#atla ttrpg

[biconickyoshi]

Is this the first ever time we’ve gotten official show-style art of Lu Ten??? I love him so much, he’s got Iroh’s eyes 😭

[circlique]

Chapter 4: Moonlight

Overall Rating: Mature (this chapter, Gen)

Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Categories: Gen, Multi

Fandoms: Avatar: The Last Airbender

In the era of Kyoshi, a scrap of ancient history was discovered. Faded by centuries of dust and neglect, all that could be discerned from the tattered parchment was the words, “Dai Li’s agents brought balance to the chaos of Ba Sing Se.” It is from this that Kyoshi would find the inspiration to establish a new police force in Ba Sing Se in her era. But what of the original Dai Li? Thousands of years before Kyoshi, Kuruk, and Yangchen–a history all but lost to time–the world teetered on the brink. Nations one incident from all out war, environments destroyed by the greed of man, and spirits angered by the insolence of humanity. The spirits threatened to wipe them all out, unless the humans could make a change. From this chaos, a man named Dai Li attempted to unite the world. With his charismatic aura and strange bending abilities, he all but compelled his followers to complete devotion. His power spread, commanding total submission. His daughter, however, would ruin his plans. After his first fall, Dai Li, thought dead, faded into obscurity, and his daughter, granted a strange power by the last Lion Turtle, rose to fill the void of the absent Avatar. Ten years later, Dai Li would rear his head again, and Juno, knowing humanity under Dai Li’s rule would have no humanity at all, sought out her own band of benders to take on her father. With all their differences and flaws, she will have her work cut out for her as they face Dai Li’s enigmatic cult, their own demons, and the Avatar of whom no one speaks.

In this chapter:

The hallway was illuminated by the faint light of the moon shining in through the window at the end. The hallway was empty, but by the moonlight, he could see all the way down the hall into the common area. Across the suite, the doorway that led from the common area to the outdoor walkway beyond—the door that should have been locked—was ever so slightly ajar…and as Chai Li watched it, it slowly drifted shut.

Someone had been here.

Read on AO3!

Prologue/Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4

[glutenfreehimbo]

My friend invited me to play the Avatar Tabletop RPG, so I present to you: Kashuo the Rogue Airbender. He utilizes his unorthodox method of air bending to fuel high flying taekwondo kicks, as well as being an amplifier for his throat singing. Oh yeah btw, do you wanna join his band? It’s more of a metaphorical band rn, but it’s in the work. Totally.

[t4lkn3rdyt0m3]

My Air Nomad Liosho from an ATLA struggle we played awhile back. Set in the future it was a cross between ATLA and Cyberpunk with Lioshi character being the only one still living in a traditional air nomad style life in an commune that was part of an air nomad group that branched off from the rest.

[ettawritesnstudies]

Animated a lil meme for my ATLA DnD Party!

[akiizayoi4869]

Have you read any of the Avatar Legends TTRPG content? If yes, what do you think of the addition of Sozin's sister Zeisan and her connections to Air Nomads?

Yep, I have read them. I actually have two of the books. As far as his sister Zeisan goes....I guess it's fine? We don't know too much about his character outside of what they showed us in The Avatar and The Firelord episode, so expanding on him is fine.

[terkmc]

I suspect a good chunk of Atlas poor reputation stem from trying to pilot it like Raiden from hit video game Metal Gear Rising: Revengence instead of Raiden from hit video game Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

[jeeyonshim]

Atlas of Local Ley Lines is a solo player mapmaking game where the catalyzing mechanic is receiving postcards in the mail, sent by friends in real life, to use as a divination tool. It's in a VERY rough draft state, but I'm really excited to share it with my Patreon members!

[pyromaniacpaladin]

[IT'S THE ONLY THING I'VE EVER KNOWN]

[skittlesandham]

Atlas is a reserved fey who has a record of every written thing in a massive library he protects. To them, the more words the better. Their little sister (haven't quite landed on a name ;-;) prefers story books, and loves to hide and cause trouble for her brother. Atlas uses He/They, and their little sister uses She/Her. Dnd NPC concepts from a while back. Definitely need a redesign but i still think they work.

[rynmaru]

A Manic Attempt to Sell You on the Atlas Frame:

You ever want to get the effective range and speed of teleportation without actually teleporting? Feel the urge to play fruit ninja with your enemies? Ever want to experience the sweet sweet taste of victory while your mind melds with the hundreds who came before you and you no longer know which you is the real you? Then my friend, the Atlas is the frame for you!

You can Titan Fall wall run, hide in plain sight, get a sickass katana, clothesline people with a zip line, and then the lore of inherited memories is just- *chef’s kiss*

If speed is what you’re after, then put a lot of points in Agility and make a few strategic picks for your talents and you too can cross a hex map in a single turn, snag the objective, and still be able to barrage or just ✌🏼 disappear.

And don’t get me started on the lore!

*Slaps Atlas*

This bad boy can fit so much lore in it! Memories of past pilots merging with your own to help you fight better? Fuck yes! You can flavor it as a constant data stream into the brain! Space magic! Ghosts! Grey matter in the mech’s internal components! Your pilot can start to slowly pick up the ticks and traits of past pilots the longer they use the Core Power! Hell, my flash cloned pilot was given the Atlas to try and force reboot their brain to make them remember the person they used to be (didn’t work! Just fucked them up!). The possibilities are endless!

Do you have great HP? No. Do you have a large repair cap? No. Heat cap? Nope. Will you immolate yourself the moment you overcharge? Absolutely. But when you’re playing a speed oriented striker Atlas build you don’t need high HP or a massive repair cap when god himself can’t beat your evasion!

If you main an Atlas you know you’re running a glass cannon and that’s okay! Because Atlas pilots do it for the love of the fucking game and the risk is half the reward!

[biconickyoshi]

Zeisan and Rioshon giving major Zukaang vibes here 🔥❤️‍🔥🌪️

[circlique]

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately! Life and all that... But I have been working on some things! It was awesome to work on this commission of some OCs from someone's Avatar Legends campaign!

[osteoptimist]

So I've been thinking about narrative mechanics in games, particularly the Beats system in Slugblaster.

For those unfamiliar, I highly recommend watching this Quinns Quest review, Quinns is awesome and he really does play games with his group before reviewing them, usually an 8+ session adventure if not a whole campaign.

Basically Slugblaster is about teenagers riding hoverboards and flipping off cops in other dimensions, drawing a lot of inspiration from skateboarding culture, and it has a big emphasis on a kind of coming-of-age vibe.

One of the core mechanics of the game is the Beats system. Quinns does a better job explaining it than I will, but basically Beats (and especially Arc Beats) are like small structured storylines for your character. They follow a particular theme like family trouble at home, or teenage angst, or a romantic relationship, or signing on with a sponsor.

The Arcs all contain four Beats, and they follow a very familiar story structure. Exposition, rising action, climax, resolution. And that means some of the events are good, and some of them are bad, and there are mechanical incentives for all of it and it's very well done and I want to try it.

BUT. The reason I'm talking about this is because this is something I have wanted from TTRPGs for a long time.

See, I mainly play combat heavy heroic fantasy games, which I previously tried to make work in D&D5e but am now having much more fun with in Draw Steel. There are a great many games in this genre, and they tend to work pretty similarly in a lot of ways, but one thing that almost all of them have in common is that as the adventure goes on, your character is consistently getting stronger.

You face challenges, overcome them, and get rewarded by levelling up and getting new powers, or looting magic items, or getting special benefits awarded by NPCs or whatever. But you are always getting stronger. Outside of rare cases where you lose a magic item or something, you never really get weaker or lose access to powers you've gained.

But in virtually all fantasy media where the characters have magic powers, they don't JUST get stronger as the story goes on. They inevitably have a darkest hour, a lowest point where the combination of their internal conflict and the external opposition seem too great to overcome. Often in these moments, their powers might weaken or stop working entirely, or they might lose control, or they might be afraid to use their power.

And once they emerge from that, they're stronger than ever.

The oaths in the Stormlight Archive series are a great example of this. Spoilers I guess, but look at Kaladin! In Words of Radiance when he strays from his oaths and allows the assassination plot to continue, his bond with Syl weakens and he loses his powers. Once he resolves his inner conflict and commits to protecting even those he hates, he swears the third ideal and gets his powers back.

That is a direct correlation between character growth and character ability. You see this in other media too. Zuko loses his firebending after joining the avatar, and regains it once he fully turns away from his anger and decides to commit himself to restoring balance. In the first Spiderverse movie, Miles struggles the entire time to control his powers and it's only when he overcomes his fear and takes a literal leap of faith that he really takes ownership of his abilities.

And THAT is something I have always wanted in TTRPGs. Tying mechanical advancement, at least in some respects, to the personal growth of your character. Levelling up from fighting monsters and getting stronger from experience is all well and good, but becoming more powerful as a consequence of learning more about who you are, what you stand for, what you believe in? That's the juicy shit right there.

Now, in Slugblaster, these Beats don't usually make your character any more powerful. Some of them can give you access to new abilities, but it's not a game where you become a godlike skater by the end. It's just not a game principally focused on becoming more powerful in order to overcome bigger obstacles. The Beats system in Slugblaster is primarily a way to let gameplay set up character and story moments, in a way that is structured enough to let almost anyone create really compelling journeys of personal growth and yet vague enough to let the story be unique and interesting every time. The Beats you go through also determine your Doom and Legacy, two resources that accrue over the course of the short campaign and are used in a final roll to decide your character's epilogue.

The Beats system, I think, is what makes Slugblaster really work as a game about coming-of-age stories. Without it, it might still be a cool fun game about riding your hoverboard in weird dimensions and trying to go viral with videos of your tricks, but it would take a lot of work from the whole group to really make it into a compelling story. With Beats, the game does all that work for you and gives you a very clear recipe for dramatic and memorable narratives. Again, that might sound restrictive or flat or like it's going to make for very predictable stories, but all it really does is lay out the classic story structure that sticks around because it works.

There's also a lot of potential for tragedy, because you don't have to complete the Arcs. In the class arc for the Grit class, for instance, you spend the first two beats trying to do something really hard, failing, and getting back up determined to try again. In the third beat, you try, you fail, and you give up, because you've been trying so hard and maybe you really just can't do it, no matter how hard you try. We've all been there. And then in the fourth beat, you try one more time, spurred on by the people who believe in you, and you nail it. Amazing! Simple recipe, but an awesome emotional payoff every time.

But you don't need to do the fourth beat. You can just stop after the third, where you give up. If that fourth beat wouldn't make sense, if you don't have the support you need to face up to the potential for failure again, nothing in the game requires you to do it.

And I think that's part of what makes this system really sing. If the Beat would feel forced, just don't do it. So even though the path is laid out, the whole group really does need to work to reach the end. There is a happy ending, but only if you actually do your best to make it happen. Brilliant.

I'm thinking about adapting something like this for Draw Steel, a Chronicle system where you can choose to embark on a character arc for your hero where they will encounter both triumphs and defeat. So in addition to levelling up as you gain Victories, you're also having a personal journey and dealing with inner conflict, and you become more powerful by resolving that as well. These Chronicles would also include their low points, their darkest hour, where they might be less powerful. They might include moments where the hero has conflicts with other party members or NPCs, or makes an unfortunate decision, because those moments are essential for the drama.

I'm still toying with the idea, and deciding how it should work and how it might interface with the rest of the game, but I think it might be interesting.

[catthlaf]

Lancer mechs from memory #6: SSC Atlas

[bregflr]

Lord of battle

First lancer personal piece of the year, was struggling a bit for ideas, but i'm overall really happy with it! What mech would you like to see me doing next?