Harry Potter
I saw the latest Harry Potter movie last Friday and enjoyed it quite a bit. I liked it better than the last movie, for two reasons that I can think of. First, it'd been longer since I'd read Goblet of Fire, so rather than movie omissions irritating me, my subconscious just filled in the blanks. Two, it didn't have an absolutely pathetic CGI "werewolf". The effects were pretty good, and now I'm ready to reread the book. Or all the books. I'm not sure where to start. I faced this dilemma after reading the Half-Blood Prince (It WAS Hagrid, all along, Prince of the Giants! ... Just kidding Ann.)
After reading HBP, not only did I want to reread the books again, I was somewhat inspired to try and fiddle with running a Harry Potter based RPG. This desire meant that if I were to re-read the books, I'd be sitting there taking notes all the time, writing down characters, spells, shops in Diagon Alley, broom types, wand cores, etc. Why? Well, because I'm an infophile, which is to say, I'm a geek. (Note: There's a popular definition of infophile that differs from my personal definition, but we're not going to get into that now.) Lucky for me, there are now millions of other geeks out there to do that for me. Wikipedia has an article on Spells in Harry Potter, as well as Magic in Harry Potter, and much more. The spells list not only describes what is known about each one, but also has a list of non-canonical spells (those from video games and the movies that did not first appear in the novels.)
As I was browsing through these spells, characters, etc it occurred to me that there's more than enough info there for an RPG, and all you really need to do is wrap the system of your choice around it. For me, I think FATE would be an excellent choice. Were I able to make the Harry Potter RPG, I would steer clear of d20 and it's ilk, and release what would amount to a giant sourcebook with a bit of system (FATE, as I said) in it to help guide newcomers into their own role playing in the world of Harry Potter. It would definitely be geared towards those new to role playing, and the target audience would be kids/teens/adults who are huge fans with great imagination. Anyways, most experienced role-players who wanted to play Harry Potter would have already adapted it to their own system of choice. Or maybe played Broomstix (Nice PDF). The experience system based on House "virtues" inspired my initial fiddlings with a Harry Potter RPG using Fudge and a version of Spiritual Attributes (from The Riddle of Steel). Essentially, Spiritual Attributes are a combination of your character's goals and virtues. SA's would work in your favor, providing benefits and increasing their own rating, when you acted in tune with them, and they were also the currency used for character progression (stat/skill increases, etc). So, really, you only grew when you followed your heart, or your destiny. This fit in really well with the aspects that the Sorting Hat used to select someone's house. Courage, Wisdom, Loyalty, Cunning, etc. In FATE, these virtues or house qualities would be Aspects, and they'd generate Fate Points for you to use for later benefit and story control.
To sum up, I now really want to re-read the series... and maybe try running a Harry Potter based game sometime.
After reading HBP, not only did I want to reread the books again, I was somewhat inspired to try and fiddle with running a Harry Potter based RPG. This desire meant that if I were to re-read the books, I'd be sitting there taking notes all the time, writing down characters, spells, shops in Diagon Alley, broom types, wand cores, etc. Why? Well, because I'm an infophile, which is to say, I'm a geek. (Note: There's a popular definition of infophile that differs from my personal definition, but we're not going to get into that now.) Lucky for me, there are now millions of other geeks out there to do that for me. Wikipedia has an article on Spells in Harry Potter, as well as Magic in Harry Potter, and much more. The spells list not only describes what is known about each one, but also has a list of non-canonical spells (those from video games and the movies that did not first appear in the novels.)
As I was browsing through these spells, characters, etc it occurred to me that there's more than enough info there for an RPG, and all you really need to do is wrap the system of your choice around it. For me, I think FATE would be an excellent choice. Were I able to make the Harry Potter RPG, I would steer clear of d20 and it's ilk, and release what would amount to a giant sourcebook with a bit of system (FATE, as I said) in it to help guide newcomers into their own role playing in the world of Harry Potter. It would definitely be geared towards those new to role playing, and the target audience would be kids/teens/adults who are huge fans with great imagination. Anyways, most experienced role-players who wanted to play Harry Potter would have already adapted it to their own system of choice. Or maybe played Broomstix (Nice PDF). The experience system based on House "virtues" inspired my initial fiddlings with a Harry Potter RPG using Fudge and a version of Spiritual Attributes (from The Riddle of Steel). Essentially, Spiritual Attributes are a combination of your character's goals and virtues. SA's would work in your favor, providing benefits and increasing their own rating, when you acted in tune with them, and they were also the currency used for character progression (stat/skill increases, etc). So, really, you only grew when you followed your heart, or your destiny. This fit in really well with the aspects that the Sorting Hat used to select someone's house. Courage, Wisdom, Loyalty, Cunning, etc. In FATE, these virtues or house qualities would be Aspects, and they'd generate Fate Points for you to use for later benefit and story control.
To sum up, I now really want to re-read the series... and maybe try running a Harry Potter based game sometime.
posted by gamer-geek | 11:05 PM
3 Comments:
Let me be the first to stand in line to play, if you ever do run a HP game :) I've often thought that a mud based on the wizarding world would be cool, but this would be much cooler.
I'm thinking more and more about it now, but there's no way it'd start until after the new year. That'll give me time to re-read the books as well. I was thinking of having characters be a few years older than HP and friends. Character creation would likely be a mini-session building characters one year at a time through Hogwarts, building their histories. Actual play would start around the timing of Order of the Phoenix, with that either being their last year at Hogwarts, or they'll have just graduated. Of course, that's my idea, but if players would rather take a different direction (playing through years at school, or being already established wizards/witches) I'd go with that too.
First, wonderful article and links..
Secondly, my friends and I are actually working on the same thing. We play DnD and Modern D20 alot. This just seemed liek the next step.
The awesome thing about a D20 game in this setting is it is more about the storytelling and less about melee-style combat... like alot of D20 games unfortunately turn into. Even the magic is not the main focus at times...
The only downfall of most HP based ames is the "fanfiction" curse.. Where it is jsut the way to interact with your faorite book and movie characters.
Best of luck in your endevours
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