Posted April 27, 2020 by David Brunell-Brutman
The most frequent comment/question/request I get about Hogwarts: An RPG is "I really like the game – how do I make it about characters going on adventures in the wider Wizarding World?"
The short answer is, you don't. All the rules & mechanics in Hogwarts are designed to make adventures in the style of the Harry Potter books, which are (mostly) about young wizards at school. I deliberately gave Hogwarts this narrow focus so it would be simple, lightweight, and easy to learn & play.
Previously, I would've left it at that. The game is hackable, and it's released under a Creative Commons Noncommercial Sharealike license, so anyone can mod it to better suit their gameplay needs. But I recently received an email that got me thinking... maybe folks who want a more mature or wide-ranging Wizarding World RPG shouldn't be trying to hack Hogwarts. Maybe they should be hacking an entirely different game.
Monster of the Week. MotW is a bigger, broader game about a team of characters confronting supernatural threats – you know, like wizards tracking down magical creatures in 1920s New York, or a secret order protecting the world from a powerful dark wizard & his followers. Like Hogwarts, it's a mystery game in a fantasy world, but unlike Hogwarts, it's got rules & mechanics for older characters dealing with problems anywhere in that world.
But perhaps you're looking at Monster of the Week and saying, "It looks cool, but it's not Potter enough". And that's where Hogwarts comes back in. Because both MotW and Hogwarts are Powered by the Apocalypse games, you can actually bring bits of one game into the other without much difficulty. So here I present to you, the Preliminary, Quick-n-Dirty Guide to Patching Hogwarts into Monster of the Week:
MotW has 5 stats, Hogwarts has 5 stats. Sweet!
Monster of the Week's playbooks work great in a Wizarding World setting! The only things you should eliminate are the Gear section, as it's mostly weapons a wizard wouldn't use, and the Divine playbook, which doesn't quite fit into the Potter universe. Here are some suggestions for Wizarding-World-specific versions of MotW's playbooks, with some representative characters:
At character creation, use Hogwarts' Create Your Witch/Wizard pages to determine your character's wand/ambition, name, and patronus.
Keep Hogwarts' Setting Quick-Reference page handy for character names, magical objects, & magical creatures.
Hogwarts' mystery system is more or less system-agnostic. It'll work just as well in MotW.
And with that, you've used Hogwarts to convert Monster of the Week into a Wizarding World game! Wicked! I hope this helps you continue your Wizarding World adventures outside the walls & grounds of Hogwarts. If you try it or come up with a better hack, let me know how it goes!
Stay healthy & stay safe 🧙♂️🧙♀️✨