Wizardry and Witchcraft by Daniel Armyr is a Harry Potter role playing game, an unlicensed Harry Potter role playing game. It gives credit to the works of Rowling’s, but avoids using specific terms and names used in them. No mention of Hogwarts, just magical schools in general etc.
It was released a few years ago and can be downloaded for free. As I understand it there were physical books at one time, but they since long sold out.
The book
The electronic version of the game is a full color 127 page PDF, richly illustrated by Ayne Greensleeves, Jamie Poitra and others.
There are wide margins on the pages, and large fonts in all the headings, the game is a quick read.
The setting
The reader is assumed to be familiar with the Harry Potter books/movies, and there is not much real setting info in the game, except for a pretty nice chapter on the nature of magic.
The game allows for both student and adult characters, but the focus in on the former.
The rules
The game uses a d12 for all mechanics (the common die+attribute+skill against difficulty). The nine attributes are divided into a matrix with the areas of Physical, Mental and Social on one axis and the styles Crude, Efficient and Fancy on the other. I have not seen this anywhere else, and think it is pretty neat.
Each character has a few Virtues (good stuff) and Vices (bad stuff) to give some extra color and bonuses.
The magic rules are simple and follow the same principle as skill use, there are spell lists with assigned difficulties in the game. Also the players are encouraged to invent a few spells of their own during character generation.
All together a pretty light set of rules, that look a bit like the WoD rules on the surface, but without the dice pools.
The form
The game does not say very much about form. There is a GM called Storyteller, and there are players who play wizards and witches. The players are encouraged to keep track of actions that their characters are proud of or ashamed of, but I could not find any rules linked to those records.
Conclusion
The setting is weak, but if everyone is familiar with the source materials it should not be a problem, it’s easy to fill in the gaps.
The rules are good, if you want a traditional rules light game. Less so if you want the rules to model the development of the characters or the story in the source material. Still, if you want a more rules light engine for your WoD game you could pretty much take your character sheets as they are and start using these rules instead.
The form is weak, or nonexistent if you will.
Will I play it?
As you can see above I am not all that impressed by the game, but it is not a bad game, just not something I could see myself running.
If you want a rules light traditional Harry Potter RPG you could definitely do worse than picking up Wizardry and Witchcraft.
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wizardryandwitchcraft.sverok.net – The Wizardry and Witchcraft site where the game can be downloaded.
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