I've been thinking about a Pathfinder game set in the 17th Century for some time. Right now I am watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It occurs to me that if fantasy is real in the 17th Century, then Hogwarts could very well exist in this setting.
From having read the 1st book, and seeing the first three movies, it appears to me that perhaps Pathfinder is the worst system to try to model Hogwarts. Of course, I'm not trying to run a Hogwarts campaign -- I'm just running a campaign in which Hogwarts and their students and alumni would exist.
So I thought I'd come here and fish for ideas for how Hogwarts might fit in Pathfinder - 17th Century.
Every spellcaster, if you allow one would have to not use magic in front of non magic users (unless they were in danger) and all of them would have to use some sort of arcane bonded item to cast their spells (like a wand).
PF is the worst system to run it in I agree.
Pathfinder, with it's inherent high-magic setting, seems like the PERFECT system to run something like Harry Potter in.
I believe that I am going to end up with a variant of the Potterverse, and not a high fidelity translation. I don't intend to do a Hogwarts campaign, but, watching this movie, I think there are lots of ideas I could use.
Goblins and other creatures (perhaps not all of them) could be like in the Potterverse -- more commonly encountered in the Wizard's world than in the Muggles world.
One difference in my campaign is that not all spellcasters come from Hogwarts -- there are other options. It probably works to have Hogwarts being a school of wizardry in another plane, which can be accessed from our own plane at different points of access, or by a properly cast spell. PC wizards could choose to be Hogwarts alumni.
It's pretty clear nobody's on a spell slot budget in Rowling's works. Young magicians who can't possibly be very high level spam stuff that's a bit too potent to be cantrips. That means you'd absolutely need to rip out the magic system, probably for a mana system.
The lack of a good published mana/cooldown based system is the plague of all homebrewing in settings not written for D&D.
Or, since everybody in Hogwarts has a magic wand, perhaps the magic wands provide a way to amplify their magic power. To prevent misuse of these wands, perhaps they do not work as well in the muggles' world.
One thing that is being clear, is that Hogwarts is like being on another plane of existence. This brings to mind other stories which also are like other planes of existence: Oz, Avalon, Hollow World, Atlantis, and possibly others. I'll have to find a way to organize these.
Perhaps Oz and Hogwarts can share a plane. You never hear about Camelot at Hogwarts; perhaps they were once in the same plane, but since have separated. Camelot and Avalon could have separated as described in the Mists of Avalon, which also portrays a fairyland which apparently had split off from Avalon long before.
An idea occurred to me of defining 22 alternate worlds, one for each of the Major Arcana tarot cards. The idea came from imagining a topology of two circles each divided into two segments, intersecting at the top of bottom segments, making a total of 12 + 10 = 22. Since I've also decided to assign a tarot card to each class, that gives me a clue as to where to put things.
It occurs to me that I might want to be able to a limited number of multiple worlds into one slot. If I allow three worlds per slot, that gives me a total of 66 worlds.
So far I have the following associations:
I. Hogwarts.
II. Witchworld.
III. Amazons.
VI. Avalon.
XI. Camelot.
XV. Muggle.
XVI. Atlantis.
XVIII. Midgard.
I've been thinking about a Pathfinder game set in the 17th Century for some time. Right now I am watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It occurs to me that if fantasy is real in the 17th Century, then Hogwarts could very well exist in this setting.
From having read the 1st book, and seeing the first three movies, it appears to me that perhaps Pathfinder is the worst system to try to model Hogwarts. Of course, I'm not trying to run a Hogwarts campaign -- I'm just running a campaign in which Hogwarts and their students and alumni would exist.
So I thought I'd come here and fish for ideas for how Hogwarts might fit in Pathfinder - 17th Century.
I don't think D&D/Pathfinder is very good for modelling this campaign concept at all. Is everyone going to be a wizard of some stripe?
You might want to go with a skill-based system rather than class-based. Like GURPS, Runequest/Chaosium BRP, etc. If you are looking for a magic system that seems really "magical" you might look at ARS MAGICA.
I know that advocating anything besides Pathfinder is rank heresy on this board -- but it is only a tool for providing fun for your players. It is a good tool, but it might not be the RIGHT tool for the job.
Hope you find what you are looking for.
CJ