Harry Potter D20 (Mechanics posted)

[Celebrim]

Marius: I think you are largely missing the point. If you remove the action to Beauxbatons and dispense with the houses, the sorting hats, and Hogwarts itself, then as far as the fans of Harry Potter are going to be concerned this isn't Harry Potter.

The original post mentioned nephews.

I think for the primary age group of the fans, the setting must be retained before they will enjoy it. For the age group of those that enjoy richly detailed 'adult' worlds, the world is still a bit shallow to warrant setting a campaign there. Maybe by the time the series is over that won't be true, because Potter is definately growing up as the series moves forward, but for the most part its still a kid's story and an RPG based on it would have to take that into account.

The trick will be retaining the setting while still giving yourself the freedom to create new stories and put your characters (the PC's) at the center of it. I'd personally set the story at Hogwart's during Potter's childhood. Potter is 4 or 5, the PC's are starting their first term at Hogwart's against the backdrop of the end of the 'bad times' and the beginning of 'normalcy' returning to Hogworts. Of course, 'normal' for Horwart's is anything but 'normal'...

 

[Marius Delphus]

Marius: I think you are largely missing the point.

I don't see how you can conclude that without a fairly long string of inferences and assumptions. Perhaps I'm missing something after all. I suppose I should have mentioned *more than once* that a Beauxbatons campaign would lack many of the elements that'd be present in a Hogwarts campaign. It was only an idle thought anyway: I took "around J.K. Rowling's wizarding world" (from the original post) to mean the *entire* world (glimpses of which we've seen in the books, after all) and not just Hogwarts. My apologies if I misunderstood.

I still happen to think that removing the campaign from the period and/or the Hogwarts milieu featured in the novels is the ideal way to proceed. It's just my opinion; I've said my piece. Though I quite agree with everything else you've said in this thread, Celebrim.

 

[blargney]

I'm glad Byrons_Ghost found my wizarding school thread.

My conclusion was that it's a lot more work to make D&D into Hogwarts than it is to take the idea behind the school and make it work in a D&D setting. The specifics of Harry Potter are vastly too different from D&D to make it work well.

If your nephews need the authenticity of playing in Hogwarts-only-Hogwarts-and-nothing-but-Hogwarts, you've really got your work cut out for you. If you can make the school setting work in D&D without the trappings of Harry Potter, then you have the potential for a very fun campaign!

-blarg

ps - St. John's Academy is a great PDF! Keep in mind that it's meant for university age students, and it's very specifically an abjurer's college.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yeah, injecting the flavor of a wizard's school is certainly a lot easier than injecting Harry Potter.

You just have to take the idea of D&D magic, and think about how that would be 'taught' to the young 'uns...maybe a 6-year thing where when they start at about age 10-11, they're apprentices with apprentice-level magic, but by the time they graduate, they're 5th level and 'reasonably confident adventurers.'

It's pretty easy to have wierd critters teaching wierd classes....Aelina the elf teaches Enchantment, describing the differences between Charms and Compulsions, etc.

ACTUALLY, it might be easier to do it with psionics, believe it or not. They do specialization much better, and have a much wider circle of things to choose from (from attacks to healing to mobility to psychic warriors).

So you could have an Illithid teaching you about Telepathy...creepy Professor Semsinie, and his new elf wife/thrall. And you could have a dwarf teaching Psychometabolism. And perhaps a halfling in the Psychoportation school....

Phy Ed could be optional...a specialist in physical might would be a psychic warrior.

Heck, you even have the 'dark arts.' The WotC website uses the "Subconcious" as a sort of pseudo-FR-Shadow-Magic, and it even plays into morality fairly well (subconcious = dark desires = things better left unexplored).

If you wanted to inject more "arcane" flavor, you could have regular animals instead of psicrystals, giving the animals the same abilities that psycrystals give, and leave it totally up to the player which to choose. You would have scrolls instead of power stones, wands instead of dorjes, weapons of 'special material' isntead of crystal (like a flaming sword that uses a phoenix's feather), etc. You would call it Enchantment instead of Telepathy, Dimensionism instead of Psychoportation, Transmutation instead of Pyschometablism, Divination instead of Clairsentience, etc.

In addition, psionics works on a slightly-more-intuitive point system, and allows a lot of fun little feats for the PC's.

The more I'm thinking about this, the more I like the idea of psionics as a typical 'wizarding school.' Is cool,.

 

[Stone Angel]

Wanted to let everyone know that I ran the HPd20 Homebrew over independance day weekend. It went pretty good. I have my own feat list and skill list as well as a few templates that you can take.

We got together and created characters two weeks prior. I had a blast those little guys are natural RPGer's. It was my nephew and a friend of there's two of them are thirteen and one is twelve. My niece would like to play to but she is seven, so next time I will have here be my little helper that way she is involved.

I will post more of my mechanics later if anyone is interested,but I did go with a wound point/ hit point like star wars.

We did the sorting per the players wishes, two gryffindor, and one ravenclaw. Had a chase from filch and went to our first flying lesson.

More later

The Seraph of Earth and Stone

 

[dren]

No, god, please god no....(sobbing uncontrollably and incoherently)....please no.

 

[Rel]

I will post more of my mechanics later if anyone is interested,but I did go with a wound point/ hit point like star wars.

I would be very interested in hearing about the mechanics you used and what feats you altered/added.

 

[Uruk]

I'll second the request for mechanics. I started working out specifics a couple of months ago and sort of let it drop. I was going to use D20 as the base, but make the schools of magic skill-based and have feats for broom-flying etc... I'm in the Indianapolis area too so if you want to play with some big kids, I'm game!

 

[Vaxalon]

It really needs a more flexible system than D20.

I ran a Harry Potter one-shot using BESM.

 

[blargney]

Another "Hear, hear!" for the mechanics!
-blarg