Harry Potter Tabletop General #4 /hptg/

Soon we will have a HM, soon.

I feel like this could be useful for the inevitable discussion about whether or not Method of Rationality is completely worthless or not:
danluu.com/su3su2u1/hpmor/

Nice to see a review that actually breaks down the retarded bias LessWrong applied.

Here are some Harry Potter RPGs I've found :

Broomstix and its update Brommstix and Kauldronz :
docs.google.com/file/d/0B_QEws739Q9Ba01fZVhNd1Z5WW8/edit
>blog here : broomstix-n-kauldronz.tumblr.com/ (I love people using websites totally not designed for the task to host rpgs...)

In french :
couroberon.free.fr/Harry.html (BASIC system)
jdra.eklablog.net/harry-potter-r-p-g-a1530509 (rule-light homebrew made by a belgian professional)
limbicsystemsjdr.com/category/jeux-de-role/bienvenue-a-poudlard/ ("Welcome to Poudlard" - Focused on school; idk much about it)

I can translate some bits if you want me to, tell me what kind of elements or subsystems you're interested in.

Also a shitton of deadlinks (great job calling it "harry potter rpg", that way youre sure that nobody searching it will ever be able to find it again.) and a pile of homebrew of dubious quality.
Scribd seems to a have a lot of those.

I'm making an alternate HP world; but changing some things to make it more "mine" and not be constrained by the canon.
One thing that I want to change is the thing about magic being something people is born with. I just don't like to think about magic about some midichlorians in your blood that make you binarily able or not to use magic.

The alternative that i'm using is that some children are more attuned to this power; and that there are some kind of "orientation controls " in common schools, led by mysterious enterprises, to find the children that are more worthy of training. Then, some guy appears in your home and explains your parents that you have to go to wizard camp or something.

That's an awful analogy, the Force is in everybody in Star Wars.

I don't think magic is really binary in Harry Potter; Neuville has really poor magical abilities, Filch is able to see dementors even if he has no powers, and so on...

A muggle could probably be able to pass as a wizard in Hogwarts simply by saying that he has lost his wand and by doing well in other areas like Potions or Herbology.

It could even make for a valid character build for a face or a skillmonkey.

Nevilles poor magical ability is apparently due to him using his fathers waand and having low self confidence. He gets confidence from DA and loses his wand fighting death eaters in the minister of magic. After that he gets decent at magic.

I know it's only a minor thing, but the ancient and noble houses shit pisses me off to no end, because it proves a complete lack of reading comprehension.

I know the guy only uses the books as wank material, but the noble house thing was blatantly there to show that the Blacks were a cut above the usual arrogance of pure blood society, not because there actually was a nobility.

The idea that people like Malfoy or Voldemort wouldn't be lording it over people if they actually were noble in title is plain retarded

>A muggle could probably be able to pass as a wizard in Hogwarts simply by saying that he has lost his wand and by doing well in other areas like Potions or Herbology.
I've thought about playing a character like this before.

A muggle in Hogwarts would be hit by all the antimuggle wards. Plus there's a lot of magical shit that muggles can't even perceive, he'd get found out in a second.

Isn't the school invisible to Muggles anyways

This is the dealbreaker here

It maybe invisible from outside the grounds.

Muggles would never get accepted in Hogwarts, the automatic wards that detect underage magic use wouldn't ping to send them the invite.

>invisible
I'm pretty sure they just see it as an abandoned ruin.

There is tons of shit where hpmor is atrocious. And as he says, the author uses Calvin ball rules to make Harry seem clever, not actual clever writing.

Writing geniuses is hard, making all other characters complete idiots to make your supposed genius look smart is easy.

Yes. And once you get close, you remember you have something else to do.

>Ooooh, a piece of candy!

Wouldn't being exposed to magic (as a poser would be) negate the spell? Like how the Grimmauld Place house was unsafe once someone grabbed Hermione when she entered.

Using logic when talking Harry Potter is a bad idea. Magic is barely explained and rarely coherent with itself in the books.
Regardless, Grimmauld Place (btw "grim old place"? Jesus Christ Rowling, you're better than that) is a very peculiar example: the only thing that was invalidated is the Fidelius charm, because Hermione (a secret keeper like everyone else who learnt of the place from Dumbledore since his death) "told" him about it by side-along apparating him. Hogwarts isn't under the Fidelius afaik (and no shit, what's the point of hiding a place every kid over 11 years of age is gonna be invited in anyway?), its wards aren't explained in any way. If it worked like the Fidelius or thereabout, the muggles would need the headmaster to tell them "willingly" about the school, kinda voiding the point of them being hidden.

That could be the point of the letter they get. Making it so the muggle kids can see/enter the castle.

Imagine a muggleborn going near Hogwarts when he's 6. His parents have no knowledge of the dangers, and he's not affected by the spell ("Ho, a giant castle just behind this nice forest, I'll get a closer look" "Damian, what are you doing? Please come bac... I suddently feel the need to go elsewhere")

And as noted above, Filch can dust Hogwarts eeven if he has no magical power.

Filch isn't a muggle, he's a squib. They have the same "magic sense" as wizards (the cat lady could see dementors, unlike Dudley).
Regarding muggle kids, the letters are addressed to the prospective students, not the parents, so I don't think they qualify as invitations. Besides, parents aren't supposed to get to Hogwarts regardless.
We're definitely approaching unmapped territory tho, there's no point discussing stuff Rowling herself likely never considered and certainly never explained, especially when you consider that Rowling's world-building is plot driven.

I could imagine shenanigans allowing for such a scenario. Fantastic Beasts briefly touched on how the muggle community would interact with the wizarding world.

Bump

But Hermione is black you racist cis-het white male supremacist!

>But Hermione is black
Was Rowling afraid, or did they pay her that well for this? Most authors absolutely loathe having their work altered for political reasons.

She's liberal and desperate to keep HP relevant for $$$. It's the same shit as the gay Dumbledore reveal.

Actually, the gay dumbledore reveal was heavily foreshadowed in the books set after his death. Dumbles was always kinda like that, and it's heavily implied that he was in love with grindelwald.

>desperate to keep HP relevant for $$$
I will never understand uber rich people wanting even more money. You'd think that after the first score millions other stuff would start being more important than just having more 0s in their bank account.
I wouldn't even know what the fuck to do with more than 10k a month.

So, what period do you want to explore in a Harry Potter rpg? First or second wizardry war? Modern times? 19th century? Earlier? Near future cyberpunk?
At hogwarts or outside?

Shadowrun HP could be interesting.

desu the premise of the coming movie sounds interesting. Hunting/capturing magic monsters, the time period wouldn't matter much to me.

Modern days or Belle Epoque seem the best options for the HP setting. Playing during the Voldemort wars would feel really shitty, because the baddies are shit tier.
As far as the type of game, I'd say the choices are Law Enforcement game (Auror or wars), Adventurer game (Magizoologist or Curse Breaker), School game (Hogwarts)

You could also just hunt artifacts or tomes.

That's basically a curse breaker's job.

You could conceivably run a political intrigue piece as well. Though that falls more on the roleplay half of an rpg.

Marauders Era would be terrific fun imo. A good blend of mischief without getting too grimdark off the bat.

Thr movie is already out and the book has been out even longer. The movie felt more polished but its appeal in large part came from the cgi.
Though, for a monster movie it was underwhelming.

The book has nothing at all to do with the movie. The book is literally just a supplement that tells you about magical creatures.

Aw crap.
But yes, wasn't the book just a fake encyclopedia?

>Belle Epoque
You have good taste.

The opposition between muggles switching to a society of industrial production and the wizard world would be very cool to play with.

Yeah.

Wasn't Voldemort killing people left and right during the marauder's era?

The "war" lasted eleven years and started the same year the Marauders joined Hogwarts, Voldemort was probably just considered a random evil wizard at the beginning and not quite the darkest of dark lords until a few years in. Likely he didn't have as many followers and allies early on as when he died the first time.

Also Hogwarts had a younger Dumbledore at the time, and Voldemort was afraid of him. Probably the best and safest place to be, until you got a letter saying your parents died, I guess. I can't remember if they talk much about that in the books. I mean, we have Lupin and Sirius who lived through it and probably talked about it.

The Order of the Phoenix was founded in 1970, and Voldmort was already talked about and had followers during the 60s (it's mentioned that he was accompanied by death eaters when he went asking for a teaching position at Hogwarts).
I think it's pretty safe to say the 70s were a shitshow.

bump

I think the Lily/Snape thing would have ended mufh earlier on if Voldemort was already at his peak in their school years. It wouldn't have been long before shit hit the fan after.

...

That's why I like Worst Witch.
It's a mixture of magic and "real life" (which probably makes a strange class workload)
and also has a branch of higher learning at Cambridge.
JK pretty much just ripped off THE BEST (and most translated) British author., Enid Blyton.
She took the whole "Twins at St. Clairs" and mixed it up with the other Adventure books and threw in magic.

Side note. I have friends from Korea, Japan and Shri Lanka and one of the things we all have is Enid Blyton.
She's racist as fuck in only the way someone from "the Empire" can be after the war and also the books are rife with food porn. I think it was probably due to the rationing.

What happens if a letter gets misdirected?
Owl gets caught in a storm.
blown off course.
letter is either found on wounded owl or perhaps blows out of it's talons and the letter (no real genius) "finds" the closest kid.

>>Besides, parents aren't supposed to get to >>Hogwarts regardless.

Parent teacher interviews where parents go to Hogworts n stay the night.

Owl mail is weird. It seems to always find its recipient. And remember the shenanigans at the beginning of the first book? Though that was probably Dumbledore fucking with the Dursleys.

Worst Witch could have done so better were it not girlish

That was kind of the point though.
Although there was a boys magic school as well.
That's were JK either got it right with a mixed gender school but that might have either been modernity or marketing.
Also, girls can slip into boys rooms at Hogworts but not vice versa hmmmmmm

Yeah, I've always come across this problem when playing a character. How are you supposed to get into the mindset of a character who's smarter than you?
I mean, I'm smart, but I'm not nine-digit multiplication in my head smart.

Holy fuck, when the review can easily be TLDR-ed, there is no way in ice-skating Hell I'm reading MoR now.
I mean, for fuck's sake, P versus NP is a super goddamn ambiguous problem to the point where it's been 'proved' in both directions by tons of dudes. P DNE NP, by my own interpretation, but obviously I can't give a hamfisted declaration that this must be so, especially in a FICTIONAL MAGICAL UNIVERSE.

They're magical owls, user. They'll get through it all.

You'd need the GM's complicity, or the other players, for it. And maybe asks if anyone'd be okay if the group's good ideas came from your character, story-wise.

>Grimmauld Place (btw "grim old place)

Holy fuck how did i not realise

I think muggle parents can go to hogwarts if invited. Im sure hermiones parent go there at some point.

Also how did hermione (or any muggle student) get on platform 9 3/4? Did she figure it out or have a guide?

It was probably mentioned in passing in one of her textbooks.

BTW, it's implied Hermione has perfect memory recall. She can recite Dumbledore's speech about Cedric from memory one year later.

From Molly, I guess wizards look for kids and parents who look lost?
Or maybe when teachers visit muggleborn kids they explain it? I mean Hagrid kept forgetting things or that he wasn't supposed to talk about others, he probably just forgot to tell Harry even though he was supposed to.

Dumbledore knew that harry wasn't getting letters and knew where the dursleys were running to before they arrived (they go to a hotel before the island shack and one of the staff instantly tells them that there's like 15 letters) so there's probably a spell on it that can tell if the letter has been received and opened by the correct person. There is also probably a spell that will make the letter destroy itself if it somehow got into the hands of someone else (as in, someone who's not a relative of the student).

Also I think that for muggle students who had literally no knowledge about the magical world a teacher would be sent, its just that dumbledore assumed the dursleys would tell harry and only sent hagrid when it was clear he was being prevented from opening them.

I would have thought they send teachers to muggle born students.

If a muggle born parent saw the hogwarts letter they would assume it's a joke. It would be better to send a teacher who could do some basic magic to prove it's real.

>maybe when teachers visit muggleborn kids they explain it
They do send teachers, m8. It's in the books.

Imagine the poor kids who get Snape.

>tfw a stranger didn't arrive at my house to magic me off to a private school in the middle of nowhere

I doubt they would send the head of slytherin to muggles.

More like imagine the poor kid who got trelawney.

>ok prove you're a witch, do some magic
>you're going to die a very painful death! The tea leaves shaped like a frog prove it!

Top fucking kek.
Wonder how many kids they lost because of those two.

>tfw no letter from Beauxbatons.

To be fair most of the times she was predicting that stuff about Harry, who was always in mortal danger and did briefly die at the end of the series.

If you throw shit at a wall enough eventually some will stick.

But McGonagall said she did that for one student in every third year class since her first year of employment. It's not like she foresaw anything about Harry, she just picked the obvious choice of the class for her yearly routine.

Serious question, how would wizards in 21st century Britain maintain secrecy with surveillance cameras everywhere? Maybe have the same magical effect that disrupts technology at Hogwarts cause digital cameras to go haywire whenever something explicitly magical is in view?

Doesn't the first Half-Blood Prince chapters implies wizards have infiltrated the British government? They can probably pull enough strings to keep things undercover while they obliviate everyone.

Also, there doesn't seem to be that many wizards in Britain, and most of them probably don't spend a lot of time in places with Muggle cameras.

>Serious question, how would wizards in 21st century Britain maintain secrecy with surveillance cameras everywhere?
They wouldn't. Short of some preventive electronics disruptive spell existing and hitting a wide area for a long time (and that would still make trouble with muggles wondering what the actual fuck is causing all these issues), there would be no way to retrieve every smartphone in a given area, and a great many cameras stream live to multiple points, so good fucking luck reaching them all.
This discounting the fact that HP wizards are fucking luddites who don't have any understanding of muggle tech, and as such wouldn't even be aware of the danger.

IIRC, the series was set in the 90s, where infiltrating the government would have been enough to keep the books straight.

Good luck keeping that up in the era of smartphones and YouTube without a dedicated task force who actually knew shit about technology and worked with various world governments

Consider this: Harry Potter game set in WWII, where you play as wizards preventing the infiltration of the british government by Nazi's/Grindewald's forces.

Could be fun but I'd prefer an Inglorious Bastards twist on it rather than playing it straight.

One problem is that you'd have to be careful about how OP Grindelwald and his cronies get to be. If he doesn't fit what players expect they'll bitch.

That's a thing, you're not able to beat him in duel side he owns rhe else wand the shitfest new movie be damned. Technically you can't beat him at all because of canon and he loses only to Dumbledore.

>What would be your ideal campaign in the HPverse? Edition
As odd as it may sound, probably not school. I have no idea how to do a Harry Potter school campaign which is both interesting and not literally just the plot of the books all over again. I'd kind of like to do an Aurors game - CSI Magical Britain, with occasional magic combat showdowns

I suppose that's why was referencing IB, which is basically the "fuck canon, do what feels more fun/cathartic."

The only discussion I want to have regarding HPMoR is whether you could run a reasonable game as Aurors trying to break a catastrophic spell cast by some dark wizard which turned the Potterverse into HPMoR.

>BBEG pulls a time turner out of his ass every 10 seconds
>He's got some malignant spell that makes whatever he thinks to be right a universal law

How would one defeat such a beast?
I assume you'd have to make sure every tactic you use falls in line with something he believes, just so he doesn't warp the universe and change it.

Trap him in his own twisted logic, find the bais and analyse it. He's the locus of the spell so get him talking and thinking, when he ignores enough holes the universe will notice and snap back on him like a rubber band.

Flick him right off the face of existence.

Fuck that sounds more like how you beat a Doctor Who villains than a HP one.

Well, the classic approach is tricking him into thinking something that you then use to beat him before he can change his mind, ideally by relying on his own arrogance. There's also the Bill and Tedd approach, which is to have your own Time Turner and trick him into thinking he's in control until he falls into your trap. Then there's the Index approach, which is to get him to be afraid of you and think you're able to defeat him. At which point, you are.

Fuck time turners

Plot hax are fine in moderation

Bamp.