Creating a Character
Whether it's your first time at Vault 713 or you're a returning member looking for more ideas, this section of the Player's Guide is dedicated to helping you expand your imagination and create an alternate personality that you will love playing! Please keep in mind that all Child, Student, and Adult aged characters can be played as a Witch, Wizard, Squib, or Muggle. You're not restricted to just magical folk here at the Vault! For those who are looking to play a canon character, all we ask is that you remain extremely active and that you stick to the limit of only two canon characters per person.
If you're in a hurry to get to the application process, simply skip this and head to the Application Forums! This guide is an optional resource provided for those who might benefit from it and to give you an idea of just how broad our character spectrum is here at the Vault.
A great starting point for those new to Harry Potter RP is the child or student character. These are the ones you find in school to study magic, bounding towards the joke shops in Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, and waiting anxiously for their school acceptance letter! Child Characters are aged at 10 and younger and will recieve an owl inviting them to one of five magical schools once they are of age. They are a great way to play younger siblings or children once you've got a pre-existing character.
Student Characters are the most typical of the Harry Potter RP world - aged 11 to 17 they can attend one of five schools here at Vault 713. Or if you choose, you can create a muggle student who might spend time with their magical friends at home over holidays! Our magical schools are as follows -
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Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, a canon co-ed school located in France.
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Durmstrang Institute, a canon co-ed school located in Russia.
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Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a canon co-ed school located in Scotland.
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Salem Witches Institute, a canon co-ed school located in the United States.
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Seireitei University, an original co-ed school located in Japan.
Any characters who attend these institutions will need to be born in a country that is relevant to each school - ie, we will not be accepting Japanese students to Hogwarts nor American students to Seireitei University. The staff will sort you into the school that they think most suits your characters nationality! For more information on these schools, feel free to click the links above.
Students who are attending a school with houses or similar groupings (Hogwarts, Salem, Seireitei) should note that you will be sorted into your grouping just like in the series - the Vaultkeepers serve as the Sorting Hat and have been trained to make sure that all characters are appointed to a house or fellowship that suits them best!
Any character who is at least age 17 and has completed schooling is considered an adult. From here, they can hold any number of jobs! While you can find a full list of career ideas at our Tag Database, we've spotlighted some of the more common careers in this guide. Please check out the full list, however, because you may find something you've been dying to play but weren't sure if it would fit into our world. Don't forget, you aren't limited to only the tags we have available - any character who chooses a career that's not currently listed will be issued a standard wizard or witch tag.
For all five of our magical schools, we need professors and other faculty to keep the students in line! Apply for the Headmaster position (when available) or select a course for them to teach in the interim time! We have a template for hosting lessons and allow faculty members to freely roam when not on teaching duty, as well as intereact with others at the school. Don't forget that each school also needs support staff such as a nurse, board of directors, janitorial staff, and more!
Beyond the usual Aurors and secretarial staff, there are plenty of positions available in the Ministry of Magic. We've compiled a directory of the departments, but remember that there are hundreds of unique jobs available in the company. Think of how many people work for your local government and all the jobs involved! The Ministry is just like that - there's jobs for post sorters, beast and being capture units who work out in the field chasing werewolves and other creatures, unspeakables who can do nearly anything you can think up, the folks who keep track of enchanted muggle objects, magical mishap reversal squad - and more! Use your imagination to come up with a dream career in this fantastical government where everything is possible.
An exciting part of Vault 713 is that we offer an expansion to Harry's world that many RPGs do not - beyond the usual Wizards and Muggles, we also offer the ability to play more than ten different unique creatures seen in the Harry Potter series. Whether you fancy humanoid beasts like werewolves, house elves, and goblins or prefer curious beings and has-beens like portraits and ghosts, it's the perfect way to expand your creativity. Though these characters require a slightly more detailed application, there is no limit to how many you can have - try out a bulky Giant and invade a nearby village, or charm your way out of trouble as a Veela, there are plenty of options beyond just the wand-waving folks! Check out the Beast & Being Catalog for more information on these characters.
You may notice that a small number of the Beast & Beings applications, as well as the applications for some special abilities such as Animagi and Occlumency, require a "code" to apply. These codes can be won through contests, as well as purchased in the shop. We charge for these codes not to make it more difficult to apply, but to keep a fair amount of these unique character types! As things like animagi, metamorphmagi, and seers are very rare in canon, we wished to limit them in a way so that we wouldn't have a surplus of these characters and could allow them to remain special. Since this posed a problem with how to restrict who can and cannot have them, we decided to offer them "for pay" - this way anyone who feels so inclined to go through the extra trouble can have these abilities without having to worry about who's posts are "good enough" or honor veteran status. In order to keep this as fair as possible, we also allow the codes to be traded or given to others and try to give them out during special events to help the circulation.
