Fictions & Fragments

These are some quick ideas about Talents for Harry Potter characters. The first are Rank 1 Talents for characters by house, expanding their Career Skills. Gryffindor Rank 1 - Gryffindor Student: Cool becomes a Career Skill for you. Hufflepuff Rank 1 - Hufflepuff Student: Survival becomes a Career Skill for you. Ravenclaw Rank 1 - Ravenclaw Student - Perception becomes a Career Skill for you. Slytherin Rank 1 - Slytherin Student - Skulduggery becomes a Career Skill for you.

Careers are an important way of defining core skills for a character type. Since all the HP characters are Hogwarts students, I tried to frame Careers like cliques, describing how the character expresses themselves and their motivation at school. The Careers I decided upon are Athletic, Mischievious, Popular and Studious. Everyone gets Arcana as a Career skill, because a HP game is going to rely upon using magic. Athletic Athletics Discipline Coordination Perception Piloting (as Riding(Broom)) Resilience Brawl Leadership Mischevious Alchemy (as Potions) Coordination Skulduggery Stealth Streetwise Arcana Deception Negotiation Popular Cool Vigilance Arcana Charm Coercion Deception Leadership Negotiation Studious Alchemy (as Potions) Discipline Mechanics Medicine Vigilance Arcana Knowledge(Magical) Knowledge(Magical Creatures)

Getting into Careers reminded me that Genesys Skills need some updating for Harry Potter! The basic skills in the game include: General Skills Alchemy --> Potions Astrocartography (removed) Athletics Conputers (Muggle skill) Cool Coordination Discipline Driving (Muggle skill) Mechanics Medicine Operating Perception Piloting --> Flying(Broom) Resilience Riding --> Riding(Animal) Skulduggery Stealth Streetwise Survival Vigilance Magic Skills Arcana Divine (removed) Primal (removed) Combat Brawl Gunnery Melee Ranged Social Charm Coercion Deception Leadership Negotiation Knowledge Knowledge --> Knowledge(Muggle) Knowledge(Magical) Knowledge(Dark Arts) Knowledge(Magical Creatures) This is a very general mapping of skills. At this point there's no need for heavy redesign but some of the skills have little use in Harry Potter. Others, like Divine and Primal don't reflect the world that we've seen so far through the s...

I like Harry Potter. It's something I can share with my whole family, because everyone is a fan, so it's a constant interest of mine to see Harry Potter and the Hogwarts world in RPG systems. Genesys seems like a very good candidate for this. It has a very open magic system that seems like it would work well with HP. Something I enjoy about the idea of Genesys is the narrative dice system. My goal in creating an HP game is to have a co-GM game where my wife and I can play without feeling the burden of creating stories rests on either of us. I'm also happy that Genesys uses incremental (non-level) character gains. It seems to me like it fits the HP model well. So running down character creation step by step in Genesys, first you need a Background for your character. This is more descriptive than statistical. You answer questions about your character's life and upbringing pre-game. In my HP example, I want to start with Year 1 Hogwarts students, so the Background w...

I recently got a copy of the Genesys Core Rulebook from Fantasy Flight Games. The Genesys system is the updated and revised system that has been used in the Star Wars RPG products Edge of the Empire, Age of Rebellion and Force & Destiny. I've been very pleased to read through the Genesys rulebook because it's a great update and clarification to the SW RPGs and also a fantastic sandbox for creating your own games. The Star Wars games have a really interesting engine revolving around narrative dice. Until recently I found this difficult to embrace because it violates my two preferred points in RPGs: 1. A free System Reference Document (SRD) or Quickplay that introduces the system and rules before you purchase it. RPG books get expensive and I like when companies believe in their product enough to share it and give people a chance to try before they buy. Fantasy Flight doesn't do this with their RPG products. To make things harder, the system requires specialized...