Avatar: The Last Airbender’s RPG expands with a new Uncle Iroh book

Magpie Games’ Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game will give players and game masterss the tools they need to build century-spanning campaigns with its latest expansion, Uncle Iroh’s Adventure Guide.

Any Avatar fan knows how much of the series rested on revelations of the past — from Aang’s lives as past Avatars coming back to haunt him, to how the Fire Lord’s family line was stacked with generational trauma. Avatar: The Legend of Korra continued that theme, showing how the actions of the Gaang affected the next generation of Benders and their own Avatar.

Magpie Games’ new Avatar Legends sourcebook, due out this fall, aims to facilitate the same kind of multi-generational storytelling at the home table. The book will include new mechanics, new NPC legends, new playbooks — like the Bound, a character sworn to fulfill a certain duty — and the new setting of Jasmine Island, the place of origin of Uncle Iroh’s favorite tea variety.

“These adventures hold to the truth that the events of the past inform and shape the heroes of the present,” said Magpie Games in a news release, “encouraging players to follow the legacy of their characters across multiple eras of the island’s history.” Jasmine Island, as described by Uncle Iroh, “provides a backdrop for the adventures that span all five eras, from the Kyoshi Era to the Korra Era.”

Magpie Games co-owner Mark Truman told Polygon via email that Jasmine Island is “a unique locale that can act as a backdrop for individual adventures in an existing campaign or as part of a five adventure cycle that takes players all the way from the Kyoshi Era to the Korra Era as the island changes and evolves. This new style of play — generational play — is all about watching your character’s actions impact the future; just as Team Aang passed on their legacy to Tenzin, Lin, Korra, and others, so too can your group pass their legacy from one era to the next.”

And just as previous Avatar Legends sourcebooks have featured “legends,” pages that dive into characters from the wider Avatar world (including major characters of the animated series), Uncle Iroh’s Adventure Guide will have its own dives into Avatar’s wider setting. “We featured General Iroh in the core book, but he will be appearing in full here as Uncle Iroh in the post-war Aang Era, and we’re going to have full write ups for both Princess Zeisan and her betrothed, Monk Khandro,” two characters introduced in the Avatar Legends core book as contemporaries of Fire Lord Sozin.

Uncle Iroh’s Adventure Guide will also feature a legend page exploration of Lu Ten, Iroh’s late son, whose death forms the basis of one of Avatar: The Last Airbender’s most beloved and tear-jerking installments.

“That main focus of Uncle Iroh’s Adventure Guide, however, is on Jasmine Island itself,” Truman said, with four new playbooks for players to pick from at character creation that feature older heroes. “One of the playbooks we’re most excited about is The Broken, an older hero who endured a terrible tragedy in their past, but has now been called forward to heal themselves and fight for what’s right.”

It might seem odd for TTRPG fans to get hyped up about playing a geriatric adventurer, but with the Avatar setting’s emphasis on old folks who can kick your ass, and young heroes who grow into such, it fits right in. Uncle Iroh’s Adventure Guide will be released this September.