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.