[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Harry Potter and the Death of Magic

[Shaun Hately]

On 20 Apr 2006 at 20:51, Steve wrote:

 
> bboyminn:
> 
> Shaun, I'm so glad you did this again. I greatly enjoyed last years
> account of the Role Playing group, though I admit I am thoroughly
> confused as to how it works (more on that later). This years account
> is even better. I also admire all the work you put into it, I sure,
> whether they know it or not, the players greatly appreciate your efforts. 

Fortunately a lot of my players have run games themselves at Cons 
and so they do have some idea of how much work we put into it. Some 
people can be very annoying though and just don't turn to a session 
they've booked for putting me at a disadvantage and the other 
players if it takes the total below the number needed to run. 
Fortunately I didn't have to cancel any sessions for that reason 
this year, but it has been known.
 
> I love how you setup the story, then work in interesting plot twist
> and turns. It must make it so much easier and certainly more fun for
> the 'players' when you have so fully developed the world in which they
> must 'play'.

Yes, and with Harry Potter - it's really good because people know 
the world too - a lot less set up is needed than some games where 
you have to explain everything. Everybody I ran it for had at least 
seen the movies so understood the basics. The only real issue was 
trying to explain Luna Lovegood to people who hadn't encountered her 
yet.
 
> I've been wondering since you made your Conquest report last year,
> exactly how these Role Playing Groups work? Do the characters move
> around the room like they are on a stage acting out their roles? Do
> they simply stand a recite their lines like a radio play? Do they all
> sit at a table and move little game pieces around? Or are they all
> sitting at computers playing with their on-line Avatars? 

The type of game I run is called a tabletop game. This involves all 
of us sitting around a table, and - well, basically I describe the 
environment the players are in. I tell them what they can see - what 
they can hear. What they can smell - I basically tell them 
everything they would know if they were actually in the location 
where the game is set.

And then they tell me what they want to do. They talk to each other 
in character, discussing things and working out what they want to do 
and they describe to me what they are actually doing and I react to 
what they do. So - if for example, they say they open a door, I'll 
tell them what they see when they open the door.

All the action takes place in the mind. We say what we are doing and 
we imagine it. 

There's rules that are designed to handle cases where someone tries 
to do something that they might not automatically be able to do. 
Every character is described by a series of statistics generated 
according to a particular set of rules... let me give you an 
example, using Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

I use the D20 rules system for my games. This is probably the most 
used rules system around today, but there are plenty of others. The 
D20 system is best known in its incarnation of 'Dungeons and 
Dragons', the modern version of which (3.5) is an evolutionary 
descendent of the game going back to the early 1970s. It's called a 
D20 system because the most commonly used dice in this system is 
what gamers call a D20 - a twenty sided dice.

Every character starts with a set of basic statistics - their basic 
characteristics. These are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, 
Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. These scores are typically 
between 3 and 18 - and the higher the score the better someone is at 
something.

So in my game, Harry has the following scores:

Strength: 15
Dexterity: 18
Constitution: 12
Intelligence: 15
Wisdom: 14
Charisma: 15

In English, Harry is fairly strong, very dextrous, healthy but 
nothing special, reasonably smart, reasonably wise, and quite 
likeable.

Hermione, on the other hand had these stats:

Strength: 14
Dexterity: 12
Constitution: 13
Intelligence: 18
Wisdom: 16
Charisma: 12

She's a little above average in Strength, average in Dexterity, 
healthy, extremely clever and very wise, and not unlikeable.

Ron -

Strength: 15
Dexterity: 16
Constitution: 16
Intelligence: 16
Wisdom: 12
Charisma: 13

Ron is fairly strong, reasonably dextrous, reasonably fit and 
healthy, pretty smart, fairly average when it comes to wisdom, and a 
likeable enough fellow.

(Note - in most games, you'll have lower scores than these - for 
this game I assume the characters are potential heroes and give them 
scores that tend to the high side - I also use higher scores for 
adult characters - most D20 games assume the characters are mature 
adults - my Harry Potter game assumes they are children - but in 
this particular game, the characters are close to adulthood, so have 
high scores for that reason as well. Just in case any other D20 
players reading this think my scores are very generous - adults in 
my D20 Harry Potter games have scores average around 15, with 20+ 
not being unheard of in their peak characteristics).

This is just to give you an idea of how we use the numbers.

There's also a whole range of skills that every character has 
available to them and again they have numbers assigned to them 
according to the rules - I won't go into all of them - because 
there's a lot, but for a few common examples...

Ride Broom - Harry has a 10, Ron a 7, Hermione a 3.
Research - Harry has a 2, Ron a 3, Hermione a 13 (the highest score 
in the game).

The way these work is fairly simple.

Say, these three characters are riding their brooms, being chased a 
group of Death Eaters. In an attempt to shake them off, all three 
dive suddenly to duck under a bridge.

This is a somewhat tricky manouevre so I decide how difficult it is. 
In this case, I'd probably give it a difficulty value of 15.

Each player has to roll a twenty sided dice and add their 'Ride 
Broom' score to it and get 15 or over.

For Harry - he needs to roll a 5 or better on the 20 sided dice. 
He's likely to do that - a 80% chance.

Ron needs to roll an 8 or better on the dice. A 65% chance - not 
bad.

Hermione though will need to roll 12 or better. A 45% chance. It's 
starting to get difficult at this point.

However, later on they are in the library trying to find out what 
really obscure potion they saw Snape brewing might be. I know that 
that's going to be very hard to find out. Difficulty of 25.

Ron and Harry really can't find out - even if they roll a 20, their 
research rolls can't reach 25. Hermione with her research of 13 
however - she'll need to roll a 12 again - a 45% chance.

Basically we have these mechanisms to decide if the characters 
succeed when they try to do something difficult - so it's not just 
me deciding on a whim what happens. The dice can change things.

And they did during the con. Hermione did a research roll and rolled 
a natural 20 - a 20 on the dice, highest possible result. I hadn't 
intended to tell them anything - but with that type of roll, I 
decided I had to give them *something* useful. It wasn't that much - 
but it was more than I would have just handed out.

In the Harry Potter game, we didn't use game pieces on the table 
(referred to a miniatures) but it's not uncommon to use those in 
roleplaying games - particularly games that involve a lot of combat, 
where particular strategies or tactics may rely on knowing exactly 
where everyone is. This just wasn't that style of game.

Table top is only one type of roleplaying. There are games where you 
do walk around a room actually playing your character acting out 
your role as you wish to do and other people playing other 
characters interact with you. These are actually a very common 
feature of Australian roleplaying conventions - they're referred to 
as freeforms and are regarded as Australia's major contribution to 
the hobby (freeforming was developed here in the early days of the 
hobby at early conventions). I play in freeforms reasonably often, 
but I've never written or run one.

And there are ways you can use computers to run these games as well 
- a whole different ways of doing that, from running what is close 
to a tabletop game just using computers for certain tasks, right up 
to very immersive environments.

> I assume from what you said, that you play the role of transient
> characters; for example, McGonagall and Percy. From what you said last
> year, you also play the role of referee or moderator, you stop or
> redirect the game when it starts going astray or people try to
> introduce concepts that violate the Potterverse as we know it. 

Yes, pretty much.

Basically all the characters in the game are either PCs - Player 
Characters - where each player runs one character (in this game, the 
available PCs were Harry, Ron, Hermione, Luna, Neville, and Ginny) 
or NPCs - Non-Player Characters - who are run by the GamesMaster, or 
GM - the referee - me, for this game, when and as needed. Over the 
course of the convention, I can recall playing Umbridge, Tonks, 
Molly, Percy, Fred and George, Ginny (in a game where there was no 
PC Ginny), Arthur, McGonagall, Mrs Norris, a house elf named Wedge, 
Remus Lupin, Pansy Parkinson, Draco, Lucius Malfoy, the Commissioner 
of the London Metropolitan Police, an employee of Weasley's 
Wizarding Wheezes, and probably some others I can't think off 
offhand.

I also make decisions on how difficult things are, respond to PC 
actions, determine what happens, and if the game starts to lag 
because the players can't figure out what to do, I get them back on 
track - I have a 'plot of last resort' with my Harry Potter games - 
a plot I can impose on the game if the players haven't got any idea. 
I do this for con games, because we have limited time - I don't do 
it in regular games.
 
> I was alway the person who moved the story into wild, perverse, and
> illogical realms. Frequently jumping back to my own divergent
> storyline by simply saying 'meanehile back at the....'. Unsually, at
> some point, my own storyline became so divergent and perverse, that
> the game either ended in total frustration or I was thrown out of it.

Actually sound good to me (-8

Seriously the advantage of organised RPGs over what you describe is 
because they have a structure that prevents things getting out of 
control. If things diverge too much, the GM can bring it back on 
track by using the rules and mechanics of the game. 
 
> In any event, I really enjoyed your report of the events, and laughed
> out loud several times. Always great to hear from you.

I'm glad you found it amusing.

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