way Lord of the Rings treats English peasantry and English stories as the lingua franca of that world,” Truman said. “It means that everything that happens in the Avatarverse has the potential to be part of that experience. It is not meant to be linked in any way. Ah, those people are Japanese. These people are Korean..”

Since long independent designers have been diversifying tabletop gaming space to make it more accessible for people of color and lesbian players. At the same time, legacy TTRPGs like D&D are still in the process of grappling with a Eurocentric legacy, which included racist depictions of races like orcs. Wizards of the Coast apologized recently for depictions of the Hadozees.

Avatar Legends is positioned — as an adaptation of a beloved franchise with an existing legion of fans — to be a widely played, immersive TTPRG set outside of the European subcontinent. It also poses a problem, since the Avatarverse incorporated different Asian cultures into its world. DiMartino, Konietzko said in past interviews that this was to keep from defining any one culture as antagonistic. It will be even harder to strike the right balance between cultural accuracy, and taking inspiration from these cultures in order to create an imaginative universe.

“It’s a pan-Asian experience with a lot of rich opportunity,” Truman said. “Some of it doesn’t work. Some things work well. I think our job as an RPG company is to give you the tools to really make it true to your own experience, and to challenge white players to think about the ways in which this is still not a white world.”

To bring these stories to life, the team at Magpie Games — a minority- and woman-owned company — worked closely with a number of talented game designers who had expertise in the real-world regions the game draws inspiration from. James Mendez Hodes, a cultural consultant and game designer, was brought in as the core designer.

“We ended up with our core four designers — the three of us, Magpie plus Mendez — and then another level of contributing designers who were there, before we put pen to paper, to talk through all the major issues,” Truman said. “We have worked with that community of people for what’s been almost two years now to make this game great.”

Magpie Team worked alongside Dr. Siu Leung Lee who served as both translator and calligrapher and was also the calligrapher of both the Magpie and the Calligrapher. AvatarAnd Korra. “He was telling us these stories about how they came up with the original calligraphy,” Truman said.

Image: Magpie Games

Magpie’s headquarters are in New Mexico. The team worked alongside Dr. Lee Francis (founder of Native Realities, Indigenous Comic Con) on a Water Tribe adventure that was part of Wan Shi Tong’s game supplement. It focuses on water rights. This is a reflection of the many real-life battles for water rights in New Mexico. “We want that Water Tribe sense of Indigeneity to be really strong within the stories,” Truman said.

And to guide players, the rulebook contains a section in its “Making Characters” chapter dedicated to guiding players through “playing outside your experience,” geared toward players who won’t share their character’s ethnic heritage. (Of course, many TTRPGs ask players to create characters outside their race — including races that are entirely fictitious. However, many can draw inspiration from real life. It is the Avatar Legends rulebook advises players to make sure they “portray a whole person, not just an identity or a label.”

“The Avatarverse is so amazing,” Truman said, noting his excitement “to get the chance to bring this to RPGs, and to have it never been done before.”

Avatar Legends: A Roleplaying Game The digital copy was provided by Magpie Games. It was previewed. Vox Media also has affiliate relationships. Although these partnerships do not impact editorial content, Vox Media could earn commissions when products are purchased through affiliate links. Find out more. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.