In a quiet meadow in a grassy field, Ram strolls through his land. He mighty goat legs pound against the Earth, because he felt like they should. He flexes his neck muscles, giving the group of female goats a better look at his mighty 4 foot horns. They merely giggled and hoped to the other side of the meadow.
—Ramthundar, first post of the RP
Avatar Adventures is a permanently open forum-based role-playing game, which can be located here
. It was the second ever RP on the Escapist forums to reach 100 pages, falling just a week behind the first. It is currently ongoing as of 2019.
One of the interesting things about the AA, as it is known, is that players control the character depicted in their forum avatar as their main player character. If this avatar happens to be a pre-existing fictional character, the player may control them as such, whereas if it's an original character the player may choose abilities to bestow upon them from their own imagination. Due to the fact that roughly half the characters are already well-known in popular culture, the AA doesn't require character sheets. Character control happens a lot, so in a way it's more like a story told by numerous people than a traditional RP.
There have been over 60 contributors to the story, so it might not surprise you to learn that there are numerous chaarcters.
Avatar Adventures provides examples of:
- Adaptation Decay: Death the Kid, Grimmjow Jaegerjaques and Sho Minamimoto are The Ditz, The Chew Toy and a walking talking Cluster F-Bomb respectively in this game. This is essentially assumed of any fictional character that pops into the RP.
- All Just a Dream: Phil's intro to the 1st restart has him waking up in a hospital from a coma-induced dream once the 1st universe was destroyed.Phil: But... I thought I was in an adventure! With a Ram! And a Ninja Monkey!
Nurse: Your brain must've been active the whole time. It was probably just one long dream. - All Up to You: During the Dragon Arc, the Air Dragon sucked all the oxygen out of the air around the heroes; they all started to suffocate, except for Death, who didn't have to breathe. Thus, it was all up to him to defeat the gaseous mini-boss.
- And I Must Scream: At the start of the current timeline, Sam G decided he wanted a new main character. The only problem was, his current character (Death the Kid) was immortal, so killing him off wasn't exactly easy. In the end, Sam decided to finish off one of his oldest and most beloved RP characters by sealing him at the end of the second AA universe where he was doomed to experience the end of time and be removed from existence completely. Sam claims to have actually shed a tear having done this.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Despite having originally been a new guy in the villain's group, Xandus quickly climbed up the pecking order by beating the crap out of everything and being generally awesome.
- Back from the Dead:
- Livingness the Youth's power is actually the ability to raise the dead; during the Oblivion Arc, the immortal Carmine kills everyone except Death the Kid (also immortal) and Livingness, who repeatedly restores his dead friends, only for Carmine to kill them again. And again. And again.
- Characters that have been killed and revived from the dead include Maddawg, Xandus, Death, Livingness, Sam, and Severin.
- Bag of Holding:
- Sam G's Subspace Bag, a satchel of infinite depth. He once defeated a mook by tripping him over and knocking him into the bag, causing him to fall for all eternity.
- Dark Link's hat is a freakin' gun armory.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Despite often acting like a child and enjoying his fair slice of cooked pig, Severin has a track record of living for over half a millenium, taking over half the world, taking on the role as Defender of Earth, and even destroying a few planets just because he could.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Matt has retractable blades in his arms that are of the plasma variety.
- Blood Knight: Caim does love a good battle. He's even referred to being one in the RP.
- Breath Weapon: One of Slouch's techniques has him spitting acid.
- Captain Crash: Xandus claims to be amazing pilot, but doesn't know how to land. This results in him crashing his Tie fighters countless times.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Sho's backstabbed Xandus and co. on more than one occasion. Usually it isn't more than once per rewrite, so they tend to forget.
- Crazy-Prepared: Sam is revealed to keep a trampoline, a nuclear device, and a MIKA CD in his Subspace Bag.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Death is the son of the Shinigami, so as you might have guessed, his powers involve the manipulation of death. The only benefit he gets from this, however, is total immortality.
- A Day in the Limelight: The Battle for Hell arc is one for Livingness. He went from being a comic sidekick to the ruler of Hell.
- Dissonant Serenity: Sam maintains this for almost 20 pages, before Orgazmo manages to break him by dragging his unconscious body to a cave, chaining him to a rock and attempting to rape him.
- Dual Wielding: Edge carries two swords, and usually uses them in tandem.
- The Empire: Stephen Harper's New Imperial Order of Canada. Hail the Empire! Hail Lord Stephen Harper!
- Face–Heel Revolving Door: Like any teenager, Dillon's alignment changes depending on whether his parents give him his allowance.
- Face Hugger: Slouch's first appearance was as an item, where he fell from the sky and landed on the villain's face.
- Friendly Enemy: Death the Kid and Xandus are on good terms; Death came to Xandus's birthday party once, and described him as his "Beeeest fwiend" when interrogated by Arthas the Lich King.
- The Grim Reaper: Sidoh is a Shinigami who holds a Death Note Version 2, which can not only kill people, but can teleport, turn into the Washington Monument, and be used as a laser.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Youmu is somehow half-human and half-ghost.
- Harmless Villain: Despite being evil, Grimm really doesn't fight much, if at all.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: If the heroes aren't saving the world from evil, then they're usually at a bar of some sort, drinking in copious amounts.
- It's Raining Men:
- When Slouch first appeared, he fell from the sky seemingly out of nowhere. When the AA was restarted, this happened again (albeit with somewhat of an explanation).
- Once an entire band of main characters was punched all the way from New Mexico to London in a single hit. Death managed to avoid plummeting to the ground for quite a while by simply forgetting to fall.
- Used again in Sam G's introduction. Sam wakes up 700 feet from the ground with no recollection as to how he got there, and thus gravity starts to take effect. He manages to avoid falling to his doom by pulling a trampoline out of his Subspace Bag and throwing it at the ground, landing on it just a second after it hit the earth.
- No Fourth Wall: Characters frequently mention the RP and the people controlling it. Given that Sam G is an Author Avatar, this trope is pretty much enforced.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Well, ineptitude, but same basic idea. Edge has said before that it's easier to do things if no one has any expectations of him.
- Precision F-Strike: Slouch, who doesn't usually swear (in fact, only when briefly controlled by another user) pulled this off with aplomb."I don't usually swear, but... BULL-FUCKING-SHIT!"
- Power Glows: Phil's right hand glows brightly before he executes his Shining Finger attack.
- The Power of Love: Dillon cares deeply for his Lucario and often does very dangerous stunts in order to court her.
- Psychic Powers: Boss has telekinesis and teleportation, as well as a vaguely-defined second-sight that he used in the fight with Alucard near the end of the Clear Our Name arc.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Booster Gold, who only works for Ganondorf because it's a job.Booster Gold: Well yeah, nothing personal though, I'm more of a Punch Clock villain.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Any time a creation of Sam G flips out as a result of plot-induced stupidity. Almost always punctuates each word with a strike with some kind of common household object."I!" Smack. "Don't!" Smack. "Goddamn!" Smack. "Appreciate!" Smack. "Those!" Smack. "Who!" Smack. "Find!" Smack. "Themselves!" Smack. "To!" Smack. "Be!" Smack. "Better!" Smack. "Than!" Smack. "Your!" Smack. "Average!" Smack. "Lackey!!!" Volley of smacks.
- Rainbow Speak: All divine beings talk in coloured text, including the Soul Edge, Carmine, and powerful dragons.
- Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: The First Restart begins with everyone instantly being killed by The Auditor.
- The Speechless: Caim, for the most part. The PDA (and occasional world travel) helps to clear it up. Otherwise, Angelus speaks for him.
- Squishy Wizard: Glenrath has the power to destroy whole armies with waves of nuclear fire, and yet is also a chicken.
- The Stoner: Glenrath, even more so than Death and Livingness; has been known on occasion to spark up in the middle of a fight.
- Story Arc: The AA's story is a series of story arcs:
- Cyborg War Arc (from when Cats appeared to the Steampunk Civil War)
- Ireland Arc (from the death of John Wilkes Booth and appearance of Darth Timewave Zero)
- League of Evil Arc (from the forming of the Sith to the battle with the CD-i characters)
- Half-Life Arc (from the beginning of G-Man's quest to the return to the death of Maddawg)
- Sword of Novgorod and D.L.A. Arc (from the part where Xandus mentions the sword to the Fire Temple at Death Mountain)
- Armageddon Arc (from the appearance of the Auditor to the restart of the AA)
- Universe Restart Arc (from Ram sitting in the grass happily to the mecha assault on Nexus)
- Oblivion Arc (from the reforming of the villains to the battle with Carmine, Beowulf, and Greek heroes)
- Dragon Arc (from the legend of the dragon rider to the attack of the AA fangirls)
- Rutnik, Blackwatch, and Warhammer Arc (from the attack of the Communist groundhogs to the SAS rescue mission)
- Canada Arc (from the departure of Dark Link to the Battle of Hell)
- Olympus Arc (from the appearance of Techno Path to the restart of the AA again)
- Underworld Arc (from the undead armies at Arizona to the massive underworld brawl)
- Divine Arc (from the return of the Sword of Novgorod and Carmine to the Battle of Heaven)
- Space Arc (from the abduction of Sam and Sidoh to Sam trapping himself in a pocketwatch)
- Sam In A Pocketwatch Arc (???)
- Aperture Recession Arc (Introduction of Severin and Frank West; GLaDOS and Justin leave; Ken leaves temporarily)
- Tiberius Invasion Arc (Villains and Heroes team up to defend Earth from an extraterrestrial invader)
- Rugal's Tournament Arc
- Everyone Goes To Japan Arc
- Soul Trial/Everyone Goes to Hell Arc (Featuring Phoenix Wright as a Guest Star)
- Quest for Camelot/Castlevania Arc
- Pokémon Arc
- Left 4 Dead Arc
- Alien Arc
- M. Bison Took Over Asia, What a dick! Arc
- Twisted Metal Arc
- Swiss-Army Appendage: Captain Sky's robotic arm can transform into an assortment of colourful killing tools.
- Talking Weapon: After the Pokémon arc, Caim now has a Houndoom and a Skarmory living in his sword (named Sword and Comet respectively). They put in their two cents every so often. It also helps the sword was already enchanted to begin with.
- Useless Useful Skill: Even though immortality has the potential of being incredibly useful, Death was unquestionably the weakest fighter of the group during the second arc (that is, if you ignore Slouch).
- Vampire Hunter: In college, Gerard Way majored in music, graphic design, and kicking vampire ass. He wields a stake and mallet in battle.
- The Voiceless: Pointman chooses to use technological messages to speak for himself.
- You and What Army??: Both Glenrath and Maddawg have at different points had an army behind them. The latter has had several different armies under his command, from the standard Locust Army to a more recent Machine-Gun wielding Roman Gladiator army.
