Modern Urban Fantasy Heartbreaker

[Prak]

So, in answering a friend's questions about Harry Potter earlier, my interest in a Rowlingverse style game was renewed. In looking up my old thread, and starting to re-read the books, I was reminded that the world was shit.

Also, someone on here recently pointed out that we still need a good Urban Fantasy setting.

So, lets look at making a good Urban Fantasy game, hopefully using what works from the Rowlingverse and stuff from the Dresdenverse.

First, what works and what doesn't work in Harry Potter?

Here's my two bits:
Works

• The Masquerade Magic is held separate from the mundane, and seemingly the only people that know about it are heads of state who talk to the heads of the magical communities of their areas. The British Prime Minister may not like that magic exists, but he knows, and in a modern world, needs to.
• Wizard Schools The idea of the Magic community having boarding schools where they sit kids down and say "yer a wizard," teach them basic magic (and control of their talent), and get them connected to their peers is awesome, and I think would be very needed.
• The Dark Arts Evil Magic. Practically a necessity, and the idea that it has a lot of influence on people who come into contact with it (Voldemort's mental and physical state, Harry's scar, and so forth) is very cool I think. Maybe there could be a taint system in which a character is influenced by using, being targeted by, or submersed in evil magic. So the evil wizard becomes more snake like, the target of his spells may survive, but may forever be linked to the villain, and possibly pick up aspects of his personality, and the magic cop that pursues him through the Wizard underworld becomes callous, brusk and paranoid, at best.
• Simple Spells I actually think this is one of the good points of the series, the fact that the spells are fairly simple, and can be created fairly easily, though they are implied to be difficult to master.
• Magic Jobs The fact that there are actually jobs specific to the Magic community is kind of cool, actually, Auror, though named stupidly, is probably where a games would get hung, since it's basically playing Magic Cop.

What doesn't work:

• Masquerade Induced Stupidity Why the fuck would a grown man, in the modern world, under any community masquerade, whose community has supposedly been around forever, but only separated since roughly the Industrial Revolution, think that galoshes, a bonnet, and a nightgown was what a Mundane man wore? Why the hell would they have no clue what a tv is, when half the people in their community come from mundane households? The masquerade is a courtesy gentleman's agreement to not go around letting the mundanes know about magic, not beer goggles for the rational mind.
• Uber Spells Avada Kedavra is terrible writing. It's like saying everyone has a special mini-nuke in their pocket, but it's illegal to use it, so most people don't. It's also apparently damned easy to use, so long as you hate someone enough. So, we all know how that'd play out in the real world, with people fucking greenbeaming others who cut them off in the streets, or take the last carton of milk at the supermarket, and kids fucking having a 50% mortality rate on the playground...
• Evil Ambition Dumb, dumb, dumb, since it means that in actuality, 90% of your best students are in the evil house, while the other three houses are primarily composed of Lazy Genius Slackers, Jerk Jock Idiots, and Class Clowns.
• Insufficiently and poorly defined houses If the primary game style is going to be playing Magic Cop, the secondary style is going to be Saved by the Belltower. And for that to work, the houses need to be clearly defined, not have a "And the Rest of you Flat Personalitied Idiots" house, and be based on things that are actually different, or at least opposed enough to not have the magic character who tells you what house suits you go "Well fuck, you fit all of them, where the hell do you want to be?" Ravenclaw focuses on "wit, creativity, and wisdom." Slytherin focuses on "ambition, cleverness, cunning, resourcefulness, and pure blood heritage." So... if you're clever, but not a pure blood, you go to Ravenclaw? But I'm pretty sure that Luna is a pure blood. And ambitious. And definitely clever. On the other hand, she's also loyal, brave, has a lot of nerve, and is very tolerant. Harry, as is fucking explicitly said in the first book, is ambitious, destined for greatness, is brave, intelligent (even if he rarely if ever fucking shows it), so on and so forth. Hell, I'm now convinced that the houses mean almost nothing, and they just let the hat sort the people out such that the kids don't bitch and moan about arbitrarily being put into "the evil house," or "the nerd house."

So what do others think?


Helpful Links for the Project:
Frank's Kitchen Sink Fantasy lists
Rowling's site
TV Tropes' Urban Fantasy Page

[CatharzGodfoot]

It's been said before, but the only House that doesn't mean anything is Gryffondor. Although having a 'this is the House that the protagonists are in' manages to work for Harry Potter, it would be terrible game design.


As far as the Dark Arts, I'm a fan of the initially stated (but not followed up on) Harry Dresden/Starwars system, where doing nasty shit to people with magic inevitably turns you evil. If you want to be a good guy, you shoot people's wands out of their hands, create illusions, trap them in force-cages, and commune with the dead.

If you want to go Dark Side, all you have to do is start shooting fireballs, turning people into frogs, and casting charm person. Evilness is a natural byproduct.

[schpeelah]

Dark Arts: There was a fic that I think had a very good idea: instead of some general Good vs Evil slider that Dark spells push you along, each spell has some specific effect, like you use a spell to enslave someone and suddenly it's really hard to remember that someone had rights and was anything other than your property.

Houses: I think you overestimate the issue. Sure, you basically have an alignment system as slightly more poorly defined than D&D, but it's not like it impacts anything other than what stereotype a character is pre-judged by. Anyway this essay might be of interest for you.

Uber Spells: Same as above. Remember that in this setting a) even a particularly well-trained 12-year-old can put you out of the fight if she lands that Full Body Paralysis, so all fights are by default Save-or-Lose all the time at all levels b) everyone has 2 defences to choose between using, dodging and counterspelling (well, magic resistance for creatures), so a curse that forces you to dodge is a big deal but not THAT big.

The bigger problem is that the capabilities of magic are poorly explored and undefined in the books and to have anything playable you WILL have to write some of your own. For example:
* Transmutations: are they limited-time any-subject-into-any-target, if-something-untransfigures-inside-you-you-are-fucked like in Methods of Retionality or one spell per subject->target pair, permanent until dispelled, safe for consumption like Red Hen thinks they are? Does a wizard "build" a house by transfiguring it straight out of the ground? What sort of materials are or aren't easily obtained by magic?
* If you read some fanfiction you have noticed that most fics with lots of fighting in them assume existence of easy, large area anti-Apparation anti-Portkey spells not mentioned in the books because you can't have any meaningful fights other than Rocket Launcher Tag if everyone worth a damn can teleport home anytime they want. Simillarily, it is implied that only Hogwarts has a permanent anti-teleport field, but what the hell, does that mean the country is filled with teleport ambushes waiting to happen?

What protections CAN you put on your house, how can you detect, identify and counter spells, what sorts of rules govern the functioning of spells, potions and magic items, how do you classify them? In short, you'll need to invent structure and rules of magic because all Rowling gave us is a haphazard list of things she wanted magic to do at various points, plus a really short list of things we are explicitly told cannot be done.

[PoliteNewb]

Uber Spells Avada Kedavra is terrible writing. It's like saying everyone has a special mini-nuke in their pocket, but it's illegal to use it, so most people don't. It's also apparently damned easy to use, so long as you hate someone enough. So, we all know how that'd play out in the real world, with people fucking greenbeaming others who cut them off in the streets, or take the last carton of milk at the supermarket, and kids fucking having a 50% mortality rate on the playground...

Uh, in the real world we already have something where you can point at somebody and unless they dodge really fast, they die...it's called a gun, and lots of people do have them in their pockets. But it's actually pretty rare that people get killed over cartons of milk. Because it's illegal, so most people don't.

One might consider Avada Kedavra easier to have/use than a gun (just point and say some words), but one could also consider it harder (unless you have sufficient proficiency/hate/raw magical juice, you're just going to give someone a headache). Either way, I don't really see a problem with "kill" spells. Especially if you're thematically making them something "bad people do", and being a bad person comes with drawbacks.

[Quantumboost]

Uber Spells Avada Kedavra is terrible writing. It's like saying everyone has a special mini-nuke in their pocket, but it's illegal to use it, so most people don't. It's also apparently damned easy to use, so long as you hate someone enough. So, we all know how that'd play out in the real world, with people fucking greenbeaming others who cut them off in the streets, or take the last carton of milk at the supermarket, and kids fucking having a 50% mortality rate on the playground...

I've never read the books (most of my Harry Potter "knowledge" is mostly from this), but a no-save death spell with a ranged touch attack can be made in line with other magic pretty easily.

Evil Ambition [...] Insufficiently and poorly defined houses If the primary

If you want to stick to something vaguely resembling the Harry Potter verse, with the same or equivalent houses (which don't even apply outside Magical Britain, I think) you could have people sorted into them by the "virtue" they most value, and have the sorting mechanism try to maintain parity:

• Gryffindor: Courage
• Hufflepuff: Dedication
• Ravenclaw: Curiosity
• Slytherin: Ambition

And remove the blood purism thing from house-sorting concerns, apart from the most politically powerful Slytherins happening to ascribe to that theory.

Alteratively, you could use MoR's approach, and have blood purism be a political issue that's "tainting" Slytherin house (by being the most prominent issue held by graduated Slytherins in the public arena) and causing those who could be sorted into either S or one of the others and are politically opposed to it into the other house they qualify for. Then cowardly, lazy, uninspired people who happen to be blood purists get all shoved into Slytherin to maintain parity.

[Prak]

Uber Spells Avada Kedavra is terrible writing. It's like saying everyone has a special mini-nuke in their pocket, but it's illegal to use it, so most people don't. It's also apparently damned easy to use, so long as you hate someone enough. So, we all know how that'd play out in the real world, with people fucking greenbeaming others who cut them off in the streets, or take the last carton of milk at the supermarket, and kids fucking having a 50% mortality rate on the playground...

Uh, in the real world we already have something where you can point at somebody and unless they dodge really fast, they die...it's called a gun, and lots of people do have them in their pockets. But it's actually pretty rare that people get killed over cartons of milk. Because it's illegal, so most people don't.

One might consider Avada Kedavra easier to have/use than a gun (just point and say some words), but one could also consider it harder (unless you have sufficient proficiency/hate/raw magical juice, you're just going to give someone a headache). Either way, I don't really see a problem with "kill" spells. Especially if you're thematically making them something "bad people do", and being a bad person comes with drawbacks.

Yes, but most games don't say "if you get hit by a gun, you die automatically, no save, final destination.

[sabs]

Avra Kadavra is an ugly spell. Don't get hit by it. It's also a slow caster. You have to mean it, you have to say Avra Kadavra, and it clearly takes 'time' to do that. Dumbledore and Tom have their big duel, and Tom doesn't even try to cast Avra Kadavra once. He's too busy dealing with all the speed-casting.

A magic system involving HarryPotterVerse needs spell casting speeds, and stealing blatantly from Ars Magica a Mastery Skill for every spell.

Spells have a Base Cast time, and then you can decrease your casting time with being really good at 'That Spell'.

[Maxus]

As far as the Dark Arts, I'm a fan of the initially stated (but not followed up on) Harry Dresden/Starwars system, where doing nasty shit to people with magic inevitably turns you evil. If you want to be a good guy, you shoot people's wands out of their hands, create illusions, trap them in force-cages, and commune with the dead.

If you want to go Dark Side, all you have to do is start shooting fireballs, turning people into frogs, and casting charm person. Evilness is a natural byproduct.

Yeah, I can tell Jim Butcher has read a lot of the Star Wars novels.

The Dark Side/using evil magic feels good. It's apparently quite a powerful rush, at least for some uses of it, but it'll burn you out eventually.

At the same time, there's not-as-harmful uses of explosions, mind-magic, etc and the backlash seems to vary.

Dresden killed his first teacher with magic--admittedly because the man was trying to kill him at the time, but killing someone with magic seems to make a backlash that isn't found on monsters. Hasn't turned him into a rampaging Lord of the Sith, but it's enough to show up on him. Intent and motivation seems to matter in how much backlash you get there.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Yeah, I can tell Jim Butcher has read a lot of the Star Wars novels.

He's actually quite up-front about admitting its influence.

Dresden killed his first teacher with magic--admittedly because the man was trying to kill him at the time, but killing someone with magic seems to make a backlash that isn't found on monsters. Hasn't turned him into a rampaging Lord of the Sith, but it's enough to show up on him. Intent and motivation seems to matter in how much backlash you get there.

I think that it's more a person's connection than intent. After all,

Molly does minor brain-editing with the best of intentions

, and that's still considered deranging enough to warrant a death sentence. Working evil magic on a rock or a vampire won't derange you as much, because it's not as human. Presumably nonhumans are already deranged or have sufficiently different mental structures as to be affected differently.

[Username17]

The actual Avra Kedavra in the actual books is fucking lame. It's slow enough to dodge, it can be blocked (by at least two spells and fucking curtains), and people who are hit with it are often as not merely seriously wounded. If I was in a mage fight and I had a shotgun and knew Avra Kedavra, I would pull the trigger on the shotgun twice.

The issues I see with the Potterverse are mainly ones of incoherence. The time control shit that people can do should logically be used to keep bad things from happening. I mean fuck, if you can reset a whole fucking day whenever you want, why the fuck would the 7/7 bombings have worked? On the flip side, I actually find it insulting that so many magicians use magical tricks that are objectively inferior to like owning a dishwasher or something.

So right away you'd want to do something a lot more like Dresden Files than Harry Potter. Because for fuck's sake, at last Jim Butcher tries to keep from writing setting destroying spells in. Not that he always succeeds.

Now, the school houses deal is actually pretty attractive as far as playability goes. Because it lets you arrange your characters into character classes without writing Fighter on your character sheet with all the associated problems that entails. I mean, being in "House Scorpion" could just make you good with potions and also inherently resistant to betrayal. There is no literal connection between those traits, but having them associated with a completely arbitrary boarding school house methodology side-steps most of peoples' defenses as far as willing suspension of disbelief goes for associating traits in character classes. So you can arrange talents by game balance requirements rather than "common sense". That's super useful.

The actual Potterverse houses are divided into Protagonists, Antagonists, Smart Side Characters, and Boring Side Characters. That is fucking retarded. Don't use those. Don't use anything like those.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

On the flip side, I actually find it insulting that so many magicians use magical tricks that are objectively inferior to like owning a dishwasher or something.

I think this is actually rather clever satire on her behalf about how people will hurt themselves in a thousand tiny or big ways in order to wank to their speshul snowflake-ism. The same reason why plantation owners were so invested in slavery or people whine about having to learn non-English languages. A running theme through her book are how wizards (even the protagonists) are aching at the chance to prove that they're superior to muggles; this is why the Wizarding World is so insular and backwards and elistism and jumped at the chance to become Magic Nazis.

The other stuff is genuinely bad though, but I think Harry Potter would lose a bit of something if magic and technology were integrated as well as in, say, Shadowrun.

[TheFlatline]

On the flip side, I actually find it insulting that so many magicians use magical tricks that are objectively inferior to like owning a dishwasher or something.

I think this is actually rather clever satire on her behalf about how people will hurt themselves in a thousand tiny or big ways in order to wank to their speshul snowflake-ism. The same reason why plantation owners were so invested in slavery or people whine about having to learn non-English languages. A running theme through her book are how wizards (even the protagonists) are aching at the chance to prove that they're superior to muggles; this is why the Wizarding World is so insular and backwards and elistism and jumped at the chance to become Magic Nazis.

The other stuff is genuinely bad though, but I think Harry Potter would lose a bit of something if magic and technology were integrated as well as in, say, Shadowrun.

Oh bullshit JK Rowling isn't capable of subtle satire.

This is the woman who said it never occurred to her that she was writing fantasy, and that she didn't consider Harry Potter to be fantasy.

If she's really that dull, she isn't going to write subtle satire.

She's also one of the biggest egomaniacs I've ever seen in an author. If she was going to write satire, she wouldn't make it subtle I suspect, because someone might not realize she was writing satire and therefore not be able to appreciate her efforts at satire.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Accidental satire is still satire.

[Prak]

Her writing can be quite clumsy, esepcially in the first few books, but there were some excellent Chekov's Guns in there...

[Grek]

One of the legitimately interesting things to do with the Potterverse (and other urban fantasy where it isn't explict) is to try to figure out the rules of magic based on whatever magic you happen to see, and to propose experiments to try to puzzle those rules out. Stuff like "What happens if we use a chicken egg instead of a duck egg in this potion?" or "What happens if we transfigure wood into water, freeze it and then make an ice sculpture?"

If you can make an urban fantasy game with advancement that is based partially or in full on figuring out the laws of magic physics, I would love you forever and play the shit out of your game. But it sounds really difficult to come up with rules for generating interesting magical rules.

[PoliteNewb]

Yes, but most games don't say "if you get hit by a gun, you die automatically, no save, final destination.

1.) Neither does Potterverse, despite all the hype.
2.) Some games do something pretty close to that, actually. What are your odds of survival after being hit by an assault cannon in Shadowrun?

[Parthenon]

Heres what I'm wondering: If you're going with Harry Potter / Dresden Files with a focus on Dresden Files, then does the generic urban fantasy setting also extend to Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan series? (also a magic user in a modern urban fantasy setting with all kinds of supernatural creatures)

If it does, does it also extend to True Blood? Or modern urban fantasy settings by authors like Patricia Briggs/Carrie Vaughn/Rachel Vincent/Lilith Saintcrow/etc?

Because seriously, a whole lot of people have probably watched True Blood on TV and could get into it via that angle. You can probably have a party made up of the psychic waitress, shifter bartender, and two of the regulars that happen to be a witch and a newly turned vampire. They all tend to hang around the one bar being pulled into random adventure after adventure, hiding bodies behind the bar and sweating nervously while police officers come in to have a pint, or all going out to the supenatural big event and something bad happening.

Although, a lot of that could probably be done by After Sundown with a specific setting.

[Psychic Robot]

I think this is actually rather clever satire on her behalf about how people will hurt themselves in a thousand tiny or big ways in order to wank to their speshul snowflake-ism. The same reason why plantation owners were so invested in slavery or people whine about having to learn non-English languages. A running theme through her book are how wizards (even the protagonists) are aching at the chance to prove that they're superior to muggles; this is why the Wizarding World is so insular and backwards and elistism and jumped at the chance to become Magic Nazis.

the definition of fan wank

that is all

[Prak]

Sure. Honestly, Rowlingverse ostensibly has vampires, but if I recall correctly they're kind of pathetic, or not really expanded upon. Werewolves are totally a playable race, just poorly thought of, like playing a large blackman in a game set in the early 1900s.

And yeah, it's totally looking like this is shaping up to be similar to After Sunset, but a modern fantasy game rather than a modern horror game.

So lets see, the game is a bit of a kitchen sink setting, with magical races inhabiting the areas their mythology comes from, so the banking in the british isles is all controlled by Goblin banking dynasties, but the supernaturals in japan probably have their banks run by tanuki, tengu, hopping vampires, or a combination of the three.

So, we know that the British Isles have as possible playable races, in addition to Witches/Wizards, which can probably be assumed to be international, werewolves, vampires, some immigrant herds of centaurs and giants(?), goblins, house elves(?). On the other hand, werewolf, and likely vampire, are quite literally templates, as evidenced by Remus totally being "A wizard who happens to get hairy" rather than "A werewolf that knows some magic." Possibly you can choose to advance your magic or wolfishness, as Fenrir seems to be "A werewolf" rather than "a wizard."

France has some weird immigrant subspecies of Nymph, unless I'm just not up on my french mythology (er, Scandinavian, apparently. we'll say they came over with the Normans). Giants live where ever they don't get blasted by the local wizard population, but likely aren't playable. Dragons are all over the place, but definitely not playable (beasts rather than beings, unless we want to use Dresdenverse Dragons, in which case they're nigh-unto gods).

Off course, this being the information age, and the magical world having AirBroom for time immemorial, geographical bounds don't mean a lot.

So what all creatures do we want in our urban fantasy game? Magic Users are a definite, and if we're using Dresdenverse and Rowlingverse as source material, it should be a genetic thing. Maybe mortals can go learn sorcery, but true magic is basically a genetic trait that occasionally submerges and resurfaces. Vampires, Shifters and Psychics would all be good to have, due to their popularity. Unless people invested in the project think otherwise, I think I want maybe five types per major area as playables, and in the British Isles/Europe that would look something like:

• Centaur
• Werewolf
• Goblin
• Veela
• Vampire

Witches and Wizards are implied, and referred to as Wights (going with the faux-tymology from D&D about it meaning man. Gender-neutral term for natural human magic users.)

But Asia would have

• Yokai (basically covers the japanese "thing what has a special awakened spirit" idea, tengu, jorogumo, yuki-onna. Also come in non-playable flavours. Basically you choose nature powers, or animal powers.)
• Naga
• Gandharvas
• Mujina
• Yak people

And America totally has small ghettos of pretty much everything, and the civil rights movement extended into the Magic Community, so the American Wight Schools actually see goblins and werewolves and vampires as students with little harassment. Still not many of the other beings, since most have their own magic, but those three, at least, can have and learn wand magic.

[Josh_Kablack]

American Wight Schools

Aside from the radical Wight Power movement.

[Prak]

I didn't think of that, but it works. heh.

[Username17]

You can also look at the Marla Mason stuff by Pratt.

-Username17

[K]

You should stop calling this a Urban Fantasy Heartbreaker. This appears to be The Harry Potter Heartbreaker RPG which is for kids and incompatible with teen fiction like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and adult fiction like True Blood.

Ps. Wizards don't have washing machines in HP because washing machines are magic to children. Using some other magic is equivalent.

Using cute magic is key for kids fiction. That's why they use owls for messages instead of the internet.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

About the masquerade thing, didn't Rowling once say the real reason for the secretive wizarding world was because a muggle with a shotgun pretty much beat a wizard with a wand?

[sabs]

and Muggles with Shotguns take 2-3 days of training, not 7 years.