Witchcraft and Wizardry, and the Future of 1400
A devlog for 1400 Witchcraft and Wizardry, and a comment on 1400 moving forward.
Last week I released the first 1400 game in a long while - 1400 Witchcraft and Wizardry. It was commented on almost immediately that this was 1400 and not 14XX, and the reason for that is just that I changed my mind on how I want to name/label/brand these micro-games. Originally, I liked the 14XX designation to show that these newer releases are distinct from the original 1400 zine, as I have no intention of reworking the zine to include them. That was the reason for Golden Age to be 14XX. However in the time between Golden Age and Witchcraft and Wizardry I’ve rethought it, and decided to stick with 1400 for all of them. That means, in the near future, Golden Age will be updated to be 1400. The same will be true for any more of these games I release in the future.
Are there more in the pipeline? One of the reasons for the long gap between Golden Age and Witchcraft and Wizardry is that I’ve been working on a bunch of different ideas simultaneously, for 1400 and other games. (Other reasons for the delay include writing a depthcrawl for my ongoing D&D campaign, now in its eighth year, and just life getting in the way.) I have no idea when more 1400 games will release, but I’m not starting from scratch, as a couple have already had a good amount of work done on them, and finally getting Witchcraft and Wizardry published has given me a push to get more done. It always feels good to hit the button and make a game public on Itch.
In the meantime, please do check out 1400 Witchcraft and Wizardry if you haven’t already. More about it below.
1400 Witchcraft and Wizardry Devlog
This micro-game is the 1400 take on the ‘magical school’ genre. You play as children or teens getting up to mischief and making friends while trying to pass your classes and survive magical wacky events. The quote-unquote “magic system” is purposefully freeform. Instead of a list of spells, you say what you’re aiming to do with magic and how, then the GM decides if you just do it, if the magic is beyond your ability, or if you need to roll for risk. The intent is that the game is a mix of slice-of-life roleplaying, comedic mischief, and more serious elements, but nothing too dark or lethal. If you’re familiar with the genre (which you almost certainly are, even if only a little) then you know the kind of thing we’re dealing with. There might be a monster terrorising the school, but it’s less likely to kill students and more likely to petrify them or secrete them away to its lair, where they are eventually found safe and sound. OSR grimdark this aint.
There are lots of different books, TV shows, anime, and movies that are part of, or adjacent to, the ‘magic school’ genre, some of which I’ll mention momentarily. However let's first deal with the lightning-bolt-scarred elephant in the room.
I never really liked Harry Potter. I read the first four books, but when the fifth came out I didn’t bother to continue. It’s fine I guess, and I don’t fault people who enjoyed it (unless you go on about it as a fully-grown adult, talk about which house you’d belong to, refer to people as muggles etc.). For a lot of people it was probably their first experience with that kind of story or setting, and now there’s probably a generation who were introduced to it by their parents and have a different kind of emotional connection to it. Supposedly, the Harry Potter books caused an uptick in child literacy, although I don’t know if that’s really true.
All that said, I never really found them all that great. I’d read The Worst Witch before then, so The Philosopher’s Stone wasn’t my introduction to the idea of a school for witches, and there was just more interesting genre fiction to read. Other examples of the genre include the show The Owl House (which is fantastic and worth a watch if you haven’t seen it) and the anime Little Witch Academia. Both the Discworld and Earthsea series include magical schools of some description, and even Magic the Gathering has the setting of Strixhaven. I would recommend using any of these as inspiration when playing 1400 Witchcraft and Wizardry, adapting both the inspirations and the game as needed.
However, 1400 Witchcraft and Wizardry clearly has overlap with Harry Potter in its implied setting and there are three main reasons for that. One, Harry Potter is pretty generic. It’s very derivative of things that came before it and it was so influential that it had an impact on things that came after. It has a soft magic system, little in the way of innovative worldbuilding, and lots of archetypal or stereotypical characters. It’s very easy for anything in this space - especially one actively leaning into genre tropes - to not have overlap.
Two, I want people to be able to play out their HP headcanon or whatever with this game. It’s not really in the game’s best interest to purposefully push too far away from that. You wouldn’t make a game for people to play Star Wars with, then set it in an undersea circus.
Three, when writing the game I tried to be inspired by my own experiences as a child, and it just so happens I grew up in the same place, around the same time, that Harry Potter is set. The default or implied setting for 1400 Witchcraft and Wizardry isn’t an american highschool in the 50s because I’ve never been to highschool in the 50s. You can certainly do that, but you’ll have to rewrite some of the tables and events to do so.
The last thing to add, because it’s important, is that you can’t talk about Harry Potter without conjuring the image of J.K.Rowling, like some spectre appearing behind you in a haunted mirror. I want to be clear that by making a game partially inspired by Harry Potter, that does not in any way show support for its author. In the same way 1400 Quest is, in part, inspired by Dungeon and Dragon but does not denote support for the misogynistic things attributed to Gygax, 1400 Witchcraft and Wizardry is in no way intended to show solidarity or agreement with things that Rowling has said and done with regards to trans people. Let me be clear when I say: trans rights are human rights.
Please check out 1400 Witchcraft and Wizardry if you haven’t already. It’s $3 on Itch and your inner child will love it.