Things to remember are that the students are probably only going to have a handful of points worth of magic training walking into middle school and those are going to be in spells that are useful enough to teach basic spellcasting but not considered dangerous enough to worry about teaching to grade schoolers. But seeing how restrictive society is on real world young drivers I would say most spells that could be dangerous would be restricted to older students with licensing requirements to use in public.
A good adventure idea may be the classic mages duel. Shapeshifting potions used in the classic mages duel format (think Disney's Sword and the Stone movie or the song "Two Magicians" - although not with the laters sexual context). Perhaps make them come up with a list of shapes to choose from before hand and only a limited number of potions to bring to the match. It could be one of the schools athletic competitions. If you wanted to make it a bit darker you could also throw in a toned down Lilith from Gurps Monsters. The new hot substitute teacher that everyone is totally ga-ga after, and a bunch of strange disappearing children.... who will be next. That would require a large list of supporting characters and several characters to hide who the real culprit is. A slightly more humorous choice might be the quiet machinations of the penguin hive mind. Several penguins are skulking about (in various magic or natural disguises if you want it to be way over the top) and only the hero's seem to have noticed, and nobody seems to believe them about how that large fat pigeon in the ice cream cart is really a penguin. Who knows what they are up to. The big nasty pops out of the banestorm during the class field trip would be another possible choice. But the one that tickles my fancy the most would be a modification of the penguin idea. Liter the campus with cute fuzzy critters (squirel's most likely but rats or bunnies, or cats all work too). Only some of these are sentient and scheming. They watch from the shadows and manipulate events on campus to their liking (getting a unliked groundskeeper fired, manipulating the cafeteria menu more to their tastes (and less to the students), running a gambling operation betting on the school match outcomes (and rigging the events when needed). And once the critters know that the students have found them out - they do their best to get them suspended, expelled or otherwise discredited so no one believes their wild stories about evil squirrel overlords. I would probably have one of the critters occasionally mind control a weak willed school bully to act as an enforcer when needed. The idea of a bunch of kids with magic baseball bats beating down all the squirrels on campus is kind of disturbing (and funny all at the same time). I hope some of these ideas spark some of your own! Good luck. Clint "Mike Ruggles" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/05/2007 12:00 AM Please respond to [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Please respond to The GURPSnet mailing list <[email protected]> To <[email protected]> cc Subject [gurps] Magic and 13 year old Mayhem Caterpillar: Confidential Green Retain Until: 03/07/2007 Retention Category: G90 - General Matters/Administration My son wants me to put together a Harry Potter type game for a group of his friends. I have decided to use the 'Technomancer' world as a base and have them attending a private prep school for wizards (grades 7-12) in the El Paso area. Obviously they would have to take all of the regular school courses as any other kid in America, but beyond a basic Thaumatology course, what magically based classes would they most logically need? The first spells would obviously be all the basic ones that form the prerequisites for the other spells, but which ones would be considered 'most important' for a general magical education? There are so many directions one can go with GURPS Magic that I am having a hard time nailing this one down. A little general advice and discussion would be most appreciated. Also, if someone else has already done something like this, it would be a great time-saver to see what you have done. My son and his friends are all 12-14 years old, so any advice on the kinds of adventures suitable for that age group would be appreciated. I don't want to bore them, but I also don't want to go over their heads.even though 13 year olds seem a lot sharper than I remember being at that age, but that may just have been me and my gamer geek friends. :-) --Mike _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
