I've run the official Avatar TRPG, Avatar Legends, a few times.
Overall, I think it's good. It's basic moves and playbook moves do a good job of reinforcing the themes of Avatar and I am glad they added a combat system since a lot of people were worried about that with PBTA.
The principle system can be overwhelming for the GM as they have to keep track of a lot of different principles when managing a scene. The mechanic comes from Masks from the same game devs. But it works better there because everyone shares the same Labels (instead of a unique one per playbook).
That makes it a lot easier to keep track of. I just have to remember the 6 that affect everyone rather than everyone having their own dueling sets. In a group of 5, that's 10 principles to keep track of. AND you have to challenge their principles or else they get a free XP at session end.
So, you just literally HAVE to do it once per session, which is a lot to ask.
My second complain is that combat resolves all at once. It removes a layer of tactical combat that the action-based initiative (your choice of action determines reveal order) could provide that could be meaningful.
It feels that one point it DID matter the order of resolution and that was a source of strategy. At some point, it got removed but they kept the order. And it frankly makes me wonder why they even bothered with the exchange system order if everything resolves at once.
Still, it's a solid system and I enjoy playing it. While I do wonder if Cortex Prime might be a better fit and I even made my own FATE hack back in the day (and people have been making tons of Avatar hacks for years), I think it's a good game and a lot of fun.
@rivetgeek part of me agrees, but part of me worries it would just turn out like Masters of the Universe. Like, I can only speculate what caused Fandom to up and leave (probably what happened to Marvel Heroic Roleplaying where it did well for a TRPG but that wasn't good enough for the licensor), but I feel we were only destined to get one game out of them. And once they left the licenses vanished. If Cortex got Avatar, it would a world where only one (DP or Avatar) got made.
@Covok Fandom was all in for Cortex until the E-suite decided they were getting out of TTRPGs, likely when WotC began making noises about going digital. Odds are DDB was going to be the foundation, in terms of experience, if not infrastructure, for Cortex's online offerings. There was no reason for Fandom to hold on to Cortex. Negotiations for selling D&D Beyond would have taken *months, during which. *Fandom stopped most active support of Cortex. After the DDB sale, they stopped altogether.
@Covok Fandom, in the initial phase before they decided to sell DDB (and to be clear, WotC pursued that, not the other way around - they were looking to take down what might have been their biggest digital competition by buying them out), would 100% have produced both games. And we'd still have social media outreach, and actual plays, and Primed by Cortex. I'd say there would have been a chance - albeit a slim one - that had Fandom had both properties they would have told WotC to stuff it.
@Covok But regardless it was just bad timing for Fandom to get into the TTRPG space by buying Cortex in the first place. The same waves they hoped to ride were already being ridden by WotC. That's business unfortunately. They made a move to break into a new market, it didn't go as planned, and they got out.
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