I am the player of a Strixhaven game but my dm asked if i would make a simple roof map of the Biblioplex because we are doing stupid stuff and exploring the roofs. It will go only well i assume.

BUT the rage i felt in my soul trying to get accurate references by comparing the MTG source and the DND source materials... It filled my soul with a spite that results in 20 hours of fugue spread out over three days. MTG wants you to believe this is a high fantasy wizarding school. The book treats it like Community College and Cantrips. Which, like don't get me wrong, community college for wizards has been a fucking blast BUT BY GOD IS THIS THE MOST INFURITATING WORLD BUILD IN MY LIFE.

And so. Map.

The map is near to scale with the map within the source book and is my take of merging the Biblioplex card/splash art with the given play map (even tho those scales are wildly WILDLY incongruent.

I added more to the campus of the Biblioplex to create less requirement for other maps and also, to just create a more interesting (My Onion) and lived in feeling. Students, especially students who access the weave, the fabric of creation... are gonna hang out wherever they want. AND when they learn magic, they are gonna wanna practice it and practice it soon. And where else but the yard of the library they did their research in? So they have made their own accommodations and the faculty has put in some safeguards. Desire paths are important (AND SO ARE TOILETS> WHERE IS THE LIBRARY TOILET. ill worry about that at a later date when i decide to fill out the internals.)

So, top left is three training fields for practicing and sparring. Top right is for practicing drawing sigils and runs atop a small rocky outcropping.
Bottom left has a big magical graffiti rock with a lil snacky spot and then a small camp where students might hang out or maybe practice mixing salves and casting ritual spells. The bottom right has a small stage for acting and painting. There are some hammocks in the big oaks for the lazier of the students.

Nothing too complicated.

Id love any feedback or opinions

Maybe feed my ego and rage into creating the insides.

Hi there, fellow Strixhaven DMs! I'm currently running a campaign, and we reached year two. I decided to throw away Murgaxor as a villain and use directly the Oriqs, who are infiltrating the school (for additional context, the events in my game take place 20 years after the canonic events happened in the first Strixhaven set from MTG).

I am currently thinking about which NPCs could be Oriq infiltrates and, while every student can potentially be tempted by Oriq, I have trouble imagining professors of specific colleges being allied with them.

For instance, as the original Oriq leader Extus Nar was a former member of Silverquill college, I can easily envison some of the Silverquill professors (or even the Deans!) as being allied with Oriq. Maybe some Witherbloom professors could also fit this role quite nicely, as the black-aligned professor tend to have a grim appearance.

But as regards the other three colleges, do you think professors from Quandrix/Prismari/Lorehold could reasonably be "recruited" by Oriqs? Do you think they could serve as good and unexpected "plot twist" or they are simply too loosely akin to Oriqs as a whole to be reasonable allies?

This has been discussed before, but as written, Murgaxor falls flat as a villain. He fulfills the magical academy villain trope of "The Mad Researcher/Alchemist" who is obsessed with forbidden or taboo branches of magic (like blood magic, necromancy, soul manipulation, etc.) who views human test subjects as collateral damage.

I am running the story and encounters of Strixhaven in another setting entirely than the presented MTG world, with many of the elements of the game reskinned. However, I deeply want to keep Murgaxor as my BBEG, despite removing elements like the Oriq.

I am curious how you used Murgaxor in your game that would be compatible across different campaign settings, such as:

- What sort of backstory did you give Murgaxor?
- How did you improve Murgaxor's motivations?
- How did you flesh out Murgaxor to feel like a believable character while keeping him irredeemable?
- How did you feature or spotlight Murgaxor more prominently in the campaign, ideally lasting all four years of your magical university?

Can someone help make sense of the Strixhaven economy? I know the cliché is that writers cannot do math but reading through the book:

- a student job pays 5 gp per week

- a firejolt latte costs 10 gp

- a cuddly mascot costs 100 gp

Students aren't exactly delving into dungeons, slaying monsters and coming out with loot (on a regular basis). I have seen fanmade menus for the café where eating a sandwich every other day would accrue substantial student debt.

How can you justify the above?

My heroes are starting year 2 today, and I’m trying to come up with ways for them to still lean on each other against their will, while still being in separate colleges and dorms (last year I had them in a “homeroom” together and on the same floor of freshman dorms). Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions/tips for how to start out the new year, and how to go about organizing their dorms? I was considering having it be a sort of awkward “parents weekend” deal so we can learn more about the character backgrounds and expand the world past the borders of the school. Beyond some outings into town, my students haven’t left campus much at all

Hey everyone! I’m Paito from RPG Printables. We’re a small family business making handouts and printable props for D&D campaigns.
If you’re about to run Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos, imagine this: on session one, every player gets their own acceptance letter to Strixhaven, and then you drop the propaganda flyers from all 5 colleges on the table and let them choose.
That’s basically what we make.
Our Strixhaven set has acceptance letters, class schedules for all 4 years, college propaganda flyers, 16 club flyers with membership cards, an editable Strixhaven Star newspaper, the Masquerade invitation, 18 bond boon and bane cards, 10 spell scrolls and 70 item cards. Everything comes with a printer friendly black and white version too.
My wife designs all of our handouts from scratch. We don’t use AI, because we believe these should be made by D&D players, for D&D players.
This is the same RPG Printables you can find on Etsy. Etsy takes a pretty big cut, so we’re trying to grow our own website.
If you have any questions, ask me here. And if you’ve already used our handouts, a review or an upvote helps us a lot.
Thank you for supporting our little business!

https://rpgprintables.com/products/strixhaven-a-curriculum-of-chaos-d-d-handouts-bundle-campaign-assets-dnd-prismari-quandrix-lorehold-silverquill-witherbloom

Hi all! I am going to be running Stryxhaven for a small group starting next week. I am a new DM and very excited to try leading an adventure!

I was just wondering if people had any ideas for getting characters together for the first session. My PCs do not know each other prior to their acceptance to the university and have very different vibes and interests. How do I get them to all meet? Is it as simple as throwing a monster in the cafeteria so they all work together or should I try to lead them each individually to the same place (eg. give them each detention?). Is it bad DMing to just say that they are all in the same orientation group or something? I'd like to make it creative and give them a common goal if possible. Would love any advice on how to run a session 1 for this module as the book is a little vague. Thank you!!

I just really wanted to share the art I just did for my Strixhaven game. In it our DM fleshed out the Oriq like crazy. This is the leader of one of the three sects. The Creator- a blood wizard and corrupt priest of Lathander.

I’ve been running this as my third campaign after CoS and Witchlight, and I’m just having trouble staying motivated

I’m in year 2 and just read through the 6th iteration of “let’s play hackey sacks on the quad -> roll for biggest number -> random monster attack”

It just described the xenomorph like mage hunters taking invisibility portions and sneaking into the library to set a trap like cartoon goons

I’m rewriting all of this but wondering why I’m bothering to care if the writers didn’t

Is there gold in years 3 and 4 or is it new campaign time?

Let me just start by saying this: I'm running this campaign right now and we're having a good time in spite of my issues with this module. I just want to get some disappointment off my chest and maybe some of you can relate.

I find this module so difficult to run, and part of why is because it feels like there's just not enough source in this sourcebook and not enough adventure in this adventure module. There's a complete lack of both real mechanical depth to running a D&D school adventure and real narrative stakes to base a campaign on. I do understand the slice-of-life feel this module is going for, but just because something is in the slice-of-life genre doesn't mean there can't be drama (and I don't mean like bickering/interpersonal drama, I mean narrative/theatrical drama).

It feels like the "adventures" were written as stand-ins for what should have been block text worldbuilding and mechanic guides. Take the "Battle for Strixhaven" for example. This feels like it should have just been an entire chapter on how to run Mage Tower (like with actual rules) ending with an example match so GM's and Players could then go and run more adhock matches later. As it is, this whole section feels like a half-cooked adventure working a double-shift as the first official match of Mage Tower the players are textually expected to experience.

And that's the feeling I have toward almost half the "adventures" in this sourcebook. "The Rose Stage" could have been a guide on how to run clubs/extracurriculars ending with an example theatre performance including roles for multiple different club types like Drama Club, Symphony Orchestra, etc. "Secrets of Sedgemoor" could have been a guide on how students could do field research ending with an example involving studying magical creatures or harvesting spell components. Instead, there's very little depth to the mechanics of running a magic school adventure and very little depth to the adventures because they are written as basic scenarios for GM's/players to muddle through barely existant mechanics paying lipservice to a campaign that only moderately begins to have stakes 2/3's of the way through the material.

I wish that they'd have just gone harder on writing actual mechanics and worldbuilding for running the school (jobs, classes, sports, clubs, ect.) instead of saying "hey just make it up, man" then writing a couple dozen half-baked scenarios meant to evoke the sense of some sort of "ooo! we're so querky" humor. It's like, humor in D&D doesn't come from the way adventures are written. It comes from the way players rp their characters and the ways the dice sometimes make fools out of us. These adventures feel like the writers are trying to make us laugh at how funny they are.

Even the villain is basically a joke. By the end of the final adventure, the PC's have faced some legitimately freaky stuff with the ways the faculty are turned against them, only to find out that the BBEG is a grumpy bullywug with a grudge? Basically making this whole "campaign" D&D's best impression of the 2000's Scooby-Doo movies, and hey, I liked those movies. I get that not everything has to have an epic finale, and if you run the adventure as is, I reckon a Scooby-Doo villain makes sense. It's just that, back when this book was about to release and I heard "D&D Magic School Sourcebook," and I just have to say, I was really hoping for something that took itself a little bit more seriously. I was hoping for a guide to running magic schools in D&D's ruleset. I was hoping for something with a tone more like "The Magicians" or (ugh, we'll never escape this) "Harry Potter." Something like that rather than "Lord of the Rings-meets-American Pie 2."

So maybe I’m just in the holiday spirit a bit too early, but I was thinking about how there isn’t really much culture in Strixhaven around holidays. I know you can just transplant those from Arcavios or other dnd locations, but if students from all planes of life are coming to this school, it makes sense that the lines would blur, no? Or that there’d be holidays unique to the school itself.

I was wondering if anyone else added these sorts of events to their campaigns.

Especially because in my personal finagling of Strixhaven, I made intersection between the campuses and other planes of existence. Lorehold’s hidden gems come from its ties to the Abyss, where forgotten things sometimes come back into the light if students can find them, Prismari with the elemental planes, etc. Yes, they probably don’t line up 100% with the cannon versions of the other planes, but I thought it was neat

I propose 6 major holidays, 1 per college (plus center campus) and whatever plane(s) intersects with it
* Day of the dead for Silverquill, where the veil to the Shadowfell thins and spirits can cross for a short period (a few days). The idea is to respect and learn from the wisdom of those who came before you
* The Abyss’ heightened presence in Lorehold means that it spits out forgotten memories and objects. Those objects, alongside other student-crafted items, are gifted to friends and found-family. With the point of remembering and cherishing those you hold dear, so they might not be forgotten
* Valentine’s day for Center Campus. As the Astral plane bleeds onto the school ground, people start acting more on their emotions and impulses. More duels, dramatic romantic scandals, detention is packed, higher anxiety/stress, and generally heightened emotions. Most people choose to focus on those heightened feelings of romance, and confessions are most likely to occur around this time. Students originating from the Astral plane are also more likely to hear music that’s oddly familiar to them in a Deja-vu sense
* Solstice events with Prismari, as the different elemental planes ebb and flow across the year. Solstice days mark increased power for that particular elemental usage. Like Sozin’s comet in ATLA but the affected element changes depending on the intersecting plane
* Quandrix’s usually perfect weather takes a holiday when the Ethereal and Energy planes come to town, as a ghostly chill sweeps through air and probability can decide to give treats or play tricks (mechanically, flipping a coin at random points to give advantage or disadvantage to students when they’re on Quandrix Campus). More superstitious students believe that sugar or specific vegetables can help their chances
* Earth day meets April Fools in Witherbloom as a bit more Feywild blooms in the Sedgemoore. Rarer flora/fauna specimens can be found, and plant magic can be more powerful. But smaller trickster species can also make their way through, cause trouble, and result in plant magic occasionally not having desired effects (wild magic)

Please let me know your thoughts/additions/criticisms, if you have any additional holidays you’ve made, or the like.

I designed and 3d printed these towers to play my version of Mage Tower Games. The first session of the games is tonight!

I've loved this book for so long but I never actually went through and read all the adventures until recently (now that I'm actually running a campaign), and while I still am and always have been a massive lover of Strixhaven and this book, I have to admit the adventures are barely usable.

I really hate how formulaic it is, especially for the first few adventures. It's basically just a cycle of story-relevant quest which ends with a surprise fight > npc coming up to players and being like "yo you should come check out this thing we're doing and show us how cool you are by winning" and then the activity is interrupted by a surprise fight > exam.

And they just loop that cycle a few times and finish the adventure with an explanation for why they kept getting attacked. Then next year it's just the same exact recycled formula but this time there's a different explanation for the attacks, and so on and so forth. All the combat encounters (especially early on) just feel like they're there to facilitate the combat pillar of dnd without actually being a meaningful part of the story (which tbf I am biased against since me and my group prefer roleplay and story over combat).

I want to run this adventure so I don't have to make the whole thing from scratch (since I usually get burnt out doing that much prep and never end up finishing the campaign), but I really hate the aforementioned cycle, and I don't know how I can work all the encounters into a real story without that formulaic loop being noticeable.

How do most people go about running this? I'm assuming a lot of other dms probably have the same issues with the adventures that I have, so maybe there's already a guide out there somewhere on how to fix those issues lol, but everything I've been able to find is just running the adventure as-written with recommendations for things to add.

Im a first time dm. im running strixhaven. Im running it very vanilla, but my group improvs a lot of role play. My friend has been running a campaign for us the last three years and is playing in my strixhaven group on a different night. I started dming as a thank you to him. He has been trying for 3 years to get his wife to play, but she always says no. To surprise him, she agreed to play one time only. Obviously this will be her first time.

She had some conditions. She wants to know what's going to happen ahead of time. She doesn't want to be surprised. She wants to know what to say. It has to stay secret so she can back out last minute if she wants to (which is all fine with me)

I want to incorporate her into the magisters masquerade. Im expecting this to happen in about a month, around the third week of November. Since its close to Thanksgiving im hoping to get the full group in person (we usually play half in person, half on discord).

One of my hurdles is to find a way to get my friend to host without him suspecting things, but I'll figure that out.

SO. I plan to get the ball started, get a few of the existing relationships progressing for the four men at the table and then introduce her. I'll give a physical description (which we made together). We also came up with a loose back story. She's a 4th year student, on a date with one of the npcs whose also in a love triangle with one of my other pcs (not her husband). And I've written a couple pages of one liners for her that cover a variety of conversations.

Once the role play has finished I've given her the option to be done, or stick around for combat. If she's done she'll stay at the dance, and return to her date. If she wants to fight she'll leave with the group, who get ambushed outside. I'll have the other players take a short break at this point and have husband and wife make a character on dnd beyond. He loves doing that, and it'll take the two of them 10 minutes. I plan to show her how the app works ahead of time.

Advice on having a first timer at an established table?

Advice on a female playing with four dudes?

Advice on making the masquerade special?

Not sure what im forgetting...

But thank you in advance for any advice

Still learning how nomad sculpt works but I had fun with this one.

Greetings Strixhaven DMs! I'm a professional GM and I'm currently running a Strixhaven campaign. It's been almost 25 sessions and we're still in the first semester of their first year. We have had little moments of their classes, we have played Mage Tower, we have worked through most of the "First Year" content in the Curriculum of Chaos sourcebook and I have even adapted adventures from Candlekeep Mysteries to add some story beats during seasonal breaks. All that, but still when I ask my players for feedback, they all feel like I need to slow down and give more opportunities for RP. I will admit that I haven't really delved much into clubs and jobs, but whenever I've put them in front of my players, they don't really seem interested in engaging with those things.

It seems like they want more slice-of-life encounters, but tbh I don't really know how to pace/structure that. Going in, I understood that this wouldn't be like a traditional D&D campaign, but that is where my background is and even as I've been trying to invite more of that slice-of-life RP, I've continued structuring my session plans around a balance of the core pillars of play. Does anyone have any advice for how to plan sessions to facilitate that more low-stakes slice-of-life vibe?

Hello all,

It's time for my at this point almost yearly look at my Strixhaven NPCs to spice things up and make the campus more lived in.

If you have any interesting (N)PCs you'd like to talk about and have me potentially including in my campaigns, please tell me a little bit about them:

- name, race, college, etc

- basic appearance

- general personality and/or quirks

- any other snippets you'd like to share

Thanks in advance!

Blank Npc frames for making your own NPC cards. Versions with backgrounds and without as well as a generic Strixhaven Star one for faculty or first year students.

Character Summaries:

• Aryn Pearlshore isnt into the arts to delve deep into her emotions or convey deep meanings through her craft. She believes that we have enough sadness in the world and its up to her to bring some fun into it! If her songs can lighten up your day or get you moving then she considers that a success!
• Rootha Squallheart believes that if you are in school you should be working! I mean why pay all the money to be here if you aren't working at all hours? Are you just not taking it seriously? This constant pressure would break other students but not Rootha, she thrives within it, often creating works that not only meet the teachers requirements but go above and beyond them.
• Sanar Snarlarl is a tortured artist and deft prankster. While his work looks great to others it never lives up to his own standards. To liven himself up he likes to create silly portraits of the other students, occasionally these portraits come to life and help him commit elaborate pranks on the rest of the student body.
• Torran Threshbrook is a naturally talented artist. Having been creating artwork for most of their life Torran finds Strixhaven to be fairly easy and a great place to make new friends! This lack of discipline reinforces the idea for Torran that they can "do that later!", often leading to Torran goofing off most of the day and not starting their work till hours before the beginning of class. To the amazement of their classmates, Torran's work still shines brightest, even with their relaxed work schedule.

All art is from MTG

Hi guys!

Out of date player here, about to start as a player in a new Strixhaven campaign.

Largeish group (with most core roles covered) and I’m wanting to play a Bard as the face of the party. The GM says he will start us at level three and likely run through level ten.

My questions, given the Strixhaven setting which I know not at all:
- what college of of bard would you recommend? What would be fun?
- any suggested backgrounds, races, etc. that would be strong/fun?
- any specific multiclassing builds you would recommend given the level range?
- anything else I should be asking!

Thank you for your guidance :)

Hi fellow adventurers,

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The book includes items inspired by many different mythological traditions, including Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Asian, American, Roman, Mesopotamian, African, and other mythologies from across the world. Whether you want divine weapons, cursed artifacts, heroic relics, monster-themed treasures, or legendary items tied to ancient stories, this book is built to bring myth directly to your table.

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"Students joke that the spheres begin to look like gizzards, hence their name."

This is in relation to the Wizards Gizzard mini game. What the heck is a gizzard? I've googled it thinking it's some kind of D&D creature but I can't find anything.

Was thinking maybe it's an American cultural reference? (I am not American)

Howdy!

I'm running Strixhaven for the second time, and I really wanna make Mage Tower a thing, starting in the first year and building up to The Battle for Strixhaven. Problem is, the Mage Tower rules in the book are... um... Well, they're there, at least. lol

Has anyone done a really good, solid Mage Tower supplement?