Night-Haunted Hogwarts: Skills Part 1

 

For an overview of the project, see here

Skills

Each Skill has a default Stat, representing the most common pairing. However if the fictional situation suggests that a different Stat pairing is more suitable, use that instead.

 

Athletics

Default → Courage

 Used for all manner of physical pursuits – climbing, swimming, flying on a broomstick, etc.

Wizard sports are pretty bruising – in combat you might use Athletics to dodge, tackle, throw, etc.

 

Charms

Default → Wisdom

A Charm is a general catch-all category for magical spells. If it isn't changing one object into another or primarily used to hurt or humiliate someone, it's probably a Charm. 

Examples: summoning an object, conjuring fire or water, lumos, the Shield Charm, or making an object fly.

 

Creatures

Default → Courage

Representing comprehensive knowledge of magical and muggle animals, Creatures is used for everything from hunting and riding to knowing the proper way to approach a brooding dragon.

 

Courtesy

Default → depends on approach

 

In the stratified and honor-bound wizarding world, knowing the right social graces for the right situation can be invaluable.

 

Curses

Default → Cunning + Shadow

Spells designed specifically to hurt, impede, or humiliate. 

Examples: the Jelly-Legs jinx, the Stunning spell (Stupefy), the blasting hex (Reducto), the body-bind spell (Petrificus Totalus)

 

The Unforgivable Curses:

The three Unforgivable Curses are distressingly easy to cast. Rolls to cast them are always Safe. However, when you attempt an Unforgivable Curse, you must explain the following:

• Crucio: why it will make you happy to see the subject suffer

• Imperio: why you deserve to be obeyed

• Avada Kedavra: why you don’t care whether the subject lives or dies

 

The Referee will then assign you a target number of 6+, 9+, or 12+, depending on how convincing your explanation is. Keep in mind that good intentions (such as righteous anger, or the desire to defend a friend) are less potent fuel for these dark curses and should result in higher target numbers.

 

Roll Shadow + Curses to determine how well you succeed. You then gain 1 point of Shadow.

 

When a player character performs an Unforgivable Curse within the bounds of Castle Hogwarts, roll for the Presence of the Dark Lord immediately.

 

• Crucio: causes 1 Non-Lethal damage per round, and the subject is Sickened with pain for as long as you maintain the spell. A target who fails a Strength test against this curse gives up (whatever that means in context). A target reduced to 0 Strength is psychologically broken. 

• A mixed success with the Cruciatus Curse causes the subject to take 1 Non-Lethal damage and be Sickened for 1 round.

• Imperio: the subject falls under your mental control. If the subject is strong-willed, takes damage, or if your command violates a strongly held principle then you must roll again to maintain command (you don’t gain an additional point of Shadow when you do this). 

• A mixed success with the Imperius Curse causes the subject to partly perform a single command before regaining control.

• Avada Kedavra: instant death. There is no countercurse. The avada kedavra can only be dodged, blocked by some large and solid object, or Luck. 

• A mixed success with the Killing Curse causes the subject to take 1 damage.

 

Devices

Default → Cunning

Used for discovering the properties of complicated magical objects, mechanisms, and muggle artifacts. Devices can also be used when attempting to repair an object, craft one, or alter the charms on simple enchanted items.

 

Divination

Default → Wisdom

Used to uncover the past, reveal the present, or foretell the future. Divination requires a medium and [1d6 - Divination Rank] turns in which to study it (minimum 1 turn).

 

First, select your medium:

• Tarot Cards: +0

• Palmistry: +0. Can only ask questions relating to the person whose palm you are reading.

• Crystal Gazing: -1. The crystal ball is a more challenging medium, but it provides clearer and more detailed visions when successful.

• Omen Reading: -2. Includes everything from interpreting tea leaves, gazing into a fire, or watching the stars. Nearly anything can be used by a trained seer so long as it has some degree of both pattern and randomness.

 

Then frame your question in one of the following ways. The Referee will assign you a target number between 7 and 12, based on the obscurity of your question. Then roll. 

• Past: ask a question about the past of a person, object, or location you are currently touching.

• Present: ask a question about the current state of a person, object, or location.

• Future: ask the Referee “if X happens, what will happen?”

 

If you succeed, the Referee will provide you with a relevant and accurate answer. On a mixed success, the Referee will provide you with an accurate answer framed in symbolic terms. The Referee is free to be as vague, obtuse, or mystical as they like on a mixed success, and can even attempt to mislead you with the truth, but they cannot tell you anything that is outright false.

 

Example: 

Player: if I go through this door, what will happen?

GM, success: you see a man covering the door with his pistol, ready to shoot at the first person to come through that door. He looks grim and determined.

GM, partial success: the flame of enmity strikes sparks from a heart of steel! A flash of fire, the leaden arrow descending!

 

There are some risks to divination, however:

• If your question touches on something within the bounds of Castle Hogwarts, roll for the Presence of the Dark Lord.

• Questions that concern the Dark Lord directly automatically fail the Presence roll. 

• If the question would reveal a method of destroying him, you have an X-in-6 chance of success, where X is your character’s Rank. Whether or not you succeed, you must retire your character immediately after such a terrible revelation.

 

Telling Fortunes

As one of your actions during the Town Phase you can draw up a star chart for a single course of action to be undertaken by a specific person whose birth date you know. Roll 2d6 a number of times equal to your Wisdom + your rank in Divination and record the numbers in order. Substitute those values for the subject’s next rolls in the pursuit of that course of action (you are essentially rolling for them in advance.

 

A star chart and its associated numbers expire after one expedition. If the stars do not favor a particular course of action you can always avoid it for an adventure and try again when the signs are more propitious.

Continued in Part 2

Night-Haunted Hogwarts: Combat

For an overview of the project, see here

 

Combat

Check for Surprise

Before an encounter begins (and if the fictional circumstances have not already accounted for it) check for Surprise. Each monster has an X-in-6 chance in its description.

If you are surprised, the monsters get a free action. Because you cannot respond to these actions you must make Luck rolls to avoid them.

If you surprise the monsters, you get a free action. You must still roll, but the monsters cannot respond this turn.

Combat Structure

1. Referee hints at NPC actions

2. Players declare actions

3. Resolve actions

 

Resolving Actions in Combat

Actions taken against an opponent use that opponent’s relevant stat for the Difficulty. 

 

The procedure is essentially the same whether the player is initiating an action or reaction to an NPC. In either case, the loser of the exchange suffers damage (or whatever other effect their opponent was trying to impose). You can use any Skill in combat as long as you can justify your actions within the fiction. Some actions might not work - for example, trying to block a giant's club with your shield - and will automatically fail. Most of the time, however, your choice of Skill will simply suggest the kind of effect that you can achieve.

 

Damage, Injury & Death

Whenever you take damage you must make a Strength test using your newly reduced score. 

If you succeed, all’s well. If you fail, you have taken an Injury. Roll for location and severity. While Injured, any rolls that your Injury might reasonably apply to become Deadly.

If you are Injured twice in the same location you begin Dying.

 

Location – roll d6

1: Left Leg

2: Right Leg

3: Left Arm

4: Right Arm

5: Torso

6: Head

Severity – roll d6

1: Grievous – you are now Dying.

2-5: Severe – your injury clears at the end of your next Town phase.

6: Minor – your injury clears after your next Rest.

Dying

Each turn, roll 1d6. On a 1, you die. If you exert yourself in a given round (fighting, moving quickly, casting a spell, etc) you die on a 1-2 instead.

If you survive an injury that left you Dying you gain a Scar (this can be an actual scar, a limp, a missing eye or digit, etc). The player describes the Scar.

Scars

Mechanically, Scars work like Flaws, in that you can invoke them in a relevant situation to increase a roll’s level of Danger and gain Inspiration. Additionally, the GM can invoke a Scar in situations where it would be relevant (for example, trying to tie a knot with a missing hand). This makes a roll Deadly but does not grant Inspiration.

Healing

A successful Herbology or Potions roll reduces an Injury’s severity by one stage:

Dying → Severe → Minor

Minor Injuries cannot be cured by magic – you must Rest to fully recover.

 

Safe & Deadly Combat Rolls

If no other ruling for a mixed result on a combat roll seems more relevant, consider one of the following:

• The attack succeeds, but deals -2 damage (min. 0)

• The attack succeeds, but the attacker takes damage in return.

Design Notes: this is my first experiment with a looser "problem solving" combat system. The flexibility of "everybody is a wizard" suggested an open-ended approach to combat where most skills can be used in a fight as long as you can justify it within the fiction. As we'll see later in the Skills section, straightforward combat options exist in Fighting (for mundane weapons) and Curses (offensive spells), but the system supports using Charms to levitate your opponent's club, Transfiguration to animate a statue to intercept a blow, Divination to predict an enemy's spell and counter it in the nick of time, etc.

Injuries are the counterweight to Strength healing quickly. You can shake off being battered and bruised with a few moments to catch your breath, but once someone is seriously hurt you'll need to think carefully about when and how to get out of the castle and back to town.

The "two strikes and you're out" method was adopted from The One Ring RPG 2nd edition (as was the chance for a light wound or a serious one that skips straight to Dying). TOR doesn't use hit locations however. Normally I wouldn't either, but in this case it's meant to serve as an impartial spark table for describing the somewhat freeform injuries and scars that characters can accumulate, as well as a kind of hidden HP. In this rule set each hit is basically a saving throw vs death, with your chance of success dropping off rapidly with each point of damage (for example at 6 Strength you have a 72% chance of avoiding injury, but a single point of damage drops that to 58%). Strictly speaking the need to score an injury on the same place twice should make characters much more survivable in a concrete sense, but as each injury causes penalties on associated rolls (and the Danger mechanic here means that if you take a penalty on a roll only a qualified success is possible) mounting injuries should still feel very stressful.

The injury durations are non-diegetic here because of the assumed style of play: an open table where the characters venture out from town to a nearby dungeon and then return at the end of the session, with an in-game gap of at least a week between expeditions. In that context the durations "short term," "end of the session" and "dead" seemed sufficient - I didn't want a player who had missed several weeks worth of sessions to show back up wondering whether or not their character was healed up yet. Everything that doesn't kill you going away within a week would be a bit much for more grounded settings, but in Harry Potter land magical healing is apparently no big deal - its assumed that the healers in Hogsmeade give you whatever treatments you need to regrow all the bones in your arm or what have you. If this were a sandbox game that assumed a lot of traveling around then I would swap those durations for diegetic days or weeks.

Of course I couldn't write a Harry Potter themed dungeon-crawler without some way for the characters to pick up cool Scars. Inspired by this mechanic at Goblin Punch, Scars are trying to do a couple of things. First, genre emulation. Apart from the lightning scar, people seem to get cut up a decent amount in serious fights in Harry Potter - losing a finger or an ear, disfiguring facial scars, whatever the hell happened to Mad Eye Moody, etc. We're also told that scars can prove surprisingly useful, which is partly the reason that Scars can be used to gain Inspiration. Second, Scars are meant to provide a long-term consequence to almost dying, much like the "death and dismemberment" tables of some other games, and to create a mechanical and fictional incentive for some characters to simply retire rather than push on until they die in the dungeon. However, not everyone is comfortable with their character getting chopped up (and I didn't want to write a big table of effects), which is why the player describes the Scar. It can be as debilitating or disfiguring as you're comfortable with. Minor injuries will get in your way less, but you'll have a harder time justifying using them to gain Inspiration, so mechanically there's no "right" answer. I don't want anyone to feel punished or pushed here.

Night-Haunted Hogwarts: Exploration

For an overview of the project, see here 

Exploration

Turn Structure

1. Party decides how to use their action.

2. The Referee checks for an encounter.

3. The Referee describes what happens. If there is an encounter, incorporate it here.

4. The turn ends. Return to Step 1 to start the next turn.

Encounter Die

        1. Encounter: with the monster’s sign first unless the party is surprised

        2. Atmosphere

        3. Fatigue

        4-6. Respite

Quentin Regnes

Resting

If you rest for a turn you clear 1 Fatigue and recover 1 Strength, +1 of both for each of the following:

• Food

• Drink

• Warmth

The Referee rolls the Encounter Die for each turn that you rest. If an encounter is rolled while during your rest, you are automatically surprised.

 

Conditions

• Miserable: cannot benefit from Rests until treated. Treatment will be specified by the effect that caused the condition - for example, if you become Miserable by falling into cold water and getting soaked, you can clear the condition by getting warm and dry.

• Poison: 

• A character who fails a Strength test against Poison damage starts Dying, and and requires an antidote.

• A character who passes a Strength test against Poison damage becomes Miserable until they receive an antidote.

• Blind: All tests become Luck rolls. Unlike ordinary Luck rolls, modify these results with your relevant skill.

• Deaf: A deafened characters suffer -1 to all rolls due to disorientation. All tests involving spoken spells become Deadly.

• Sickened X: At the start of every turn, a Sickened character can choose to spend their turn choking and coughing, or to act normally. If you cough you take no damage and make no actions. If you act normally take 1 Non-Lethal damage. The condition clears after X turns.

• Befuddled: all tests become Deadly.

• Drowning: you can hold your breath for 1d3 rounds. After that you suffer 1 damage per round.

• Fear: test Courage or become Afraid. While you are Afraid, all rolls made against the source of your Fear become Deadly.  You may re-roll your test if you successfully damage the source of your Fear. The condition ends once you are safe from the source of your Fear. 

 

The Presence of the Dark Lord

The malice of He Who Must Not Be Named suffuses the land around Castle Hogwarts. Disaster comes to those who draw the attention of the Dark Lord.

 

The attention of the Dark Lord is represented by the Presence score. 

For expeditions to lands around the castle the Presence score starts at 0. 

For expeditions to the castle, starting Presence is equal to the rank of the highest level character.

Increasing Presence

The Presence intensifies when the characters draw attention to themselves in the following ways:

 

• Displays of Magical Power: particularly dramatic spellcasting, and following any combat in which spells were cast, increase the Presence score by 1

• Rolling Snake-Eyes: when a player makes an unmodified 2d6 roll of 2, increase the Presence score by 1

• Naming the Dark Lord: if any character *or player* (besides the referee) speaks the Dark Lord’s secret name aloud, increase the Presence score by 4 points.

 

When the Presence score increases, the referee makes a Presence check. Roll 2d6 + Presence. If the result is 12 or greater, reset the Presence score to its starting value and a Revelation occurs.

Revelations

When the characters are revealed to the Dark Lord, things get worse. The character who caused the Revelation becomes Miserable until the expedition ends, and the referee should introduce some new difficulty, complication or event. If the characters’ current circumstances do not suggest anything, then the next time an encounter is rolled it will be with Death Eaters.

Design Notes: like a lot of OSR games, Night-Haunted Hogwarts uses a simple turn procedure supplemented with an overloaded encounter die. Well-supplied, uninjured, and happy characters can recover from damage with a turn or two of rest (remember that a starting character has Strength 6 and a fully-stocked party can recover up to 4 Strength in a turn). Tracking the Presence score is intended to act as a limiter on freeform magic (in addition to player creativity and a shared sense of what Harry Potter style magic can do), since all the characters are witches and wizards capable of solving most problems with a wave of their wands, as well as to add to the atmosphere. The limit on players (rather than simply characters) saying "Voldemort" is meant to be a fun party game element. However, it's possible that bored or disruptive players could effectively spam this feature by saying it a bunch of times in a row. The hope is that the castle will feel dangerous enough that people won't want to risk doing that most of the time. I think you should design with an assumption of good faith, rather than defensively trying to anticipate antisocial behavior. After all, one of the benefits of a table-top RPG is that you can just say "Hey, please stop that". If it becomes an issue during playtesting however, I may edit the rule.