Games

Avatar Legends TTRPG Perfect While Waiting on Saber's Last Airbender Game

Published

4 weeks ago

October 28, 2024

Children of the 2000s have been rejoicing these past few weeks, as it’s been revealed that Saber Interactive, the developer behind games like Space Marine 2, will be throwing its weight behind an all-new Avatar: The Last Airbender game. Very little information has been revealed about the project, but a proper AAA Avatar game is long overdue, so its very existence is enough to get players excited.

One of the more interesting bits of information regarding this upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender game is its setting: it will reportedly take place thousands of years before the events of the original TV show, totally untethered from characters like Aang and Fire Lord Ozai. If one were to speculate about this creative choice, it could be posited that the setting is conducive to player-oriented storytelling, as there could be far more freedom in terms of choice and personalization. In other words, playing as an Avatar thousands of years in the past may allow players to create their own character, or even choose from which nation they hail. Alas, it will be a while until such speculation is confirmed or subverted, but if any Avatar fans feel intrigued by that possible level of freedom, there may be a great gaming experience that’s already available.

How Critical Role’s Daggerheart TTRPG Compares to Dungeons & Dragons

Table of Contents

The upcoming Daggerheart TTRPG from the Critical Role team has a DnD foundation, but it diverges in several key ways that cement its unique identity.

Avatar Legends: The RPG Could Hold Fans Over Until the Avatar Video Game

Avatar Legends Offers a Unique Experience Within the World of The Last Airbender

Although it’s obviously a very different experience compared to a big-budget Avatar video game, the Avatar Legends tabletop RPG can be a novel and enjoyable adventure for fans of the show. It draws deeply from the IP’s lore, allowing players to start a campaign in a number of different eras, including the eras that Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra take place during. Players don’t actually fill the role of an Avatar themselves; they create their own character, selecting from broad archetypes like bender, warrior, and merchant. Naturally, these choices inform how each game unfolds.

The sense of freedom inherent in TTRPGs actually allows Avatar Legends to be more varied and expressive than Saber’s eventual Avatar game: rather than being pigeonholed into a specific niche or character mold, players can decide for themselves what kind of person they want to be within the fictional setting. Moreover, the very nature of pen-and-paper RPGs means that Avatar Legends has a theoretically infinite number of stories buried within it, waiting to be teased out by players and game-masters. Complex mechanics, stunning visuals, and immersive atmosphere though it may lack, it’s a perfect fit for fans who want to inhabit the world of Avatar.

What Sets Avatar Legends Apart From Other TTRPGs

Avatar Legends adheres to many of the same principles as contemporary Dungeons & Dragons and other leading TTRPGs, though recontextualized a bit to better fit with the thematic framing of the source material. For example, rather than having a bevy of traditional RPG stats like charisma and wisdom, Avatar Legends players rely on just four:

Creativity
Focus
Harmony
Passion

In practice, these function much like the aforementioned traditional TTRPG stats, adding or subtracting from a player’s rolls and, by extension, shaping the outcomes of various events. But their connection to the themes of Avatar means that they have a fundamental impact on the role-playing experience, as players must embody a very different sort of character than, say, a typical mage in D&D. The game’s version of moral alignment offers a similar benefit, as players have to worry about dichotomies like progress versus tradition rather than traditional spectrums like chaotic and lawful, further deepening a sense of immersion.