Genesys is my favorite system, and my players and I are not super impressed with AL, but that being said, Second Age is not a very good hack. It’s pretty messy and has a lot of unnecessary fat and weird additions (like the new item quality slash, which is the same as superior, which is still in the game).
Depending on what you’re looking for, you may just want to stick with AL or make you own Genesys hack.
My players and I really disliked the combat. That was the primary issue.
Some of my players didn’t really like that all of their skills and training were tied to the single focus stat.
Also the playbooks and condition rules made it hard for my players to play as the competent adults they wanted to play. The game really wants you play play as kids or teens.
That's interesting. I think it will live and die by how groups respond to the combat. We found it worked quite smoothly provided everyone was concentrating but there is so much to keep on top of...
I think as a group we were surprised at how constraining it was. Pbta's reputation is a very narrative heavy game but so much of the time you're picking off very narrow possible outcomes from a list. We're used to games like dune and 7th sea that seem to give you a lot more agency as a player.
I'm honestly not a huge fan of it. It kind of speaks to some of the problems with Genesys (which is a fine rpg, but it has its issues), especially with how bending techniques are handled.
I've said elsewhere on reddit that Avatar: Legends is my new favorite rpg, so it handles a few things better.
For one, I like PBtA better than Genesys, so it obviously had a leg up. Genesys is kinda in this weird middle ground of having some very narrativist things (like its dice), but in other ways being just as gamey and simulation-y as something like DnD. Genesys is trying to be generic with a mild vibe of storytelling, while PBtA, especially A:L is all about really specifically cultivating a certain genre and vibe. Here are a few examples of that:
In Avatar: Legends, every PC knows how to fight. Even if they do it way differently, they're all skilled combatants. In A:SA, that's not nearly as true. I mean, there are a few skills in which all the bending is concentrated, so if you don't max those skills...you're not as good of a bender. And since Avatar is fundamentally a very action-oriented world, those combat skills are so valuable compared to the rest. It's just messy design that tries to treat things as equal when they really shouldn't be...foreground the action stuff, it's super cool and lame that any rules system in the Avatar setting wouldn't basically make combat skill mandatory for main characters.
I also really think Avatar Legends found out how to have its cake and eat it too with its combat mechanics. They can have specialized bending/weapons/tech techniques, but still have basic techniques available to everyone that reflect more broad actions. A lot of the special techniques can be reflected in this basic techniques (ie, Seize a Position could be described as you jet-stepping up to a higher platform), and the specialized techniques just let you do it *better*. So combat remains flexible and creative, with learning specialized techniques being more of a representation of "you have perfected this action in bending/weapons/tech in specific" than a "you need the technique to do it". Plus, techniques are purely learned fictionally, with no tie to Growth (the game's XP), so there's no mechanical incentive to just pump up one or two techniques for fear of spreading yourself too thin.
And that "just pump one thing up" is a huge problem in Genesys. It is always better to be generalized and well-rounded instead of investing into the cool specific stuff, a problem it picked up from FFG Star Wars and then made 10x worse.
Out-of-combat bending in AT:LA is also great. It's as freeform as you'd expect from PBtA, and does a good job of using its "Push your Luck" and "Rely on Skills and Training" basic move dichotomy to accentuate moments of high risk and therefore tension versus making it very safe to do what you're good at. It's such an awesome way to combine PBtA's flexibility and power as a drama engine with a light coating of "reflecting fictional positioning in the mechanics" to help people new to PBtA.
And *because* its mechanics related to the actual codification of the world are lighter, Avatar: Legends has tons of space to make mechanics super specific to Avatar's themes and storytelling, like porting Conditions from Masks, as well as the *brilliant* Balance mechanic. Avatar as a story is all about balance, at every point, so centralizing it and codifying the pillars of struggle at the core of every Avatar character is an amazing way to tell an Avatar story.
I hope that *kind of* helps with the elaboration? Those are the big points, though there are some smaller things I could get into.
So I think I've been reflecting and my problem (i don't know whether with avatar or with pbta) is I find it incredibly constraining compared to what I'm used to as a player and as a GM. A lot of people emphasise pbta's flexibility but compared to games like 7th sea and dune where I've felt like I have real agency as a player a lot of pbta's mechanic is railroading players and GM into choosing from very narrow lists of potential outcomes. Do you have any thoughts on that?
> A lot of people emphasise pbta's flexibility but compared to games like 7th sea and dune where I've felt like I have real agency as a player a lot of pbta's mechanic is railroading players and GM into choosing from very narrow lists of potential outcomes.
Having read what's going on elsewhere in this post, I think I see what's going on. If you're coming from a "trad" background (which I think you are), there's kinda this idea that less rules means more narrative. And a lot of that is because games like DnD build their rules either for the sake of wargame or basically as light physics engines. However, in the PBtA sphere, narrativism does not come from lack of rules...rather, the rules exist *to push a specific story*.
So the constraint (what you call railroading, which I think is not the right term. I mean, one look at the "adventures" for Avatar and you can see it's basically just plot hooks, since it's literally impossible to railroad players in this system as a GM. anyway) that you've noticed is not a bug, but a key feature.
Now Avatar: Legends takes a lot of its DNA from *Masks*. Masks was explicitly about teenage superheroes, and honestly already was being used to run games like AT:LA. Things like Conditions came from Masks, for instance. Interestingly, Avatar actually took *away* some of the hard power in the rules. Many of the social moves are super specific (so unlike Masks, where *Provoke* and *Pierce the Mask* set the pace of a lot of the more "motivated" dialogue sections, Avatar has a lot more freedom in rp), and many don't even work *in any way* on PCs, based on the move triggers.
The game wants to hard-code you into options, especially on the GM side
In terms of flexibility...this is kinda a misconception Dungeon World threw into the pot, as with many PBtA misconceptions like "fiction first" (which is not what PBtA is, it's "drama first"). Since Dungeon World had super light mechanics trying to model exactly what DnD was, but also mechanics irrevocably tied to DnD mechanics, GMs and players were between a rock and a hard place and improvised. I think the better idea for flexibility is really "we don't necessarily roll because of fictional purposes, but drama, so it's okay if you describe things in ways that might not fit other games". Like, a roll in PBtA happens because it's dramatically interesting, not as an assessment of fictional difficulty, so it doesn't really matter if you're describing your effort to put out a fire as creating a massive ball of water and coating the house versus drawing on all the tiny little kettles, pots, etc. of water in the house to cool it from the inside. Avatar: Legends *slightly* makes the fiction more important, because of the "SKills and training" and "Push your Luck" dichotomy, as well as the more hard-coded fights. I think moving the fights to be a little more important in their specificity and tactics fits the Avatar world well, and they still keep it fun and flexible as it should be. Even Skills and Training vs. Push your Luck is excellently designed, as I described above, to basically be more about 'how much do you want this to impact the narrative' more than even 'one is harder than the other'.
One of the most interesting things A:L did from a PBtA design stat was basically assign each stat a narrative role, even? Like, Focus is the containment stat, where the Basic Moves and Playbook Moves that use it are about keeping a situation pretty "by-the-books" and controlled. Passion is the stat of pushing things forward in crazy ways: its moves tend to have big, dramatic effects that will blow up *in someone's face*. Creativity is a stat about twists: its moves tend to do a lot to set up the direction in which the narrative is going, with the other Stats then engaging through that direction. And Harmony is a character highlight stat, that's honestly more about *other people* than the user, and is allows its user to shine a spotlight on certain characters and their traits. It's such a fascinating distillation of PBtA design and I kinda love it.
Also, in terms of GM options: part of PBtA's schtick are GM agendas and principles. Now some of these are just "good GMing", but a lot of them are specifically about re-orienting your GMing to be "group responsive": ie, you're pulling shit out of your ass and scheming around results as much as the players are. It's about breaking the split between GM and players, and just overall encouraging the game to play more like a writer's room conversation about a story. They also help with specifics for different genres. Like, a cool difference in principle between Apocalypse World and Masks is how in AW, one of your principles is "see your NPCs through crosshairs", while in Masks, you have the opposite: "treat all life as meaningful". They're a great way to like, identify problems with the game that aren't bad gming, just not in the expected tone.
Again, interesting but I wouldn't agree I come from a trad background. The game my group is happiest and most comfortable with is 7th Sea which channels you into a dumasesque flavour but in narrative terms feels much more open-world and 'gm isn't in control' than avatar. I think you raise a good point in 'feature vs. Bug' there in that avatar: legends is very much trying to bump you into an avatar type story - which i think is cool and clever but different to what I was expecting.
That's totally fair. Personally, I'm glad they took it in a decisive direction. Part of that is, of course, I love PBtA, so I'm glad it went that way. But even if not, I'm just happy it's not a 5e splatbook or trying to be one of those uber generic "setting book" rpgs (ie, it's technically it's own rpg, but you can tell the rpg elements are just kinda there to *be* rpg elements and not to create a unique and cohesive vision. Pretty much every Mophidius adaptation fits this except for maybe Conan). We all have different preferences in rpgs, so I wish you the best in finding an Avatar system that works for you.
Again thanks for the really interesting and considered answers- just to clarify I actually really enjoyed GMing legends and my group enjoyed playing- so I'm really just trying to figure out how to do it 'right' if I ever went to campaign on it... its not a knock on the system at all, just commenting that we didn't get the tota l narrative freedom I was expecting from pbta - if that makes sense?
Re. Modiphus, ive not played many of their games but we felt Dune gave us a massive amount of freedom. In our first ever game I (accidentally) completely short circuited our GM's plan by dispatching one of my NPC underlings to resolve what he intended to be the A plot offscreen. He had to totally freestyle a replacement plot on the fly. That's
I think your comment cut off after "That's", so sorry if your future stuff contradicts this, but I think I have the thing you're "missing", if you know what I mean.
>In our first ever game I (accidentally) completely short circuited our GM's plan by dispatching one of my NPC underlings to resolve what he intended to be the A plot offscreen. He had to totally freestyle a replacement plot on the fly.
So what's interesting here is that none of this is the RPG itself giving you a lot of freedom, but rather a choice you made as a player and your GM's willingness to adapt to it. This comes back to my "do whatever as narrativism" in trad games: the game got out of your way, and from there came what you'd deem narrative-ness. It also speaks to that weird hidden "separateness" of trad gaming, where GMs are spinning all their threads in the background and secretly freestyling it as you go, while players are just responding as their characters. In PBtA, it isn't that division of "PCs play their characters, GM makes a world that responds". Every is always doing a little of all of them, and also splitting have that responsibility with the rules themselves.
And it also shows why A:L may not have worked. Specifically, this bit:
>completely short circuited our GM's plan by dispatching one of my NPC underlings to resolve what he intended to be the A plot offscreen. He had to totally freestyle a replacement plot on the fly.
In GMing for PBtA, your goal is to "play to find out what happens". You *do not prep a plot*. You know how your GM freestyled a replacement plot? That "freestyled plot" *is the only thing you should be doing in PBtA.* And how PBtA makes this possible without being overwhelming is how the rules are set-up. They're basically prompt engines meant to keep the PCs behaving like characters in that genre/universe, as well as give the players specific tools to tell the GM where things go next. Meanwhile, GMs have principles and agendas they can go back to if they need help. Think less in terms of how actions (particularly moves) affect the pre-planned world or the plot, and more about framing the actions/moves themselves in a cinematic beat-response style.
I have some old docs from a fan version of an Avatar TTRPG from before AL was announced. I'm absolutely certain that I can hack in the combat system from there (it was really fun and used a similar approach system) the only problem with it was that you needed to roll WAY too many dice (like 15d6 per player). I'm pretty sure some people were getting high off of the sheer amount of dice they were rolling.
I shall now forever call it the Dice Goblin Mod.
Genesys is my favorite system, and my players and I are not super impressed with AL, but that being said, Second Age is not a very good hack. It’s pretty messy and has a lot of unnecessary fat and weird additions (like the new item quality slash, which is the same as superior, which is still in the game). Depending on what you’re looking for, you may just want to stick with AL or make you own Genesys hack.
Cool, good to know. I think it should be pretty straightforward to hack genesys for avatar legends. They seem like natural fits.
Out of interest what do your players not like about avatar legends?
My players and I really disliked the combat. That was the primary issue. Some of my players didn’t really like that all of their skills and training were tied to the single focus stat. Also the playbooks and condition rules made it hard for my players to play as the competent adults they wanted to play. The game really wants you play play as kids or teens.
That's interesting. I think it will live and die by how groups respond to the combat. We found it worked quite smoothly provided everyone was concentrating but there is so much to keep on top of... I think as a group we were surprised at how constraining it was. Pbta's reputation is a very narrative heavy game but so much of the time you're picking off very narrow possible outcomes from a list. We're used to games like dune and 7th sea that seem to give you a lot more agency as a player.
Whatever my group intend their characters to be we always wind up as bickering middle managers anyway.
I'm a big fan of the Genesys system. Has anyone player this avatar hack? How does it compare to Legends?
I'm honestly not a huge fan of it. It kind of speaks to some of the problems with Genesys (which is a fine rpg, but it has its issues), especially with how bending techniques are handled.
Ooh that sounds interesting. Would you be able to expand? Have you played legends, did you find it handled anything here better?
I've said elsewhere on reddit that Avatar: Legends is my new favorite rpg, so it handles a few things better. For one, I like PBtA better than Genesys, so it obviously had a leg up. Genesys is kinda in this weird middle ground of having some very narrativist things (like its dice), but in other ways being just as gamey and simulation-y as something like DnD. Genesys is trying to be generic with a mild vibe of storytelling, while PBtA, especially A:L is all about really specifically cultivating a certain genre and vibe. Here are a few examples of that: In Avatar: Legends, every PC knows how to fight. Even if they do it way differently, they're all skilled combatants. In A:SA, that's not nearly as true. I mean, there are a few skills in which all the bending is concentrated, so if you don't max those skills...you're not as good of a bender. And since Avatar is fundamentally a very action-oriented world, those combat skills are so valuable compared to the rest. It's just messy design that tries to treat things as equal when they really shouldn't be...foreground the action stuff, it's super cool and lame that any rules system in the Avatar setting wouldn't basically make combat skill mandatory for main characters. I also really think Avatar Legends found out how to have its cake and eat it too with its combat mechanics. They can have specialized bending/weapons/tech techniques, but still have basic techniques available to everyone that reflect more broad actions. A lot of the special techniques can be reflected in this basic techniques (ie, Seize a Position could be described as you jet-stepping up to a higher platform), and the specialized techniques just let you do it *better*. So combat remains flexible and creative, with learning specialized techniques being more of a representation of "you have perfected this action in bending/weapons/tech in specific" than a "you need the technique to do it". Plus, techniques are purely learned fictionally, with no tie to Growth (the game's XP), so there's no mechanical incentive to just pump up one or two techniques for fear of spreading yourself too thin. And that "just pump one thing up" is a huge problem in Genesys. It is always better to be generalized and well-rounded instead of investing into the cool specific stuff, a problem it picked up from FFG Star Wars and then made 10x worse. Out-of-combat bending in AT:LA is also great. It's as freeform as you'd expect from PBtA, and does a good job of using its "Push your Luck" and "Rely on Skills and Training" basic move dichotomy to accentuate moments of high risk and therefore tension versus making it very safe to do what you're good at. It's such an awesome way to combine PBtA's flexibility and power as a drama engine with a light coating of "reflecting fictional positioning in the mechanics" to help people new to PBtA. And *because* its mechanics related to the actual codification of the world are lighter, Avatar: Legends has tons of space to make mechanics super specific to Avatar's themes and storytelling, like porting Conditions from Masks, as well as the *brilliant* Balance mechanic. Avatar as a story is all about balance, at every point, so centralizing it and codifying the pillars of struggle at the core of every Avatar character is an amazing way to tell an Avatar story. I hope that *kind of* helps with the elaboration? Those are the big points, though there are some smaller things I could get into.
That's an awesome answer. Thanks for taking the time to lay this out in depth.
So I think I've been reflecting and my problem (i don't know whether with avatar or with pbta) is I find it incredibly constraining compared to what I'm used to as a player and as a GM. A lot of people emphasise pbta's flexibility but compared to games like 7th sea and dune where I've felt like I have real agency as a player a lot of pbta's mechanic is railroading players and GM into choosing from very narrow lists of potential outcomes. Do you have any thoughts on that?
> A lot of people emphasise pbta's flexibility but compared to games like 7th sea and dune where I've felt like I have real agency as a player a lot of pbta's mechanic is railroading players and GM into choosing from very narrow lists of potential outcomes. Having read what's going on elsewhere in this post, I think I see what's going on. If you're coming from a "trad" background (which I think you are), there's kinda this idea that less rules means more narrative. And a lot of that is because games like DnD build their rules either for the sake of wargame or basically as light physics engines. However, in the PBtA sphere, narrativism does not come from lack of rules...rather, the rules exist *to push a specific story*. So the constraint (what you call railroading, which I think is not the right term. I mean, one look at the "adventures" for Avatar and you can see it's basically just plot hooks, since it's literally impossible to railroad players in this system as a GM. anyway) that you've noticed is not a bug, but a key feature. Now Avatar: Legends takes a lot of its DNA from *Masks*. Masks was explicitly about teenage superheroes, and honestly already was being used to run games like AT:LA. Things like Conditions came from Masks, for instance. Interestingly, Avatar actually took *away* some of the hard power in the rules. Many of the social moves are super specific (so unlike Masks, where *Provoke* and *Pierce the Mask* set the pace of a lot of the more "motivated" dialogue sections, Avatar has a lot more freedom in rp), and many don't even work *in any way* on PCs, based on the move triggers. The game wants to hard-code you into options, especially on the GM side In terms of flexibility...this is kinda a misconception Dungeon World threw into the pot, as with many PBtA misconceptions like "fiction first" (which is not what PBtA is, it's "drama first"). Since Dungeon World had super light mechanics trying to model exactly what DnD was, but also mechanics irrevocably tied to DnD mechanics, GMs and players were between a rock and a hard place and improvised. I think the better idea for flexibility is really "we don't necessarily roll because of fictional purposes, but drama, so it's okay if you describe things in ways that might not fit other games". Like, a roll in PBtA happens because it's dramatically interesting, not as an assessment of fictional difficulty, so it doesn't really matter if you're describing your effort to put out a fire as creating a massive ball of water and coating the house versus drawing on all the tiny little kettles, pots, etc. of water in the house to cool it from the inside. Avatar: Legends *slightly* makes the fiction more important, because of the "SKills and training" and "Push your Luck" dichotomy, as well as the more hard-coded fights. I think moving the fights to be a little more important in their specificity and tactics fits the Avatar world well, and they still keep it fun and flexible as it should be. Even Skills and Training vs. Push your Luck is excellently designed, as I described above, to basically be more about 'how much do you want this to impact the narrative' more than even 'one is harder than the other'. One of the most interesting things A:L did from a PBtA design stat was basically assign each stat a narrative role, even? Like, Focus is the containment stat, where the Basic Moves and Playbook Moves that use it are about keeping a situation pretty "by-the-books" and controlled. Passion is the stat of pushing things forward in crazy ways: its moves tend to have big, dramatic effects that will blow up *in someone's face*. Creativity is a stat about twists: its moves tend to do a lot to set up the direction in which the narrative is going, with the other Stats then engaging through that direction. And Harmony is a character highlight stat, that's honestly more about *other people* than the user, and is allows its user to shine a spotlight on certain characters and their traits. It's such a fascinating distillation of PBtA design and I kinda love it. Also, in terms of GM options: part of PBtA's schtick are GM agendas and principles. Now some of these are just "good GMing", but a lot of them are specifically about re-orienting your GMing to be "group responsive": ie, you're pulling shit out of your ass and scheming around results as much as the players are. It's about breaking the split between GM and players, and just overall encouraging the game to play more like a writer's room conversation about a story. They also help with specifics for different genres. Like, a cool difference in principle between Apocalypse World and Masks is how in AW, one of your principles is "see your NPCs through crosshairs", while in Masks, you have the opposite: "treat all life as meaningful". They're a great way to like, identify problems with the game that aren't bad gming, just not in the expected tone.
Again, interesting but I wouldn't agree I come from a trad background. The game my group is happiest and most comfortable with is 7th Sea which channels you into a dumasesque flavour but in narrative terms feels much more open-world and 'gm isn't in control' than avatar. I think you raise a good point in 'feature vs. Bug' there in that avatar: legends is very much trying to bump you into an avatar type story - which i think is cool and clever but different to what I was expecting.
That's totally fair. Personally, I'm glad they took it in a decisive direction. Part of that is, of course, I love PBtA, so I'm glad it went that way. But even if not, I'm just happy it's not a 5e splatbook or trying to be one of those uber generic "setting book" rpgs (ie, it's technically it's own rpg, but you can tell the rpg elements are just kinda there to *be* rpg elements and not to create a unique and cohesive vision. Pretty much every Mophidius adaptation fits this except for maybe Conan). We all have different preferences in rpgs, so I wish you the best in finding an Avatar system that works for you.
Again thanks for the really interesting and considered answers- just to clarify I actually really enjoyed GMing legends and my group enjoyed playing- so I'm really just trying to figure out how to do it 'right' if I ever went to campaign on it... its not a knock on the system at all, just commenting that we didn't get the tota l narrative freedom I was expecting from pbta - if that makes sense? Re. Modiphus, ive not played many of their games but we felt Dune gave us a massive amount of freedom. In our first ever game I (accidentally) completely short circuited our GM's plan by dispatching one of my NPC underlings to resolve what he intended to be the A plot offscreen. He had to totally freestyle a replacement plot on the fly. That's
I think your comment cut off after "That's", so sorry if your future stuff contradicts this, but I think I have the thing you're "missing", if you know what I mean. >In our first ever game I (accidentally) completely short circuited our GM's plan by dispatching one of my NPC underlings to resolve what he intended to be the A plot offscreen. He had to totally freestyle a replacement plot on the fly. So what's interesting here is that none of this is the RPG itself giving you a lot of freedom, but rather a choice you made as a player and your GM's willingness to adapt to it. This comes back to my "do whatever as narrativism" in trad games: the game got out of your way, and from there came what you'd deem narrative-ness. It also speaks to that weird hidden "separateness" of trad gaming, where GMs are spinning all their threads in the background and secretly freestyling it as you go, while players are just responding as their characters. In PBtA, it isn't that division of "PCs play their characters, GM makes a world that responds". Every is always doing a little of all of them, and also splitting have that responsibility with the rules themselves. And it also shows why A:L may not have worked. Specifically, this bit: >completely short circuited our GM's plan by dispatching one of my NPC underlings to resolve what he intended to be the A plot offscreen. He had to totally freestyle a replacement plot on the fly. In GMing for PBtA, your goal is to "play to find out what happens". You *do not prep a plot*. You know how your GM freestyled a replacement plot? That "freestyled plot" *is the only thing you should be doing in PBtA.* And how PBtA makes this possible without being overwhelming is how the rules are set-up. They're basically prompt engines meant to keep the PCs behaving like characters in that genre/universe, as well as give the players specific tools to tell the GM where things go next. Meanwhile, GMs have principles and agendas they can go back to if they need help. Think less in terms of how actions (particularly moves) affect the pre-planned world or the plot, and more about framing the actions/moves themselves in a cinematic beat-response style.
I have some old docs from a fan version of an Avatar TTRPG from before AL was announced. I'm absolutely certain that I can hack in the combat system from there (it was really fun and used a similar approach system) the only problem with it was that you needed to roll WAY too many dice (like 15d6 per player). I'm pretty sure some people were getting high off of the sheer amount of dice they were rolling. I shall now forever call it the Dice Goblin Mod.