Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game’s Kickstarter campaign is now live
Magpie Games’ official adaptation of the adored animated series comes to the tabletop.
Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game launched its crowdfunding campaign on August 3rd, supporting an official adaptation of the widely popular Nickelodeon cartoon series about saving the world from an imperial menace and learning much about friendship and empathy along the way.
Magpie Games announced it had secured the rights to bring the world of Avatar the Last Airbender and its sequel series, The Legend of Korra, to the tabletop back in February. Magpie CEO Mark Diaz Truman said at the time, “The stories of Avatar are so moving for us because they are joyous and heartbreaking. We’re incredibly excited to bring the tales of brave benders and loyal friendships to tabletop roleplaying games.”
Truman and designer James Mendez Hodes later told Dicebreaker that the story-focused RPG would use the widely popular Powered by the Apocalypse system, giving players control of the narrative and the tools to embody a character defined beyond just their capacity to bend elements. Magpie games has used the same system in several of their past games - Root: The Roleplaying Game and Masks: A New Generation among them - and felt confident in their ability to translate the show’s core themes into a physical game.
In July, the team released a quickplay ruleset available to the public for free, containing the basic rules for character creation, understanding both roleplay and combat, and a sample adventure for beginner parties. It outlined the principles of play - understanding a conflicted world, deciding one’s place within society, using power for the good of all - and detailed the interesting addition of a Balance track, which can be tugged by both the player character and NPCs between two ideals close to their heart.
As for bending, Truman and the team have continuously reiterated that they wanted the elemental bending system to be vital to many aspects of the RPG, thus binding it solely to combat mechanics felt like cutting out the cultural and personal significance. Whether a character can bend or prefers to use technology or weapons, they will still have access to a range of choices in and out of combat. Though, those who do can pursue advanced techniques and seek master benders during their adventures.
The Kickstarter campaign for Avatar Legends, which runs through September 2nd, managed to reach its funding goal of $50,000 (£35,900) within minutes and is currently (August 3rd) sitting just shy of $600,000 (£431,000). Backers can choose to pledge for a digital or physical version of the core rulebook, which will contain everything a group needs to quest across its five eras of time. The digital version runs $20 (£14), while the physical version costs $50 (£36).
Magpie currently estimates the books will ship in February of next year, but ongoing global freight delays make hard dates difficult to forecast.