Risus Hogwarts

I love Risus. It’s a fantastic game to pick up and play on the fly, and it works so well with so many genres of play, and can be played both humorously (preferable) or seriously. I was looking through some old email, and found that I had started to work on Risus Hogwarts back in 2005. It looks like it’s in pretty good shape, though. It just needed spells added, which should be easy for anyone wanting to run it. Have fun.

THE RULES

The rules for Funky Dice, Inappropriate Cliches, and Double-Pumping are not used.

Hooks and Tales are, however.

Clichés

All characters are first year students, and will take 2 points in the Cliché 1st Year Student. The rest of the points may be distributed as follows:

1. A minimum of 1, and a maximum of 3 points may be spent in ONE of the Racial Clichés (Note: You MUST place at least one point into a Racial Cliché.)

2. The most points you may spend in any one Class Cliché is 2. You will have a few Class Clichés that you have no points in.

3. Any additional points you may have, you may place into General Clichés.

RACIAL CLICHÉS

• Pure-Blood (Both parents Wizards)
• Half-Blood (One Wizarding parent, one Muggle parent)
• Muggle-Born (Both parents Muggles)

1st YEAR CLASS CLICHÉS

• Defense Against the Dark Arts
• Potions
• Transfiguration
• History of Magic
• Charms
• Astronomy
• Herbology

GENERAL CLICHÉS

• Flying
• Writing
• Quiddich
• Sneaking
• Library Use
• Charisma

Casting Spells

All Spells have a certain difficulty associated with them no less than 2. In order to cast that spell, you must roll against it using the appropriate Cliché. Usually this will fall under what Class the spell is (Transfiguration, Charms, etc.), and you add your Schooling Level (1st year), but occasionally, a character won’t have any of the appropriate Cliché (For example, Dumbledore has no points in any of the Classes. Instead, he uses his “Head Wizengamot” cliché). Other effects have to be taken into account to make a situation easier, or more difficult.

An example: Ron is about to be trampled under by a Troll that’s escaped from the dungeons. He casts Wingardium Leviosa on the Troll’s club. Given that the Troll has a firm hold on his club, and Ron is under considerable stress, as he is about to be killed, the usual difficulty is increased. The spell is “Wingardium Leviosa (2)”, but is now “Wingardium Leviosa (4)” (+1 troll hanging on to it, +1 Ron in mortal peril). Ron has a “Charms” cliché of 1, and adds his School level in (1, being a 1st year student). Ron casts the spell, rolling 2 dice (remember, +1 for Charms, +1 for School). He rolls a 6 and a 4, equaling 10 (a nice roll). The GM rolls for the Spell’s difficulty (Rolling 4 dice) and rolls a 2, a 3, a 2, and a 2. Ron succeeded by only one point. The club wrenches from the troll’s hand and drops down onto his head.

---

As I said, the game still needs spells, as well as a complete repository of magical creatures, but I’ll leave that for another time. Thoughts?