Over the last three weeks, I’ve run my local gaming group through my second convention module. I say second, but I never actually got a chance to run the first.

The mod takes place fifty years after Avatar: The Last Airbender and twenty years before Legend of Korra. Two of the PCs and one prominent NPC are the children of the main characters in A:TLA, and several characters in the mod go on to be part of TLoK.

The module went great! I used D&D 4e for the ruleset, and used all the “standard” expectations for building the mechanics behind a first level “delve” style adventure. The pregenerated PCs are available as Encounters-style character cards and have outlines for both roleplaying and tactical suggestions.

Introduction
The situation is that the chief of police in Republic City – Toph Bei Fong – has just been murdered! Her only child (gender determined by the airbender’s player) Lin has been arrested by Toph’s second-in-command – Penga (who is introduced in the comic series “The Lost Adventures”) – for poisoning Toph. There are spoilers ahead, so if you’re planning on playing it, maybe take a step back.

First Skill Challenge
The party’s first stop was the police station, where the desk clerk was reluctant to let anyone speak with the prisoner. The highly charismatic firebender won over the clerk and got two people allowed in. With this group, the earthbender decided he was close friends with the male Lin, so with the female airbender (who was in a relationship with Lin) talked to Lin (locked in a wooden cell, since he’s a powerful metalbender). A short, harried conversation came to pass, interrupted by an angry Penga.

The group searched Toph’s house, talked with her servants, and investigated the missing police officers (who had been on guard at Toph’s house when the murder occurred). One of the officers lived with a Foggy Swamp tribe waterbender and a questionably moraled fire colony firebender. After an amusing conversation with the Foggy Swamp guy (involving bribing with bowls of udon) the party learned that the firebender was involved with triad gang activity, most likely including the murder of Toph, and would be holding a meeting at a construction site that night. A common motif during the investigation was a lotus with only three petals, and the petals dyed red, blue, and brown.

First Encounter
They managed to get the drop on the gangsters at the construction site (having succeeded at the investigation skill challenge) and the waterbender and Kyoshi warrior dominated this particular fight, with a minion sweep and a strong forward offensive. Despite my having put scaffolding, rebar pits, standing water pools, and rubble piles throughout the site, the fight was mostly confined to one corner of the map. And it was a pushover, but even-level encounters should be, right?

The defeated thugs revealed the location of their boss’ hideout in exchange for reduced sentences. Which is made interesting by the revelation that Penga was the one who, along with their boss Lightning Bolt Zolt, orchestrated the entire poisoning and frame job to expand the activities of the new Triple-Threat Triad. Which is what the players guessed at about minute two.

Second Encounter
Zolt was found hiding in the warehouse district with two of his flunkies. The airbender dropped her daily while flying between the storage racks, which tied up the two flunkies for the whole encounter, leaving Zolt to the rest of the party. The waterbender totally coup-de-graced one flunky because he’d dropped her lynx-wolf twice. Zolt let out that Penga was on to them, and was at that moment making her escape on the Ba Sing Se Express train.

Second Skill Challenge
Here’s where the party surprised me. I had a train chase all thought up. Very steam-punk, high tension, pulp action hero. But… they just went and got Appa. Gives me foresight for the future though, since it would totally make canon sense for Appa to be too old, and his mate to be pregnant with a litter. Giving me my pulp action scene.

Anyway, a skill challenge later, and Appa swooped down to the speeding train. Penga and her sergeant flung metal scraps at the party, but the benders had a plan! The waterbender condensed the engine, slowing the train down – the firebender superheated the traincar floor – the earthbender created a speed bump – all without spending powers! Just creative use of skills! (every bender had a skill related to their bending)

Final Encounter
After flinging the earthbender onto the engine car and pulling the waterbending police medic off the train, the airbender balanced on the corner of the trailing car. The superheated car floor resulted in an exodus of most of the opponents, who surrounded the earthbender. Between gobs of resist all, warden defenses, and constant marking, he kept them occupied as the rest of the party swarmed Penga.

Penga’s crazy Earthquake attack kept damaging/proning/dazing the heroes, but the fugitive police chief, surrounded at 4 HP, surrendered, ending the manhunt and the adventure.

Retrospective
The initial skill challenge took a whole four hour session. Part of this was introducing all but one of the players to the mechanics of the game, but most of it was awesome roleplay as the party combed the city. That’s going to have to be tightened up for convention play. I had a very free-form “lead the party from Lin to construction site encounter” directive that probably contributed to the length, and can be reduced significantly with some clever railroading or improving early information releases.

The new 4e players loved the character cards! They all fell into battle easily and skillfully. In fact, they tore apart my encounters, which probably tells me more about my tactics than theirs. The players also all really identified with their chosen pregen, especially I think the airbender, who had I believe the highest Avatar knowledge to draw on.

Even with Stephen Chast’s help on the encounters, I need to optimize those a little better. Having only three targets in the middle encounter, that don’t synergize well, made it difficult to challenge the party.

On the other hand, the feedback from the players indicated general satisfaction and awesomeness for gaming in a world that wasn’t “D&D” but used the familiar d20 rules (despite a lack of 4e experience, the group has been playing a 3.5e game for a year together). Even with completely Encounters-legal pregens, the players all felt like they were playing benders in the Avatar world, and not an adventuring band in Dungeons and Dragons.

The Adventure
I’ll be writing up the adventure itself here on this blog, probably in the next week or so. I have the MasterPlan file available for download, but it’s still the rough outline with unoptimized encounters.