My brothers and sisters in christ, to all the PbtA Devs, because we seem to be the only motherfuckers who do this, do not say "the playbooks are available online so we aren't putting them in the print book."
For the love of god, pay the extra 2 dollars a book to print them. Otherwise, in twenty years when every download link to them is gone forever because the internet is ephemeral, your game will be literally unplayable.
I swear to God, people forget how easily shit is lost on the internet. It boggles my brain when I was chatting with people and say they put loads of effort into a game but have no interest in a PDF for it and want to keep it a website.
Maybe it's because I was around when the internet started but your site will die one day, anything that can be saved to a harddrive or kept in print media will keep it alive when that day comes.
@masukomi I'd suggest giving Majestic Supheroic Roleplaying a shot then. It's just an SRD, but it's a stripped down version of Wild Hunt for superheroes that I made as kind of "oh crap, Magnificent Heroic Roleplaying, a retroclone, might have made people think Wild Hunt is a retroclone because it's based on Dicey Fate. Let me show an example of how it isn't."
@masukomi Let me know what you think. Since it is going to be the engine for a major game, it will be useful to have feedback.
Also, I'm planning to do something weird with Wild Hunt. I plan to put the setting into the creative commons sometime after release. Got to work that out with the publisher so don't take it as a definite. But, it'd be awesome to put the setting into the public domain and let other people make commercial works with it.
@masukomi It's worth noting, Wild Hunt doesn't use Zoichi dice. Its specifically for MSR because its a superhero game and I used it as a stand in for the high power levels of the genre.
And go wild. I don't mind. Be super detailed. It literally can only help. If you don't want to do it here, I can send you a discord invite.
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.
It's official, I've lost all patience with reading through "physics engine" #TTRPG rules at anything other than a high level. I get it, various things have different bonuses and penalties. I'll look it up if I ever find myself running such a game. Or wing it if I'm reasonably familiar with the game.