Notes towards a Harry Potter RPG

[avram]

That last entry reminded me of some half-formed ideas I had for a Harry Potter role-playing game:

Inspired by School Colors from Out of Space (or “What if Rumiko Takahashi Went to 0 San Before Writing Urusei Yatsura?”), each character would have a pair of attributes corresponding to general cultural knowledge of muggle and wizard societies. Either the two would by inversely paired (the higher one is starting out, the lower the other must be), or the lower starts out capped at some fraction of the higher. A special advantage could be purchased to build characters like Hermione, who can have high values (arbitrarily high, or just a higher fraction?) in both.

Other special advantages would give the characters bonuses when acting from certain motivations. Any character could buy any advantage, but each starts out with the advantage associated with his or her house for free — acting bravely for Gryffindors, seeking knowledge for Ravenclaws, seeking power for Slytherins, and bringing things up to counts of four but otherwise staying offscreen for Hufflepuffs. (Do other schools have houses? If so, what traits are associated with them? The game should have more than four, but characters probably shouldn’t be able to buy more than two or three at most.)

Comments

[cadhla.livejournal.com]

Gryffindor: Bravery. You can ignore frightening or life-threatening situations if it means you will achieve a goal or save a friend.

Ravenclaw: Wisdom. You can make connections that others miss, often causing you to find the answers other Houses overlook.

Slytherin: Adaptability. Nothing throws you for long. You can react quickly to new and strange situations, keeping you on top of the world around you.

Hufflepuff: Dedication. Once you set yourself to a task, you finish it. You are the unswerving rock, and neither pain nor exhaustion will sway you from your goal.

[avram]

I think you've bought into Slytherin propaganda. On the other hand, from a role-playing POV, it would be pretty cool to play an all-Slytherin game under the assumption that the books are presenting a distorted view of the house.

Maybe Slytherins can take either Adaptability (bonus under new circumstances) or Power-Hungry (bonus when seeking power), but to balance out this greater flexibility, they get the Considered Harmful disad (nobody trusts them; penalty when trying to convince any non-Slytherin of something).

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

For the muggle/mudblood/halfbreed//squib/wizard/oldwizarding family spectrum, and its effect on world-knowledge (and prestige), i'd just crib from whitewolf (werewolf, in particular), and force all characters to pick a "bakcground" which determines base muggleknowledge (decreasing l->r), wizardknowledge (increasing l->r), muggle "passability" (arthur weasley has lots of muggle knowledge, not much of this) (decreasing), and wizardly prestige (increasing).

Say a 0-10 scale
0 - "muggles? What's that?"//"magic? You must be joking!"//broom use in front of muggles//normal muggles
1 - muggles lack magic // magic exists // robe, hat, and owl as you pass through trafalgar square // the magicless halfgiant child of a squib from a disreputable family.
...
10 - a worldwise, intelligent, muggle//Dumbledore; L. Malfoy//average muggle//dumbledore

A d10 rollunder to know any basic thing about muggle culture//wizard culture//to pass among muggles without remark//to be "known of" by J. Random Wizard.

Dumbledore has 7//10//6//10
A street muggle has 9//0//10//0
Harry, at the start, has 8//0//8//9
Hermione, when we meet her has 10//7//9//2
Ron, when we meet him, has 2//7//3/7
Harry, now, has 8//7//6//10
Hermione now, has 10//9//8//4
Ron, now, has 3//8//3//7

This is for knowing things like the galleon knute exchange rate, how to get to diagon alley, what plugs are, how to operate a tv, and whether muggles look at you funny. General stuff.

Hermione, I suspect, has some special "interface" knowledge, as she seems familiar with muggle entrances to magical places, the pound-galleon exchange rate, and functionality of electronics at hogwarts.

Also, have you given thought to the power(talent) - skill dichotomy? (ie: why hermione is better in class, and harry is better at dueling.)

[avram]

Actually, the more that I think about it, the less it seems sensible to treat muggle and wizardly culture knowledge as equivalent. In a campaign that accurately reproduced the books, almost all the action would be taking place in the wizarding world, with muggle society being someplace the characters occasionally visit. Probably better to assume all characters are wizard-raised and familiar with that culture, and not with muggle culture, unless the players have bought the appropriate advantages and disads to indicate otherwise.

There are two approaches to representing the difference between Harry and Hermione:

The more generalizable one, and the one I find more interesting, is to have separate attributes for classroom smarts and raw power. The magic system can be set up so that casting under controlled circumstances (in class, or when you've got a personal project that you've got time to work on) uses classroom smarts, while casting when your ass is on the line takes power. (Or maybe it's just matching your spells against those of an active opponent that takes power.)

The more specific one has all spells running off a magical ability attribute (though which spells you know are skills, of course), and Harry gets a duelling bonus because he's got some kind of special ability. This is less interesting, but it may be the model Rowling is actually using.