Night-Haunted Hogwarts: Introduction & Outline

 It is September the 1st. You are here because you received a letter. Possibly, you have received many letters, depending on how long you tried to run from it. You could never escape them, no matter how well you hid or how far you fled. Following the tracks of the old railway, you have made your way to the village of Hogsmeade, at the foot of the old castle – that great and damnable ruin, the accursed and night-haunted Hogwarts. 

 

Everything from the series happened up until book 7: Harry & co. did not successfully destroy all of the horcruxes, and Harry was killed in his final confrontation with Voldemort. The old world was consumed in magical apocalypse. Many generations later, Scotland is a dark and haunted land with an approximately early modern level of technology. You and your fellows, members of one of the many wizarding clans from across the former United Kingdom, have been drawn to explore the ruins of Hogwarts Castle. If you can avoid death at the hands of its many traps and terrible guardians you may find answers, treasure, and undying fame in its haunted halls. Perhaps you will even find the key to bring about the final defeat of the Dark Lord: the master of death, the lurking fear, the lord of serpents, the hated Enemy of the Four Houses, the great and terrible He Who Must Not Be Named.

Structure of Play

Each session you and your begin in the village of Hogsmeade, planning your next adventure at the Hog’s Head pub. Once you have decided where to go and made all necessary preparations, you set out on your expedition. When you (hopefully) return, the referee will award and tally House Points, which you can spend to improve your skills. Then the cycle repeats, with another town phase where you can rest, visit the shops or market, and perform other errands to prepare for your next expedition.

Outline

1. Core Mechanics
2. Exploration
3. Combat
4. Skills
1. Part 1
2. Part 2
5. Creating A Character
1. House Gryffindor
2. House Hufflepuff
3. House Ravenclaw
4. House Slytherin
6. Character Advancement
7. Hogsmeade & the Town Phase
8. The Monster Book of Monsters
1. Aquatic Creatures
2. Beasts
3. Dragons
4. Fairies & Goblins
5. Ghosts & Ghouls
6. Giants & Trolls
7. Ensorcelled Objects
8. Plants
9. Witches & Wizards
9. The Castle
10. The Wilderness
1. The Forbidden Forest
2. The Black Lake
3. The Mountains of Shadow
4. The Misty Moors

 

Design Notes: Somewhere around 2015-2016, I pitched the idea “what if Harry Potter were Outlander/Game of Thrones?” to some D&D-curious friends as a joke (the second, slightly longer pitch was "It's Harry Potter but you look like Outlander, the wizard nobility is like Game of Thrones, and you explore a ruined Hogwarts that looks like Dark Souls and Bloodborne").

The response was universal: “yes please, you should make that”. Bound by that solemn obligation and commitment to the bit, I’ve been working on it on and off ever since*. The nugget of a post-apocalyptic, neo-feudal magic Scotland with Hogwarts as a haunted ruin to explore is not original to me, however – I first saw it on the sadly defunct blog A Wizard’s Kiss (I’ve even borrowed the name, as you can see). The proposal outlined there was essentially a reskin for B/X D&D however. It’s a great idea, but some of the pieces don’t fit together as well as they could. 

I wanted to go further, with a bespoke system that would do the following:

 

• Emulate Harry Potter’s incredibly specific genre elements in both form and feel.

• The big joke here is basically re-mystifying Harry Potter’s intentionally de-mystified magical elements. For example, turning “The Boy Who Lived” into a literal rather than metaphorical Christ figure or “He Who Must Not Be Named” into a kind of Sauron figure with a dash of Lovecraftian elder evil is an obvious choice, but (in my opinion at least) a fun and funny one. You can lay the high fantasy melodrama on pretty thick, confident that players will be in on the joke.

• However, players who are familiar with the books (and to a lesser extent the movies) should have that out-of-game knowledge rewarded. For example, if you remember where and how Harry got into the Chamber of Secrets then it should be there when you go to look for it, although how it has changed in the generations since it was opened may be unexpected. That way the game can deliver both the fun of shared expectations (which is a big part of the appeal of genre emulation RPGs) with the fun of discovery.

• Be well-suited to online games with loose attendance.

• I moved away from Baltimore, where most of my gaming friends lived, in 2016. Since then we’ve continued to spread out. Nowadays we can meet up in person maybe once a year if we’re lucky, so if I’m to play D&D at all I’ll have to get comfortable with doing it online.

• A mega-dungeon setup supports this style of play. Each session begins and ends in the nearby town of Hogsmeade, and a session consists of an expedition into the ruined Hogwarts Castle. The fictional justification for the open table is that the expedition team is composed of whoever was in town and ready to adventure that week. If you miss one or more sessions it’s easy to explain where you were and why you’re back.

• To prevent each player from needing to get their own set of polyhedrals, the system is d6 only (since 2016 the options for online RPG play have really exploded and this isn’t really an issue anymore, but I’m happy with the results nevertheless).

• Be something I would enjoy I would enjoy making and running.

• I like problem-solving dungeon exploration, so that’s the kind of game this is.

• I usually make my own settings. The feeling that I’m pulling off some kind of prank by making a Bloodborne-esque mythology out of silly Harry Potter building blocks is fun and engaging for me.

 

*There are many reasons why it’s taken me so long, most of which are personal and uninteresting. However, the fact that JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, decided to make posting about how much trans people freak her out into her full-time job played a part. I think that Rowling’s anti-trans campaign is evil; a moral panic dedicated to making people’s lives much worse for no good reason. Some of my friends are trans. I’d like it if they were able to lead happy, secure, and dignified lives that they have reason to value. Would it even be fun to make or play this game anymore?

Ultimately (as you may have guessed), I decided that it would. Lots of good art has been made by bad people. When I make RPG material I have a very small audience in mind: first myself, and then my immediate circle of friends that I play games with. I decided that filing off the serial numbers and remaking the game with a generic setting would defeat the purpose: the fun of the game is inextricably tied up in the designer, GM, and players’ knowledge of and relationship to Harry Potter – seeing specifically Harry Potter setting elements receive a horror-fantasy twist, bringing what you know of the books or movies to bear when exploring the dungeon, etc.