Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

This is a simple question. I want to run a campaign based off of those two series eventually, should I simulate bending as psionics, magic... What should I simulate it as?

Furthermore what tech level do these two fit into?

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

It's chi-based in the setting. I don't know if you want to change that. GURPS Thaumatology: Chinese Elemental Powers and GURPS Martial Arts can basically get you all the way there.

Avatar is mostly TL3+1 (for the Earth kingdom) with the fire nation at TL3+2 and the Water tribes at TL0+2.

Legend of Korra is fairly uniformly TL4+1. Republic City and other advanced areas are TL5+1.

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

Okay... I have access to neither of those books-

I have the basic books plus Psionics, Magic, Horror, Space, High-Tech, and Bio-tech.

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

There was a thread on this a while back:
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...ight=airbender

As for TL, in Airbender the Fire Nation seemed to have some TL 5 (even a little bit of 6 if you count the tanks) tech but used bending for combustion so maybe TL 4+1, but the other nations seemed more solidly TL 4. In Korra, Republic City seems to be TL 6 without the need for bending. No guns for anyone still, but odd electric weapons, right? Been a while since I watched.

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

These threads may be of interest.

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

This seems far more plausible for me to use, thanks.

And yeah, those tech levels make more sense in my book. Now I just have to make the maps of the local areas the player characters will start out in.

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

You are right 3+1 is probably better for the Earth Kingdom then a flat 4.

Now that I think about it maybe Korra is TL 5+1. I was going by the automobiles and moving pictures without bending when I said 6.

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

Then you should probably get them (both are available as W23 pdfs)? Running a martial arts centric campaign without Martial Arts may be difficult, unless you are willing to create your own rules for styles.

• Psionics is a third edition book and that system basically doesn't exist in 4e (the system in Psionic Powers is a spiritual successor, but mechanically very different).
• Magic isn't directly useful for Avatar unless you just treat "spells" as chi-abilities. Which is probably doable.
• Horror isn't going to be very useful, unless you are running a game in the same setting but a very different genre (though there are some horror-elements in the two cartoons like Blood-Bending).
• Space isn't going to useful at all. The genre advice is for the wrong genre, and you only have the one (basically Earth-like) planet.
• High-Tech will be useful for technology of the Fire Nation in the Aang era, and for everywhere in the Korra era.
• Bio-Tech might be useful for the hybrid animals, but probably not necessary.

You are probably going to want Powers, both for bending abilities (although not as much if you just use the system from Chinese Elemental Powers) and for spirits.

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

It sounds like this kind of campaign is out of my realm of plausibility then. I'm a new GM. But I suppose I'll safe this information for later when I feel more like I know what I'm doing.

I do like the suggestion regarding hybrid animals, and I WILL include blood-bending and some other horrific elements in the hands of my villains.

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

Really, with Chinese Elemental Powers and Martial Arts most of the really crunchy things about the setting are already available.
You might want to pick up a copy of How To Be A GURPS GM as well as try to run your first campaign with Action, Dungeon Fantasy or Monster Hunters. These are all great resources that would have saved me a lot of learning curve if they had existed back in the dim eighties when I started playing GURPS. I cannot recommend them enough to new GURPS GMs.

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

Sounds like what I really need to do is get the right books, then.

I'll work on that, but might have to develop my own setting rules if I can't get access to those things.

What about naming NPCs? What name generators and name meaning related resources can you guys recommend?

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

Again, all of these are available in perpetuity from Warehouse 23 as pdfs. With a few rare licensed exceptions (GURPS Vorkosigan Saga and the forthcoming GURPS Discworld) all books for GURPS 4th edition are either exclusively pdf, simultaneously published in hardback and pdf, or start as pdf only and get a softcover printing later. The deadtree books go out of print, but the pdfs are available forever.
It depends on the setting. I often just do some Google searches for period or culturally appropriate names.

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

This one :
http://tekeli.li/onomastikon/

But also:
http://www.ocean-of-storms.com/nameme/index.jsp
http://www.behindthename.com/random/

Hope this help

Celjabba

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

I'd look to GURPS Psionic Powers first. It might be a dud in one of several possible ways, but then again it might in fact serve the OP very well.

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

I don't see why you think that. Bending isn't much like psionics.

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

Bending is an inborn potential that is subsequently realized by learnable skill. GURPS Psionic Powers, and indeed psionics in most fiction, is exactly like that.

But sure, if Chinese Elemental Powers does that thing even better, then the OP should probably go for that. I don't have it, have very little clue how it does things. But I know GURPS Psionic Powers fits.

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

"Can only buy new abilities in a Power if you started with abilities or Talent from that power" isn't especially unique to psionics and isn't so revolutionary an idea that you can't just get it from the sentence I just wrote (look, I saved the OP $9.99!). The "skills" for Bending are martial arts not the Psionic skills in Psionic Powers.
It has chi-based elemental abilities that are very similar (if not identical to) bending unlike Psionic Powers which has psionic abilities that aren't based on classical Chinese elements and don't at all resemble any feat in either cartoon series.
Much more like the source material than Psionic Powers. How do you figure? What ability in Psionic Powers matches an Earth Bender pushing somebody with a slab of rock combined with a Tai-Chi push?

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

Chi is usually depicted as learnable, in fiction; even if some individuals are born with an increased aptitude for it (as represented by the two Chi Talents in GURPS Martial Arts), anyone can learn it.

Psionics, in fiction, is usually depicted as an innate gift that only a few are born with and then the rest can't participate at all. At most a few percent of the population, and more likely a few per million.

Psionic Powers doesn't have a lot of specific examples that fits Avatar, but it does show how to adapt GURPS Powers to fit various manifestations. Just focus on the physical examples, which IIRC are filed under Telekinesis and the like, rather than on the Telepathic stuff.

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

But really this bit is trivial. That's a sentence. There's no point in buying an entire book for one sentence.

That doesn't make any sense at all. Why use Psionic Powers if you are just going to have to use Powers to make up your own powers anyway? Why not use the system that already has all of the elemental martial arts chi-powers from Avatar in it more-or-less already?

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

Especial as the same line is in GURPS Powers

aslong long as you have the Power talent you have the excuse to buy other abilities in the power.

That how you model latent powers, buy the talent but not the abilities.

Re: Converting Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra setting to GURPS
 

Regarding the mini-mecha in TLOK, what TL would they be?

And I forget but what kind of engines do the cars have?

EDIT: Found out their gasoline powered.

So is the Avatar world by the TLOK-era a TL 6 world or more like a dieselpunk world or what?