AtLA RPGs and other acronyms

[deird1]

This will probably be of very little interest to anyone who isn't into tabletop roleplaying...


I've been trying to figure out how the heck to turn AtLA into an RPG. The big thing getting in my way is the element-bending.

So, here's what I've come up with.

Element Bending in RPGs
There are (as always) three standard physical stats:
1) Strength
2) Dexterity
3) Constitution

In other words, how much stuff you can interact with, how skillfully you can interact with it, and how long you can keep up the interaction.

Paired up with this are the mental stats:
1) Intelligence
2) Perception
3) Willpower

Otherwise known as: how much you can mentally process, how skillfully you can process it, and how long you can keep up the mentally processes.

...this is all pretty standard, as far as RPGs go.


Now, take element bending. We've got:
1) Scope
2) Agility
3) Endurance

These being: how much water you can bend, how skillfully you can bend it, and how long you can keep bending for.

So, in total, there are:
1) Strength - - Intelligence - - Scope
2) Dexterity - - Perception - - Agility
3) Constitution - - Willpower - - Endurance


Generally speaking, a specific bending move will require one of these stats more than the others. For instance, if you are picking up a lake and throwing it at someone, it'll rely more on scope - accuracy isn't much of a consideration, and presumably you won't need to throw a second lake...

So, with any instance of bending, you figure out whether you can do the action based on all three stats; and then figure out how well it's worked based on the most applicable stat:
"You want to spend the next fifteen minutes picking up boulders and throwing them at Aang's head? Okay. You'll need a medium endurance, high scope (based on the boulder size), and medium agility." *rolls* "Okay. So you can manage it - and you've got three success levels. Hmm. Well, throwing things at Aang is more about accuracy than anything else, so let's add the success levels to your agility stat to see how many boulders hit him."


Of course, there's also the matter of specific bending forms - like the waterwhip.

Here's how that works:
- Katara has been practising the waterwhip pretty diligently, so she has 6 points in the waterwhip skill.
- Aang got bored and went off to airbend marbles halfway through the practise session. He only has 2 points in the waterwhip skill.

Because Katara has been getting so good at waterwhipping, she can do some pretty fancy waterwhips. For instance, she could pick up an entire well's-worth of water, and make a huge whip.
Or she could make her whip curve right round Zuko's head and steal his lunch from behind.
Or she could just do standard waterwhips, over and over again, all afternoon.
The choice is pretty much up to her.

When Katara wants to do a waterwhip, she has 6 extra skill points to play with - so, what she can do is dump them on top of her stats...

For instance, supposing Katara has:
scope - 5
agility - 7
endurance - 4

That's her base level for standard waterbending. But, if she's doing a waterwhip, she can add extra points on top of her stats, like so:
scope - 7
agility - 9
endurance - 6

Or, she could decide that, because she's wanting to grab Zuko's lunch, agility is really the most important stat here, and chuck all her points into that:
scope - 5
agility - 13
endurance - 4
...and she'll suddenly have AWESOME AGILITY POWAAS - but almost no endurance.



That's what I've come up with so far.


Questions? Comments?

Comments

[rahirah]

Hmmm. Combat system?

[deird1]

Getting there...

[redsixwing]

Hm. I like what you have here - the triple stat nicely mirrors the physical and mental triple stats, and I'm assuming you're in a d20 system, so they would add bonuses to rolls the same way?

Also, here are some edge cases! I find it's often useful to test the weird stuff, because it'll show up a flaw in the system faster than running a hundred iterations of standard actions.

Can people voluntarily use less than their total stat? Say, Zuko wants to light a candle. Since he isn't feeling like melting the thing into a puddle, he wants to make a tiny, focused flame instead of a raging wall of fire.

Can Zuko use his scope at 1, and his full agility, to light it with barely a flicker of waste heat?

Iroh knows he's made someone very angry and is ready to channel lightning. How does he distribute his skill points to avoid being fried?

Toph wants to throw a pebble. Can she scale up the power behind a given pebble without scaling up the size of the thing she's tossing? Or, likewise, can she gently float a boulder in Sokka's general direction before laying it down - lots of mass, but not a lot of speed?

Do non-benders have null stats, zero stats, some other way of representing they're not benders?

When character-building, how does a non-bender maintain about the same level of buttkicking as a bender? Or do you just not have mixed groups? Or is Sokka's player (for example) just aware that, and OK with, the benders being stronger in many situations?

...

I've kicked around the idea of an AtlA RPG using Exalted as a base, considering that Exalted already has (in the form of the Terrestrials) elemental 'bending' in a way. Remove the wood element, scale their physical power back down to the human norm, and there you have it... even the Avatar could be covered by a tweak of the Eclipse-caste charm rules (and again, scaling back the physical power to the human norm so you don't end up with one Solar in a world full of heroic mortals.) There's even spirits already! But it seems like that's not the system you're going for. It'd be a pretty heavy modification, but I think anything would be. ^^

[deird1]

Hm. I like what you have here - the triple stat nicely mirrors the physical and mental triple stats, and I'm assuming you're in a d20 system, so they would add bonuses to rolls the same way?

Not in a d20 system (D&D prejudiced me against it) but, yes, they'd all add bonuses the same way.


*makes notes on edge cases* Thanks!

When character-building, how does a non-bender maintain about the same level of buttkicking as a bender? Or do you just not have mixed groups? Or is Sokka's player (for example) just aware that, and OK with, the benders being stronger in many situations?

I'm thinking of probably giving the non-benders more skill points to spend...

[redsixwing]

I like that, as someone's said below. :)

[xlivvielockex.livejournal.com]

Have you checked around to see if someone has already modded it for like GURPS or anything? Someone might have already done the work for you. Or it might already exist. I mean, they have a Buffy and Angel RPG with corebooks and expansions. :)

[deird1]

Not that I can find. (And I'm amazed no-one has. Generally there's at least something out there.)

I mean, they have a Buffy and Angel RPG with corebooks and expansions. :)

Yep. *hugs my BtVS book*

[(Anonymous)]

This is awesome so far!

I would think non-bending fighting uses non-bending stats. You lose out on some of the neat stuff bending lets you do, but since you don't have to spend points on bending, you get more to spend on skills.

This would explain (for example) why Sokka is both a good swordfighter and a tactician and good with a boomerang and (insert lengthy list of Sokka's skills here), because he didn't have to spend points on bending.

[deird1]

You lose out on some of the neat stuff bending lets you do, but since you don't have to spend points on bending, you get more to spend on skills.

*nods* That would work well, I think.

[(Anonymous)]

By the way, the comment suggesting a way to do non-bending characters a few minutes ago was me.

--Froborr

[unjapanologist]

Oh, interesting.

Katara has been practising the waterwhip pretty diligently, so she has 6 points in the waterwhip skill.

The only tabletop RPGs I've ever played at length were old White Wolf stuff, and distributing points over stats for specific skills doesn't sound familiar to me. So just a quick question -would a character need to draw up a list of their skill levels for every single bending move they know? Or is listing a bending move as a specific skill with extra points only necessary for a character's specialty moves, with success in "regular" bending moves determined only by the standard stats?

[deird1]

Or is listing a bending move as a specific skill with extra points only necessary for a character's specialty moves, with success in "regular" bending moves determined only by the standard stats?

That's the one, yes. :)

[(Anonymous)]

Will your stats take the Martial Arts requirement in? Or will that be something looser?

[deird1]

Well, given that bending martial arts aren't used to actually hit people (in the way that martial arts in our world are), I'm not categorising them in the same way. Basically - being good at bending makes you good at bending; if you want to be good at hand-to-hand combat, you'll need to practise that instead. There's no real crossover.