Role Playing in Avatar.

Saxony · Post by **Saxony** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 5:55 am

Virgil, what's heart bending? Never heard of it.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:03 am

Of course the show has the scope for a spirit war. There's four episodes left in season 1. That's one for korra's friends to escape from jail, one for Korra to meditate and then return to republic city, and a two-part throwdown with amon and/or tarrlok's men. Then there's a whole second season with 14 episodes to fill. They have to introduce something big and new to fill it, and I'd wager good money that it has something to do with the spirit world.

Personally, I'm wondering if Amon hasn't somehow severed the spirit world from the material world entirely. That's why Korra can't use the Avatar state, Aang's spirit feels trapped, the philosophical schools of bending are in decline, and we haven't seen a single spirit or religious official yet.

K · Post by K » Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:04 am

Saxony wrote:Virgil, what's heart bending? Never heard of it.

It's the thing that Aang gets from the Lion-Turtle and uses to take the Firelord's power. It was never given a name in the series, but it's generally called heart-bending, energy-bending, or chi-bending.

I like heart-bending because it sounds like Captain Planet.

K · Post by K » Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:16 am

Orion wrote:Actually, I think Mako and Bolin are strong evidence in FAVOR of elemental affinity being genetic rather than cultural.

Then why are Tenzen and all his kids air-benders? They should have at least one water-bender since their grandmother was one of the most powerful water benders ever and their mother was a not a bender.

I think the bender/non-bender conflict is just going to set the stage for the big reveal that anyone can be a bender, maybe even going so far as to say that anyone can master multiple bending styles.

That, or we'll find out that Amon is also transferring bending power and the Fire kid of Team Avatar was actually given his parent's killer's fire-bending as some kind of justice.

Either way, I expect that Amon will end up as some kind of anti-Avatar who also has all the bending styles, either by learning them or stealing them with heart-bending.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 10:57 am

Mako and Bolin have different colored eyes. Katara was able to identify the bending affinity of Tenzin's next kid while it was still in the womb. bending affinity is obviously genetic. There are circumstances where people of mixed ancestry come out as one flavor of bender or neither: Mako, Bolin, and Asami are of mixed Fire/Earth heritage and are respective Fire, Earth, and Non-Bender; Kya, Bumi, and Tenzin are of mixed Air/Water heritage and are respectively a Water, Non-, and Air Bender.

There are even examples of benders being born to non-Bender parents. Toph's parents don't seem to be benders, for example. However, there are no instances of someone being born to a family of benders and being a different type of bender from their parents. It's like blood types or something. If you're Type A, you can't give the genes for B to your kids, even if one of your parents was B.

This is useful for an RPG, because it means you don't have to solve the multicaster problem. Water benders can just have level based water magic, and it doesn't have to mix well with Earth magic because you can't multiclass them.

-Username17

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 12:31 pm

The writers of the show have outright stated in various interviews that it's a combination of genetics and spirituality. Notice that the air benders were an entire culture of monks and had a 100% bender-rate? I think genetics determine flavour of bending and spirituality of your environment determine the chances of being a bender.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 2:13 pm

K wrote:
Saxony wrote:Virgil, what's heart bending? Never heard of it.

It's the thing that Aang gets from the Lion-Turtle and uses to take the Firelord's power. It was never given a name in the series, but it's generally called heart-bending, energy-bending, or chi-bending.

I like heart-bending because it sounds like Captain Planet.

I call it bending-bending.

Saxony · Post by **Saxony** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 3:19 pm

Thanks for the explanation, K. I thought it weird Amon had the avatar power to take away bending...

K wrote: That, or we'll find out that Amon is also transferring bending power and the Fire kid of Team Avatar was actually given his parent's killer's fire-bending as some kind of justice.

You know, I'm not sure the fire bender and earth bender pro benders are actually siblings? Just siblings in the sense that they grew up together and call each other siblings. They look quite different.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 3:28 pm

It's not actually an avatar power. The lion-turtle told Aang that "before people bent the elements, they bent the energy inside themselves." or something to that effect. So it used to be a learnable art for people generally. People probably assumed it was an Avatar power because only Aang knew how to do it and he didn't tell them otherwise.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 3:28 pm

Saxony wrote:You know, I'm not sure the fire bender and earth bender pro benders are actually siblings? Just siblings in the sense that they grew up together and call each other siblings. They look quite different.

Word of the writers is that they are in fact siblings from 'a multicultural family.'

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 4:12 pm

Orion wrote:It's not actually an avatar power. The lion-turtle told Aang that "before people bent the elements, they bent the energy inside themselves." or something to that effect. So it used to be a learnable art for people generally. People probably assumed it was an Avatar power because only Aang knew how to do it and he didn't tell them otherwise.

That doesn't state that everyone could bend, just that bending-bending came before element-bending. I do wonder what else bending-bending can do, because otherwise it would've been a useless trait before elemental bending; "Behold, I have taken away your ability to take away the same ability" Super powered thumb wars?

Quantumboost · Post by **Quantumboost** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 4:38 pm

virgil wrote:I do wonder what else bending-bending can do, because otherwise it would've been a useless trait before elemental bending; "Behold, I have taken away your ability to take away the same ability" Super powered thumb wars?

My money's on chi blasts and other such shenanigans.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 5:15 pm

I gathered that it could be used for self-enhancement, healing, and mind destruction. Not too confident on that, but apparently using it on an unwilling subject was really dangerous in some manner.

Taishan · Post by **Taishan** » Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:57 pm

Another option is that bending is metaphysical. After all, the Avatar can bend all 4 elements, and is a member of a particular elemental segment and culture.

Training for an element may also be important; if you had two siblings, one with the potential to be a water bender and the other to be an airbender but they were born in the Fire Nation or Earth Kingdom, they'd never learn how to bend. This potential could be genetic or metaphysical, we just don't know yet.

It would be interesting if Amon was the result of a backlash of the spirits to having a slacker avatar for 100 years. Too many benders for 100 years not paying respects to the spirits or something.

Taishan · Post by **Taishan** » Mon Jun 18, 2012 8:42 pm

A crazy theory just struck me. What if Amon is an Avatar of the Faceless One?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Jun 18, 2012 8:49 pm

Taishan wrote:A crazy theory just struck me. What if Amon is an Avatar of the Faceless One?

???

Crazy as in, 1) Everyone already has presented theories that Amon is in some way connected to the faceless one and you are behind? Or 2) He's not an Avatar of the Faceless One because gods don't have Avatars, there is just the one Avatar, and gods/spirits just either show up or tell other people to do things.

Taishan · Post by **Taishan** » Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:01 pm

My theory is different in that I'm positing that he's not a mentor or a loser in a deal with the Face-Stealer but an actual AVATAR of the Face-Stealer. Which as far as I can tell. And no, there's not just one avatar, since the moon and ocean both had avatars, ie, physical embodiments of the spirits.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:11 pm

Taishan wrote:My theory is different in that I'm positing that he's not a mentor or a loser in a deal with the Face-Stealer but an actual AVATAR of the Face-Stealer. Which as far as I can tell. And no, there's not just one avatar, since the moon and ocean both had avatars, ie, physical embodiments of the spirits.

No, there is just the one avatar, because avatar is an in universe term, and this is exactly as shitty as talking about how D&D gods aren't really gods because they didn't create the universe.

And a) No previous theory contends that he is either a mentor or a loser in a deal with the Face Stealer. b) The fish are not avatars of the gods. Those are just gods. When you kill a physical embodiment of a god, they don't fucking die, and yet that's clearly what happened. So no, you are wrong, as I said, gods either show up themselves, or get someone else to do it.

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Tue Jun 19, 2012 7:19 am

Discussion of the Legend of Korra aside, if we're seriously considering making some set of rules, there seems to be an issue that we need to address, namely how abstract we want to make the powers- on the one hand we can have the powers be stuff like, or even far more discrete than, "water whip" or "throw boulder" or it could be stuff like "ranged attack" or "immobilize." On the one hand, having lots of discrete powers is cool as it allows for tactical choice through having many mechanically discrete options, but can also lead to ability bloat, which results in both decision paralysis and unwieldiness when doing a WoF thing, given that you might have twenty separate options on a giant table. On the other hand, abstraction might lead to having a boring character sheet, a lack of choice, and not being able to advance in an interesting way.

I'm not really sure where the good point is, and I'm pretty sure there's some third option that renders this a non-issue, but I'm not sure what it is. Any thoughts?

Taishan · Post by **Taishan** » Tue Jun 19, 2012 4:37 pm

Kaelik wrote: And a) No previous theory contends that he is either a mentor or a loser in a deal with the Face Stealer.

K wrote:It'd be kind of cool if the spiritual mentor turned out to be that Face-stealer guy mentioned in the last episode of the first series. The reveal when Amon showed that he didn't have a face would be awesome.

Kaelik wrote: b) The fish are not avatars of the gods. Those are just gods. When you kill a physical embodiment of a god, they don't fucking die, and yet that's clearly what happened. So no, you are wrong, as I said, gods either show up themselves, or get someone else to do it.

I don't know why you keep using the term 'god' when the show uses the word 'spirit' and they obviously mean it in an animistic way, much like Japan is the Land of 8 Million Gods. According to the show, when the spirits manifest in the physical world and take a mortal form, they can die. This is how Zhao can make the moon disappear by killing the koi that is the mortal form of Tui, the spirit of the moon. But Yue also had part of the moon spirit and was able to revive the koi and bring back the moon by becoming fully spirit. Would it fit your terminology better if I said Amon was the mortal form of Koh?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jun 19, 2012 5:21 pm

Just calling it right now: Amon is going to try to take Korra's bending away and she is going to turn it back on him. The Phoenix King almost did exactly that to Ang at the end of the first season, so the seed of this possibility is already planted.

-Username17

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Tue Jun 19, 2012 6:10 pm

So, is this connectible with this in some useful way?

EDIT: fixed url tag

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Jun 19, 2012 6:48 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Just calling it right now: Amon is going to try to take Korra's bending away and she is going to turn it back on him. The Phoenix King almost did exactly that to Ang at the end of the first season, so the seed of this possibility is already planted.
-Username17

If you're only getting around to predicting that NOWthen you're a cautious man

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Tue Jun 19, 2012 8:09 pm

I for one would think it would be more interesting for her to go ahead and lose her powers. I think the journey to get them back or to learn spirit bending in order to get them back would be awesome.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Jun 19, 2012 10:30 pm

Taishan wrote:
Kaelik wrote: And a) No previous theory contends that he is either a mentor or a loser in a deal with the Face Stealer.

K wrote:It'd be kind of cool if the spiritual mentor turned out to be that Face-stealer guy mentioned in the last episode of the first series. The reveal when Amon showed that he didn't have a face would be awesome.

?? So... You are stupid? That example neither involves Amon being a mentor to the Face Stealer or the loser in a deal with him.

Taishan wrote:I don't know why you keep using the term 'god' when the show uses the word 'spirit' and they obviously mean it in an animistic way, much like Japan is the Land of 8 Million Gods. According to the show, when the spirits manifest in the physical world and take a mortal form, they can die. This is how Zhao can make the moon disappear by killing the koi that is the mortal form of Tui, the spirit of the moon. But Yue also had part of the moon spirit and was able to revive the koi and bring back the moon by becoming fully spirit. Would it fit your terminology better if I said Amon was the mortal form of Koh?

No, that wouldn't fit either, because see, in my terminology, we don't make up really complex ways of saying is.

See, this is one thing you could say that I wouldn't have given you this shit: "Amon is the Face Stealer."

But when you want to go on and on about something trying to find every other way of saying it, I'm going to keep giving you shit about why.

Maybe Korra is the person who current time states representation of the Avatar.

Or you know, maybe she just is the Avatar.