Spellbooks and Schoolgirls d20

[deaddmwalking]

I think that's a good point. You're going to want characters to be different, so you'll want them to have different specialties. But you also want them to hang out together, and the Harry Potter style houses allow that.

[Prak]

By archetypes, I'm referring back to this list-

• Buffs and Support magic "Enhancers"
• Enchanting "Coercers"
• Summoning "Beckoners"
• Battlefield Control "Shapers"
• Knowing Things "Scryers"
• Blasting "Blasters"

The plan is to base houses overall on the Pathfinder TarotHarrow deck suits (with rewritten correspondances because the in-manual ones don't work 100% for this), and each house to be known for one of the archetypes. Not to the extent that everyone in the house is a caster of that archetype, but it's common for the house-

• Hammers Armchair generals, athletes, warriors. Blather about honor. Corresponds to Blasting
• Keys Artists and sneaks. Tend to see everything as a game. Corresponds to Shaping
• Shields Hufflepuff types, but more on the food-loving homebody side. Corresponds to Enhancing
• Tomes Ravenclaw expy, but less "study" and more "I want to know everything." Corresponds to Scrying
• Stars A bit of the friendliness side of Hufflepuff. Partiers. Corresponds to Beckoning
• Crowns House Creep. Manipulators and schemers. Corresponds to Coercing

So, like Hogwarts, but in D&D land and with more distinction.

[hyzmarca]

By archetypes, I'm referring back to this list-

• Buffs and Support magic "Enhancers"
• Enchanting "Coercers"
• Summoning "Beckoners"
• Battlefield Control "Shapers"
• Knowing Things "Scryers"
• Blasting "Blasters"

The plan is to base houses overall on the Pathfinder TarotHarrow deck suits (with rewritten correspondances because the in-manual ones don't work 100% for this), and each house to be known for one of the archetypes. Not to the extent that everyone in the house is a caster of that archetype, but it's common for the house-

• Hammers Armchair generals, athletes, warriors. Blather about honor. Corresponds to Blasting
• Keys Artists and sneaks. Tend to see everything as a game. Corresponds to Shaping
• Shields Hufflepuff types, but more on the food-loving homebody side. Corresponds to Enhancing
• Tomes Ravenclaw expy, but less "study" and more "I want to know everything." Corresponds to Scrying
• Stars A bit of the friendliness side of Hufflepuff. Partiers. Corresponds to Beckoning
• Crowns House Creep. Manipulators and schemers. Corresponds to Coercing

So, like Hogwarts, but in D&D land and with more distinction.

Drop the archetype associations and you have a good set. With the archetype associations, it's impossible to have a well-rounded single-house party. Its kind of important that Ron, Hermione, and Harry all by in Gryffindor together.

To be more descriptive, as a player I don't care about what personality traits are associated with my character class. I can make a cowardly blaster mage or an unscrupulous, deceitful Paladin just fine, and enjoy the contradiction. I look at that list and I just ignore the House names and descriptions and just look at the type of magic that they get, because that's what matters most during chargen.

On the other hand, if I were rolling up a VTM character, I'd take the Camarilla/Sabbat/Anarch choice quite seriously, since that determines who my character will be hanging out with. I don't give a flying fuck about Abtribu bloodlines, though. Being a Ventrue who decides that he wants to be Lestat instead of Louis doesn't need a half-assed separate clan.

In other words , divorcing your political affiliation from your powerset is a good idea. People might want to be honorable warriors and battlefield control specialists, for example.

[Username17]

Whatever your groupings that dictate party allegiance are and whatever groupings that dictate character archetypes need to be different and entirely overlapping. It's one of the few things that New World of Darkness almost did right.

So if you want the player characters to be in the same house, then there needs to be a different thing that's not house related that is the thing that means your character is a fire magic specialist and likes cheese. The fire magic specialist group and the likes cheese group can be different, but don't have to be. It's entirely acceptable if your fire mages stereotypically like cheese or whatevs.

But if the game makes it in any way difficult to have a party with mixed specialists in it, you've failed right away. Mixed parties are the baseline assumption of RPGs. People actively avoid playing characters who are "the same." If you don't have a built in assumption that a fire mage, a blood mage, and an alchemist adventure together, I don't even want to hear about the rest of your ideas.

-Username17

[Prak]

Drop the archetype associations and you have a good set. With the archetype associations, it's impossible to have a well-rounded single-house party. Its kind of important that Ron, Hermione, and Harry all by in Gryffindor together.

each house to be known for one of the archetypes. Not to the extent that everyone in the house is a caster of that archetype, but it's common for the house

Not everyone in Hammer House is a Blaster, there are just more Blasters in Hammer House than other houses.

[Username17]

Not everyone in Hammer House is a Blaster, there are just more Blasters in Hammer House than other houses.

Look, nothing stops you from being a Tremere who pumps Auspex out to the max and just goes to town with fencing skill as a frontline fighter. It's still fucking bullshit to have the "probably a blaster caster" tag be the same tag that decides whether you're in the same party as the other fucking player characters or not.

Look, you fucking are in the same party as the other characters. That's not fucking optional. That's not negotiable. That's the price of admission for a cooperative storytelling game. So the choice to be in the same party as the other characters is not a choice! So you cannot, cannot tie it to any other character generation options. You just fucking can't.

If everyone wants to "play against type" or no one does, or anything in between, you still have to have all the player characters in the same group. It's not optional. If you make any design choices that contradict that or even make it take two sentences to work around, you have fucking failed your design test. The. End.

-Username17

[Harshax]

I think a big problem with trying to shoehorn classes directly into a university atmosphere is that the fluff material for some of the classes don't justify a scholastic experience in the first place.

Clerics need to study ecclesiastic texts and devote worship to a higher power. How that would translate into a lengthy academic career is hard to describe. They don't study magic and Knowledge: Religion isn't actually required to be a high level cleric. You're only sticking around campus to be a big fish in a small pond, hitting on lower classmen and siphoning off the trust fund of others.

Druids have a similar reasons to drop out and attune with nature as quickly as possible. Most of their magic is ideal for non-urban settings. So while you could have dimension-spanning mini universes of pristine wilderness dotting the campus, there is no carrot to keep them on campus to study things that can't be learned by remaining in their preferred environment at all times.

Shamans have a similar riff to Druids. Spirits tend to inhabit isolated or pristine places, except Spirits of the Dead. To borrow a term from Rick & Morty, if the University adheres to a strict-Alignment Based Mindset then the university atmosphere is also a terrible experience for Shamans.

All the other tweener spell-casters need sports-ball or other activities that blur the lines between the mundane and the magical in order for them to stick around a place that mostly caters to one-half of their class type.

The house system for determining the thematic direction of the party is an important one, but it has to be summed up in a mission statement that could include a variety of character types. The only way to really tickle a player's special snowflake experience is to allow their actual studies; which should be at the heart of a magic-school experience; to directly impact their spell selections, feats, hit-points and skill choices. These choices need to pop up every few levels, with choice trees for specialists, a secret choices that are unlocked through the course of their adventures.

I also think the best way to accomplish all of this is to drop the whole divine/arcane/diabolic dichotomy and drop most of the character classes from the game entirely. I'd suggest Grim Tales as some inspiration ... a d20 supplement that tried to take every class feature from D&D and break them down into d20 Modern feats ... but I've never found a PDF version of that document and I wouldn't bother to hunt down a physical copy unless they could get one at bargain prices.

[hyzmarca]

I think a big problem with trying to shoehorn classes directly into a university atmosphere is that the fluff material for some of the classes don't justify a scholastic experience in the first place.

Clerics need to study ecclesiastic texts and devote worship to a higher power. How that would translate into a lengthy academic career is hard to describe. They don't study magic and Knowledge: Religion isn't actually required to be a high level cleric. You're only sticking around campus to be a big fish in a small pond, hitting on lower classmen and siphoning off the trust fund of others.

Like this: http://hds.harvard.edu/academics/degree-programs

[Prak]

@Frank

Ok, I'm not getting the problem. I can understand why House Blaster (where everyone is blasters) and House Shaper (where everyone uses illusion, shapeshifting and battlefield control) and so on is bad...if you assume everyone will be the same house, which I understand is a reasonable assumption.

But I don't understand why "House Hammer has 300 members. At any one time, around 70 of them are blasters, and the other 230 are roughly evenly divided between the remaining archetypes" is bad. Especially with archetypes (mostly) divorced from classes.

Can you explain what I'm not seeing here, please?

[Harshax]

Like this: http://hds.harvard.edu/academics/degree-programs

That's a great example of a course that gives you ranks in Knowledge: Religion. The RAW does not require a Cleric to have a single rank in that skill to cast spells, so you need to figure out why a cleric needs to be in University.

You can do it two ways:
You can say that characters have to "take a specific courses" to level up in each class, which makes the idea of coursework meaningless fluff.

Or you have coursework have mechanical impact into how a character develops over time. That means you have to change the RAW, rewrite the class, or fundamentally change the nature of magic and challenge some sacred cows.

If you go with the first choice, your entire setup is a couple pages - "You're a bunch of magic students that go on adventures thematically appropriate for your house. It's just D&D but your home base is a frat house. The Fighter wears a toga and has Sunder Guitar as a bonus feat.

That sounds kind of boring ... and doesn't add any depth to the Spellbooks half of the setting title. Just cross off the classes that make absolutely no sense in setting and away you go. If all the PCs are female, then the setting is practically finished already.

[Prak]

@Harshax

um.

Casting Spells
The idea is to reinforce the "you're learning to cast spells" thing, so when you first learn a spell, you have to roll an appropriate skill to cast it successfully (Kn.Arcana, Kn.Divine, Kn.Nature, Performance, divvied up logically). The base DC would be something like 15+spell level, and then I'd go ahead and let people try to cast above their level at +5 per spell level above their max. I think that'd really only be an option if you have the spell in written form, and spells below your max spell level would have -5 DC per level, too. Wands are a genre convention in Harry Potter, Little Witch Academia, and a lot of other magic school stuff (because Harry Potter), so to incentivize wand-use, I figure having a wand would give you a +3 bonus to your spell rolls, and might allow you to prep more mastered spells, or something.

Also, the thread title is just an alliterative joke name for the campaign style I originally came up with in the Redhurst review thread for a hypothetical "if I were going to use d20 for this" situation

[Harshax]

@Prak

I think the learning rule is good step toward making the setting mechanically relevant. But that's only four skills. Four. At minimum you have four classes and those four classes are even less distinct than Basic D&D: Fighter, Magic-User, Thief, Cleric.

EDIT:
To be fair, you might have a few more:
K: Religion - Ecclesiastic Divine Caster
K: Nature - Druidic Divine Caster
K: Arcane - Arcane Caster
Perform - Bardic Caster
K: Planar - Pact Caster (Warlock?) or Elementalist
K: ? - Sorcerers. Something like meditation or self-reflection

Question - If I sneak on to your campus or dumpster dive after the semester is over and steal some text books, then later invest a bunch of ranks in one of the above skills, can I cast spells?

Question - If I'm a "Wizard" and invest in any number of Knowledge Skills, can I cast spells from cross lists?

[deaddmwalking]

Prak,

One way to think about it is what you hope it will add to the game. Let's say I have a house that is ASSOCIATED with a particular casting style. And let's say I have five players from that house.

In all likelihood, I have ONE player with the 'associated school'. If I didn't, we'd run the risk of everyone seeming the same. If my party is five people, and 20% of them are the 'associated school' and the other 80% are not, the players won't even SEE the association.

If there is a mechanical incentive to choose the associated school, then most of my party is missing out.

If there is not a mechanical incentive to choose the associated school, why do they make up an outsized portion of the school?


To make the game work, you want every party to include members of different types of schools. Trying to 'encourage' players to choose a house based on their chosen school discourages players from being from the same house. If the game works better (and it probably does) if they're in the same house, your design is creating problems for no benefit.

[Chamomile]

But I don't understand why "House Hammer has 300 members. At any one time, around 70 of them are blasters, and the other 230 are roughly evenly divided between the remaining archetypes" is bad. Especially with archetypes (mostly) divorced from classes.

Can you explain what I'm not seeing here, please?

The problem is that's not what you'd said originally. What you'd originally said, and the phrasing which is most likely to make it into your actual finished document, is that House Hammer "corresponds to" Blasters, or that they're "more common" than other archetypes, or something else vague that suggests that the actual percentage of Blasters in House Hammer is at least 50% and probably closer to 75%. Writing down a little list that shows how many of each archetype are in House Hammer, and in which Blasters happen to be slightly over represented, would work out fine (although you should still keep that information away from chargen sections and reserved for the lore section towards the back of the book), but that's not what you did. You stated the most common archetype and left it at that, which implies that the dominance of the archetype is overwhelming enough to be immediately obvious, which it really wouldn't be if they were a plurality but not even halfway to being a majority.

Concerning an entirely different argument: Do not try to piggyback this onto existing 3.5 skills. 3.5 has the worst skill list of any D&D game ever made. The individual skills are probably the best of any D&D game because nearly all of them have actual explicit things you can do with them, not one-size-fits-all skill challenge systems or simple descriptions that the GM has to interpret, but the actual list of skills that appears on the character sheet is abysmal. Ignore the 3.5 skill list and write your own based on the needs of the game. This is something you should do even when playing regular D&D where possible, let alone a game where you would reasonably want Illusions and Conjuring to be separate skills.

[Username17]

@Frank

Ok, I'm not getting the problem. I can understand why House Blaster (where everyone is blasters) and House Shaper (where everyone uses illusion, shapeshifting and battlefield control) and so on is bad...if you assume everyone will be the same house, which I understand is a reasonable assumption.

But I don't understand why "House Hammer has 300 members. At any one time, around 70 of them are blasters, and the other 230 are roughly evenly divided between the remaining archetypes" is bad. Especially with archetypes (mostly) divorced from classes.

Can you explain what I'm not seeing here, please?

Imagine for the moment that you want to play a character when playing a role playing game. Fucking crazy, I know. Whether your character is a "normal" member of their demographic group or an "outlier" member of their demographic group is a core piece of their identity. Of your imagined character's identity, of the role you want to play. In a game that is literally called a role playing game.

If you make the house choices the in-group determinant and you make the house determination be the thing which determines whether your character is a "typical" or "weird" character for that in-group, you have effectively told people that they do not get to pick important parts of the core identity of their character. And you've done it for no fucking reason.

It's a very basic, very fundamental, very total failure of design.

-Username17

[Prak]

Ok, so it's sort of my old problem of not writing my entire thought out, and the summarized version not conveying what I mean. But also the version I meant is sort of meaningless due to sample sizes.

The next place my mind goes is to shift towards the way Hogwarts houses correspond to things, the "every dark witch and wizard in Magic Britain was a Slytherin, but not necessarily every Slytherin is a dark witch or wizard" thing. But if we look at the way Rowling wrote things, Slytherins are presumed dark until proven otherwise, so "The most famous blasters were in House Hammer" will still imply "House Hammer is the Blasting House."

I guess that brings up several questions about the whole houses thing-
-Why have houses?
-Does the party need to all be one house?
-What should the houses mean?

Obviously, the first question's primary (but not really best) answer is "Because Harry Potter." And mostly the houses, apart from dividing single-author fiction characters into "Protagonists, Exposition, Sidekicks and Villains," represent dorms. Except that whereas real dorm assignments are probably three parts arbitrarium and one part stacking together vaguely similar applications, Hogwarts dorm assignments are based on personality traits (and calvinism).

But a Magic School campaign is going to be leaning pretty heavily on players' liking Harry Potter, so there is something to be said for having houses "Because Hogwarts has them"

The second question also refers back to HP, and if you're doing Hogwarts with the name changed, then the answer is yes. But at the same time, there's not a lot of reasons that a Harry Potter fic group couldn't be a mix of Griffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. I mean, hell, the Golden Trio and expanded core group basically were that mix even though five of those six characters all slept in the Griffindor dorms. At which point, you go back to the first question, why have houses if all they really mean is "these people sleep relatively close to each other." The closest personal frame of reference I have to houses is my middle school, which divided students into arbitrary teams. I don't even remember what all the teams were, and I'm about 90% certain that the sorting was either based on last name or completely arbitrary, and 99% certain that they meant nothing. They sure as hell didn't impact who I was friends with. So, if we follow the Hogwarts model, the party is expected to all belong to one House. Characters of the same gender can meet up in their bedroom, while the whole party can meet up in the common room and only other people in their house will be around to hear them. And they all go to the same classes (minus electives). So the one thing that Houses have going for them in a direct Hogwarts rip is that the party is together for most of the day and has a place to go to get away from rival parties (because Draco and his gang can't get into the Gryffindor dorms). But D&D characters want more specialization, so the "everyone's in the same classes" works less.

The third question is somewhat entangled in the second, because the source material has Houses determine primary personality trait and proximity of characters. I could see Houses being used in place of races in a direct Hogwarts game, so that Griffindors get +2 Str and a bonus against fear DCs, and Ravenclaws get +2 Int and some extra skill points, or something. The thing I keep wanting to do is have Houses give a bonus for a type of casting, but people keep telling me that's wrong and dumb. If everyone's supposed to be in the same House, yes, yes it is. What if Houses primarily just determined access to certain resources? So House Hammer has more ready access to weapon enchanting workshops, and House Tome has the best in-dorm library, and House Crown has the best parties or something. I don't know, I'm spitballing here, and The Magicians is creeping in.


Am I overlooking a reason for the party to all be one dorm other than "because Harry Potter did it?" My college experience is 100% for-profit vocational school and community college, so I don't have a ton ofany experience in a traditional dorm set up. Or even a traditional university set up.

[Harshax]

In my High School we had Home Room. It was an organizational apparatus closely associated to your year of entry in the School. You gathered there at the start of every school day. It designated the primary staff member responsible for disseminating information about the school and current events as well as introduce you to group of individuals, regardless of their individual club memberships, majors or scholastic goals. It was probably also a way for the school apparatus to funnel information from all other staff through a single source into a unified record. The Home Room teacher was most likely to contact your parents about concerns voiced by other staff.

I guess I'd call the Home Room teacher your Handler. I think that's what you're after.

[Username17]

Am I overlooking a reason for the party to all be one dorm other than "because Harry Potter did it?"

You structurally need to have an in-group determinant. This is not optional. This is step one on the game design checklist for a fucking reason.

In Dungeons & Dragons, the characters are an adventuring party. They are together having adventures because they are adventuring in a hostile wilderness and there is no one else to have their backs. In Shadowrun, the characters are an elite Ocean's Eleven crew, who stick together because they are doing elaborate heists and have diverse and non-replaceable skills.

If you are going to make a roleplaying game you need to have a reason for the player characters to work and interact primarily with the other player characters. You have not gotten to step one of your design process until you have that. I literally do not give a pieces of moldy rat shit about anything in your RPG design unless and until you have a pitch for why the player characters are collectively a reasonably stable group. That is literally the first thing. Without that, nothing else matters. That is not hyperbole. You literally do not have a game at all unless and until you have the players together within a defined group.

Now the group doesn't have to be defined in terms of dorm sites. It could be defined in terms of home rooms. Or class schedule blocks. Or club membership. Or any other academic or pseudo academic foo-faw you feel like throwing around. But it's gotta be something. It's absolutely not OK for there to not be something. If you don't got something, this conversation is over.

-Username17

[Prak]

Ah, gotcha. That is, then, actually something I wasn't worrying about for an entire other reason. The classic D&D party meets in a tavern and says "sure, we'll work together," and when I run, I try to have the PCs each tied to at least one other PC in the group.

The game I'm playing in currently has the party thrown together by escaping prison together. The last game I ran was a published adventure path with the group tied together by hiring, and the game I ran before that had one character who was a megalomaniac and regard two of the three others as personal minions, so I just had to integrate Wandering Gunlizard and I think I did that in the tavern model. Possibly aided by the Wastri Worshippers Convention being in town and alienating all the PCs because none of them were humans.

So because this is just a home game and not something I'm trying to write as a professional product, and it's just a D&D game with an idiosyncratic style, the in-group determinant has so far kind of been "being played by real people." But hell, if you want an in-group determinate baked into the campaign, then here we go-

The Proving
The Sigilarium does not take just anyone.

It only takes almost anyone.

More seriously, prospective students of the Sigilarium must prove their aptitude for spellcasting, of one style or another, of one discipline or another, to be let in. Admitting people with less magic that a ring of mushrooms just leads to wasted resources.
To determine this, the Sigilarium holds periodic admissions days, called Provings, open to anyone. They then group together prospective students in teams of 4-6 individuals and administer first a written exam where each team is allowed to work together. The teams that do not flunk the exam horribly are then put through a practical test.

While nothing requires teams to stay together past the Proving, the members who survive the proving regularly form a bond of trust and respect, if not genuine friendship, and will frequently do fieldwork together in their time as students.

---

There you go, the initial in-group determinate is "you all went through the mildly lethal admissions exam together."

[Username17]

There you go, the initial in-group determinate is "you all went through the mildly lethal admissions exam together."

I don't think you're really grappling with this at all. The point isn't that the characters have to all know each other (although they do), they have to have adventures together.

-Username17

[Prak]

So then the initial in-group determinate is "being played by a real person." Everyone being in the same dorm, or homeroom, or club, or whatever doesn't mean that they go on adventures together, unless every adventure is "a demon is attacking your dorm!" or similar. And even then, the only thing that determines that the player characters all fight the demon, rather than some fighting and others running away is that they're played by real people who understand that if they don't follow the basic "here is an objective, work together" prompt there's no game.

Most D&D games say "you're all escaping a dungeon!" or "you were each hired for [x]" or "a mutual acquaintance called you guys together" or "a guy stands on a table in the tavern and begs for someone to help his village" to get the group together. "You were arbitrarily grouped together by the school to go through a low level adventure and now know each others' basic abilities and have a shared experience" is at least as legitimate as any of those, if not stronger. It's "adventuring in a hostile wilderness and there is no one else to have their backs" minus the hostile wilderness where the first adventure can be played or handwaved as your players choose for a given game. Hell, it's actually less arbitrary than "an elf walks up and says you [x] are the chosen ones. Given you have nothing better to do, you go along with it"

[Harshax]

I think your best bet for defining houses has to tie into why the world at large allows people to dabble in a science that ultimately makes them more powerful than everybody else.

Here's four to get your juices running:

You could have a house that behaves like a Model UN or the Brotherhood of the Lotus - a group that transcends political borders and strives to maintain a natural order on this universe. Your adventures maintain the status quo or you assist Senior members in minor tasks that help them prevent war or maintain a regions stability.

Another house could literally be Planescape: The Next Generation. A group of interdimensional explorers seeking out new life, new civilizations and new magic. Your adventurers face Things Man Was Not Meant to Know or battle denizens from other places marooned on your planet or imprisoned here by an incomprehensible civilization of light and meaning.

Another house seems quite similar to the first house, but instead of interfering directly with the machinations of petty nobles, they operate an extensive spy network and information house. They maintain stability by stealing secrets and revealing them in damaging ways that make leaders fearful of their power to infiltrate and deceive.

Going back to a question I asked earlier: If magic is based off of a Knowledge skill and someone stole a text book, could the cast spells? Firstly, it neatly answers how a Thief's Use Magic Device allows them to use scrolls. Secondly, it introduces another house that thinks magic users are superior to everyone else. With great power comes great responsibility. You're a man in black or collector for the Wizard equivalent of Area 51. You gather magic and artifacts too dangerous to leave in the hands of lesser men or even lesser wizards.

[nockermensch]

If by the end of the mildly lethal admission exam some genie pops up and soul binds the survivors into a coterie or circle or something like that, I think you'd be into something usable.

[Prak]

Ok, so fluff and student body type stuff all in one place-

The school is The Sigilarium, it's in a small-ish demiplane that is home to both the school and a small college town sort of settlement around it. The school is largely in the wish economy.

As suggested in the Redhurst OSSR thread, there's a room with portals in the Sigilarium, probably on the first floor, or one is, at least. Maybe it's a courtyard. Because the teleporting campus thing is a mess. Students come from across the great wheel (and yes, I'm using the great wheel because fuck writing a new cosmology for this shit. My players only ever care in how much the new cosmology fucks them), but mostly it's the Fellowship races, their dark counterparts, various planetouched, and other LA 0-1 races.

There are six Houses, based as stated above on the Harrow Suits-

• House Hammer Known for bravado, braggadocio, and stubbornness. People who used direct damage spells, weapons, or generally took an aggressive approach in the Proving are pointed toward this house, but not forced into it.
• House Key Known for artistry, sneakiness, and looking at things in terms of games. People who used stealth, terrain/environment, or trickery in the Proving are pointed to this house.
• House Shield Known for being welcoming, protective, and stalwart. People who primarily supported their team, took a more defensive approach, or simply pushed through challenges in the Proving are pointed to this house
• House Tome Known for inquisitiveness, curiosity, and analytical attitudes. People who used knowledge or observation to address the challenges in the Proving are pointed to this house.
• House Star Known for organizing groups, directing others, and having pets. People who primarily relied on another creature to bypass challenges for them (familiar, summons, animal companion) are pointed to this house.
• House Crown Known for arrogance, manipulation, and persuasion. People who tried to sweet talk or intimidate their way through challenges in the Proving are pointed to this house.

At one point, I was actually considering doing a sorting ceremony thing, but with a harrow deck instead of a sorting hat. Hence basing houses on the Harrow suits. In practice, I'd let players choose their house, and then stack the cards of that suit on the top of the deck and let them draw for their specific card. This idea slipped through the cracks as I was trying to figure stuff out. But I could see doing this instead of house recommendations based on how you handled the Proving.

The idea for people having a randomly determined specific card would give them a little bit of in-game fluff and bringing in the idea of Harrow Points from PF which were like action points with adventure-based limits/uses. But instead of saying "this adventure cares about this suit and you can use your points in this encounter based on the card you drew" it would be "the card you drew allows you to use harrow points in these situations" but I acknowledge that that's a very niche mechanic that some players won't give a shit about. And needs to be better implemented than it is in Pathfinder APs.

That's what I've got for now, and I need to head to work soon.

@Harshax, RE: pulling old spellbooks from dumpsters-
Well, first, spellbooks are more akin to those textbooks you keep for life because they're useful beyond your class. But also, sure. If you grab a wizard's spellbook and start studying it, you can learn to cast magic, represented by taking Wizard 1. And yes, you can pull a page out of it and cast it if you can roll well enough on Use Magic Device.

[deaddmwalking]

I think you need to decide if a coterie is primarily made of one house or a mix of houses. If it's one house, you DO NOT WANT them to be similar in demeanor. Your group will be boring if everyone has the same personality.

Having everyone in the party as a single house has the advantage of letting them be together outside of class. At my college all Freshmen were assigned a dorm largely at random. Sophmores and Upper Classmen selected their preferred dorm based on a lottery. Each dorm had a character. One was known as the party dorm. One was specifically designated the 'quiet dorm'. Floors were divided by gender. I stayed in the same dorm all four years. It had three floors. The first and third year it had two floors of men; the second and fourth year it had two floors of women.

Your houses/dorms might be divided just by faculty sponsor. If Frshman are assigned, but older students can choose on a limited basis, you can allow changes. Such a setup could see Harry and Malfoy in the same dorm until one is forced to transfer out due to 'roomate issues'.