Avatar: Legends Log - No War in Ba Sing Se

[Easy e]

Greetings all,

My group has completed our "1-year in Rokugan" Campaign. With that completed, the next game we had decided to play was Avatar: Legends. Our group tries to meet weekly and in person. In the past, we have mostly played D&D 5e. Our experience outside of D&D 5e has mostly be small one-shots when the whole group has not been present. This included games like Those Dark Places, Call of Cthulu, WEG Star Wars, and Princes of the Universe.

Therefore, our group is steeped in D&D-isms and have a lot of system mastery with D&D 5e. This is the first Powered by the Apocalypse system for most of them, with only me and one other playing having experience with PBTA. The other person was mostly a player, while I also was a GM in the system.

I GMed our L5R campaign. However, this time I am just a player and have no inside information into how the game is supposed to play out. I can only journal what I experience as a fellow player.

Session 0:
Like many PbtA games, a session 0 is strongly encouraged. Before we even made characters, it encouraged us to work with the GM to define the campaign and part of Avatar we wanted to play in. There is a structure to this pre-game prep laid out in the rules.

We immediately encountered our first challenge. Half the players were not familiar with the source material at all. Therefore, we had to spend more time than I would like explaining what the Avatar was, element bending, the world, and an overview of the Ages to play in. It was a lot for the new folks to take in.

However, once past that we soon started to dig into the meat of the process. We decided that we would have our campaign focus on the city of Ba Sing Se during the Hundred Years War period. I have to admit, I was only familiar with it from the memes, "There is no War in Ba Sing Se". However, we decided that our characters would have found out about the war outside of the city by individual means. Our group came together when we were all abducted by the secret police, taken to the internment camp, and we discovered that the other inmates were getting brainwashed! Resigned to our fates, we managed to escape when by chance a Badger Mole burrowed through our holding area and allowed us to escape. Many of fellow inmates were not so lucky, and were killed in the accident.

Armed with this knowledge we decided to act as a fifth column within the city to bring the truth to the people. First, that there was a war going on outside of Ba Sing Se and to reveal what the city leaders were doing to suppress that knowledge!

Our basic campaign prep was now done. We wanted our campaign to last 4-8 sessions of 3 hours each. Onto the characters!

Our Cast of Characters
We have 6 players, but 1 could not make it tonight. Therefore, the rest of us got to work! Our first step was explaining and choosing the playbooks. Two of us had all ready chosen playbooks prior to the session, so this was a pretty quick process. However, the other four needed them all explained and a quick tutorial on the mechanics of the PbtA system before they felt comfortable choosing.

We eventually ended up with:
- The Prodigy, Fire - Explosive Blast (?) and other stuff
- The Adamant, Weapons - Pin a Fly to the wall, Chi-blocking jabs
- The Elder, Earth - Stone Shield, Risk Assessment, Hear the Heavy Step, and Duck and Twist
- The Idealist, Water - Refresh, Protect
- The Icon, Sand (?) - No idea, some sort of movement twister thing?

I did not get a good feel for all of their Techniques, but jotted down what I could.

The players had a hard time bending their head around the fact the playbooks were designed to invoke certain character tropes from the show. Instead, they wanted to mix and match parts of the playbooks together and they players were really trying to find the best "tactical" combinations. They had a really hard time wrapping their head around the fact that the focus was narrative driven to match the fiction of the show. They were uber focused on creating "strong" combat characters and builds and looking for exploits.

This section took a bit longer than I expected because the players were so focused on trying to "maximize" the fighting/bending and not really knowing how it worked in the first place. They asked a lot of questions.

A Quick Escape
To help us get an idea of how the game was played, we decided to play out our escape from the internment camp. The scene began with the Badge Mole incidentally digging through our cell wall, sending it crashing down! Bending guards quickly arrive to contain us, and a fight was on!

Right away, the players had a hard time wrapping their head around the following:
- Narrative Positioning as opposed to tactical positioning
- The initiative process and deciding on their Moves
- The idea combat was not granular, but sweeping like scenes in a TV show
- How states impacted them and their foes
- That failure was more than just dying and that victory was not killing your foes

We quickly got past the guards. However, some of us stayed to try to rescue or help other inmates. However, we mostly failed and they were trapped in the rubble or we could not get them all out in time. Much of the cell collapsed and many innocents were killed. We barely escaped with our lives thanks to a quick Risk Assessment before the end of combat and some Push Your Luck after the guards were pushed back.

From there we fled into the city and closed the session.

Observations as a Fellow Player
The Narrative approach as opposed to tactical was a big challenge for my peer players. They wanted to micro-manage the action. When I told one of my peers to think more about how a TV show unfolds, I literally saw their brain dis-connect. LOL.

They also had a hard time wrapping their head around conditions and positive/negative states. When to apply them, how to clear them, what happened with them in combat, etc. They were surprised when the combat lasted two rounds.

In our initial test, some of the folks thought the games mechanics were harder than D&D. I think they are just struggling with the abstraction of the game compare to the level of detail they are used to. I am interested to see how this goes. However, there is no doubt that players were struggling with the mechanics and what could or could not be done. It will come together in time and I look forward to see them start to bend into the more permissive and narrative parts of the game.

I was honestly surprised by how long the set-up lasted and character creation was. I thought Character Creation was pretty straight forward as laid out by the playbooks. However, a lot of my peers had some analysis/paralysis. They were over-thinking it instead of just filling in boxed.

Until next time, when we actually start to see some of the character beats unfold compared to the 25 minute intro session we got today once all the Session 0 and Character Creation was done.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to share some of your Session 0 tips and tricks for this game, or PbtA systems in general?

[Composer99]

Thanks for the session log! Definitely lots to unlearn going from D&D to PbtA.

[Notafish]

I've run one session of Avater Legends, too, and my group ran into some of the same issues your group did. We didn't have a formal Session 0, but did spend a week on discord before playing to discuss the system, the setting, and what we wanted to get out of it. We went into session 1 with knowledge of the IP and a goal of moving through roughly one episode worth of story in a 4 hour session. Having that kind of consensus on pacing helped guide conversations and also helped to emphasize the lack of discrete "actions" and action rounds that (for the most part) exists in the system. We did not encounter the issue of optimization vs. story so much, but this might be due in part to the limited options presented in the free quickstart manual we were using more than anything else.

Overall, I think that if everyone is on board with the idea that the game is about telling a story about characters overcoming challenges (rather than about players overcoming challenges presented by the GM through character abilities, tactics and system mastery), I think it is a very fun system, but with perhaps a few too many moving parts.

In particular, the fact that there are two possible ways of resolving a combat scene, was confusing - we found that using the moves in conversation was a lot more free-flowing than the "combat exchanges," which were confusing and somewhat disruptive to the flow of the game, especially when everyone was still learning the system.

The Balance track, while a cool concept that we got a lot of milage out of in our game, also sits uncomfortably on top of other damage clocks like the Fatigue tracker and the different "Conditions". I understand that the system introduces dramatic complications as a consequence for running low on "HP", but having so many different complications that could crop up was overwhelming, and brought the mechanics into the spotlight too much for my taste. If I return to the story the next time my regular GM wants a break, I might write down some extra GM rules for how to navigate the different damage consequences to take the pressure off my players, likely focusing more on Balance and less on Conditions.

[Easy e]

A couple quick updates since last session:

1. The Icon switched out to be The Bold. Still no idea on his Techniques though.
2. Our 6th player is going to the The Pillar. No idea beyond that.

Our Protégé will be out for our next session.

The GM has been asking us some questions about if our characters are from Ba Sing Se or someplace else. For those of us from the city, they are asking them from what circle they are from, outskirts, lower, middle, or upper. Finally, if we have friends and family in the city.

I am interested in how this plays out and look forward to playing tomorrow.

[Kane0]

Keen on hearing about it!

[animorte]

My father's day gift included the core book. I've been reading through it and I'm interested in the updates here as well!

[Easy e]

I am glad that there is some interest in our game!

Last Time on No War in Ba Sing Se
Last time we established outlined the era, established our scope, and outlined some characters. For those who do not recall, we decided that our group was going to try to expose the fact that there was a war going on to the people of Ba Sing Se.... but exactly how was unclear. Our plucky group of heroes all came together when they were rounded up by the Dai Li and sent to a re-education camp. However, we escaped when by chance a Badger-Mole burrowed through our cell walls and allowed us to escape. However, most of our fellow inmates were not so lucky despite our efforts to rescue more of them.

In the meantime, over the course of the week the players spent time hashing out their characters a bit more. This led to a few small changes and tweaks as we tried to align our fighting styles better with our characters. We also hashed out some backgrounds with the GM before play began, and answered a few questions to help him set-up this session a bit.

Our Icon changed to The Bold playbook. In addition, we picked up The Pillar as some sort of Swamp Bender and guerrilla fighter from the Great Swamp.

Our Cast
Here is what I could glean about our fellow characters so far:

- The Elder (Me)- I was from the Upper Echelons of Ba Sing SE, and 20 years ago had been a high-ranking member of the Dai Li. However, With the death of the 51st Earth King I lost political position and was essentially kicked out of the government for those more aligned with Long Feng. I bided my time in government exile hoping to be recalled when the 52nd Earth King came of age. However, that never happened, and I was eventually rounded up for re-education because I knew there was a war going on for some time. This character is authoritative and decisive, but is also a pacifist. My character is an Earth Bender who has abilities focus on defense and observation.

- The Idealist - This character's parents were killed in the War when they were younger. However, they are unsure how, who, or why they were killed. They were then sent to live with their older, estranged sister who lived in the Upper Ring of Ba Sing Se. The characterization is a bit like a valley girl. They are a water bender, and their techniques focus on healing and protection.

- The Adamant - This character comes from the outer rings of Ba Sing Se and was an agriculturalist. They know about the war as they are from outside the city, and were herding a group of frog-goats to the city to sell. They are at an awkward, in-between an adult and teenager. They try to be a big shot, but are kind of clueless about what it means to be an adult. They are a Weapon adept with attack oriented techniques.

- The Pillar- This character is a swamp person guerilla who is not a fan of the Earth Kingdom's leadership. They see themselves as the frontline in a revolt against the Earth King. They not just know someone in the war, they have fought in it. They are not very bright, but capable and the most aggressive of us all. They are a swamp bender, but also have stealth related abilities.

- The Bold- A character who came from the Upper tier of the city, but lives in the middle. Their father is a famous earth bender, but they were cast out. They work for their grandfather as a delivery person, and all though they live in the Middle ring, frequently move between rings. They were arrested for trying to deliver letters that were "sensitive" in nature. They are convinced it is all a misunderstanding. This character is a Sandbender, with no real control over earth. They seem to be movement focused.

- The Protege- This player was not present, so their character is still a bit unclear to me. They are clearly a Fire Bender, with attack related techniques. However, beyond that they are still a question mark.

Session 2
We discover ourselves at the surface of the underground prison next to a Lake in the outskirts of Ba Sing Se. Only one other prisoner managed to escape with our group, a boy named Hero. We go to try to locate some help, and almost immediately run into Dai Li agents. We manage to distract them and then make a break for safety, essentially running from our first potential confrontation. We using our bending skills to cover our escape and tracks.

The Adamant leads us to a local farmer that he has done business with in the past, and we manage to negotiate a place to stay the night and hidden. During this time, we learn that Hero is part of a petty smuggling ring and we decide to connect with his former associates and get back into the cities lower ring. Our travel papers had been confiscated.

During this time, we come to the realization that Hero was brain-washed by the Dai Li before his escape. He is still a smuggler, but he can no longer comprehend or understand that their is a war. He never disputes it, but their is a big mental gap where he simply can not connect the dots. We suspect that our Bold may also have been brainwashed, but they are simply convinced that her arrest was a mistake, and believes the authorities when they say there is no War. This led to some conflict with the group, who have seen it close up!

Eventually, we make contact with the smuggler's and they get us into the city. There was a bit of a moment, but the Bold got us through. We do not have a safe house, so instead we are forced to follow the lead of The Bold. She leads us to a nice old ladies house for shelter, one that the Bold knows and has helped/delivered to in the past. We had to trust our Bold, but many of us were suspicious.

The game ended with us in the City. However we did determine that our next move was to follow-up with some of the people that were going to be delivered messages from the Fire Nation. Beyond that, the characters themselves are not aligned on how to handle and reveal the War to the people of Ba Sing Se.

Character Observations
These characters..... wow. Everyone really put some effort into solid characters with good backstories, motivations, mannerisms, and even voices (I rarely do voices, but this character I did?). Folks are going hardcore and leaning into Method more than I have ever seen before. Perhaps it is the foundations laid out by the playbook? Perhaps it is the simplicity of the rules so the focus is on more character? Perhaps it was just this session? Perhaps it was the pre-work we did before the session? Perhaps more people watched parts of the show? Whatever it was, it worked! I felt like all the players thought about their character a lot before play began.

It is interesting to note that we played for 3 hours, and did not have a single, true combat. We had one brief chase scene where we had abysmal rolling. Perhaps this dissuaded us from rolling. Instead, the session was all role-play and interacting with "the fiction". I used a special playbook rule once with Hero, and the Swamp Bender used a stealth related special skill once. There were a couple times we used "Assess the Situation", a "Trick" and a "Plead" move. Overall, very few rolls were used.

Now we have all these great characters, the question is if we will now be able to gel as a party and move "the fiction" forward. I see that there are some big schisms between our characters all ready. The nature of the war, how we plan to reveal it to the populace, and the role of the Earth King in it all seem like friction points that will be interesting. For example, I am a fervent monarchist while the Swamp Bender is clearly an anarchist. The Bold believes the official line, while the Idealist knows it is BS. The adamant is naturally drawn to the Swamp Bender due to their rural roots, but also to my character as a mentor type figure and "fellow adult". The big wild card is how our Protege player will come into the game and what dynamic they will bring to.

The hardest part seemed to be for the GM to create scenes almost out of whole cloth as we did not give them much idea where we were going or doing before play began. However, they gave us one plot hook in the form of Hero and we took it.

Final Thoughts
The D&Disms that showed up in Session 0 did not creep up in this session at all. Indeed, folks seemed to do their homework by watching some of the show, working with the GM, and really thought about their characters. They came ready to play and by play I mean to lean into "the fiction". I was honestly really impressed with my fellow players.

I look forward to seeing where this goes.

[Pauly]

I don’t have much to contribute since PbtA and Avatar both fit into my “not my thing” basket, but I am enjoying reading the journal.

[Actana]

Glad to hear the sessions went well, and that negative "D&D-isms" (for a lack of a better term) aren't showing up much.

If I had any advice for an Avatar: Legends game without having played it myself, it's twofold:
1. Don't expect to use the exchange rules for every combat. Instead, try to reserve them for the more important showdowns and high states and high drama situations. They're a bit cumbersome from what I've read of them, and using them for every single scuffle will likely be a bit too much.
2. From a player perspective and as broad PbtA advice, the best thing to do with most moves is to first describe what you're doing within the fiction of the game, and then see if a move is being triggered by the GM, mentioning what you were going for if necessary. This keeps the focus more towards fictional actions and less towards mechanical levers you pull, which I at least feel works better for PbtA games.

Having fewer but more impactful rolls isn't uncommon in PbtA games, so what you experienced is probably fairly typical. But also don't be afraid to fail either, as failure can be just as exciting if not more than just succeeding all the time.

Seems like your group is going to have some fairly heated ideological differences at some point. Should be exciting.

[Easy e]

Thanks all. We will be playing again tonight.

1. Our Protege will be back, so I will have a better feel for the character after tonight. I look forward to finding out more!

2. Our Adamant is out, but arranged for a "special guest" player to fill in with their character. Therefore, it will be a "full group" but missing one of our regulars.

I have also been reading the rules a bit more, and feel like I need to get a better feel for the other characters balance traits are to really help others lean into "the fiction".

[Easy e]

Last Time on No War in Ba Sing Se
Our band of characters who broke out of the internment camp managed to make their way back into the lower ring of the city, with the help of a group of smugglers. They spent the night holed up with an old woman who was the friend of our The Bold.

Our Cast
I won't repeat what we talked about last time, but we did have a new character join our party.

- The Protégé- This character is a fire-bender. I am not 100% sure of their techniques but it was clear that the use of Fatigue was a big part of them. The character was the member of a family that defected to the Earth Kingdom early on in the war. Therefore, this character was also from the top district. They are a bit of a loner and outsider, and act like a 13 year old. Willful, stubborn, and thinks they can do it all themselves and doesn't like to listen to anyone.

In addition, our Adamant was played by a special guest and not the usual player. This led to some trouble later on.

Session 3
We started at the house of the old woman. We rose early, made her some breakfast and Tea in thanks. She made it clear to us that we were not welcome to stay the night again and to move on. This conversation led to some interesting character moments between the Elder, the Idealist, The Bold and the old woman.

We left the old woman's home and began discussing our next move. The Bold had been a messenger, and she had been apprehended by the Dai Li while trying to deliver a Fire Nation letter to someone in the Lower Ring. We decided to go see who that letter was for, as they were obviously no friends of the Dai Li. However, The Bold could not recall the address and only knew that there was a giant Lion-Duck statue in front of it.

Before we could get on our way, we ran into some local guards looking for us and putting up Wanted signs. We attempted to flee, but ran into a group of Bounty Hunters also looking for us. This led to a messy fight between all three groups. We tried to make a distraction with sand and water, but failed to escape. Our eager Swamp Bending soldier friend was quickly being swarmed and hurt but aid from our Idealist to heal them, and the Elder to intimidate the attackers with a show of skill kept them alive. Our Bold went off their Balance Track on Loyalty which allowed us to end the scene in a dramatic fashion as they blasted a sandstorm powerful enough to knock all three groups into various side streets and alleys. With the distance we managed to flee.

We eventually got to the address of the Lion-Duck only to find that the Dai Li had gotten there first. Not a big surprise. However, we entered the location and found a map with some key points marked on the various rings of the city. We checked around for enemy agents, but no one spotted anything.

We camped there for the night and rested up. In the morning, we talked and decided to align on our plan. Instead of trying to convince Thousands of citizens, and risking them getting picked up and brain washed along the way; we decided we only needed to convince one person. Our plan was to get incriminating evidence about the war from the Dai Li's head office, and then take it to the 52nd Earth King to prove to him there was a war. We then guessed that the marks on the map were potential passages through the wall, we began to set out.

However, when we opened the door to leave we were met by a taskforce of Dai Li agents. Roll Credits!

Character Observations
I am playing the Elder and an ardent Monarchist. Therefore, I was actually surprised that the fellow players decided to go with my plan to enlist the aid of the Earth King. They wanted a more "conventional" guerilla approach. However, I managed to persuade them not as a mechanic, but through wisdom. That was fun!

It is clear that we still need to work on our "team work" and understanding the fight mechanics. We had a difficult time in our 3-way battle, often using techniques or doing things that hindered each other more than helped. Our guest Adamant player was very aggressive and leaned hard into the "Results" side of their balance bar causing all sorts of needless escalations. The whole guard vs. bounty hunters was basically precipitated by our guest player.

Our new Protégé was annoying as all hell to play with. He is the typical archetype, annoying D&D loner rogue. Many times, he refused to help us to the point where I asked the GM to remind the player what the core tenants of the game were about character creation. Our group was also terrified of using fatigue and tried to horde that resource instead of using it, especially during non-combat Help actions. Only our Swamp Bender ever got into any real trouble with fatigue and our group worked together to resolve it; one of the rare team work we showed.

So far, we have some great characters BUT we still have a lot to learn about how to work together as a team. Worse, I am not 100% sure all the players WANT to work as a team. There are places where players can help each other built right into the core mechanics and so far we have stubbornly refused to use them. Comfort moves, help moves, and even group determining what moves we are using prior to declaring are all things we failed to do; sometimes out of not knowing the rules well enough, sometimes to horde resources, sometimes for other reasons. I feel like we took a big step back this session from last, and I eagerly await the return of our usual Adamant player to help ease this issue.

However, our The Bold Player and myself spent some time learning the rules a bit better and were able to use this weak system knowledge effectively in the game. I am not 100% convinced this is a good thing moving forward, but it is what it is.

Final Thoughts
So far, both sessions have felt like an episode in the Avatar series. I look forward to playing again. This session flew by at break neck speed and when it ended I could not believe it was 3 hours all ready. However, each session we have moved the story forward in an appreciable way.

We still have a lot to learn in this system. However, the Bold, The Pillar and the Idealist players have really leaned into their characters. The Protégé player is still feeling their character out but exhibited the most negative RPG traits so far. Hopefully that can be resolved. The Adamant guest player had their own motives, so I look forward to the return of our regular player.

So far so fun. No idea how we are going to achieve our goal with only about 6 sessions or so left. Should be fun. Hopefully a full and regular crew next week.

[Easy e]

Last Time on No War in Ba Sing Se
The group was in the lower tier of the city and were on the trail of Fire Nation agents in the city. We got tangled up with some Earth Kingdom guards AND some criminals in the area for a three way brawl. We managed to escape when our Bold went out-of-Balance and blasted all of us away with a huge sandstorm. With some distance, we made it to the suspected Fire Nation safehouse and found the Dai LI had all ready been there. After searching the place, we found a map with X's marked at various walls. WE spent the night there.

The next morning we decided our strategy to reveal the War in Ba Sing Se. We were going to go into the Dai Li headquarters, get documents about the War, get them to the 52nd Earth King, and reason him to reverse the "No War" policy. The argument was that it is easier to convince 1 person than Thousands.

After decided this strategy we step outside and were confronted by Dai Li agents.

Our Cast
I won't recap all the characters, but I will say that for tonight's session our Protege was out. Our regularly scheduled Adamant was back.

- The Adamant- Weapon Adept
- The Bold- Sand Bender
- The Idealist - Water Bender
- The Pillar - Swamp Bender
- The Elder - Earth Bender (Me)

Session 4
We started right away with the Dai Li agents ready to apprehend us. As the Elder, I actually had a previous relationship with the leader of this patrol of Dai Li. I was there "godfather" and a mentor and sponsor as they grew-up. They were still a member, where I had been out of the government for 20 years. For that reason, my Character was ready to parlay BUT my fellow party members were not.

The Bold just straight-up attacked, accusing the Dai Li of ruining their life. That was basically true. However, the battle soon erupted in earnest. The first and second Exchanges went pretty well. The leader of the patrol; focused there efforts on me; and I focused on defensive and support actions. I spent the time trying to unbalance her with words and to live up to their principles. In this case, the true and original principles of the Dai Li to serve the Earth King and not Long Fei. I was very close to breaking her BUT that also made her more aggressive. In the end, she knocked me over the edge of my balance first! I turned into a blubbering mess, apologizing for not raising her properly and teaching her the proper principles.

The other players focused on the other Dai Li agents, and kept them pinned down pretty well over two Exchanges. However, eventually we failed some key rolls to keep them pinned downed or heal at key moments and we ended up getting trapped in the earth. With me defeated, and our party encased things looked bad. However, the leader of the Dai Li was satisfied with humbling me; feeling that I would no longer be a threat and satisfying a personal grudge; she left us to flounder in the Lower Ring.

Since I was out of balance and full of conditions, I spent the rest of the session lashing out, being worried, and having no confidence. The groups usual leader was out of the action.

The Swamp Bender stepped up and took control. We investigated the X's on the map in the lower ring and found stacks of gunpowder being housed there. We alerted the authorities in the area and used the distraction to sneak onto one of the Earth Trams and moved to the Middle ring. From there, we went to the Bold's place of business to continue to track down the Fire Nation agents in the city. Of course, the Dai Li were all ready there, but we managed to sneak into the stables and through stealth and subtlety managed to make contact with their Grandpa.

The Dai LI cleared out and we managed to convince the Grandpa to let us stay and help us locate the Fire Nation agents. He referred us to a group of Fire Nation shippers called the Ember Rats. That is where the session ended as we continue to slowly make our way to the Top Tier and try to unravel the Fire Nation plan while working towards our goals.

Character Observations
Another good session. It was nice to have our regular Adamant back. He brought a different level of role-playing skill that helped ground and focus the rest of us.

I will say, this session really stretched my role-playing! I had to deal with some past drama, try to show how all these Conditions I wracked up were affecting me, and what it looked like to lose your balance! It was not easy to do! I do not recall being stretched this much in Role-playing in any recent system I have been a player in.... and I loved it!

I also took our Bold as my Protege by the end of the session with her Grandpa's permission. This aligned with our Bold having issues leaning into their Confidence principle, bending Sand instead of Earth, and having a mental block on Earth blending after failing to adopt her Father's techniques.

In addition, my mental breakdown on the Humility principle opened up 3 slots for new techniques and permanently moved my Center towards Humility. Both of these were unique to my playbook. That was a lot of stuff for my character to trackdown! However, other characters were also starting to hit some of their Growth measures as well. The specifics for each playbook are very different and provide unique channels and prompts for role-playing.

During the Combat Exchanges we are starting to get better at coordinating our efforts. The combat system has a lot more depths and intricacies that a first glance would lead you to believe. There is a certain interconnectedness and timing to get down for your moves. Also, there are three damage tracks to think about; Balance, Fatigue, and Conditions. When you run out of Fatigue it carries over to conditions, and you can always use Balance instead. To make it more interesting you frequently use Fatigue to trigger some of your special abilities and Balance to recover from a missed role. Therefore, you can run out of damage and space to keep going real fast. In addition, the GM never roles dice SO the bad guy moves always connect, so you have to think of ways to try and disrupt their moves just as much as remove their Fatigue/Conditions/Balance as well. Therefore, it takes a team effort and only now are we starting to figure out some of the nuances of how to make it all work together better as the "tactical" combat in this game is nothing like other games we have played.

Finally, our Idealist Water Bender was not with it tonight. They had given blood right before hand, and it showed. They did not bring near the energy level they had before and I think the table suffered for it a bit.

Final Thoughts
A deceptively simple set of mechanics that has led to a surprisingly challenging RPG experience. I have been stretched to lean "into the Fiction" more than I have before. That includes other PbtA I have played in the past. We are starting to wrap our heads around exactly how this game works, and I look forward to where this goes.

[Easy e]

No session this week due to travel across the board for many players.

Oh well, until next time.

[Easy e]

Last Time on No War in Ba Sing Se
Our group of plucky heroes(?) managed to get into the middle ring of the city after some Mission: Impossible style infiltration of the monorail system.

There, we went to our Bold's place of business. The Dai Li were there, but we managed to sneak into the stables, and waited. We then holed up with the Bold's Grandfather for the night.

We have slowly been making our way up to the Upper Ring so we can infiltrate the Dai Li HQ, get documents proving there is a war, and then convince the Earth King that the War is real and to remove his edict of "No War".

It is a terrible plan, but that's all we got right now.

Our Cast
I won't repeat all the details, but we were down one player for this session. Our Fire Bending Protege was out due to work.

That left:
- The Adamant- Weapon Adept - Agricultural Ring
- The Bold- Sand Bender - Middle Ring w some Upper ring connections
- The Idealist - Water Bender- Upper Ring
- The Pillar - Swamp Bender - Outside the City
- The Elder - Earth Bender (Me) - Upper Ring

Session 5
We started the Session in the home of the Bold's Grandfather. There, we met one of their Brother's who pushed the Bold to turn themselves into the Dai Li. We agreed, IF he could help us get to the Upper Ring. We convinced him that we needed to talk to the Dai Li as we had uncovered a plot by the Fire Nation to blast their way through various walls using a map we discovered in the lower ring. This map was linked to the messages our Bold had delivered that got them arrested in the first place.

We had some RP elements between The Elder and the Bold, as the Bold was now the Mentee of the Elder. The Idealist and the Bold also had some RP with the Family and each other. However, the next day we then set-out and the Brother was true to his word and got us into the Upper Ring.

Once there, we decided to go to the Idealist's home. The Idealist had been taken in after her parents were killed in the War by her very rich and upper class sister. We picked up some "disguises" which included a dress-up-montage for our characters that was very silly, but fun!

We then went the Idealist's house, and found that her Sister had been kidnapped! We had to go back to the Middle Ring to deal with the kidnappers. This lot was not a sophisticated bunch, so the whole situation was suspect. However, we managed to get close to the Sister via trickery, grab her, and make a break for it, using combat to slow up our pursuers.

We thought was were in the clear, with the Sister, and then the session came to an end.

Character Observations
This session was really focused heavily on the Bold and then the Idealist for plot points. Therefore, they got to lean into their characters and their backgrounds. Since my Elder has been closely aligned with both characters, I got to play a decent amount in this space as well.

Our Pillar and Adamant were left a bit on the outside for much of the session. However, they got to take the lead on dealing with the Kidnappers, as that was more their speed.

We are getting better at combat exchanges, as we have started to use the "Pressure" ability to locked down our opponent's options. However, the interactions of abilities beyond that has been challenging. We also got to "Challenge" each others and NPCs Principles a bit more. So far, it does not seem as effective on NPCs as it is on Characters.

Finally, I went into this session with several conditions and I had a hard time finding ways to clear them. Getting Conditions can happen fast, and they are not easy to clear.

Final Thoughts
This session started late, and was slow to get going. We had not seen each other for a bit so we wasted a lot of time just getting going. Then, once we got going there was a lot of RP with NPCs, then a lot of silliness with getting our disguises. For some reason, the group really got into talking about their clothing choices, and then kept changing them out. It was fun, but ultimately no closer to our goals. The fight scene at the end was one of our better ones, but the enemies were mostly push overs compared to the last two fights we had. So I am not sure if we had gotten better, or the enemies were worse.

At the end, we rescued someone BUT I am not 100% convinced it was the right person. Something about it all was just too easy. I look forward to the big "twist" next session.

[Easy e]

Welcome back to another exciting episode of No War in Ba Sing Se

Last Time on No War in Ba Sing Se
We spent some time in the middle ring with the Bold's family, who then helped us get to the Upper Ring. From there we went to go-to-ground at the wealthy noble sister of our Idealist. However, when we got there she had been kidnapped! We followed the ransom instructions and busted her out from her kidnappers and escaped.... or so it seemed.

Our Cast
This session we had:

- The Adamant- Weapon Adept - Agricultural Ring
- The Bold- Sand Bender - Middle Ring w some Upper ring connections
- The Idealist - Water Bender- Upper Ring
- The Pillar - Swamp Bender - Outside the City
- The Elder - Earth Bender (Me) - Upper Ring

Our Fire-Bending Protege was out again due to work travel. Boo!

Session 6
It turns out, the person we saved was in fact the person we wanted to rescue! No twist. The really big twist was that this upper-society, noblewoman was up to her eyeballs in debt and people were starting to come and collect on it! That rocked our Idealists world, who always assumed her big sister had the "perfect life" and everything was under control.

We finished off our escape from the bad guys, barely. We managed to crash our cart but used Swamp and Sand Bending to throw off our pursuers with a sand storm hiding some vines across the path to knock the riders chasing us off.

We then managed to get to a lesser used entrance back to the Upper Ring, and the Idealist managed to bluff us past the guards and back to the top ring. From there, we got the truth from our Idealist's sister. We cut a deal with her, that she would get us access to the Earth King's Palace at the next Earth Kingdom Ball. In exchange, we would protect her from the gangsters she owed money to. She readily agreed.

Armed with passes, The Elder, the Pillar, and the Adamant all infiltrated the party as servants. Meanwhile the Bold, Idealist, and Protege went in as Noble guests. Infiltrating the party was relatively easy. Getting out would be hard.

From there, me (Elder) and The Pillar infiltrated deep into the Dai Li's HQ looking for Long Fenn's office so we could get documentation that proves the War is happening outside the walls. We managed to get to his office, but he was in it! This led to a climactic showdown with Long Fenn the leader of the Dai Li.

Meanwhile, the Bold's cover was blown by our old Dai Li nemesis Kayaki. They were trying to casually take them into custody during the party. The Idealist and Protege were still managing to avoid detection and shadowing the agents ready to spring into action and rescue our Bold.

Finally, our Adamant started an altercation in the kitchen and escalated it into a large fire!

We ended on the exchange with Long Fenn. As the Elder, it was revealed that I had formerly been a high level agent of the Dai Li and former political rival of Long Fenn. We had a brief exchange where I brazenly just took the documents I needed from his desk while talking smack. Then, the Pillar attacked and I ran for it. The Pillar had a special ability where they could sacrifice themselves and be capture so that I could escape cleanly, which we narrated through.

The Elder had the documents we needed but was deep in Dai Li HQ. The Dai LI were trying to arrest our Bold during the party without making a scene. The Idealist and Protege were still in deep cover at the party. The Adamant had started a brawl and fire in the castles kitchen.

Roll credits!

Character Observations
The first half of the adventure, the spotlight was on the Idealist the most. They had to connect with their sister, sneak us past guards, and then interact with their sister. The rest of us piped in, but it was clearly their arc. They stepped up and role-played through it very nicely.

Once we got to the party scene, we were executing on our Adamant's plan. The spotlight got spread amongst the group, with each doing their own part of the VERY loose plan we came up with. We all got a chance to shine, with some excellent role-play with the Idealist and Bold at the party.

The Elder and The Pillar had the big action set-piece and climactic moments. They other players literally shouted "What!" when it was reveal that I had been a member of the Dai Li and a close associate of Long Fenn in the past, and that I was essentially a former spymaster. That was a big reveal and it hit hard!

In addition, the resolution of the fight with our Pillar was perfect! They got to use their special ability AND this was the players last session as they are headed to start Law School. Therefore, they ended their part in the campaign with a Heroic sacrifice that can explain their absence later. A neat bit of "Leaning in the Narrative" if you ask me.

Final Thoughts
Because it was our Pillar's last game, we again were all over the place with a lot of side banter. That was fine, as we still got where we needed to go. It was a good time, with a lot of good conversation, laughs, and memories.

Hopefully, our Fire Bending Protege can attend more, especially as our Pillar will be out. Once this campaign is over, we will spend time figuring out who, how, and if we are going to recruit a new player. The loss of our Pillar player will be a big hit as they were an excellent role-player and a good high energy part of the group. They will be missed.

Onto next session!

[Easy e]

Welcome back to No War in Ba Sing Se

Last Episode
Our intrepid adventurers got passes to a Earth Kingdom ball at the palace from our Idealists rich (and heavily indebt) sister. Our Idealist, Bold, and Protege entered as Nobles while the Adamant, Elder and Pillar entered as servants.

Soon, the Elder and Pillar snuck off into the palace, and made their way to the Dai Li HQ, and all the way to Long Fen's office. There, it was revealed that the Elder had once been a high ranking member of the Dai Li and a former peer of Long Fen. We managed to snag the documents we needed and fled the seen. However, our Pillar nobly and sacrificed himself so the Elder could escape.

Meanwhile, at the party the Dai Li quickly saw through our "Noble" party goers disguises. They made some simple trade-craft blunders like using their real names or forgetting their cover identities. In the kitchen, the Adamant brewed up trouble to start a distraction. However, it looked like the Idealist, Bold, and Protege were about to get nabbed by the secret police.

Our Cast

This session we had:

- The Adamant- Weapon Adept - Agricultural Ring
- The Bold- Sand Bender - Middle Ring w some Upper ring connections
- The Idealist - Water Bender- Upper Ring
- The Elder - Earth Bender (Me) - Upper Ring
- The Protege- Fire Bender- Upperd Ring

Our Pillar Swamp Bender went off to Law School, so their noble sacrifice played into their actual departure in real life. They will no longer be appearing in No War in Ba Sing Se, unless they guess appear in a future episode at Holiday break/Summer.

Session 7
We start the session with the Dai Li attempting to apprehend our Noble friends. The Water-bender sees that the game is up and strikes first, retreating to the bathroom, gathering a lot of water from there and then using it to start to flood the place and freeze Dai Li agents and guards to the floor. The ball turns into a general melee as guards and agents converge in. This includes our old friend Kayaki, and her boss Xi.

The Elder manages to escape Long Fen thanks to the Pillar. However, there are still a few guard rooms to get past in the HQ. He successfully tricks the first set of guards to go and protect the Chancellor. However, the next over are not so easily convinced. Instead, he rips off his disguise and intimidates them into withdrawing for back-up.

In the confusion, of the main hall the Idealist, Bold, Protege, nd Adamant meet-up and are soon joined by the Elder. There is a big battle between the guards, agents, Kayaki, and Xi. The Protege manages to keep the guards and lesser agents busy why the rest of us face-off with the named characters. Things, do not go well, and again the Elder is the main target.

He falls off his Balance track, and ends up literally bringing the hall and half the palace down around him in order to end the combat and throw off the pursuers. However, he is out of commission the rest of the session, exhausted and spent. However, it is enough for the rest to flee. This moves the Elder's balance permanently towards Experienced, after he had just spent some growth re-centering it from Humility!

We manage to flee the chaos and head to the Bold's true fathers dojo. There, we meet up with the Bold's brother again. After showing him the evidence of the war he decides to help us in our efforts. We manage to take shelter in the Dojo and plan our next step.

In accordance with our plan, we need to get the documents into the hands of the Earth King. Our only chance is at the Earth Kingdom Day Parade, where the Earth King participates in the parade and "shows himself" to the people. Of course, he is heavily guarded by guards an agents. We will have to come up with a plan to successfully accomplish our mission.

Roll credits.....

Character Observations
With the Pillar being out, the session was a bit... tighter than some of the previous sessions as we had only 5 folks instead of 6 to work with. As a group, we decided not to try to recruit any new players at this time.

As for the session itself, we really pulled out all the stops to get that piece of evidence. Backstory hooks, non-combat actions, combat actions, and role-playing. The whole palace set-piece evolved from the players Narrative, not something really planned by the GM. The parade is likewise, a player invention; not something from the GM. I think this system works well with letting the players set the parts of the story that interest them, and then the GM just kinda rolls with it.

Our Idealist has an ideal of NO ONE GETS LEFT BEHIND so handling that with the loss of the Pillar was a dramatic RP moment between the Adamant and the Idealist. The Elder was out of action at that point, in order to facilitate the escape at all.

This entire episode had some fun cinematic moments that really felt like they fit into the feel of the show. Some well-timed puns, one-liners, and just fun hi-jinks. In this one, the Adamant felt the least engaged though. Something to consider next time, with the Elder, Bold, and Idealist leading the way this episode.

Our Idealist still had some challenges with the multi-tiers "condition bars" of Fatigue, Balance, and Conditions causing some confusion. In addition, since the GM never rolls the villains stuff always works. That means, they can rail on you pretty good IF you do not work well as a team with a shared goal for a combat. So far, our team has struggled with coordination in combat as we often come into it with very different goals and approaches. This leads us to be sub-optimal even though we discuss and decide on our actions as a group every turn. I don't mind too much, since our decisions are being driven by our own individual principles and character narratives.

Final Thoughts
So far, we have been able to lean into the backstories of a few of our characters much deeper than some of the others. We have set-up out next big set-piece in the story, so I am interested in how that plays out, and what curves develop before we can execute on it.

I imagine we will have a run in with our Bold's father before we can move on. That should be interesting. Plus, our Idealist's sister is still in danger from gangsters and criminals, which could serve to derail us. Finally, there is still the Fire Nation spy ring and gunpowder plot lurking out there as well.

Plenty of hooks left as we strive to reveal the truth of the War outside of the walls of Ba Sing Se.

[Easy e]

Welcome back to another session of No War in Ba Sing Se!

Last Time on our Adventures
Our group of heroes managed to infiltrate the Dai LI headquarters and recovered a document proving a war is going on outside of the city, complete with a government seal.

However, it came at great cost as our Pillar was captures and the Earth King's Palace was heavily damaged in the battle. Our group had to flee, and took sanctuary in the Dojo of our Bold's estranged father.

Our Cast
This session we had:

- The Adamant- Weapon Adept - Agricultural Ring
- The Bold- Sand Bender - Middle Ring w some Upper ring connections
- The Idealist - Water Bender- Upper Ring
- The Elder - Earth Bender (Me) - Upper Ring
- The Protege- Fire Bender- Upperd Ring

A good showing for this session, and our group going forward.

Session 8
We spent a lot of time in this session deciding what we are going to do next? It was not clear how we should use our evidence to move the plot forward.

We had some in-character development between The Elder mentoring our Bold. This was fun to RP for the two of us, and I think there were some real "fortune cookie" gems of wisdom dropped about the nature of Earth bending, confidence, and growing up.

While that was going on, the Adamant, Protege, and Idealists went out to find and follow General How, the high commander of the Earth Kingdom Military. We were hoping to get some detail on him to help us get the truth of the war in front of the Earth King. We are still operating under the assumption that Long Fe has kept the truth from him.

Alternatively, we also learned that in a few days the Earth King will be in person at a parade through the city. This might be our only chance to get the proof of the war to him. However, that is "Mission Impossible" level of action. Therefore, we started thinking about other ways to do things, and not having success.

Eventually, the Bold's father returned after helping contain the situation at the palace. We eventually persuaded him to help us after a lot of RPG between all of us and him. That allowed us to stay in the Dojo for a few days, while the Father worked his contacts.

In the meantime, we still had an open lead to follow with the Fire Nation spy network within the city. We decided to follow that lead with the 'Ember Rats". We are hoping to leverage this relationship somehow which is still TBD. We all have conflicting views on how to leverage this relationship for our own benefit.

Character Observations
This session our Adamant, Protege and Idealist struggled a bit with D&Disms. Our Idealist hated the way the Father treated our Bold, and that led to some good RP; but the Idealist was actually getting to the point of murderous intent! The Adament and Protege were also leaning much harder into Terrorists to prove there was a War than they had in the past, and that led to more discussion and moderation on next steps. They tended to forget that we are the heroes in the Avatar universe, not murder hobos.

That said, we had some awesome RP between characters at the session. There were some very memorable lines of dialogue and we moved the spotlight around a decent amount.

Final Thoughts
The discussion of what to do next took much of the session before we settled on our approach. This was clearly a "transition" session as the scenes at the palace were a big set-piece. It almost felt like a mid-season story arc ender. Now, we were setting up the space for the next arc of the season.

[Easy e]

Last Time on No War in Ba Sing Se
We hid out at the Dojo of the Father of our Bold in the Upper Ring of the city. We had the evidence we need to get into the hands of the Earth King, we are just figuring out how to do it. So far, we seem to have landed on working through General How, the leader of the Earth Kingdom's military and a potential political rival of Long Fei.

Our Cast of Characters
This session we had:

- The Adamant- Weapon Adept - Agricultural Ring
- The Bold- Sand Bender - Middle Ring w some Upper ring connections
- The Idealist - Water Bender- Upper Ring
- The Elder - Earth Bender (Me) - Upper Ring
- The Protege- Fire Bender- Upperd Ring

A good showing for this session, and our group going forward.

Session 9
You know, every campaign has a "shopping" episode and this felt like that episode for us. We spent a great deal of time trying to learn new techniques while we hung out in the Dojo. However, this was more mechanically focused than RP focused. This took up a lot of the session for some unknown reason.

Once all that tediousness was done, we finally got moving. We had determined at the end of the last session to investigate and discover the identity of the Fire Nation agents in Ba Sing Se hoping we could use them to get us access to the people we needed to get access too. Our lead was that they called themselves the Ember Rats.

This led to us investigating the Gunpowder Plot we uncovered way back in Session 2 or 3. This investigation led us to two major events. First, our Protege stole a travel passport from a cabbage merchant we encountered in the Upper Ring. No one else in the party was really aware this happened, and instead the Protege passed it off as having the proper documents. The rest of us had lost ours when we were in prison and traveling between rings has been a major challenge.

Secondly, we tracked the Ember Rats down to an Inn in the Middle Ring. There we uncovered that the Fire Nation agents were a group of smuggler's we worked with to get into the city in Session 2 or 3. We were able to get them to choose to help us infiltrate Gen. How's compound if we needed it. They could not get us to the Earth King though. The Bold's father had also agreed to help us get in front of General How, but only if we turned in the Ember Rats to the Earth Kingdom authorities. Our final method was to Mission: IMpossible our way into the parade and get the Earth King the evidence there.

We now have to decide how we want to proceed, and which avenue to follow.

Character Observations
The departure of our Swamp Bender Guerilla has ended up being a bigger issue than I expected. The player had a lot of understanding of the Avatar universe and was eager and capable to lean into the Narrative of a PbtA game. Since his departure, our Adamant and Protege have really struggled with the idea of leaning into the Narrative.

What do I mean? The Adamant admitted that he is trying to "check the boxes" of the game and can not wrap their head around the idea of just tell the story first, and then the GM will tell us if a box is checked or not. Basically, he is trying to push the buttons to operate the machine of the story, instead of just telling the story and letting the buttons be pushed as he goes.

In addition, our Protege keeps wanting to do things that goes against the basic premise of the game as Good guys, who have a shared goal, and are generally young people. He just wants to murder hobo his way around. Before, I think the leadership of the Swamp Bender kept this in check, but now that he is gone; the Adamant is leaning into the Protege's desires.

I am not surprised so much by the Protege. The more I play, the more I realize he just wants to murder-hobo his way around the game worlds. The Adamant surprises me a lot! When we play, I always thought he was one of our better role-players! However, he openly admitted that he had a hard time wrapping his head around character and narrative first approach. This legit shocked me.

However, many of the players seem to be struggling with the idea of Narrative first. Part of the reason it took so long to deal with our "New Techniques" this session is that it was clear people could not wrap their head around how to Master a technique. It involves a character arc/narrative discovery the character comes to that helps them transition from practicing the skill to mastering it. Players really struggled with this idea. It was clear, they were not use to thinking of character first and tying character growth to actual "feats" or "class benefits". They wanted to spend points, level up, or something mechanical instead.

Final Thoughts
The GM stated he felt there were about 4-6 more sessions before this campaign will play out, depending on how aggressive we are. This led to some players saying how much they wanted to play a D&D campaign next. We have been two campaigns since playing D&D: CoS, so most of the year has been with out D&D. We hemmed and hawed about who would go next as GM, one of our regular DMs wanted to GM a non-D&D game instead. The second was all ready doing Avatar, and I do not like DMing D&D because I am not a fan. The players vocal for D&D also did not want to lead it. That left us a bit at an impasse on that topic for the moment. I have started putting together a classic hexcrawl, but honestly I hope one of the D&D fans just decides to lead it.

I am not sure if this discussion was a trigger for those players, because the rest of the session they tried to play like it was a D&D campaign and not an Avatar campaign. I could see the D&D-isms in their playing, and it is hard to put my finger on exactly what that means. However, I knew it when I saw it and it surprised me. I felt like we regressed a lot from where we were a couple weeks ago where the players were really leaning into their characters.

After leaving, one of my fellow players though that we might be seeing the end of our group coming up. It was clear half of us are moving away from D&D and half wanted to lean back into it. I am not as convinced it is all over yet. I think we can still balance between D&D and other games. We'll see.

I am interested to see what others think of this?

[Actana]

Sounds like that Swamp Bender was the glue that held the game together. That's a real shame, but sometimes that happens. It's also possible that the players looking for a more D&D-like experience have started craving it due to other reasons (cough a certain recent video game might have something to do with it).

It is of course hard to say how the players themselves feel about the situation without asking them directly. Trying to probe into the feelings right now might net a lot of insight, but also might mean the dissolution of the game as those negative feelings are let out finally and everyone realizes the game isn't going to go great anymore when so many players don't feel into it. But the murder-hobo instincts should probably be talked about regardless, those aren't going to go over well for the rest of the game, I feel.

Regardless of what happens, I think it's been great reading these logs, and hopefully even those who don't really click with the system will over time retain applicable skills or perspectives to their own preferred games. Trying out more games is always good in my opinion, even if it doesn't work out.

[Easy e]

For those following the thread, I put together a more detailed review of the rules on my blog if you are interested:

http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2023/09/rpg-review-avatar-legends-magpie-games.html


We got another session in, and will write it up for you guys in the next day or two.

Thanks for following so far.

[Easy e]

Last Time on No War in Ba Sing Se
We hid out at the Dojo of the Father of our Bold in the Upper Ring of the city. We had the evidence we need to get into the hands of the Earth King, we are just figuring out how to do it. So far, we seem to have landed on working through General How, the leader of the Earth Kingdom's military and a potential political rival of Long Fei.

However, our Bold's father offered to arrange an audience. However, in order to do so he wanted us to track down some Fire Nation agents called the Ember Rats. We quickly tracked them down and they also offered to help us get in front of General How.

Our Cast of Characters
This session we had:

- The Adamant- Weapon Adept - Agricultural Ring
- The Bold- Sand Bender - Middle Ring w some Upper ring connections
- The Idealist - Water Bender- Upper Ring
- The Elder - Earth Bender (Me) - Upper Ring
- The Protege- Fire Bender- Upperd Ring

A good showing for this session, and our group going forward.

Session 10
Well, everything went crazy in this session!

We returned to the Dojo and the Bold gave his Father what we had found, including the map of the potential locations; which he took. He then advised us to go and apprehend the Ember Rats in order to bolster our case with the Earth Kingdom.

Our Idealist took exception to this, feeling like it was an underhanded tactic. The rest of us agreed, not trusting him. This escalated quickly, and the Idealist fell off her Balance Track and tore into the Bold's father for being a terrible father with stupid adult rules. This did not end well, and the Bold and the Idealist both got us kicked out of the Dojo.

We left to go to the Idealist Sister estate. It was on this journey that the Bold realized that she left the evidence on the Ember Rats with her dad. The Elder, Protégé, and Adamant to retrieve the map. The Bold and Idealist went on to the Sister's estate.

Back at the Dojo, we found the Bold's father turning the documents over to the Dai Li, a former peer and old enemy from our time in the palace. After a brief exchange things also escalated here. A fight broke out!

We managed to defeat the Dai Li agent and the Protege escaped with the Fire Nation Map we came for. However, after knocking the Dai LI commander off their balance, the scene ended with the Adamant and the Elder being apprehended by the Dai Li.

Character Observations
The Protégé and Adamant were itching for a fight, and we got one. Interesting, I noticed in this game that when our Idealist brings her "A" game and energy, this infected the Adamant and Protege player. When the Elder and the Bold brought their "A" game, it did not bring that same energy to the table. Perhaps that is based on the seating chart?

However, after the Idealist layed-into the dad NPC things got exciting and the group was amped up. Honestly, this was a terrible session strategically and for moving the story along. In fact, we probably took a huge step backwards. Despite that, the group seemed to have a blast!

However, at one point as we were determining our strategy the Adamant player burst out, "I hate this system! I have no idea what we are doing and it seems like they smoke us every time." I mean, he wasn't wrong but his focus was not on leaning into the narrative, he was trying to win! The power of the D&D system mastery is not to be underestimated as a barrier to getting people into other, cool games.

Final Thoughts
Well, this was a fun and rousing session BUT everything went wrong story-wise. I have no idea where it is going to go next. Our big evidence was being held by the Adamant who is now in custody, and the secondary Ember Rats evidence is in the hands of the Protege. The Bold and Idealist are off someplace else completely, and out Pillar is long gone. Things look pretty bad for us right now as characters.

However, this game our Protege and Adamant were pretty engaged, even if they were vocal about their frustration with the system. I am looking forward to what comes next and how the group and campaign evolves.

[Easy e]

Last Time on No War in Ba Sing Se
At the end of the last session, our group had been split. Our Elder had agreed to go with the Dai Li agent Kayaki if she let the others escape. Of course, the other members had other ideas and went back for the Elder. This led to a cliff hanger at the edge of a bottomless pit between the Dai Li and our heroes.

Our Cast of Characters
This session we had:

- The Adamant- Weapon Adept - Agricultural Ring
- The Bold- Sand Bender - Middle Ring w some Upper ring connections
- The Idealist - Water Bender- Upper Ring
- The Elder - Earth Bender (Me) - Upper Ring
- The Protege- Fire Bender- Upper Ring

Due to travelling, the Elder and the Idealist both had to call in for the session.

Session 12
The group of heroes fought with the Dai Li agents. The Elder spent their time trying to defend Foh, the Dai Li agent that had helped them escape earlier. This left the players time to focus on Kayaki, who they forced to run away up the shaft towards safety. This took up a great deal of time.

The Elder advised the party to let her go and they did. He then tried to convince Foh to joint heir party, but he failed to convince him. Foh went his own way.

From the group searched the rest of the prison and freed the other prisoners. The Elder urged the others to freedom, as he went back and destroyed the brain washing center. Explosions and collapsing roofs kept the players on their toes as they took the last prisoners up to the surface.

At the surface, the woods around Lake Lagi were ablaze. The Ember Rats explosives had done the job and Dai Li agents were busy trying to avert the flames. The players managed to use their powers to form a safe passage through the blaze, and escorted the freed prisoners to safety.

Meanwhile, inside the prison the Elder spent his time slowly dismantling the prison with his Earthbending as he walked downward and to his former cell. He had made an arrangement that he would not try to escape in exchange for his friends safety. He had also learned from Kayaki that the Earth King himself had sanctioned Long Fei's "No War" policy and was fully aware of the Dai Li's brainwashing program.

Disillusioned, the Elder could no longer keep up his own fiction that the Earth King had somehow been above it all, and unaware of Long Fei's plans. The Elder had never been recalled back to service, because the Earth King himself was not interested in the council of the Elder. The Elder destroyed the prison, and then locked himself in the cage above the bottomless pit. There, he meditated on the nature of service, honor, and humility as the prison collapsed around him.

At this point, the Idealist realized that the Elder had not emerged from the prison. She turned around to go back, but it was too late. The entire prison collapsed in ward. The brain-washing prison was destroyed and all the prisoners had been freed.

Character Observations
Well, the Elder went out on his own terms once he learned the truth of things. He could no longer lie to himself, and decided to keep his own word to no longer resist, let himself be imprisoned but only after the prison and all the occupants had been freed. In the end, he felt a moment of weightlessness as he plunged into the bottomless pit.

The Bold and the Idealist had both followed along not really realizing what the Elder had been doing. The Adamant had cottoned on much, much earlier and helped hustle everyone else out. The Protege was harder to read. At the end, the Bold and Idealist players were bummed that the Elder went out that way and felt that the whole victory felt a bit hollow. As the Elder player, I was satisfied with how the character's arc ended, on his own terms and his own definition of honor.

The GM then gave us the chance to call it a campaign. As the Elder player, I was suitably ready to call it where it was. However, to my surprise the Adamant said No. He had been the most vocal of getting us back to D&D. He said, "We can't leave these people here, like this. We need to at least get them to shelter! " He often plays the Paladin in D&D. The Protege, and the Bold both agreed that this was not the ending to the campaign. There was still no War in Ba Sing Se. The idealist and I just shrugged and bowed to the group decision. We were both happy where the campaign would have ended, but were enjoying it enough to keep going too.

Final Thoughts
I though this was a suitably epic ending, and we could have narrated a nice epilogue. However, the other players seemed to feel differently, and the folks I thought were most interested in ending it decided to keep it alive for a few more sessions. Now, I am unsure WHERE or HOW we will end it.

I decided to make a new character, a Hammer playbook earth-bender. One of the prisoners who was freed who is now bent on revenge for his time in prison and for the death of his brother in the Earth Kingdom military during the war. A much more action oriented hot-head than the Elder was. We will see where it goes next!

Until next time!

[Duff]

Thanks for the session log! Definitely lots to unlearn going from D&D to PbtA.

My goodness gracious yes!

Maybe watching a few episodes of Avatar would be good?
That might help them with the setting side, so then they "only" have to deal with the mindset/system change
(I mean, watching Avatar is always good. I'm so glad my kids badgered me into watching it

[animorte]

I mean, watching Avatar is always good.
100%, this person wins. Next to A:tLA, of course.

[Easy e]

Woops! Re-post!

[Ameraaaaaa]

You posted the same thing again. By the way i read all of this in one go.

Sorry about the potential party split. But sometimes that happens. Just remember that as long as your all friends at the end of the day it's fine if the gaming group breaks up.

Personally as someone who only played pbp not counting a few live one shots i never had to experience the end of a gaming group. Most pbp games i was just lost steam. The 2 exceptions are the scp game i dropped out of because i built my character very purely and he couldn't really contribute (the game last i checked is still ongoing so good for the rest of them) and that one time a game broke up because a ooc argument the spiraled out of control that i stayed out of. The latter is the closest thing to a group break up i have seen.

So from personal experience it's much better when groups break up due to different tastes then due to hostility.

[Easy e]

Last Time on No War in Ba Sing Se
We escaped the prison and destroyed it. We had a few prisoners with our group, and took shelter in a farm in the ag Zone.

The Elder died in the escape from the prison.

Our Cast of Characters
This session we had:

- The Adamant- Weapon Adept - Agricultural Ring
- The Bold- Sand Bender - Middle Ring w some Upper ring connections
- The Idealist - Water Bender- Upper Ring
- The Protege- Fire Bender- Upper Ring
- The Hammer- Earth Bender (Me) - Lower Ring

All present and accounted for!

Session 13
Our group of heroes decided to band together and form protest groups. The King's parade and festival was approaching and we were going to confront the Earth King there and show the city that there was a war going on!

We went into the city in small groups and gathered up what followers we could to help us. This included farmers from the Ag zone, construction workers in the lower ring, and others. Our Fire Bender Protege located the Ember Rats and asked them to help us disrupt the parade with their pyrotechnic abilities. We then went and stationed our selves along the parade route in the lower ring.

When the time was right, we struck! We began our protest with the Hammer running out into the street and blocked the route with a sign of his dead soldier brother reading: "He was real!". From there, our followers began chanting and disrupting the parade by pouring out into the streets. Then, the real fireworks started as the Ember Rats started detonating explosives at the city walls.

Everything turned to chaos. The Bold and Idealist encountered Kayaki and managed to push her off her value track when they told her that the Elder, her old mentor and friend, died in the prison. She abandoned the fight.

In the meantime, the rest of us made for the Earth King. We discovered that the Earth King at the parade was actually Long Fei, the Dai Li chief. From there, we managed to defeat his guards and demoralize him into surrender.

It was a small victory as the soldiers of the Fire Nation and their agents stormed the city. Woops!

Character Observations
The Bold and Idealists used words instead of brawn to beat Kayaki, which was great!

The Adamant, Protege, and Hammer were less than subtle with their attacks on Long Fei. Despite the violence and coordinated attacks, we were able to pepper it with some dialogue as well to help demoralize him.

I will say, this ending would have been very different if the Elder were still alive. However, he was gone and was replaced by the Hammer. Therefore, action and force was the order of the day. The end was suitably climactic.

Final Thoughts
This was the end of the campaign, we had proven to Ba Seng Sae that there was a war! At the cost of the war coming right into the city. This supposedly led into canon events from the show BUT I am not familiar enough to say when or how.

After the events of the Parade, our little group ended up becoming the core of the resistance to the Fire Nation's rule. This eventually led us to be reunited with the Idealists sister as well. However, we did not epilogue for each character.

I really enjoyed playing Avatar, and I felt the system really asked me to stretch my role-play ability. The conditions, the principles mechanic, and the playbooks all gave me good tips and mechanics for me to lean into the character in a way other RPGs have not. I appreciated the narrative aspect of the game, and could have gone the whole campaign without fighting at all.

That said, when we did fight there was a learning curve on how to do it together effectively. By the end, we had it down pretty well. I personally liked the more "cinematic" nature of the combat but others in the group struggled with how enemies worked and the lack of a formal "turn structure".

Overall, I would play again. However, I do not think my group would. The Bold, Idealist, and I got a lot out of it. Our Adamant and Protege much less so. Despite our Adamant being an excellent role-player I am learning that they are really more of the kill things and take their stuff player at heart. I always knew that about the Protege.

Next up, we will be starting a short D&D campaign with a new GM. I am excited as I have never been part of a game led by this GM. Should be fun.

This log is officially closed.