Avatar Legends/PbtA First Impressions

[Notafish]

I ran a Powered by the Apocalypse game (Avatar Legends) for the first time last night. Usually, I'm a player in this group (it's a 3.p campaign), but I filled in for the usual DM this week to attempt a one-shot. It was fun, exciting, and exhausting, and a very different feel compared to running a dungeon crawler.

The Good: Lots of drama, lots of action, great pacing for a one-shot. The focus on character relationships and GM agency was very useful here. Encouraging the GM to ask the characters questions about their feelings also helped to highlight key relationships and get to the meat of dramatic arcs. While the combat system was a little awkward to learn and use as written, it did enable a very fun chase scene that would have either been resolved in 2 dice rolls or extremely tedious to play out in DnD.
I was actually stunned at how much the game felt like an episode of Avatar. Part of this was player familiarity with the property, but the system design also helped to guide players toward creative conflict resolution and cooperating with others.

The Bad: not much, but it was a big shift in mindset from the D&D game going from a combat focus to a drama focus. The ease with which threats could be introduced or dispatched by GM fiat was also intimidating to me - I feel like I used my power wisely, but more structure on how to set up behind the scenes would have been helpful for me just to allay my fears about the session turning into a game of Calvinball. I could also see how a less-focused PbtA could go sideways quickly, even with an experienced group.

The Weird: One thing I should have anticipated but didn't was the need to quickly come up with new NPC names - I was mostly working from prepublished material and did not anticipate how quickly my players would involve un-named background characters in their antics.

If I wind up running a campaign again, I could see proposing this system or a similar one, but I think I would likely keep the one-shot pacing. Having one "episode" per session is too tempting. I can also definitely see using some ideas from this in a d20 campaign - especially asking characters what they feel about things, and giving small, focused bonuses based on the answers.

I had shied away from PbtA in the past, since the Apocalypse and Dungeon World free materials were very hard for me to make sense of. Having played a version now, it hasn't soured me on my old systems, but it has left me interested in doing more with this one.

[Duff]

Thankyou for the insight

[animorte]

I appreciate this breakdown as it's something that's been on my radar for a while. AtLA is one of my favorite things of all time.

I have yet encountered the opportunity to experience it.

[Quertus]

I can’t believe I’ve never thought to look for an Avatar RPG before.

I ran a Powered by the Apocalypse game (Avatar Legends)

Encouraging the GM to ask the characters questions about their feelings also helped to highlight key relationships and get to the meat of dramatic arcs.

especially asking characters what they feel about things, and giving small, focused bonuses based on the answers.

Is this a standard feature of PbtA, or was it added to Avatar Legends? I’m interested in the… pacing of such questions, I suppose, for complex reasons that got eaten when I lost the first version of this post.

[Notafish]

<snip>


Is this a standard feature of PbtA, or was it added to Avatar Legends? I’m interested in the… pacing of such questions, I suppose, for complex reasons that got eaten when I lost the first version of this post.

I know that player relationships has been a core focus of PbtA from the start, and I think viewing the game as a conversation and "take +1 to your next roll when acting on the answers" are things that have been around a while, too.

For the character-focused questions, I kicked off the game with "of your companions, who do you trust the most?", which helped to establish some backstory and heat between the characters right off the bat. I also had villain test some of the player's motivations via another mechanic (Balance) specific to this game, though. Some of the player "moves" (dice checks) prompt the players to ask questions of each other, the GM, or NPCs as part of the move, getting a bonus to ensuing rolls related to the question if the first move was successful. Questions happened frequently and organically, and sometimes they would prompt a roll that led to a small bonus. The responsibility to call for moves and rolls felt mostly like the GMs responsibility, but it's really shared. In the interest of pacing, I did ask the players to summarize some conversations between characters rather than getting verbatim questions.

The in-character/out-of-character distinction was pretty blurry and I think that is also a PbtA thing - the GM addresses the characters directly, which pushes things into a mostly-in character direction - more "I (the PC) want to impress him with my earthbending!" than "my character tries to impress him with earthbending!" but the rules seemed to suggest that players should be encouraged to use their understanding of the system to guide the character actions, so "...and can I (the player) make that an Intimidate rather than a Rely on Your Training move?" would be a natural part of the conversation.

The Avatar-specific parts of the system (outside of the theming and the description of different Moves) were Principles and Balance, which I might need another few sessions to really get my head around - Principles are a bit like Bonds in 5e, but they have more mechanical oomph because they can throw off a player's Balance (a bi-directional stress track that gives situational bonuses but also makes you more vulnerable/closer to getting taken out of a scene). There is also a neat martial arts mechanic that is unique to Avatar Legends which was a lot of fun once I realized that it was supposed to be used sparingly and not every time the PCs ran into hostile NPCs.

[Quertus]

I know that player relationships has been a core focus of PbtA from the start, and I think viewing the game as a conversation and "take +1 to your next roll when acting on the answers" are things that have been around a while, too.

For the character-focused questions, I kicked off the game with "of your companions, who do you trust the most?", which helped to establish some backstory and heat between the characters right off the bat. I also had villain test some of the player's motivations via another mechanic (Balance) specific to this game, though. Some of the player "moves" (dice checks) prompt the players to ask questions of each other, the GM, or NPCs as part of the move, getting a bonus to ensuing rolls related to the question if the first move was successful. Questions happened frequently and organically, and sometimes they would prompt a roll that led to a small bonus. The responsibility to call for moves and rolls felt mostly like the GMs responsibility, but it's really shared. In the interest of pacing, I did ask the players to summarize some conversations between characters rather than getting verbatim questions.

The in-character/out-of-character distinction was pretty blurry and I think that is also a PbtA thing - the GM addresses the characters directly, which pushes things into a mostly-in character direction - more "I (the PC) want to impress him with my earthbending!" than "my character tries to impress him with earthbending!" but the rules seemed to suggest that players should be encouraged to use their understanding of the system to guide the character actions, so "...and can I (the player) make that an Intimidate rather than a Rely on Your Training move?" would be a natural part of the conversation.

The Avatar-specific parts of the system (outside of the theming and the description of different Moves) were Principles and Balance, which I might need another few sessions to really get my head around - Principles are a bit like Bonds in 5e, but they have more mechanical oomph because they can throw off a player's Balance (a bi-directional stress track that gives situational bonuses but also makes you more vulnerable/closer to getting taken out of a scene). There is also a neat martial arts mechanic that is unique to Avatar Legends which was a lot of fun once I realized that it was supposed to be used sparingly and not every time the PCs ran into hostile NPCs.

So the emphasis specifically on “how do you feel” questions (I did a much better job in my first post) is new to Avatar Legends?

Can you explain a) how the “balance” mechanics works; b) how “who do you trust the most” helped generate better responses to “how do you feel?”?

Summarizing conversations might take some getting used to - I’m used to D&D, where one actually roleplays (acts) through such conversations by default.

Would any of this change in a longer campaign? For example, would you still want to start in media res instead of letting the characters meet and develop relationships naturally during play? More importantly, do you feel you’d still be asking frequent, “and how does that make you feel?” questions “3 seasons in”? What I mean is, the group that really helped my RP, their “the <character name> who lives in my head would have done X. You had them do Y. Why was that? How do these characters differ?” questions usually became more infrequent as people got a better grasp on one another’s characters. Do you feel that this mechanic would similarly fall by the wayside, or that it would remain fresh in an ongoing campaign?

I’m not big on staying so “in character” that you don’t reference the system. After all, actually stabbing the orcs - or the other players - tends to be frowned upon. A layer of separation is healthy. ;)

If someone walked up to me and said, “I want to impress you with my kung-fu breakdancing”, I’d be much less impressed than if they broke out some sick moves, then asked, “what do you think?” -> I don’t think that the distinction between "I (the PC) want to impress him with my earthbending!" and "my character tries to impress him with earthbending!" is so much one of being in-character, vs one of 1st vs 3rd person voice (or, at most, of identifying with the character). My therapist says I should stick with 3rd person voice ;)

[Notafish]

So the emphasis specifically on “how do you feel” questions (I did a much better job in my first post) is new to Avatar Legends?

I'm a newbie at this system, but I don't think so. I believe the "game as conversation" concept is more of a general PbtA idea. The degree to which the conversation is oriented around character emotion and relationships varies, though. The Balance mechanic in Avatar highlights the character's internal tensions - digging into how a character understands their principle of self-reliance (for example) is something that the GM is encouraged to do as it can be a source of dramatic and mechanical tension via the Balance mechanic.

I also think I may have miscommunicated above when I was describing the utility of "how do you feel" questions. I didn't ask many of those in this session, just more than I have in D&D. I'll write more on that below.

Can you explain a) how the “balance” mechanics works; b) how “who do you trust the most” helped generate better responses to “how do you feel?”?

I'm not sure I can explain it well - Balance was the most difficult part of the game for me. Mechanically, it's a bonus slider that moves between 0 and +3 to rolls involving one of the character's principles, but if it goes higher than +3, bad stuff happens. The thing that complicates it is that the bonus can be shifted via roleplaying related to the character's principles or the physical stress of combat, and that it looks more like a roleplaying prompt than a push-your-luck mechanic on the character sheets.

The place where it felt good was during a conversation with the villain where it became clear the the villain could try to pull a character "out of balance" by playing on their principles and asking them to betray their friends. The character's decision to remain loyal to their companions put stress on them and shifted them further out of balance, making them vulnerable to "losing their balance" which requires them to exit the scene in one of several up-for-interpretation (through conversation between the player and the GM) ways.

"who do you trust" (and giving a small bonus to certain rolls related to this answer) was actually a prompt I borrowed from Apocalypse World. I don't think it necessarily led to better responses to my questions for the characters down the line, but it helped guide character introductions by allowing the players to describe their relationships beyond the "how you met" boilerplate. I'm not sure that the bonuses were that important in guiding the story, but it could be a lever to pull in a longer campaign or with different players. It also added a little emotional sting in the pregame - I wouldn't recommend it with all players, but here I think it helped build the internal stakes. The "losing your balance" scene I mentioned above was in fact prompted by one of the less-trusted characters trying to win the party over.

Summarizing conversations might take some getting used to - I’m used to D&D, where one actually roleplays (acts) through such conversations by default.

Would any of this change in a longer campaign? For example, would you still want to start in media res instead of letting the characters meet and develop relationships naturally during play? More importantly, do you feel you’d still be asking frequent, “and how does that make you feel?” questions “3 seasons in”? What I mean is, the group that really helped my RP, their “the <character name> who lives in my head would have done X. You had them do Y. Why was that? How do these characters differ?” questions usually became more infrequent as people got a better grasp on one another’s characters. Do you feel that this mechanic would similarly fall by the wayside, or that it would remain fresh in an ongoing campaign?

To be clear, asking for a summary was my decision, not the game's - most of the night had seen natural conversations between characters. This particular situation came late in the session and so I pushed for a summary in the interest of going to bed before midnight.

This is what one of the question-prompting moves looks like:

Comfort or Support
When you comfort or support another person, roll with Harmony (a stat). On a hit, they must decide if they open up to you. If they don’t, mark a condition and take +1 forward against them (your next roll involving this character will be easier); if they do, ask them any question. On a 10+, they can ask a question of you as well. Anyone who answers a question honestly may choose to clear a condition or 2-fatigue.

In the case above, it wasn't the characters offering an opportunity in natural conversation to get asked to make a roll because they were acting out Comfort or Support of each other; it was players wanting to clear some damage in case they had one more dangerous encounter before the session ended. It was offering a roleplaying prompt that we did not have time in the real world to pursue. so I asked for the summary.

I doubt that there would be as many backstory/interior drive questions in an extended campaign; and the conversations between the GM and the players/characters would likely have less overt discussion of how the characters understand their principles and relationships. I don't know how it would go in practice, but I do think you are right that there would be more plot discussion and less getting-to-know-you discussion. If healing moves like the above became overly disruptive, I'd hope that there are either alternatives in the full manual or else I would need to have a conversation with the players about how to clear damage without non-sequiturs.

In a d20, I could see using DM-to-character conversation as a way to spice up a scene - "Barbarian, what's the most interesting thing you see in the treasure room?" - or to better respond to player questions by adding "yes, and" or "no, but" to things like active Perception or Investigation rolls. In reflecting on my prior DMing work, I also feel like I could do more to bring character motivations into the spotlight - but exploring character inner motivations for me would be me going from "almost never" to "sometimes."

I like starting quickly in all my campaigns because I find undirected "you meet in a tavern" scenes head-smackingly boring - starting in media res is my default.

Avatar Legends actually does have a recommended process for establishing character relationships in a campaign by asking groups to outline the plot of their "pilot episode" - I went with the "trust" ploy instead because the starting adventure read like a pilot episode and also because I figured it would save time. If we return to these characters in a campaign, I will want to go by the book and fill that in.

[Razade]

Is this a standard feature of PbtA, or was it added to Avatar Legends? I’m interested in the… pacing of such questions, I suppose, for complex reasons that got eaten when I lost the first version of this post.

There are no standard features for PbtA because it's not really a system, it's a design philosophy. There are PbtA games with no dice rolling, with dice rolling, with fail forward incentives, with more traditional success metrics. Show me a "PbtA game" and I can point out four or five that break from it in at least two meaningful ways.

More to the question though, Avatar is designed by Magpie Games. They also made Masks: A New Generation, Urban Shadows, Root and a few other PbtA games and relationships and that sort of thing is a feature of their games. Masks, Cartel, Urban Shadows, Avatar and all their others all have very dynamic relationship questions and mechanics. Magpie is probably one of the better companies for PbtA games. Them and Evil Hat.

[Quertus]

@not_a_fish - thanks for the explanation. I hope explaining all that helped to look at the experience as much as it helped me understand.

I do have one little question, though:

I like starting quickly in all my campaigns because I find undirected "you meet in a tavern" scenes head-smackingly boring - starting in media res is my default.

To tease that apart, how would you feel about “none of the PCs know each other, but they’ve all been invited to a (100+ person) royal wedding, where the Prince has just been murdered”?

So, in media res of the action, but at the beginnings of their relationships with one another?

There are no standard features for PbtA because it's not really a system, it's a design philosophy. There are PbtA games with no dice rolling, with dice rolling, with fail forward incentives, with more traditional success metrics. Show me a "PbtA game" and I can point out four or five that break from it in at least two meaningful ways.

More to the question though, Avatar is designed by Magpie Games. They also made Masks: A New Generation, Urban Shadows, Root and a few other PbtA games and relationships and that sort of thing is a feature of their games. Masks, Cartel, Urban Shadows, Avatar and all their others all have very dynamic relationship questions and mechanics. Magpie is probably one of the better companies for PbtA games. Them and Evil Hat.

Ah, gotcha, thanks. That lets me know what to investigate moving forward.

[Notafish]

@not_a_fish
To tease that apart, how would you feel about “none of the PCs know each other, but they’ve all been invited to a (100+ person) royal wedding, where the Prince has just been murdered”?

So, in media res of the action, but at the beginnings of their relationships with one another?

I think that's a great scenario - the dramatic hook is clear, so the focus of the starting action is likely going to be focused on dealing with the murder, not on introductions (or, if the murder happens while the characters are meeting each other, the conversation will quickly shift).

It's sessions where the first scene requires several lvl 1 strangers to meet, introduce themselves, and agree to look for work together - with the DM introducing no reason for doing any of this - that bum me out.