Harry Potter D20 (Mechanics posted)

My nephews recently gained an intrest in Roleplaying, and they love Harry Potter, so I thought that they would enjoy adventuring around J.K. Rowlings wizarding world. I was wondering if anyone has started devolping this, if not I have several ideas. Wich I will list later after I get some responses

To my knowledge, no, and IIRC the author was adamantly against an RP version for some reason -- though she sold out quickly enough to the CCG crowd.

d20 can be adapted well, though, either on your own, or check out the Malladin's Gate Press St. John's Academy Handbook series available on PDF -- it's based on running adventures around a college of wizardry, and should adapt pretty well.

A poster a couple months back was working on the same idea for his kids and got some good suggestions; I forget who it was but if you're lucky he'll post here.

IIRC, Rowling nixed the RPG because in order to make a good RPG, she would have had to provide detailed background and setting information, some of which she didn't want to reveal yet.

Presumably, the RPG will become a possibility after the book series is complete.

So...book 5/7 comes out this June, and at this rate we should expect the RPG by...2010? Blech.

I have ideas that might be workable, I'm just too lazy to develop them. Here are some rules variants that I think are worth considering.:

• Skill & Feat based magic system
• A single basic wizard class, which comes with it the ability to do magic. Every wizarding profession would be a prestige class (i.e. Potions Master, Animagus, Quidditch MVP, Ministry of Magic Agent, Curse Breaker, Dragon Expert, Dark Wizard, etc).
• Races would be ability based (ala d20 Modern). We'd have the INT based wizard (Hermione), the CHA based wizard (You-Know-Who, Harry Potter), the CON or STR based wizard (Hagrid), the WIS based wizard (Dumbledore), the Dex based wizard (Madam Hooch). Of course I just pulled all the examples out of my butt...any one of them could be argued. And you'd have to include squibs and muggles.
• Completely original spell list.

I think Ars Magica would be a better system to use than d20. The d20 magic system is poorly conceived and if you want to play game focusing on magic, Ars Magica is the cadillac of magic systems.

Maybe you're right, and Ars Magica would be better. But seeing as how this is a d20 community...

Anyway, you're entitled to your opinion about D&D's magic system. I think it'd have to be tweaked for flavor no matter which system it would be based on. d20 is a good start since grades correspond to levels quite easily.

There's not much on rules here (and depending on how old your nephews are, I wouldn't even worry about it), but lots of good plot ideas...

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36923

roytheodd said:

I think Ars Magica would be a better system to use than d20. The d20 magic system is poorly conceived and if you want to play game focusing on magic, Ars Magica is the cadillac of magic systems.

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Surely you mean the D&D magic system. In d20, we also have the Midnight magic system, the Star Wars "magic" system, the Sovereign Stone magic system, the Call of Cthulhu magic system, the Wheel of Time magic system ... just to name a few off the top of my head. And most of these have very little in common with each other.

For that matter, the sorceror class, with a little tweaking, doesn't make a half-bad Potter-esque magician.

Wizards Academy Rules

I'm working on an article, "Wizard's Academy." It's not Harry Potter...but it's all about playing young wizards in an academy at low levels.

It includes:
* Rules on playing children.
* Levels below 1st (-3 through 0 level), including gaining feats and spell progression.
* The various schools that a young wizard may belong to -- think frats or cliques with magic.
* A whole pile of new 0-level spells to give young wizards more spells to choose from (and round out their spell lists).
* Luck rules -- getting by when you're naieve, cute, and precocious.
* Academy wands -- how to cast spells with wands alone (but no other components!).
* Combat modifications to make being a young wizard less deadly.
* An overview of monsters and which are appropriate for a Wizard's Academy campaign.
* Graduation. How it works and what you get.

Still waiting to hear if anyone wants to publish it...

Zappo said:

IIRC, Rowling nixed the RPG because in order to make a good RPG, she would have had to provide detailed background and setting information, some of which she didn't want to reveal yet.

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Thank goodness for that. I just had a hideous mental image of overzealous Harry Potter canonists arguing with each other about how magic really works at Hogwart's, while a hundred Lord Valdemort and Harry Potter munchkin clones sprouted up from the woodworks like crying, screaming mandrake roots.

Eww.

I think a Harry Potter roleplaying game might be fun, but I wouldn't want to play it with a D&D/d20 crowd.