/hptg/

Somebody in the last thread said leave the snitch as the game-ending play, but make it worth 15 points instead of 150. That way there's more to seeker strategy than just a mad rush to find the thing and auto-win, and there's no possibility of a tie game.

But that's wrong, you idiot.

Imagine Team A has 65 points, and Team B has 20 points.

If Team B catches the snitch, they lose the game.

You should never introduce a mechanic that makes one of your players basically useless.

>You should never introduce a mechanic that makes one of your players basically useless.
Did you forget that the Snitch already makes every other player besides the Seeker useless?

>Muggle paranormal investigators?
> You play a team/organisation that discovered the secret of wizards
> They know there is a leak, and they will do anything to find and fix it.
> You have to escape alive and with your memory intact
Thriller, if not horror, campaign.

There's a ton of exciting possibilities.

The problem with the Harry Potter setting is that the magic system is complete trash. It consists solely of overly-specific parlor tricks and the three forbidden curses.

You would probably need something free form to make it work. Eiher somemthing similar to Mage: The Awakening, Ars Magica or Spheres Of Power.

Altrough the spell list at harry-power wikia is fairly large.

That's my point, though. If Team B is down by that much, then their seeker's job is to assist the beaters in fucking up the other seeker until they pull back into range. This is what I mean by making their job more than just madly dashing after the snitch for the whole game. They have to keep up with the flow of the main game, stay aware of their teammates, and actually contribute. As opposed to the current rules, where the seekers play the real game while the chasers jerk off for an hour.

Side note: Team A could not have 65 points, since goals are worth 10 and apart from the snitch there's no other way to score.

I guess a game set, on say, 1800 could be rather interesting.
There would be space for completly new characters and plots, so it wouldn't have to be a canon rehash. But you would need to make up a lot of stuff.

>How would you go around making a hp game?
Natural 20 did it right in its muggle part.

One day, you wake up in your bed and nothing is out of the ordinary.
You are a simple police officer investigator that lives a simple life and never sees anything strange or out of the ordinary.
You put on your cassette player and go out for a jog.
But once you turn on the player, you hear your own voice coming out from the headphones. The voice you don't remember recording.

"If you are listening to this, they got you and erased your memory for the 15th time. Now here is what's going on..."

Three damn generals in two days and you squibs are still rehashing problems that were solved in the rules PDF that was posted in the first one.

I would do alternate universe. Make spellcasting a bit harder than it is in the books, more like transfiguration. I allways hated that you can literally just cast most spells by reading their name and speaking it aloud.

Also with an alternate universe without all the real characters you can set a game in Hogwarts of the Harry Potter time without messing with established characters, I allways hate hate hate that in RPGs, but you can keep all the interesting stuff about Hogwarts, Hogsmead, the houses and shit.

I could really see both school based and adult, as well as starting as students and doing the low levels as tiny students, and then going on to adult life when you are higher level.

I would probably use GURPS, it has so many fucking magic systems that are all good that I am certain you can hack one to capture the Harry Potter feeling.

What the world - and we as well - really need is big universal rpg system focused entirely on magic. Its kinda okish to use a normal universal system for it, but I just don't feel that there is a system that both has a good, extensive and versatile magic system and really works well when every character is doing magic. What I would really want and have been thinking of building with my rpg-group for some time now is a system focused entirely on magic and as hackable and customizable as GURPS. I feel a GURPS-like approach might work really well when you have a more focused system.

>"If you are listening to this, they got you and erased your memory for the 15th time. Now here is what's going on..."

>the memory erasers not figuring out the recording trick for the 15th time
Fucking wizards.

The reasonable fix for quidditch is to use USQ rules. The Snitch is worth 30 and isn't released with the other balls.
The fun fix is to use canon league rules that makes matches last for days and causes the snitch to be worth much less than it is in a Hogwarts school match.

1d4chan.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Tabletop_RPG

The system seems nice, but entirely focused on school.
Has anyone played it? How does it run?

Surprised nobody's posted this yet

I always quite liked the magic setting. I imagined that there were thousands and thousands of those "parlor tricks" so there was something for everything.

Hard to implement in an RPG though I admit.

>I always hated that you can literally just cast most spells by reading their name and speaking it aloud.
You also have to make the correct movements, have a wand, and for advanced spells, have the right mental state.
A skillful wizard can leave out one or two requirements, but the resulting spell is weaker. An amazingly skilled wizard can leave out some requirements and still cast at full power, but that requires a lot of natural talent and practice with that specific spell.

Surprised nobody posted THIS yet.

They're really really bad with tech. Operating anything more advanced then what your average amish farmer would use is pushing it.

Which is fucking retarded considering there are a bunch of muggleborn wizards out there.

>Adults in the wizard world?
>The wizarding world outside of Hogwarts isn't all that fleshed out, so it's definitely a more ambitious project than just retreading the book's setting.

However, it also offers the GM a lot more wiggle room to play around with and make a setting that works for the story of the campaign and the characters.

The creator ran a quest thread with the system and it worked pretty well even when Veeky Forums got a hold of it.
Extrapolating the rules to work outside of Hogwarts is relatively straightforward, you just need a library to study at in order to rank up. Skip the school-specific rules like classes. Item creation, spell use, combat and everything else aren't dependent on being at Hogwarts.

I can just imagine the third day of a pro quidditch match. Since substitutes are for muggle sports with their logic and sense, the players have all been airborne for well over 65 hours. Every last one is slumped forward on their broomsticks like a drunkard. They'd all have dropped dead by now if fans didn't keep throwing them food and water (a martyrdom of sorts for the fans, as doing so gets you ejected from the stands).

Meanwhile only the rich fucks in their luxury boxes and a few die-hards are still in the arena. Everyone else went back to the camp site to party the previous night, because it really looked like the Liechtenstein seeker was going to button things up. But he fell of his broom, the dozy squib, and managed to break himself in half on the way down. And now as the healers knit his shattered spine back together the fans mill about in a hungover stupor, wondering why the game's still going and where they put their bezoars.

And this is just a preseason game.

I would just try to capture the similar feeling and aesthetic without blatantly ripping off J,K,Rowling's world.

Rustic and homely magic is the deal, the sort of magic you expect both your nice and wicked grandmothers to practice.

Magical FBI in the jazz era: the game. Sounds really neat. I'd play it.

Sure, but for most stuff it just seems to be so basic and simple that it absolutely blows my mind why there are apparently so many people in the wizard world and even in Hogwarts that fail at basic spells, Harry literally just reads the words from the Half Blood princes book and says them aloud while holding a wand and they work. And thats what almost every spell is like. It just feels way too fucking easy for an RPG and way too fucking inconsistent in the novels. The only thing that is hard apparently is transfiguration.

What you describe is what is SHOULD be like, it is how it is always POSTULATED to be, but having just re-read and then immediatly listened to all seven books as audiobooks, it never feels like it. There are several instances of people literally just repeating the words someone else just said and it just works perfectly.

Also, there being no apparent rules for what makes a certain word a spell is just so stupid. Why the fuck is everything in Latin? Is latin somehow accidentially magical? What stops you from just saying random latin words that relate to what you are trying to achieve and hoping for the best? How is making up new spells apparently a hard thing when they allways just so happen to be latin with very little exception?

That's why I would change that, why I would play in an alternate universe with different key people and different spells that are more akin to transfiguration, which FEELS like the only thing that you actually need a lot of experience in and where it is not enaugh to just mumble some random words but requires a lot of exact concentration.

Also, for a good RPG, the way magic duels work needs to change a bit.

>Is it an unforgivable? --> DODGE
>Is it any other spell? --> DODGE or PROTEGO
>Is my enemies guard down? EXELLIARMUS INTO SOMETHING ELSE.

is not exactly the most inspired system for interesting battles, the most RPG worthy battle in the books is Voldy vs Dumbledore in the ministry.

Maybe something like this? But then, it's magic manages t even less explained than HP

Yeah, something more transfiguration based would be nice

That's why we're trying to fix it you asswipe.

>That's why we're trying to fix it you asswipe.
Yes, but that fix, despite not being particularly great, was better than the rule it replaced.

Could it be improved? Sure, I personally think 25 points is a good amount (beats a 2-point lead), but the 15-point rule is a marked improvement over what already is.

Take your gains before you start looking for more of them. Game design is like sculpting... adding and removing and modifying to perfection, not shitting on every possible change unless that change is flawless upon release.

Basically yeah, also thanks for giving me another manga to read.

The "latin" bit is fixed with a tiny bit of headcanon mixed with real canon.

Wizards don't need incantations. They don't need to say anything. African wizards don't use words or wands, yet they cast spells just fine.

Many of the spells with actual faux-latin incantations are basic, fundamental spells (lumos for light, incedio for fire, accio to retrieve, stupefy as a basic attack spell), that are taught to 11 year-olds.

So, I postulate that the Ministry of Magical Education sat down and said "okay, here are some fundamental magic spells. Let's make up simple, latin incantations for each one, so students have an easier time focusing."

When you get down to it, wands and words are just helping FOCUS the magic. The Ministry probably standardized some spell incantations just to make it easier to teach magic to students.

They could have made the chant for Incendio "fuckin' flame on", or the chant for Accio "c'mere bitchmade". The words themselves don't matter. They're just focusing tools.

We see loads up wandless and/or silent spellcasting in the books and movies. Snape countercurses the broom with only words, no wand. Dumbledore and Graves do wandless, wordless magic fuckery all the time because they're dope AF wizards.

Except that Harry casts sectumsempra on Malfoy just by saying the words despite not knowing what it did and it worked perfectly.

Mahou Tsukai no Yome is really nice. It actually dogdes plenty of the animanga tropes and conventions.
Well worth the read

Ah shit...

...magic, don't gotta asplain' shit?

It has been said that the disarm spell is not actually the "standard" dueling spell, it's just Harry's go to finisher.

Consider that they grow up in Hogwarts, receive no "normal" education, and generally live isolated from the muggle world from when they are 11.

Well, magic is magic. Sometimes weird shit happens.

Think back to "wingardium leviosa". Everyone knew the incantation, but only Hermione managed to make anything float.

You expect me to believe that Harry nailed the pronounciation and hand gesture down PERFECTLY after only reading scribbled of the word in a notebook?

I'd say that's a part of the book where magic is weird. Harry cast the spell with intent to harm, saying words he didn't know would work. Accidental magic happens all the time, because magic don't got no rules n' shit.

>do wandless, wordless magic fuckery all the time

thats just movie only stuff. Never happens in the books. Dumbledore is quite impressed when young tom riddle tells him he can do a lot of magical stuff willingly without a wand because most people can't do that at all. There is a reason the damn kobolds really really want to have wands as well, because after a certain point you just need a wand regardless of who you are and where you are from.

but yeah, thats more along the lines I imagined it should be. Its completely bonkers that saying wingardium leviosa and doing the right movement just somehow works with no explanation as to why that exact combination just happens to do that, even to people who don't understand latin. I allways imagined there would have to be a more fundamental thing that you need to concentrate on that the words and movements help you with, but that never comes up in the novels and there are literal counterexample of people paroting spells they heard someone say and it just works.

I don't remeber the name or author, but I recently read a fantasy novel where you had to do arcane shit like think of a few different things in order and then do some weird movement to get you into the right state. One spell was somehting like first thinking off an orange square up in the upper right, then thinking of a triangle that is blue in one corner and gradually gets red towards the opposing side, which turns into a yellow hexagon in a summer breeze, all the while doing a weird forwards and backwards waving motion. People just followed these instrucitons very clearly and needed ages to get it right to get into JUST the right mental state when first learning it. They also only had a dozen or so spells from magical elves travelling to their dimension through a portal, because the only way to get into the state of mind that allows you to invent spells is when you get insane from casting too many spells and start murdering everyone you love.

Except that the spell does exactly what it was supposed to, to the extent that its creator immediately recognised it, and that later on Harry gets admonished not to cast spells he doesn't recognise. Like it or not, the wand gesture and the words are what makes the spell work, with some needing intent, but there's no need for the wizard in question to actually know what the spell is or what it does.

Maybe it can work both ways? Say, the incantation doesn't necessarily matter if you know the spell.

But if you just know an incantation and test it out, magic would probably be like "well that incantation has only really done this one thing so I guess this person wants to do that", and then it casts that spell.

It's magic, rules don't have to be finite. Know a spell but not the words? Make up your own words. Know the words but not the spell? Fuck it, the words will know the spell.

WW1, duh.

None of what you are saying is canon. The levicorpus spell that harry learned from Snape's book specifically had a note "non-verbal" next to it, so it was intended to only be used that way.
The incantation is an integral part of the spell, so much that you have to say it in your head even when casting non-verbally.

...

I know you stole this from a fanfiction, i just cant remember which one.

It is also a good idea

>It's magic, rules don't have to be finite

If you're just making up your own headcanon do whatever you want, but if you're trying to base something in this universe then you really ought to obey the rules set out. Even that fanfic managed it, they conceded that while it makes no god damn sense the words and gestures genuinely do matter.

Did it actually finish into a proper Princess Maker or is it just porny dress-up doll?

Which fanfic?

Also, Harry Potter magic has absolutely no rules, makes no sense, and is basically a Macguffin for everything that happens in the children's story. You basically have to headcanon it if you want to apply it to a system.

The dress-up flash thing isn't the game. That's the dress-up based on the assets from the game. It's not a princess-maker-like. It is a full game.

Rowling has said the magic follows concrete rules, and while she's never stated them outright, there are a lots of partial statements, like the Five Exceptions to the Elemental Law of Transfiguration.

I would drown in her lily white crotch.
Oh ye gods

> I know you stole this from a fanfiction, i just cant remember which one.
IT'S LITERALLY MENTIONED IN THE POST
>Natural 20 did it right in its muggle part.

>Which fanfic?
HPMOR, a terribly written fanfic that did some mildly interesting worldbuilding and lampshade hanging

>Harry Potter magic has absolutely no rules
No actually it has very simple rules; spells are set effects triggered by magic words and waving wands. You can do more esoteric magic beyond that but at its basic level using a spell is using a premade tool. Spells are invented by wizards and witches and written down, then if they're useful news gets round and people learn them. These rules don't make much sense for the reason you describe, i.e. they're children's book simplifications, but they do exist.

As for applying them to a setting, they actually don't need much work to do it because fundamentally you have a giant list of spells ordered roughly by difficulty the same as D&D. Magic should require a few checks to work out if you know the spell, know the correct pronunciation of the incantation and a dex check equivalent to see if you can pull off the wand wiggle. Add a massive penalty if they lose their wand or can't talk and add feats that allow non-verbal on 5th year or less spells of bought or similar.

From a world building perspective Potter magic is silly but from a gaming perspective it's most RPGs with magic in them.

go on...

Yep, i'm an idiot.

>receive no "normal" education
They live with their parents at least three months of their lives. Presumably, a good parent would notice the shortcomings of wizard education.

Queenie is a 10/10 waifu.

>This is cool, but how the fuck do we fix Quidditch?

You don't. It's Calvinball with slightly more structure and should be treated as such.

This can't be true, let me look up this in Google...

WELP, I REGRET MY LIFE CHOICES

The way I see it, the only thing that makes sense is to just treat HP magic like real magic. Essentially, if you believe you can do something, you can, and words/gestures/wands/etc have definite impacts on whether you feel you can do something. So a fresh 11yo at Hogwarts might have a difficult time believing they can levitate a feather, and needs all sorts of help to do it, whereas Dumbledore is absolutely confident in his abilities, so can do lots of magic with no help at all. But, and this is key, the focusses AREN'T just placebos, they REALLY MATTER. Different spels have different attributes that associate them with certain words, ideas, materials, gestures, sounds, etc...

So, Harry casting Sectumsempra works like this: Snape is angry, and wants a spell to really hurt someone. He pracices focussing his will and trying to cut things into pieces. In order to make it more powerful and easier to do he starts adding things to it, a jab focusses spells on a target, the incantation sounds like cutting, etc...
Then Harry reads the spell in a book. He's angry at Malfoy, he ants to hurt him, he says the incantation, and everything lines up, his magic draws on Snape's creation of the spell and repeats it.

What probably happened was that Harry has enough talent to leave out the somatic component and the word/wand/emotion components were enough to carry it through.

There was this failed Kickstarter game called SPELL I heard about. You played it with scrabble tiles. When you cast a spell you stated your intent, drew a set of tiles, and tried to spell something that would carry out your intent. So if you wanted to stun somebody but could only spell Dance they'd start dancing so hard they couldn't do whatever it is they were doing. You could also remember a certain number of spells you "learned" in game and spend the EXP equivalent to have them permanently.

You sure? Many would just do normal summer vacation things with their kid who they haven't seen for 9 months and ask to tell them all about the wizarding world. Not to learn.

Reminds me of this:

>Magic exists because the universe remembers what people do. Anyone can do a rote-spells used so often that their performance has worn grooves in the universe's memory. The talented might be able to get more from a rote or perform it with greater precision, but anyone can speak the right words, wave the reagents, and perform the correct gestures so as to trick the mind of the universe into completing the action.

>A spell to conjure fire works because it has always worked-one speaks the incantation of flame, makes a half-circle gesture with their right hand and makes a throwing gesture with their right, and conjures flame from the memory of the universe.

>Likewise, objects gather magic to themselves by being used. One does not forge a magic blade-one finds a blade wielded by the hand of a mighty swordsman, and coaxes the universe to remember the skill and deadly agility that the blade once danced to. A crown becomes enchanted because people continually bow to the wearer, and so the universe recalls that such a thing is to be.

>The true talents, however, go beyond mere rote; they can evoke the connotations and meanings hidden in the world, and tap into the memory of the universe without a chant and dance. An evoker can conjure fire by merely holding an object once burned and causing it to remember the fire that caressed it. With the blade and attire of a master swordsman they can evoke the same feats of skill and daring that made the original a figure of reknown. >Likewise, an evoker can heal without chants of healing, or animate the dead by causing the bones to remember their movements once again.

>just treat HP magic like real magic
Could you teach me real magic?

>Beyond even the arts of evocation lays the domain of utter mastery-a master is one who can craft an image of what they will in their mind, hold that image, and then evoke that image into the greater universe. Masters need no rotes-they CREATE rotes, for ease of use and simplicity's sake. A master first crafts their image, holds the image, evokes it into the world, and performs a set of actions so as to form an association between the two so that the universe will remember it. It may take hundreds of repetitions, but eventually the new rote will take hold, and be easily available to all.

>In this world, the every-day life is made easier by simple rotes passed down by parents, religions, and teachers. Literacy becomes important because it is how one can learn additional rotes, which directly impact ones' quality of life. Those with greater access to rotes form the bulk of the nobility; greater access to teachers and leisure time ensure that even the meanest noble knows and can perform a great many rotes.

>Meanwhile, the common citizen's life is improved by their knowledge of rote magic; any beggar can chant a spell to stave off hunger-pangs, banish fleas, or conjure warmth. Rotes make chores faster and easier; mending a pot takes half the time with a mending tune to meld the metal, and crops grow lush with rotes to call the rain and banish pests. A farmer might not own a magic sword, but their plow might have picked up magic to carve through soil and never dull, and a special kitchen knife might slice through flesh and bone with exacting precision.

>When the great lords go to war, sorcery and skill becomes melded. Choirs of skilled rote-mages chant spells of destruction and preservation, while weapons enchanted with the magic of long practice find employ in soldiers' hands along with deadly battle-magics. Still, if one is not killed outright, rotes of cleansing and mending can ensure that no wound becomes septic and any injury heals quick and clean.

>Certain rotes become a crime to know(or at least employ) if ones' social status is not sufficiently elevated. A charm to command minds, for instance, or a chant that douses the location of gold swiftly becomes the property of the local nobility. Battle-magic is the purview of those who fight for a living, and the great chants of healing and faith are claimed by the churches.

>Outside the social structure lays the Evokers and the Masters. Evokers are wildcard figures, often mavericks who can shake up the social order with their free-flowing magic limited by materials and imaginations. Masters, by contrast, are held as untouchable, otherworldly figures; the archetypical wizard in their tower that no lowly mortal should offend, as it is masters alone that can create and disseminate NEW spells to the world at large. Even the great kings bow and scrape humbly when they seek a master to craft some new rote for their populace.

No one says anything about learning during the vacation.
>"Hey, I know you are having fun in that wizard school, but you should read normal books too."
>"From what I've heard from you, the wizards have no idea what the modern world is like, and I don't want you to be limited in your options."
>"Here, here's a book about basic stuff, take it with you to school and read it when you feel like it."

The fuck happened, she went from cute girl to British slag.

>like real magic
wut?

Harry Potter came out 20 years ago

Sure, here's a spell to warm you up in the winter. Sit in a comfortable position, take a deep breath, and visualize yourself breathing fire when you exhale. Feel the heat, see the flames, feel yourself getting warmer. Do that seven times and you'll be warmer. Don't do it more than seven times. Also don't imagine fire going IN, that can create imbalances in your body you don't know how to fix.

And the movies came out 5 years ago at most.
No excuse, considering Luna was introduced in OotP.

Well, Evanna Lynch is 25.

Take that as you will

>british
There's your problem

And some girls still look cute in their late thirties.
Take that as you will.

I'll try this out when it gets colder. It's 70 degrees out right now.

...

> It's 70 degrees out right now.
Kelvin or Celsius?

Fahrenheit.

Next thing you tell me you still use those silly Imperial units.

I'll give you the silly Imperial units but I'll always defend Fahrenheit. 0-100 is a succinct and ideal communication of "cold as balls" to "living things are cooking" as a relative scale for humans to use.

>-18C
>cold as fuck

Anything above -30C is t-shirt weather.

Also, that isn't "magic". You're just tricking your mind into making you feel warm by taking your mind off the cold.

Yeah, it's headology. I understand the confusion, though, witches use both.

Magic is imposing your will on the world. If it works, it's magic. I'm using magic right now to send you this message!

FIx Quiddich

Some adventure ideas

>Work for ministry of magic, have to deal with muggles who see or encounter magical things.

>Be a Auror chasing down monsters and evil wizards.

...