I said I would, and I finally did. I made the Hogwarts RPG into a downloadable, printer friendly RTF Document, available here. This has, for the most part, been playtested, and should be a great quick pick-up-and-play game. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been working on this Harry Potter-themed tabletop RPG, and have  gone out of my way to emphasize both simulation and simplicity, no mean feat but I think I did it.

Some highlights of this game-

• Small numbers, simple arithmetic. If you want to play this with small children the math is very, very easy to understand. This doesn’t have to be a children’s game, but it certainly can be and I think that is it’s greatest strength.
• Classes and personal experiences make up your character’s skillset, rather than a profession-like system or a strictly skill-based game. The classes themselves are designed so that they simulate Hogwarts classes by progressing from easy spells to more difficult ones along basically a linear curriculum. The Experiences are a two-way roll, a chance in six or a skill that can be advanced like a class, and can be customized for different needs very easily(I even wrote guidelines! I usually am HORRIBLE at writing documentation)
• The Yield System. Instead of making a combat-oriented game, any in-game aggression can be handled via the yield system where winners and losers are determined without threat of lethality in the controlled environment of Hogwarts, and where roleplaying the after-effects of such situations is much more important to the game over all because the aggression doesn’t actually matter. Kind of like high school.
• Two playable species for the Hogwarts school, Humans and Centaurs, House Elves and Goblins  forthcoming.
• Also, the rules for creating demihumans and half-breeds are available here at the website

Currently it has the Character Creation, Classes/Skills/Experiences, Gameplay, and Creatures, but it does not have specific equipment or locations.

Man, I just need to keep reading Vulcan Stev’s back posts. All kinds of good stuff there.

So, in my junior year of high school I wrote a game that formed the basis of all the other games on this site, in one way or another. It was an RPG focused on the Harry Potter Universe and designed to be played almost entirely upon the grounds of Hogwarts without being limited by relatively small material expanse. It never managed to get played, and is mostly lost to the endless crap I do to my computer, but I have found a few handwritten pages that survived and remember enough(and have a much more thorough grounding in system design) so I’m remaking it to serialize here, and eventually release as a PDF. On a less happy note, I’d like to remind the Intellectual Property Nazis that I am not using this fan created work for commercial purposes and it was created purely out of love for the novels. Please make your decisions about this game as such and do not sue the crap out of me. Please.

Dedication:

To Allison Moore, for convincing me to read them in the first place, and to J.K. Rowling for making it one of my better decisions at that point in my life.

1. Welcome to Hogwarts!

2. Characters: Students, Houses, Teams and Classes

3. The Grounds: The Chamber of Secrets and other Dangerous Places

4. The Drama: Professors, Politics and Prominent Players

5. Spells and Potions: From Levitation to Veritaserum

6. Magical Artifacts: Erised Stra Ehru Oyt Ube Cafru Oyt On Wohsi

7. Playing the Game

Chapter One: Welcome to Hogwarts

Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts

Teach us something PLEASE,

Whether we be old and bald or young with scabby knees

Who, after reading the Harry Potter series, didn’t want to live a life of adventure at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? The thought of learning to make potions or cast spells made Algebra a little less bearable, to be sure, but did you ever aspire to be a Professor of Potions or vanquish terrifying villains like Lord Voldemort with your magical abilities? Did you ever think of what you would do if embroiled in conspiracy at the ministry of magic? If you did, I think this is the game for you.

Every roleplaying book begins by asking the question “What is Roleplaying?” Roleplaying is a compound word consisting of the noun(abs) role and the verb playing. What that means is that you will be taking on the role of a character in the Harry Potter universe. This book serves the purpose of defining loose rules for how the game will handle your involvement, but in the end, the experience of Hogwarts is up to you. This game is set up to provide you with some basic ways to account for your interaction with the Harry Potter setting and encourage you to play the part of a student or adult resident of Hogwarts School.

If you have ever played popular RPG’s like Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons and Dragons or White Wolf’s World of Darkness, you might be surprised or pleased by what you see here. This game is rules-lite, with simple math and a fast pace, and very customizable, but designed specifically to play at Hogwarts and it feels like a faithful Harry Potter RPG should. It uses only d6(standard six sided die, to the gaming laypeople in the audience) and there are no complicated and messy tables to figure out. Levels are defined in terms of semesters and years as a student. Your house, what classes you take, what friends you make, what campus organizations you belong to, all have a profound effect on your character and how he or shee makes his way in the wizarding world. I hope you will find joy in playing this game.