Avatar Legends, the crowd-funded tabletop RPG set in the universe of Avatar: The Last Airbender, will no longer ship in early 2022.
Announced via the game's official Kickstarter page, developer Magpie Games confirmed that the product will now launch in summer 2022. According to the post released by the studio, a supply chain shortage is responsible for the delay. "After a lot of digging and searching, we are sad to say that simply due to the volume of printed materials, we need to delay when you will be receiving the physical copies of the game," said Magpie Games. "It turns out that printing over 200,000 books—plus hundreds of thousands of journals, cards, and dice—will take much longer than usual due to cardboard and paper shortages. But even without those shortages, it’s just a very very high volume of books! Even if our printers manufacture ten thousand or more books a week… it would still take months to print all these books!"
While never explicitly stated, it's possible that the sheer success of Avatar Legends' crowdfunding campaign took Magpie Games by surprise. The RPG managed to raise a total of $9,535,317 USD, greatly surpassing its initial goal of $50,000 USD and going on to set the record for Kickstarter's highest funded role-playing game.
"We apologize for the shipping delay. We know it’s not ideal, and we’re so sad we can’t make magic happen," continued Magpie Games. "Sometimes journeys take longer than you planned them to, and while we know you’re all amazing, we want you to know we’re so grateful for all your patience and kindness as we’ve been figuring out how best to get you the books as quickly as we can." While the physical copies of the game will only ship in mid-2022, the complete digital version of the rulebook will be available to all backers in February 2022.
Built on the Powered by the Apocalypse system, Avatar Legends allows fans to tell and play through their own adventures set within the beloved universe. Game Masters can set their game in a variety of periods throughout the show's timeline, including Kyoshi's Era, Aang's Era and Korra's Era, while players can assume the role of daring adventures inspired by character archetypes from the TV series. The system allows fans to create element benders or focus their strengths on standard combat abilities, such as martial arts or swordplay.
Source: Kickstarter