Accursed Tropes: The Last Airbender (Isekai; Fanfic Cliches infiltrating Canon, Lewascan gave me Permission)
You just died. It could be the cliche way of being hit by a truck, or you could have just fallen terminally ill. What is known is that you are a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and that’s why you were selected for this destiny.
Avatar Aang appears before you just as you are to proceed to the afterlife. He says that he has been replaced by an impostor, one born and given power by bad stories that have been told about him and his friends from your world, and thus he needs people from it to foil the impostor before the latter warps the world to his whims.
He does not know what the Impostor is, only that someone who knows what ‘Tropes’ are has unleashed him upon the world.
Looking at your souls, the Avatar tells you that you can live again; while he does not understand the ‘narrative energies’ the Impostor uses to warp the laws of his world, he does understand reincarnation.
So he offers you a deal: He has cracked his prison of hardened memes and materialized cliches long enough to reincarnate you to 12 to 14 years in the past, as infants with memories of your past lives and how ‘Canon’ was meant to go.
Your souls will also carry shards of his ‘Trope Prison’ with you, allowing you a small portion of the power Fake Aang uses. This will allow you to grow up with various powers and abilities that break the laws of Aang’s universe, the universe of Avatar: The Last Airbender; desperate times sometimes ask for equally desperate measures.
When you accept this, you awaken as a newborn, but realize… Now that you have your powers and memories, Real Aang, Avatar Aang, has no hold over you and saving the world is optional.
Should you still do it anyway?
What You need to Know
You, the players, are looking at a Mass-Isekai RP, as a group of reincarnated people who may or may not have forgotten, or disregarded, what Avatar Aang’s spirit said; that his world is no longer the ‘Canon’ one but rather infected by ‘Bad Fanfics’ rife with ‘exploitable tropes and fanon’.
The tone, despite the seemingly funny premise, is meant to be serious, maybe even dark and edgy at times, because a lot of bad fanfic is generally that. The cliches and tropes have realistic consequences, and even cringe can physically hurt you. So take the world seriously and assume logical consequences if you push too hard, too early.
We are operating in a ‘partial sandbox’; you can treat it as an open world if you want, but you can also follow the main plot, which involves linking up with the others and foiling Impostor Aang. Like in Lewas’ original Accursed Tropes RP, you are given a lot more control over the world than you might expect. This means you can make and control NPCs and be the direct cause of major events (within a certain reason).
Of course, there are limits; GMs control Fire Lord Ozai, other important villains, and most named characters, but you can ask for temporary permission to control them from all three GMs (me, Lewas, Danyel).
If you do not know the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom, don't feel afraid to join anyway. Playing a reincarnate without metaknowledge or localized savvy is perfectly viable too and adds some extra flavor to the cast. This RP concept welcomes all comers, so don't be afraid to ask questions if you need any quick or dirty lore drops to help participate.
If all that sounds like a good deal to you, here's some more details on how I hope for this to work.
As far as character sheets go, these may start off fairly basic, but they should be expected to be updated many times as things progress, accounting for any developments to the characters brought about by the IC. I've done my best to cover what should be necessary without bogging things down, but if there's anything in this template you think I've missed that would be particularly important, let me know. I'm open to potential improvements.
(This next section may be subject to change, as I'm still trying to strike a particular balance of progression that hopefully avoids any real focus on "stats" or anything really "gamer-adjacent". So, I might not be fully happy with this yet.)