"Yer a wizard Harry!"

Welp, so much for that notion of regular updates I had way back last year.

So short version is that between work and campaigns, I've not really had a lot of mental bandwidth for a whole lot else, much less posting here.  The campaigns have been fun (couple of Star Wars ones, and just recently restarted Mutants & Masterminds), while work has been far less so.  I had considered putting up a blog post in the wake of seeing The Last Jedi, which I did enjoy but really did need to see a second time to properly enjoy it, but all the ignorant toxicity that got flung around by whiny gatekeeping man-babies about how it wasn't "their" Star Wars soured me on that notion.

Now, I must say that I'm really looking forward to the beginning of April, as I'll be taking a much-deserved vacation and flying down to Texas for GamerNationCon 5.  Looking forward to seeing a number of friends, including a few faces I've not seen in some time.  Planning to run three events, one for Star Wars, one for 7th Sea, and one for the Dragon Age RPG; the last two are modules I've run in the past, and have worked out pretty well.  The Star Wars module I'm still nervous about, as I wound up doing some pretty major re-writes from what I initially had as well as re-doing almost all of the pregens, but I'm pretty happy with how the module looks in its current form.

So speaking of GamerNationCon 5, as one of the backers of the most recent Kickstarter, I and all the other backers got access not only to Phil "DarthGM" Maiewski's Fallout theme for the Genesys RPG by Fantasy Flight Games, but also the very cool and well-written Harry Potter theme for the same RPG written by Chris "GM Chris" Witt.

I've been a fan of the Harry Potter series ever since my mother convinced me to go see the first movie with her in theaters, and pretty much devoured the first four books of the series when I got them as a Christmas present later that year.  So having a Harry Potter hack for an RPG whose mechanics I already know pretty well was certainly intriguing; I've checked out a number of other efforts for different systems and none of them really seemed to fit well for the setting mechanics-wise or were too focused on Hogwarts as of the time of the books.  I think Chris managed to avoid both those issues, as Genesys' mechanics are pretty adaptable, and he's broadened things to include Ilvermony and American magical society as introduced in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie.

One of the things I'd been meaning to do was sit down and work up a character using the HP theme.  And after a hectic previous week at work, I was finally able to do just that over the weekend.

For my character, I figured I'd go with a first Hogwarts student, someone that had a knack for magic but still had much to learn.  In a fit of whimsy, I decided to borrow the first name of the protagonist of the Books of Magic comic book series, and named my character-to-be Timothy.  And yes, I did chuckle at the notion of playing a wizard who some call... Tim.  I then did a Google search for British surnames, and eventually settled on Barnett.

With the name in place, now came the matter of which of Hogwart's Houses would young Timothy (Tim to his friends) would be sorted.  I decided that I'd instead skip ahead in the character creation process to figure out his Strength (Witty), Flaw (Recklessness), Desire (Expertise), and Fear (Obscurity), all determined randomly.  Based on those, he sounded like a good fit for either Slytherin or Gryffindor; I decided to once again rely on random chance and flipped a coin, with the result landing young Tim amongst the ranks of Gryffindor House (my personal fave of the Hogwarts four).

Next came deciding Tim's "career" or what sort of aspiring wizard he'd be.  Looking through the options, I settled on Opportunist, as I liked the notion of a Gryffindor that employed out-of-the-box thinking and clever ploys, who may not always be completely honorable but instead uses unconventional methods to accomplish things.  In a way, he's not unlike a slightly more serious Fred or George Weasley, or a less arrogant school-age James Potter.  I decided that as part of Tim's backstory, he had an ancestor that was a famous Curse-breaker, and one of his goals was to follow in his ancestor's footsteps but also seeking to make his own mark on the wizarding world.  This in turn made him a half-blood, though I figure both of his parents were muggleborns (magical genetics in the Potterverse are weird, but then again it's magic).

Picking skills was pretty simple, giving young Tim a good mix of magical, social, and practical skills, which I decided meant that he's not been raised completely in the wizarding world, and has some notions of how muggle society operates; he probably went to a public primary school prior to getting his Hogwarts letter and picked up some peculiar skills as a result.

Spending XP was pretty simple, picking up a couple extra skill ranks (none of which are above a 1, which fits an eleven-year old that's still got loads to learn) and a couple of talents that go with the "rush into trouble" and "react quickly" notions of the character.  And in a change for the usual types of characters I make, Tim isn't all that physically impressive, instead relying more on guile (Cunning), tenacity (Willpower), and pure cheek (Presence), which is very fitting for a adventuresome wizard-in-training.

The fun part then came in figuring out what sort of wand this character have.  Fortunately, the Harry Potter Wiki has a very useful page on the topic (read it here) which made the process a bit less daunting.  I ultimately choose spruce wand with a phoenix feather core, and then went with the standard school supplies package.  I was tempted to snag a familiar as well, but decided not to and instead give young Tim some leftover currency for pocket money.  I did grab a set of Thieves' Tools (renamed as a Lockpicking Kit) from the Fantasy Theme section of the Genesys core rulebook, given that Tim's got a rank of Skullduggery and his muggle-influenced upbringing would give him an appreciation for non-magical ways of getting into places he's not supposed to.

And thus, here's young Timothy "Tim" Barnett, an eleven year old boy about to embark upon a new set of adventures as he begins his magical education at Hogwarts' School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Timothy Barnett, Gryffindor Opportunist -  Character Sheet (PDF version)

Obviously another thing I did was modify the Star Wars character sheet that I've been using for years to fit the Harry Potter theme, as I like having a recognizable character sheet that I electronically enter information into.  It's a Word document, but that works easier for me in terms of modifying that trying to set it up as a form-fillable PDF, especially given the fonts used for the dice and result icons that Genesys uses.  I tried using a couple different Potterverse-themed fonts, but none of them really worked for me, and instead wound up using a LotR-themed font called Ringbearer.

I do have a few notions for the rest of a groupof First Years, coming from a variety of Houses, such as an intellectually-focused Slytherin, a social-focused Ravenclaw, and maybe even an Ilvermony exchange student, but not sure when I'll be able to write them all up.  Hopefully sometime in the not-to-distant future now that I don't have to worry about writing modules, but even that's up in the air.

But even still, I think Tim would be a fun character to play, a Gryffindor that bucks the "honorable and noble" stereotype while still being a decent kid at heart.

Danny Copperfield, Novice Wizard and Amatuer Sleuth

Happy Halloween!!!

So I'm writing this post coming off the conclusion of the long-running Curse of Strahd campaign that my friend Eric has been running for our Saturday night online group (used to call it the Skype group, but we've pretty much switched over to Discord at this point as it's given us far less grief that Skype so far, and the ability to have separate channels for general and game-specific discussions is quite nice).  I don't think any of us were really expecting the campaign to end the way it did; yes we managed to defeat Strahd, but it was a very bitter victory indeed, leaving the party largely broken and ultimately going their separate ways.  I did have fun playing Sir Thomas, even though in hindsight there are things I would have done very differently if I'd had a better handle on who the character was.  Still, it's nice to bring that campaign to a conclusion, with the advent of running a campaign that's far more cheerful and bright on the near horizon.

Now, to continue with my string of Samhain appropriate blog postings, I thought I'd post up a character that I'd made a while back, got to play briefly, have remade and may have a chance to play again.

The character in question was originally made for the Dresden Files Role-Playing Game by Evil Hat Productions, taking place in the world detailed in the highly enjoyable Dresden Files series of novels written by Jim Butcher.  Personally, I prefer the audiobooks as I honestly feel that James Marsters (best known for playing Spike on the classic TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer) does a bang up job of giving voice to the many characters; it's at the point where to me he's pretty much the voice of series protagonist Harry Dresden.

Said character was Danny Copperfield, a young/novice wizard of the White Council, and can be summed up as Dresden-Lite.  This was deliberate, as I liked the notion of playing a still-fresh and mostly-untested wizard, just barely into his 20's (Harry started out in mid to late 20's I believe), albeit one that had proper training as a wizard and lacked the many tragic elements of Harry's personal history.  In his original incarnation, Danny had a solid mix of control and power, in that while he might not have been hitting at the same level of power as Harry Dresden, but neither was he quite as likely to set the immediate on area with an errant blast of flame.  I did get the chance to play him in a rather short campaign, and he was quite a bit of fun, delivering snark and unexpected bouts of sheer magical power with aplomb.

So when Evil Hat released the Dresden Files Accelerated RPG, updating the material to work with their very fun Fate Accelerated Edition, I decided (mostly on a lark) to do an updated version of Danny, just to see how the character would work out given DFA's method of using Mantles to set character archetypes.  And overall, I think it worked out pretty well.  The fact that in DFA a spellcaster isn't nearly as restricted in hurling magic (that was an issue with the original DFRPG was that spellcasters had very limited mojo, an issue that in the books really only affected Harry "powerhouse slob" Dresden given his own admittance for simply grabbing as much power as he could and hurling it at his foe with little to no finesse) means that Danny can make much more use of his evocations, in particular attacking enemies with fire.  As a bit of a trade-off, he's not quite as adept starting out with divination or ward magic, but seeing as how his Mantle gives him a much broader bonus to thaumaturgy makes up for it.

One thing that is nice about DFA is that by essentially rolling spellcasting into a character's approaches, there's not as much worry about balancing things out for the Pure Mortals; yes a spellcaster does get to work their mojo at a higher power scale, but magic may well not always be the answer.  That and I suspect a GM could easily compel the Wizard part of the character's aspect to have modern technology breakdown around the spellcaster.  And even the higher power scale isn't that huge of a boost when competing with Pure Mortals, whose own Mantles have some pretty neat tricks of their own.

With my friend Doran wanting to run at least a one-shot of Dresden Files Accelerated (to the great delight of the entire group as we're all fans of the Dresden Files), I'm looking forward to an opportunity to once again don the red canvas duster and whip out the blasting rod (mind out of gutter, thank you very much!) and step into the role of this character.  Given the interesting personalities that I'm sure the rest of the players will bring to the table with their own characters, it should be interesting to see how things shake out... preferably without multiple buildings being on fire (especially if it's not his fault)!

Danny Copperfield
Mantle: Magical Practitioner
High Concept: Novice Wizard of the White Council
Trouble: Chronic Wiseass
Aspects: Amateur Sleuth; Don't Underestimate My Power!
Refresh: 1

Approaches
Good (+3): Force
Fair (+2): Haste, Intellect
Average (+1): Focus, Guile
Mediocre (+0): Flair

Stress and Conditions
Stress: [1][1][1][1][1][1]
Combat Wizard: [1][1]
In Peril (sticky): [4]
Doomed (lasting): [6]
Indebted (sticky): [_][_][_][_][_]
Exhausted (sticky): [_]
Burned Out (lasting): [_]
The Third Eye (sticky): [_]

Stunts
Evocation: You are able to cast spells on the fly and without need for ritual preparation.
Thaumaturgy: You are able to cast a variety of arcane rituals, adding a +2 bonus to the roll.
Soulgaze: You have the ability to look directly upon the soul of another person, and they can look at yours in turn.
Combat Wizard: Gain two stress boxes explicitly for enhancing evocations.
Evocation Specialist: Gain +2 bonus when making a Force attack using the element of fire.
White Council Membership: Once per session, you may request aid from the White Council.

Appearance
Danny is a tall, lanky young man just under six and a half feet tall, with shoulder-length charcoal black hair, several strands of which constantly hang in front of his dark blue eyes, a good-natured lopsided smile befitting his generally irreverent nature on his face, although his expression turns much darker once his ire has been raised.  His preferred attire is a dark-hued shirt, a pair of blue jeans, simple sneakers, and a full-length red canvas duster, with his blasting rod tucked away but always within easy reach.

Notable Possessions
Blasting rod (made of hickory), red canvas duster with extra pockets, assorted ritual tools and aids stuffed in said extra pockets.