D&D 5E Strixhaven: Orientation

WotC has released an overview of the upcoming Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos, as adventurers of levels 1-10 uncover a plot against the university. Teased are activities like tavern games, a magical frog race, an improv festival, and other social encounters. You can also take exams to improve your skills, join clubs, or get jobs.

Also included is a bestiary of over 40 new creatures.

The Bibloplex contains most of the information in the multiverse. Plenty of other locations fill the book, such as Captain Dapplewing's Manor, a mansion built for the university professors. One adventure has the PCs breaking into the manor. Another adventure involves the main Strixhaven student sport, Mage Tower.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That would be different, yes. From any 5e art.


I mean...doesn't look anything remotely like it exists in vaguely the same world as Harry Potter.

Someone skipped art class!

You need to look up the difference between "style", "tone" (two meanings) and "subject". They are not synonyms!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You say that as if it's only a technicality that Strixhaven isn't a boarding school.

You know college isn't boarding school, generally speaking, right?

At some fairly well known universities students live in college.

See: Oxford, Cambridge, Durham (in a castle no less!), St. Andrews...

Durham Castle. Current inhabitants: Durham University students.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

What those people are missing is that Strixhaven is where the Hogwarts kids would go to after they graduate from high school, since it is a University.

Is high school a thing in your D&D setting? Historically, universities have been around several hundred years longer than high schools.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

Now if the Witchlight-Strixhaven spectrum becomes the norm, I'll be rather disappointed. But I highly doubt that's the case.

Judging from illustration we are slipping more and more toward the young adult black supermassive hole since 3 or 4 books.

 

[Older Beholder]

So like the main character of the first few Xanth novels by Piers Anthony, if he were sent to a college.

Never read it, actually never heard of the author.
For what it’s worth I’ve never read Harry Potter either.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Judging from illustration we are slipping more and more toward the young adult black supermassive hole since 3 or 4 books.

You are gonna love the alt cover of the rules expansion gift set!

To be fair, D&D has always been YA, it's just taken the publishers 40 years to acknowledge it.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

You are gonna love the alt cover of the rules expansion gift set!

To be fair, D&D has always been YA, it's just taken the publishers 40 years to acknowledge it.

To be fair, D&D has always been YA, it's just taken me reaching 45 years of age to acknowledge it.

 

[eyeheartawk]

If Strixhaven is "Harry Potter DnD" then it is literally impossible to make a school with magic in DnD and have it be anything else, at which point the comparison is completely useless.

Please.

The magical universities in Warhammer elicit no Harry Potter comparisons do they?

Your argument against the reductive phrase of "DnD Harry Potter" is itself very reductive. The argument is not simply that it's a magical university and that's all. It's the art, the sort of whimsical feeling, how WoTC is itself promoting it etc.

Nobody is even really saying it's bad, just that's the obvious inspiration. Again, not that it is literally Harry Potter. This is like arguing that 40k did not also take a bunch of elements from Dune. Like, they did, and that's okay. We're allowed to call a rose a rose.

 

[Bolares]

It's the art, the sort of whimsical feeling, how WoTC is itself promoting it etc.

The problem with this is that it ignores the vast majority of content that already exists on stryxhaven out there. WotC made one joke tweet about harry potter, because why wouldn't they.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Someone skipped art class!

You need to look up the difference between "style", "tone" (two meanings) and "subject". They are not synonyms!

This kind of condescending snobbery speaks poorly of you, and accomplishes nothing.

I’m well aware of those concepts, thanks. In no context does most of the art for Strixhaven resemble Harry Potter. The style, tone, and subject, are all quite different.

At some fairly well known universities students live in college.

See: Oxford, Cambridge, Durham (in a castle no less!), St. Andrews...

Durham Castle. Current inhabitants: Durham University students.

You…cannot possibly be unaware of the difference between living on campus at college…and a boarding school.

And again, assuming that someone you disagree with doesn’t know very basic things about, in this case, just life generally, makes you look worse than it does anything else.