Hey All, I’ve got a friend who’s interested in running her first game now that she has a few years experience under her belt and she’s asked me to help her choose a system. She’s a massive Harry Potter fan and given all of the PbtA games out there I know there must be at least one designed for that sort of story. Does anyone know of a Wizard Boarding School PbtA game?
Hey All, I’ve got a friend who’s interested in running her first game now that she has a few years experience under…
Hey All, I’ve got a friend who’s interested in running her first game now that she has a few years experience under…
There’s Monsterhearts, but I’m not personally comfortable with the way it revolves around teenagers forming unhealthy romantic and sexual relationships. (It’s more Twilight than Harry Potter.)
I’m thinking it would probably be pretty easy to use Urban Shadows for a supernatural school setting. It’s an Urban Fantasy game a la Dresden Files by default, but the system of interconnected relationships it builds might be just as good for supernatural teen drama as Monsterhearts’ is, with comparatively more emphasis on entanglement in dangerous situations and less on dysfunctional relationships.
The game uses four Factions: Mortality (humanity), Night (vamps, werewolves, ghosts), Wild (miscellaneous monsters like Dragons, Demons, and Fae), and Power (powered humans like Wizards, Oracles, and Immortals.) The playbooks each fit into a faction, but it would be easy enough to redefine what the factions and playbooks mean. They all have different traits in how they act with different Faction moves, so it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to have them be four “houses” with different identities and probably different forms of magic.
There is a “Wizard” playbook, but the amount of power and versatility it has suggests that it would be a teacher or star student or something like that. On the other hand, giving everyone a few magical abilities that they select from the start, from the Wizard or Fae spells or that they come up with themselves, shouldn’t be unbalancing. Magic serving the same role as normal tools and then some for the player characters wouldn’t strain the system.
Just my two cents. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s something out there more specific to what you’re looking for.
I think that Josh Mannon’s Boarsdraft is such an animal. Josh?
The latest version is powered by the Apocalypse but it isn’t an AW hack. It draws from many other games and ideas as well. It is also about two years out of date not that, that matters much.
Sean Hess
It’s not PbtA but have you looked at Little Wizards? It’s fun, well designed, and given that the protagonists are usually kids it would probably adapt well to young students. Just need to darken the tone a bit. Maybe change the names and difficulties of the magical skills?
It’s simple and would make a great game to GM for the first time.
Little Wizards is wonderful!
If you get Fate accelerated there’s a sample Harry Potter type character in the book. Would be easy to say everyone can do magic and use RAW. http://www.evilhat.com/home/fate-core-downloads/
I have designed a Cortex+ hack for Harry Potter. My group and I call it Hogwarts+ and they are having a blast. I’ll link to it if you’re interested.
I realize I’m not adding a lot here — but I don’t think the AW engine would be suited to Harry Potter style adventures. FATE does seem much more appropriate, as Scott Acker mentions.
Someone’s done a hack for (strongly influenced by the Apocalypse) Blades in the Dark called Desks in the Dark that would be perfectly suited to Potter-verse style boarding school hijinks of a mischievous nature.