Harry Potter and the Heir of Ravenclaw

[Shaun Hately]

I've been meaning to write this post for nearly a week now, but 
initially speaking I was too tired, and later was too sick to think 
about it particularly coherently. This is the normal result of 
congoing for me - I get very tired due to lack of sleep and then 
come down with an exotic cold brought in by interstate 
conventioneers.

Last weekend, the Easter long weekend, I attended Conquest, a 
fairly large Melbourne-based roleplaying convention. Most years I 
write and run a roleplaying game at Conquest - for the last three 
years, this game has been based on Harry Potter. In 2002 it was 
'Harry Potter and the Deady Choice', in 2003, 'Harry Potter and the 
Crown of the Warrior Queen', in 2004, this year, it was 'Harry 
Potter and the Heir of Ravenclaw'. These games are, by far, the 
most popular I have ever run. Previous games I ran used to get 
around 12-15 players over the Con - these tend to get 30 or more. I 
run them in sessions of 4 or 5 players at a time - and from memory, 
this con, I ran seven sessions.

The sessions were *very* enjoyable for me - mostly seeing players 
do things that I hadn't anticipated - the things the players bring 
to their characters - and I thought I'd share a couple of 
anecdotes, seeing you're not allowed to share them at cons here (-8

I can't write them all down, but here are the stand outs that I can 
recall.

All five characters in this game were Ravenclaws - Luna Lovegood, 
Cho Chang, Michael Corner, Terry Boot, and Roger Davies, just for 
the record - previous games have used the more core characters. 
That's been fun - but using these characters gave people a bit more 
freedom to do what they liked (it also had the advantage that it 
was easier for people who hadn't read all the books to adapt, 
because Ravenclaws wouldn't necessarily know everything that has 
been going on). The game was set in the time period just prior to 
Harry, Hermione, and Ron starting Fifth Year, up until the day 
before the Hogsmeade meeting that lead to the formation of 
Dumbledore's Army. Briefly the characters discover evidence that 
like Slytherin, Ravenclaw has an 'heir' in the modern world - and 
set out to identify who that might be.

Two of the groups I ran the game for contained children - in one 
game, I had an 8 year old girl and a 10 year old boy (along with 
two adult players), and in another - my final session - I ran it 
for a 14 year old girl, a 13 year old girl, a 10 year old boy, and 
a 4 year old girl. I love running these games for kids - they get 
so into them, and I'm also not as self conscious running for kids - 
so I can really overact. With the last group, when I was playing 
the sorting hat, declaiming it's annual song, I went into full 
Shakespearean overacting mode - and literally had two of the kids 
rolling on the ground laughing - that feels good. Even if, probably 
because it was the last session of a long con, the kids behaviour 
left something to be desired - not a major problem seeing it was 
four kids playing with each other - but if they'd been in a group 
with adults, I'd have had problems - because adults tend to 
actually want to stay fairly on plot the whole time, and some get 
very easily annoyed with kids who just want to play around. I 
thought the 4 year old might be a problem - running games for kids 
that young is very challenging. But she was, in fact, the best 
behaved of all of them. Her father is a serious gamer and she takes 
gaming very seriously. But her older brother, also playing, decided 
to smack her in the middle of the game (I actually was worried he'd 
really hurt her, until in a panic he told her if she stopped crying 
and didn't tell their father he'd hit her, she could smack him ten 
times - and she immediately stopped screaming and bawling and with 
a look of total glee set about battering her brother), and the two 
older girls decided they would join forces to see if they could 
break the GM (me). In a three hour session allocated, it took 45 
minutes to read through the 5 paragraphs of introductory text - and 
they only actually made it to Hogwarts half an hour before the 
session ended (not as bad as one group last year who never managed 
to get off the Hogwarts Express...)

Now - as I said, we had some interesting experiences, as people 
abandoned all semblance of following the plot and set out on their 
own paths. That's OK, BTW - roleplaying games should be fluid 
enough to allow players to do that, and in all cases, I did manage 
to complete the actual written plot - it's just they did a lot more 
as well.

Now one of the clues I gave the players early on was that they 
should 'Listen to the hat'. My intention was simply that they 
should listen to the hats sorting song (taken from Order of the 
Phoenix) which stressed the importance of unity. Every single group 
decided that the clue meant they needed to carry on more detailed 
discussion with the hat. Every single group decided to try and 
either kidnap the sorting hat, or at least gain some temporary 
access to it. We had students setting off dungbombs left right and 
centre to create disturbances. We had others waylaying Filch by 
asking him some serious questions about janitorial work in the 
school - Filch was quite flattered to encounter a student who 
understood the school couldn't possibly run without him. We had 
groups who fled the halls of Hogwarts pursued by Mrs Norris - the 
highlight was when Michael Corner and Cho Chang hid in the boys 
toilets and were observed by the Grey Lady who was very suspicious 
of students sneaking around like that - and had to convince her 
that Cho had been called by Michael because there was no paper (-8.

We had the wonderful girl playing Luna who got *really* into 
character and kept telling the others all these various wild 
stories as if they were fact. One of her stories, supposedly 
published in the Quibbler, was about the fact that every decade or 
so, a muggle was accidentally invited into Hogwarts and this was 
only discovered when the sorting hat was placed on them - and in an 
effort to prevent word of the wizarding world's existence escaping, 
the sorting hat promptly ate the student. This was only one of many 
stories - but it took on a life of its own. The person playing 
Michael asked for back issues which Luna happily supplied and which 
Michael gave to the Weasley twins - who posted copies all over the 
Hogwarts Express.

Several first year students arrived in the Great Hall, dripping 
wet, accompanied by a very confused Professor Grubbly-Plank who 
couldn't understand why they were so intent on leaping from the 
boats to escape, Professor McGonnagall was absolutely baffled by 
the need to physically pick up and carry several first years to the 
stool to be sorted - and later when the group managed to talk to 
the sorting hat, the hat was totally baffled as to why this year, 
the only message he was able to detect in most of the first years 
minds was 'ohmigodpleasedonteatme'.

I had the group where Roger Davies decided he wanted to accelerate 
the possibility of romance with Cho Chang, and so set out to buy a 
love potion in Nockturn Alley. Unfortunately the potion he got was 
incredibly powerful and not quite kosher. That group retired to 
Terry Boots home after their shopping expedition - Terry is muggle 
born and they wanted somewhere they were unlikely to be under 
magical surveillance. Unfortunately, in the game, Terry's parents 
are slightly disturbed by the magical world - and his inviting a 
bunch of his school friends home, caused some tensions. It caused 
even more tensions when Cho drank the 'love potion', and 
immediately set out to aggressively seduce Roger... end result of 
all this was the Boots fled their home, horrified at what they 
assumed was normal wizarding behaviour, and the following day, poor 
Terry found himself grounded until he went back to school - and the 
parents weren't too certain about allowing that anyway.

Another group sought a painting of Rowena Ravenclaw in the hope 
they might be able to question it - something I hadn't anticipated. 
I decided to tell them, Ravenclaw had endowed a pediatrics ward at 
St Mungos - so they headed off there. I described the ward based on 
my own experiences in a children's hospital when I was 12 or so - 
we had a horrible, child-hating nurse in charge of our ward (at 
least that's the way I remember her - I don't think anyone as 
horrid as I remember could really have lasted in a children's 
hospital). I exagerated her ten-fold and put her in charge of this 
ward at St Mungos - all the kids were under near permanent Silencio 
and Petrificus Totalus spells. The characters revolted at this - 
and tried to cause chaos. End result was that three of them wound 
up residents of the ward until school resumed. (-8

Another incident - the final scenes of the game, involve the 
characters having to flee a group of deatheaters on the lonely Isle 
of Drear. The characters arrive there on broomsticks - as do the 
Death Eaters. The thing is the Death Eaters all have Firebolts.

In the case of virtually every group, the players managed to get to 
the brooms first - and nearly all steal the Firebolts which allows 
for a fairly rapid escape (not to mention, seriously improves 
Ravenclaws Quidditch prospects from then on!).

In one case, Terry got to the brooms first - not realising they 
were Firebolts, he decided he needed to destroy them so the Death 
Eaters couldn't chase anyone. Cho Chang and Roger Davies reaction 
when they came upon a pile of blazing Firebolts - with Terry 
looking very pleased at his initiative - was quite impressive and 
amusing. Terry had nothing to fear from the Death Eaters at that 
point... but his housemates were another matter.

The game honestly went really well - my maps and floorplans of 
Hogwarts were a hit - which feels really good - and everybody 
seemed to really enjoy themselves. I'm already semi-committed to 
running another game next year - at the moment, I'm musing about 
how a group consisting of James Potter, Sirius Black, Peter 
Pettigrew, Remus Lupin, Lilly Evans, and Severus Snape might 
function... (-8


Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia