Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos - First Party Review

[TwoSix]

I think you are probably amongst those people, and are projecting your own cultural produces onto others. Try telling Shakespeare he can't tell a story about a 14 year old falling in love, getting married, and killing themselves.

Heh. I'm not going to get into the weeds of comparing Strixhaven to Shakespeare.

As the OP has well demonstrated and continues to demonstrate, it's a terrible book. If you managed to wring some value from it, more power to you. I would think if wanted more social roleplaying and less adventure hack-and-slash across the D&D community, you would be lambasting WotC for not doing a better job at selling that playstyle. This book doesn't even do a good job at selling or communicating that playstyle IF that was its goal.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Indeed. But the only thing that changes is the number.

Which make it feel weird to a lot of people, because the product still treats them like 14 year olds by imposing restrictions on them adults don't have. The age-up feels artificial in that there's no attempt to smooth over the obvious real-world social reasons for it, while simultaneously not calling it out.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Which make it feel weird to a lot of people, because the product still treats them like 14 year olds by imposing restrictions on them adults don't have. The age-up feels artificial in that there's no attempt to smooth over the obvious real-world social reasons for it, while simultaneously not calling it out.

No reason you can't set it back to 14, or whatever feels right to you. Home games don't have the same issues WotC has.

Oh, and by the way, Oxbridge Colleges still put a lot of rules on (technically adult) students. Nothing like as many as they used to though. Try reading something like Decline and Fall (Evelyn Waugh) or Porterhouse Blue (Tom Sharpe). Or if you prefer something less male and comic, Gaudy Night (Dorothy L. Sayers).

Edit: Addendum to reading list: Doctor in the House (Richard Gordon).

You can get the same sense from Pratchett's Unseen University. I'm pretty sure the Faculty never grew up (with the possible exception of the librarian).

 

[bedir than]

But that's kinda the core problem....school doesn't work the same when you're 18 as when you're 14. An 18 year old starting at a new school makes it a university, not a boarding school, which is an entirely different set of tropes and expectations.

And we also have a stronger familiarity with the idea that a 14 year old's life is going to be more structured and regimented, like the adventure plot assumes, than an 18 year old university student.

There's a reason for the stereotype of teen-oriented shows always starting to decline when the characters graduate high school; it's because adolescence and high school is such a unique experience. Muddling up high school and university into just "school" is one of the primary fails in this book.

What are the specific tropes that were present in the book that you felt only applied to low to mid teen boarding schools and not to university and colleges with dorms? (Or even military higher education with barracks)

Organized dances exist at both
Sports? Absolutely
Dating? Ha!
Study hall?
Jobs?
Extracurriculars?

I cannot recall a single thing that made me think American college kids don't do this

 

[TwoSix]

What are the specific tropes that were present in the book that you felt only applied to low to mid teen boarding schools and not to university and colleges with dorms? (Or even military higher education with barracks)

Organized dances exist at both
Sports? Absolutely
Dating? Ha!
Study hall?
Jobs?
Extracurriculars?

I cannot recall a single thing that made me think American college kids don't do this

The issue is that college students are adults. Adults have the freedom to pursue the adventure hooks at their own pace. The adventure supposes that whenever an adventure hook presents itself, the characters are going to go back on focusing on studying instead, even though studying gives them nothing mechanically.

I don't have a problem with running the setting as magical Felicity, right down to getting a job at fantasy Dean and Deluca. My problem is that the book doesn't tell me how to mesh that concept with the core 5e assumptions, and that the adventure actively fights against the premise, because it feels like adventure wants to be Harry Potter-esque. And Harry Potter would be a nonsensical story if Book 1 had started with Harry being 17 instead of 11.

I love the idea that book wants to be radical and break from 5e assumptions; the issue is that it forgot to explain what to do instead.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Might be of interest: Student life in the 1950s - Keble College

 

[Paul Farquhar]

the characters are going to go back on focusing on studying instead

This is called role playing. It's where you pretend to be a character in a fantasy world, and therefore do what that character would do, irrespective of if it would give you any gamest advantage.

 

[TwoSix]

This is called role playing. It's where you pretend to be a character in a fantasy world, and therefore do what that character would do, irrespective of if it would give you any gamest advantage.

Thank you for reinforcing my point. Assuming a bunch of college kids are going to ignore plot hooks to go back to studying for 3 weeks is exactly the sort of railroading that will derail a game for people who want to roleplay their characters correctly.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Thank you for reinforcing my point. Assuming a bunch of college kids are going to ignore plot hooks to go back to studying for 3 weeks is exactly the sort of railroading that will derail a game for people who want to roleplay their characters correctly.

If you have a genre based setting, there is going to be an assumption that players want to observe genre conventions. If you are role-playing a student, you priorities are going to be the priorities of a student, not a professional adventurer. They want to study, or slack off, or play sport, or pursue romantic reltionships. Let someone else deal with the bad guys. I here there is a war on overseas. Am I going to drop what I'm doing to go and fight? I could do that, but it's far from the obvious decision for me to make.

If a PC decides that they want to quit being a student and become an adventurer, they can do that, but describing what happens next is outside the scope of a sourcebook about a magical school.

 

[TwoSix]

If you have a genre based setting, there is going to be an assumption that players want to observe genre conventions. If you are role-playing a student, you priorities are going to be the priorities of a student, not a professional adventurer. They want to study, or slack off, or play sport, or pursue romantic reltionships. Let someone else deal with the bad guys. I here there is a war on overseas. Am I going to drop what I'm doing to go and fight? I could do that, but it's far from the obvious decision for me to make.

If a PC decides that they want to quit being a student and become an adventurer, they can do that, but describing what happens next is outside the scope of a sourcebook about a magical school.

You have read and attempted to play the adventure, right? Because I think you're not realizing how incoherent the adventure is with the rest of the assumptions within the exact same book.