On RPG Campaigns/Settings I Would Totally GM

[As-Yet-Nameless Mecha Setting]

My vision for this setting is as follows:

One part Dune (Space politics, feudal domains, long-standing rivalries, bloody plots in the night)

One part A Song of Ice and Fire (as above, but with less mysticism and even more GRIMDARK and trolling)

One part Gundam (for the giant robots, naturally)

I freely admit, this setting is totally just my fiction fetishes rolled into one sexy package full of gritty violence and PTSD.  I do love the idea of giant robots not just as weapons of war, but as ancestral symbols of authority (The Five Star Stories, Knight Titans in the old Warhammer 40,000 Epic fluff).


System of Choice: Probably Rogue Trader, either using the internal vehicle rules (in Into the Storm) or, more likely, doing a partial homebrew system for the mecha (possibly based on that of Adeptus Evangelion, though I'm not familiar enough with it to feel terribly comfortably to saying with any certainty that I like its mecha combat rules).  I have been meaning to take a closer look at Heavy Gear, and I could probably cull some fun rules and tables from Mekton, if it came down to it, even if I'd prefer not to grapple directly with its rather '80s rules.


Bleach

This may sound like a weird one because I frequently disparage Bleach, but roll with me for a second.  Bleach is a mediocre to bad story set in a really cool, fairly fleshed-out universe with reasonably consistent but not overly restrictive or arcane, or full of exceptions created purely for the purpose of creating exceptions (cough*NASU*cough) rules.

Besides that, for all the plot of Bleach lacks, its characters are pretty cool, in generally, and set some pretty creative precedents for powers.  The fact that Bleach would lend itself very well to an easy mission-based setup (Soul Society and the Thirteen Court-Guard Squads were basically built to provide structure for roving bands of adventuring PCs who hunt Hollows, deal with ghosts' problems, get up to shenanigans in the mortal realm, etc) is just gravy.  It's relatively low on my list of things I want to run, to be sure, but it's still nice to know it's out there as a possibility.

System of Choice: D&D 4th Edition, probably.  In Bleach, stuff pretty much just happens - martial techniques and magic usually work as intended (though they may not be effective against a given target, they WORK), so DH/RT/DW/BC's systems that operate around a fairly high failure percentage and spells going wildly and hilariously wrong run a bit counter to the setting.  What's more, zanpaktou limit levels (Shikai, Bankai), powerful kido (spells), and other techniques fit far better with the Encounter Power/Daily Power dynamic than DH/RT/DW/BC's high-failure-but-infinite-attempt* model for magic.

Finally, nobody ever dies in Bleach.  Just like in D&D 4e.

As an alternative, I would consider Deathwatch or Black Crusade (since Battle-Brothers and Heretics are far less subject to the high failure rate than Explorers and especially Acolytes), but for the above reasons, I think these systems fit a bit less well with the setting.  Interestingly, Orpheus could work very well for Bleach simply based on how much thematic (and thus mechanical) overlap there is between the two settings.  But Orpheus is kind of a rules trainwreck, and what's more, just doesn't have the raw breadth of content that I'd like to see for Bleach (which D&D 4e probably exemplifies best - each class has assloads of options for powers, further opened up by multiclassing, etc).  I'd consider looking at Geist: The Sin Eaters, the spiritual if not direct successor to Orpheus, but that said, I'm generally not a fan of the way World of Darkness handles dice, even if New WoD is less broken.

*(infinite until you get eaten by daemons)

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Despite lacking any real giant robots, Avatar is hands-down my favorite TV series, and I'd love to run a campaign set in the Avatar-verse.  As such, I think it hardly needs an explanation for why I want to run it.  That said, I will expound a bit more, but I'll keep it brief:

-Avatar's timeline is COLOSSAL, judging by how many Avatars statues were in the Eastern Air Temple.  What's more, the Avatar, the one of the few lore characters who spans this timeline can (and indeed, must, many, many times) die, meaning that nobody (excluding a few Spirits) is necessarily protected by causal plot armor.

-The series opens many doors but leaves many potential plotlines untapped.  In other words, free content for side-quests, if not the whole campaign.

-I want to make up my own horrible new abomination animals.  Shark-Bees, anyone?

(Edit: KillHammer beat me to this one, apparently.  I must grant props where props are due.)


System of Choice: This one would be a lot of work no matter how you slice it, because I like the idea of using D&D 4e's power scheme for Bending, but, unfortunately, because of the way powers are tied to classes, it would really mean creating at least four whole new classes (which would not be available on the Character Builder - no small downside), balancing them, creating feats and items to support them, etc.  Realistically, I would probably handle this by simply working with players to create appropriate powers for their characters as they needed them, but even that would mean a fair chunk of extra work that usually isn't necessary.

I would actually pretty strongly consider trying to find a new setting that had specific rules for custom-created powers if I had concrete plans to run an Avatar campaign, since this would allow me to leave new powers almost entirely in the hands of the players.

Ork Trek

Rogue Trader.  But everyone plays an Ork.

"Spoice.  Da foinal frontier.  Deez a' da voyagez of da Kill-Kroozah Dedkrusha. Da mission: to WAAAGH new woilds, an' ta seek out new loife and KRUMP IT GOOD!"

System of Choice: Rogue Trader.  Duh.


There are others, of course, but these are the ones I felt like about writing about right now.

-Stormshrug

On Being Totally Wrong

[Mild spoilers for Legend of Korra]

THAT'S IT!  EVERYBODY DIES!

Apparently, Bumi is not the norm.

In regards to age, that is.  I think we all knew that Bumi wasn't the norm in terms of just about everything already, though.

It'd have been interesting to see some of the original characters outside of flashbacks, but it's probably for the best that we're getting this spoiler so early on.  I'd hate to have expected them to show up and then have it not happen.  Looks like your wish is probably not going to be granted, though, Mr. Flask.  I'd still  be shocked if we don't get at *least* one flashback to the original cast.

-Stormshrug

On Recirculating Content

So, first of all, there's now an honest-to-God interview with Mike and Bryan.  Wall St Journal, you have been all over this one, haven't you?  What's more, the questions are actually poignant and demonstrate a surprising knowledge of the series.  I give props where props are due to Mr. Farley, who is either a fellow fan or an extremely dedicated researcher.

Anyway, I always feel a bit cheap when my blog post consists entirely of responding to content generated somewhere else.  That said, I'm probably going to keep making these posts because, let's be honest, they're easy, and I usually have stuff to say about what other people are saying.  I'll continue to try to have my own 'value added,' however.  Tell me if that's working for you or not.

So, what new information do we get from this Interview?

-Katara is Tenzin's mother.  Nobody is surprised.

-Being stuck in an iceberg DID "[burn] up some of [Aang's] extra Avatar time."  Lucky guess on my part, I suppose.

-New Republic City is based on Shanghai in the 1930s.  Gee, there was another series like that recently... whatever happened to that show, anyway.  (Fansubbers?  Care to tell us?)

-Legend of Korra is Mike and Bryan's response to the usual "Hey, this is making money, do another season" request that gets handed down by the network when something does well.  I would like to speak for the fandom when I say: THANK YOU for not tacking an unplanned season onto the end of A:TLA.  The temptation is obvious, and the results are rarely good.  More writers, producers, directors, etc. should be willing to take the risk of letting one story end to start another (even if the two are connected, as these two stories are).

Here's to hoping for the best for Legend of Korra!

-Stormshrug

On Cautious Optimism

Well, we've finally got an official announcement and a premise for Avatar: Legend of Korra (good job being on the ball Chris!  And Jesse!).  Bryke are notorious Comic-Con Trolls (Warning: Sh*ttty handcam incoming), and incidentally, Comic-Con 2010 begins tomorrow (with some opening previews tonight).

Interesting notes about the premise as reported by the Wall St. Journal (passed on via Last Airbender Fans, as the WSJ link they provide is dead, but I found a working one to the same article):

-It takes place 70 years after Avatar: The Last Airbender.
-It follows Korra, a waterbender and the new Avatar.
-One of the settings (there will probably be many - it's Avatar) is 'Republic City,' a steampunk metropolis melting pot of all four nations that has apparently either replaced or surpassed Ba Sing Se as the center of the Avatar world.
-Not everyone in said city likes benders.
-Aang had at least one child, named Tenzin, who is an Airbender.

If this info is correct (and not misreported, intentionally or otherwise), it means a few interesting things for the Avatar-verse.

-Aang died relatively young, by Avatar universe standards.  If Korra is 16 (the usual age for beginning the Avatar journey, and she probably isn't younger than 12), that means that Aang was only around 67 when he passed away.  Given that Bumi and Guru Pathik are both well over a century old at the end of the series and still going strong, and Avatar Kyoshi lived for over two centuries, we know that individuals in this universe *can* live an extremely long time by our standards.  We don't know the degree to which characters like Bumi and Guru Pathik are anomalous (and Kyoshi certainly was, though presumably the "Avatar Stuff" would apply to Aang).  Still, for an Avatar, it seems young.  Maybe being stuck in the iceberg did take a toll on Aang's body.  Maybe he was killed.  In any case, I suspect that there's something going on here.

-Any of the other children and teenagers from the original series could reasonably be alive.  They'd be pretty old at this point, admittedly (early to late 80s), but given what we've seen some Cool Old People do in the Avatar universe, all this means is that they'll be more badass than ever.

-Technology continued to progress after the war.  I doubt this surprises anybody, but while Avatar: The Last Airbender gave us a world on the edge of a technological explosion, here we see the results.  Nature versus unchecked industrialism is going to be even more of a core issue than it was before.  Hopefully, as before, both appreciation of the natural world and the utility of new technologies (when used responsibly) will be treated maturely.

-Bending is cultural/belief based, and so, as the influence of technology waxes, the prevalence of bending may wane.  The Earth Kingdom had the smallest percentage of benders in the original series (though, given its size, this said little about raw numbers), and was also the most industrialized and bureaucratized (if not the most technologically advanced) nation.  Air Nomads, on the other hand, typically eschewed worldly pursuits to focus on the spiritual, and as such, all Air Nomads were Airbenders.  It'll be interesting what, if anything, they do with this.  The mention of anti-bender politics also suggests that benders have become rarer - they were so integral to daily life virtually everywhere in the original series that it seems unlikely they would be oppressed, but if there were less benders and society did not rely on them as heavily, such sentiments could more easily take root.

-The Shipping Wars will finally be put to an EVEN MORE definitive end.  Probably.  Unless the series is so unimaginably trollish as not to tell us who ended up with whom via their shared offspring (and probably their offspring's offspring).  That said, I guarantee you that people will try to ressurect Zutara in some form with Korra and [most prominent Firebender within 10 years of her age's name goes here].  It's gonna happen.

Now that I've overanalyzed some tiny, insignificant scraps of data, I'll say that I am reserving full-on excitement until we've at least got a little more data.  You know, like the front half of Korra's character design.

This is what we're working with so far...

Source: Last Airbender Fans/WSJ

I have about as much faith in Mike and Bryan as it is possible for me to have in a (pair of) creator(s).  But not every work lives up to its predecessors, and I've been burned before.  I also wish that we could be more certain of Avatar: Legend of Korra reaching completion, but if it's airing on TV, we get no such guarantees.  While Avatar: The Last Airbender recieved very good ratings and reviews, it occasionally seemed to be on the verge of disappearance and possible cancellation, and five month periods with no word from Nickelodeon about the air date of finished episodes did not help in the least.  Of course, this is part of the gamble any show must make, but animation in the U.S. is a tough bracket to compete in.

This is a lot to worry about now, though.  For the moment, I'll be keeping my eyes on Comic-Con to see what spills out.

-Stormshrug

On Mediocrity

So, according to reviews, the new film inspired by Avatar: The Last Airbender is ANYTHING but mediocre.  It's running an 8% on Rotten Tomatoes as of this post (this may fluctuate a bit, of course).  To put an 8% in perspective, Manos the Hands of Fate has 0% on RT, but apparently even the Mystery Science Theater guys couldn't make that one watchable.  Friggin' Dragonball Evolution has a 13%, however.  So 8% really blows.

I am now going to say something radical.  This is a good thing.

Well, that's not quite true.  It's not a good thing.  But it's a less bad thing than a mediocre adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender would have been.  Here's my logic:

With our 20/20 hindsight from after this film, we can now see that M. Night Shamwow's glory days are beyond all reasonable likelihood behind him.  As such, we can say with a fair amount of certainty that he was not going to turn his career around with this film.  It was simply never in the cards that 'The Last Airbender' would be a good movie under his creative direction.  So, at "best," it would have been mediocre and forgettable instead of being a train wreck.

However, I don't want a mediocre ATLA movie.  I want a good ATLA movie.  And, I strongly suspect that the chances of a good live-action adaptation happening in the next decade or so are greatly improved by this recent turn of events.

You see, when a famous franchise has a movie and it's mediocre, it gets swept under the rug.  Think about 'Daredevil.'  'Daredevil' was a passable film, if not a good one.  It didn't do anything violently wrong, it just didn't really do anything right.  It pulled a 44% on RT, which isn't good, but isn't a total disaster.  And then the franchise sort of disappeared, and I guarantee we won't see another Daredevil film until the next superhero fad revival in 30 years or so.  I don't care, but fans of Daredevil kind of got the shaft.

Then look at the 'Hulk' movie from 2003.  It outscored Daredevil on RT, but it royally cocked up the Hulk's lore, alienating fans and performing poorly at the box office.  While it was not considered a terribly bad film by critics, the people who mattered - fans - reviled it.  And lo, only five years later, the franchise was rebooted with 'The Incredible Hulk.'  Which was a vast improvement in many regards, but still a mediocre film, so we won't be hearing from the Hulk for another 30 years or so.

Do I expect to see another Avatar: The Last Airbender film go into production in the next few months?  Of course not.  Hell, I don't think it's even that likely that it will go into production in the next decade.  But if 'The Last Airbender' had been mediocre, I think there would be NO possibility.  And if not a film, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw Nickelodeon push something else into production to reinvigorate the franchise.  Heck, maybe that's what the rumored 'Legend of Korra' project is.  'The Last Airbender' is not going to give the franchise the momentum it needs, but honestly, I now strongly suspect that it never could have anyway.  And with any luck, its pyre will create fertile soil where something better can take root.

Of course, this may only be wishful thinking on my part.  It's crossed my mind that this colossal failure could torpedo the franchise going forward.  But it seems that the vast majority of reviews, while negative on the film, were positive about the source material.

-Stormshrug