Silven Crossroads/Harry Potter RPG speculation

[MerakSpielman]

It could be possible to do an RPG for the Harry Potter world well. However, the charm of the books is following the characters and their adventures at Hogwarts. An RPG would get old if it stayed at Hogwarts, but is there really enough material in JKR's wizarding world to have adventures elsewhere? Once you get out of Hogwarts, it's very vague. The history of wizard-kind is more hinted at than actually revealed, and you'd need a lot of that stuff to set up a good Harry Potter campaign world.

 

[Pramas]

I clearly remember reading on some magazine that JKR didn't want an RPG to be made, because that would have forced her to disclose much information about the setting which should not be revealed until the series is over.

That was part of it, I'm sure. What I recall from the time was that her biggest beef was with the creation of new material. In her mind, any new details about her world would be made up by her and appear in her books, not in licensed RPG books. I honestly can't blame her for making that call.

 

[trancejeremy]

It's kinda like Star Wars. Various licensees explained a whole lot of stuff that was ultimately contradicted by Lucas' later movies.

I was annoyed that he let some of it happen - like the origin of Boba Fett. Surely he knew he was going to address it in the movies, yet he let the licensees come up with a completely different (and silly) origin of him

 

[Gez]

That's true. I guess I was balancing it in my head against non-wizards. You know if you had PCs with this spell the first thing they'd do is go down to the local Qwik-e-mart and start paralyzing people that annoyed them

Well, there's still the interdiction to practice magic below 17, when outside of Hogwart or its train.

Sure, wizards have a big asset over "muggles". On the other hand... Wizards in Harry Potter seem to ignore the existence of guns.

 

[DocSER]

If they want to hit the same demographic, WotC or others should consider a Samurai Jack license. It is not as popular but the world is larger and more diverse, the license would be cheaper, and the originators are more likely to play ball.

That cartoon just cries out for a slimmed down 3.5 game.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Hmmm while the idea of a Harry Potter game might not appeal to me, the idea of a Hogwart's game certainly amuses me. I would have thought that a game with yearly update books would have kept the core plot hidden...

Ah well, there is always Redurst Academy of Magic!

http://www.humanhead.com/hhgames/RAM/ram.html

The Auld Grump

 

[WayneLigon]

On the other hand... Wizards in Harry Potter seem to ignore the existence of guns.

All we've really seen so far is Britain. Not going to find too many guns there.

If there was going to be a series set after Harry graduates, I'd love to have him see the rest of the world and how Wizardry is practiced there.

 

[VirgilCaine]

All we've really seen so far is Britain. Not going to find too many guns there.

If there was going to be a series set after Harry graduates, I'd love to have him see the rest of the world and how Wizardry is practiced there.

You won't find many legally held guns in the hands of ordinary citizens, but you will find plenty of guns in the hands of criminals. That said...

A Harry Potter RPG will be hard to implement.
Because Rowling broke a big rule of Fantasy: she didn't set out the "rules" of magic. She had the most ideal situation ever to explain to the reader how magic works and what the rules are. The protagonist is a wizard first learning about magic in a school for wizards. There can hardly be a more ideal situation for explaining magic.
However, she never does this. Not in five books has Rowling set out clear rules for her magic.
Thus, any RPG would have to extrapolate from her sketchy material. Unless she reverses her trend in the last two books, there will be problems with making a HP RPG.

The biggest flaw I have found in her books is that allegedly, no wizard ever made a spell that allowed someone to breathe underwater. This is simply preposterous in my mind.
Breathing underwater seems like something that people dream about a lot, somewhat like flying, and no one ever making a spell that did that is ridiculous to me.

Explaining why Harry couldn't find a spell, that is different--perhaps the mer-people or something made wizards swear to stay on land or perhaps that lots of spells and such were lost in You Know Who's time of power, okay, but saying that not one wizard ever made a spell to breathe underwater makes no sense to me.

 

[Gez]

Especially given that there are. Like that bubble spell.

It seems Harry and co just don't know where to look for infos. Which is not surprising -- I knew who Nicolas Flamel was, and that's a knowledge every muggle can have.

A major problem of Harry Potter's world: they don't know munchkins, minmaxers, and co. In year 2, Lockhart cast a spell that removes bones. Harry-as-a-PC (or, rather, Hermione-as-a-PC) would have jumped on that opportunity to learn that spell as an attack spell. In year 4, in the train, Harry and the Weasleys discover that mixing furnunculus and jelly leg knock unconscious someone and furthermore "decorate" him nicely. Then, why don't they use this knowledge on the death-eaters?

I'm sure that the raid on the ministry of magic, if the DA was a party of PC, would have resulted in a dozen of casualties for the Death-Eaters...

 

[Zappo]

A Harry Potter RPG will be hard to implement.
Because Rowling broke a big rule of Fantasy: she didn't set out the "rules" of magic. She had the most ideal situation ever to explain to the reader how magic works and what the rules are. The protagonist is a wizard first learning about magic in a school for wizards. There can hardly be a more ideal situation for explaining magic.
However, she never does this. Not in five books has Rowling set out clear rules for her magic.
Thus, any RPG would have to extrapolate from her sketchy material. Unless she reverses her trend in the last two books, there will be problems with making a HP RPG.

Explaining how magic works isn't a big rule of fantasy. For example, in D&D it isn't explained any more than it is in HP, yet this RPG seems to do fine.