Been thinking about this for a while. I figure it might be fun to be this crazy in the 2070s...

Work in progress, suggestions are welcome!

EDIT:
V1.03 12:24 pm, 7/24/07
V1.02 10:27 am, 7/23/07 (Freaky)
V1.01 10:26 pm, 7/22/07



The Hogwarts Tradition
Version 1.01

Concept: Through study, practice, and effort magic can be wielded and harnessed. Based on the printed book phenomenon of the early 21st century, the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was established for the Awakened who wanted a unique magical education. Each prospective student is 'sorted' into one of the four houses of the school leaning to one particular focus of spellcasting

Combat: Fire (Gryffindor)
Detection: Air (Ravenclaw)
Health: Earth or Plant (Hufflepuff)
Illusion: Man
Manipulation: Water (Slytherin)

Drain: Willpower + Logic

Quality Requirements:
Positive
Optional
Mentor Spirit (Familiar) - A specific animal pet can be chosen and with a possession ritual be inhabited by a spirit attuned with a student. This provides the student with a loyal, living companion called a Familiar. This quality also provides the capacity to learn the Expecto Patronum spell which is a limited Conjuring ability of a Guardian spirit in the shape of an(other) animal (student's choice).

Non-Optional
The Houses of Hogwarts - All students must pick one.
Gryffindor
"You might belong in Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart, their daring, nerve and chivalry set Gryffindors apart.."
A combat-centric house, Gryffindor students are known for their boldness. Though not wholly focused on offensive spellcasting, this house's students are far more likely to pick up athletic activities and learn marksmanship or fencing while studying at Hogwarts.

Hufflepuff
"You might belong in Hufflepuff, where those are just and loyal, those patient Hufflepuff's are true and unafraid of toil."
Sturdy and reliable, Hufflepuff students are not as eccentric as the other houses but are known for their kindness and amiability. Fearless and resourceful, Hufflepuffs are fast friends. Many focus on the healing aspects of magic.

Ravenclaw
"Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw, if you've a ready mind, where those of wit and learning, will always find their kind."
Considered odd and bookish by the other houses Ravenclaw is nonetheless the leader in arcana and enchanting ability. Knowledge is their true goal, in any form, and their student body is as diverse as the entire school combined. Many are burgeoning artisans and enchanters in their own right.

Slytherin
"Or perhaps in Slytherin, you'll make your real friends, those cunning folk use any means, to achieve their ends."
Manipulative and domineering, Slytherins aren't really all that bad. They merely see everything as a means to their end. Though considered "Dark" by the other houses, Slytherin is home to a varied array of studies from paracritter communication, the use of various alchemical substances, and the nature of magical control.


Negative
Non-optional
Geas (Wand) - A spellcasting and drain focus with a rating equal to the student's Magic / 2 (round down), it is specifically attuned to an individual and is required for almost all of his spellcasting. Cost is Rating x 1000 Y.

Geas (Latin Vocalization) - Spells are properly enunciated with vaguely Latin words combined with Wand movement.





(I don't know if I should provide bonuses too for the various Houses.)

I'm a Potter fan and I like the concept; however, I am not seeing this from a mechanics point of view yet. Please give a couple of examples for casting spells and summoning spirits showing the game mechanics.

I like my groggies, not mudbloods, thank you.

Although I enjoy reading Harry Potter, I think you are trying too hard to fit something that simply doesn't fit into Sixth World Magical Theory.

Perhaps it would be best to have "Potter Mages" be nothing more then aspected Spellcasters with the two Gesa you've mentioned as opposed to trying to introduce new gamerules into the mix.

I dunno, I think it's just more casting centric. A Patronus could be constured as summoning. Go the Catholic route and say that true summoning is considered dangerous (because it is) and not taught at basic school. After all, the Patronus is thought to be something beyond most student's ability.

Speaking in quasi-latin could be a centering technique. Wands could be a geas or casting fetish, with all spells requiring the fetish to make drain easier to ahndle for the younger students. Then as they can get older and handle it better, they learn to cast without wands (non-fetsih dependant spells) and even without vocalizing (stronger wills, don't have to use centering to resist drain) , even though that's not necessarily how they would do it every time.

Just another interpretation.

It's a bit of a stretch I know.

Well I had envisioned the whole combat casting part of the Potter world to be exchanging physical slaps combined with some elemental accents. So I chose the Guardian who could be considered skilled enough to disarm with Expelliarmus! and also to stun and so forth.

So you demand one service every time you enter a duel (or go into combat) with a Guardian Spirit which (was summoned earlier) and you wield his powers bypassing the awkwardness of the Spirits in interpreting human commands.

Mechanically speaking the Hogwarts magician is a summoner, I should've done a list of spells and such too, but the wand acts as a leash of sorts which allows the wand holder a finer degree of control over a Spirit's actions.

So when someone casts Wingardium Leviosa the Air Spirit he summoned earlier that day is brought back to cast Levitate on an item. But the magician controls it almost like it was his own Levitate spell.

I was looking to bypass the extraordinary amounts of drain necessary for all the fireworks of a Harry Potter magician and I thought Spirits were key.




There aren't really any new game rules other than for the wands. The mechanics portion is more like a Spirit possessing the caster and being able to direct the spells and skills more easily.

It's not the smoothest of translations so please pick at it.

Yeah. No special rules are needed beyond making it -extremely- limited Tradition, which has its advantages elsewhere. So the only rule required is allowing characters to bypass the 35 DP limit on Negative Qualities at character creation since a Geas: Talisman (Wand), Geas: Gesturing (Using Wand), and Geas: Chanting (Latin) are all "required" at the very minimum. Using their talisman as a fetish (increasing its cost) is also within the realm of possibility. All of this, of course, then gives the player more Build Points to blow elsewhere and it should be -strongly- encouraged that they be spent on Language: Latin, magical Knowledge Skills, Arcana, and Enchanting.

"Students" would then have a maximum Magic score of 3 or so, meaning that if they break a single geas they break all of them and suddenly find themselves unable to weild magic until they atone.

The rest relies on the player selecting appropriate spells, focusing more on Sorcery than Conjuring. What Conjuring skills they did have -- with Summoning being pretty low, especially for students -- would be focused on one particular spirit type which they would treat as their Patronus. Summoning 1 (Guardian Spirits +2), for example. And they'd still need to use their geasa when summoning one. Could even work one in as a Mentor Spirit as well.

Arcana should be extremely high in such a tradition, with Enchanting coming in close behind. Sustaining Foci (roleplaying them as being enchanted with the spell) are their bread and butter, too, especially for random things little things and spell effects.

Yeah, I agree with the idea that you should avoid introducing rules if at all possible. Remember, you're trying to bring a bit of the Harry Potter world into Shadowrun, not vice versa.

Of course, all I know about Harry Potter I learned from memes, so perhaps I'm biased.

While I am not shocked HP has finally been linked with Shadowrun, the issue I have is that you really 'need' a large organization to create a Hogwarts-esque magical academy.

You do have the whole 'muggle versus wizard/witch' thing going on, but there's no isolated magical community to grossly misunderstand normal human behavior/customs.

While having runners break into Hogwarts to extract a student or teacher or whatever might be amusing, it really almost requires metaplanar rules to exist as written. Having a school on a metaplane would be an interesting trick.

I guess I'm trying to say as nicely as I can that the tradition as written works, but the whole Harry Potter-esque magician character isn't going to have the needed places/mindsets/people to make the most out of their tradition.

Having gone to peoplewatch at my nearest major bookstore on the release date, I can easily see any of the people there defaulting to a Hogwarts tradition if they were to awaken tomorrow, though.

Now, where you could easily fix the problems listed is have an AR Harry Potter game, maybe one that is played by a majority of young mages. It might be half fun game, half training tool, helping the proper mental viewpoint develop for maximizing magical ability.

Also, about 99.9% of the runners (and corporations) would agree with Voldemort's take on good and evil.

Quidditch in 2070 would be cool. Think of the evolution of brooms.

tweak

Considering we already have a thread devoted to the Monofilament Broom, I'd say the possibilities are endless.

Here's a what if:

What if we replaced the awakened world with the Harry Potter world and kept everything else the same?

This would make for an interesting shadowrun game.

tweak

I had been considering adapting HP stuff to SR but realised that everything you need is already there. Traditional Wizardry/Hedge Witches ARE Rowling's concept of witches and wizards and we already have SR sources of magical schools (MIT&T etc) and it just needs to be extended to the British Boarding School concept. (and wands are basically just all purpose fetishes or maybe exclusive spellcasting and the wand acts like a Mudra or something like that)

The cool crossovers are in the area of magical compounds:

Polyjuice Potion
Felix Felicis
Draught of Living Death
Veritaserum

etc. since we don't have mechanics for anything like that yet.

Oh I'm not clinging to any idea at all. It's just that the Potter-world magic doesn't really look like the Shadowrun magic to me, beyond superficialities.

But oddly enough the Spirit powers do, at least to my addled mind.

I can see a much less, what's the term, crazy solution in a casting focused tradition than with a conjuring one.

It also lacks one thing: the dementedness necessary to study this as a real magical tradition. You basically have to be off your rocker to ignore the fundamentals of SR magic... perhaps not a kind criticism seeing as how I am a potter fan.

I just saw Spirits as being these swiss army knives really. There's no limit to the amount of spells a Potter-esque witch could throw about hence my solution to that was with Spirits.


I honestly didn't know about the corresponding elements. That's kinda nifty.

And as I said, this was my twisted look upon it, trying to jam the pecularities of wand casting into SR.

This is why we have revisions! Let's see...

Geas (Wand) - Spellcasting Focus Rating (Magic / 2, round up - Cost: Rating x 1000 Y).
Geas (Latin Vocalization) - Spells are learned through wand flicking and proper enunciation.

This is what I get for not consulting wikipedia more often with the Houses and the elements.


But I disagree with Slythering being "Combat". That has to be Gryffindor with its Courage, Chivalry, and Boldness. The colours and the traditions of the House practically reek of it. Fire in Combat I think.

Ravenclaw is intelligence, knowledge and wit... I'd put them with Guidance or Task spirits in the Detection category.

Hufflepuff I'd say is Health with a choice between Earth or Plant spirits.

Slytherin would get my vote for Manipulation with Water.

Illusion would not be part of any one House's tradition but with based on Air.

Drain would still be Willpower + Logic. A fairer emphasis on Enchanting and less so on Conjuring would work better.

Should there be Geas (Robe) too?

From stuff JK has said, Gryffindor should be fire, Hufflepuff earth, Slytherin water and Ravenclaw air.

That makes more sense... d'oh! You'd think I'd recognize the Four Elements...

Updated the first post. Any ideas on what Illusion should be?

That would put them very close to being a varient on Hemetisism, which seems very appropriate.

...and to think I already developed a character who thinks she's Hermione Granger.

And yes, she does have all three geasa + fluency in Latin.

Still haven't figured out how to do the broom quite right yet. Anchored spell? Possessed by a spirit of air? Turbo ram engine?

I'd go Dragonslayer, Dog, Wise Woman, and Dark Lord.

Mentor spirits are appealing for representing the Houses since not everyone is a one-dimensional representation of their house. Look at Percy or Snape.

I'd think the Polyjuice Potion was more of an actual Shapechange. Agreed about the anchoring.

This message brought to you by Talia Invierno, founding member of the "I Can Wait Until It Arrives On The Used Book Shelves" movement.

No. It's at least a two-part Geas (Talisman and Gesture), with really spiffy wands also being foci (with Power Foci being most appropriate). There's very few cases of a wizard being able to use their spells without a wand, a geas reflects that much better than a focus does. Especially if their Magic is low, as most Hogwart's students' would be. Geas: Chanting (Latin) is also a must. Combined, that means that a student could have a Magic of 3 and become completely unable to use their magic if they are unable to use or break any one of those geasa... and that's spot on.

Using a wand as a fetish on spells is just fine, but you have to keep in mind that to do so, you have to constantly keep upgrading and modifying the wand since each fetish adds to its cost.

Of course, this begs the question that, seeing the 'limits' the Hogwarts Tradition uses..

How long would your best magically active character need to completely conquer the whole of the Harry Potter world? Not needing a wand, or using incantations, counterspelling, and active spell defense would be very handy. Not to mention spirits...

The use of Silence andor Magic Fingers alone would be devestating to them.