Campaign Set in a Magic School

I think using aspects of the university in The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear would be beneficial. Mostly young adults and adults; different classes; a local mundane location to blow off steam. Then mix in more D&D style magic. Bardic and Druidic mages and lessons. PCs could be TAs and at graduate level. If someone needs to miss a session, then they are "working on research" or "tackling their thesis" or something else.

If you have the Burning Wheel Codex there are magic school life paths. BW is one of the few systems I can see where being non-faculty would be fun to play.

A Wizard of Earthsea* could offer some flavour.

*The book by Ursula Le Guin, not the please-let-me-forget-it-ever-existed miniseries.

Don't reinvent the wheel! Find a copy of the "Redhurst Academy of Magic" by Matt Forbeck and Shaun Abshur. It is a 3rd Edition hardcover campaign book that goes into incredible detail for a full-blown magic school the rival of Hogworts. I just checked Amazon, and they have multiple copies available for under $15.

Silver Moon said:

Don't reinvent the wheel! Find a copy of the "Redhurst Academy of Magic" by Matt Forbeck and Shaun Abshur. It is a 3rd Edition hardcover campaign book that goes into incredible detail for a full-blown magic school the rival of Hogworts. I just checked Amazon, and they have multiple copies available for under $15.

Click to expand...

Oh! Thanks for the heads up. I will check that out.

G

Think I would do a A&M school, a location where, young adults are sent to for training in agriculture and military training, to help support the local kingdom/state. Define that the school is a bit more, have special studies, secret groups and such.

I ran a campaign for several years about a magic school. It was with the 3rd edition rules and set in the Mystara setting using Gaz 3 Principalities of Glantri (it covers a nation of wizards - find it on DMs Guild, if you don't already have it) at The Great School of Magic in the nation of Glantri ruled solely by wizards and their relatives.

I house ruled several things:
Only humans and elves (Mystara does not have half-elves, and playing the setting straight means no halfling or dwarf wizards; also dwarves are banned in Glantri).
Only classes that memorize spells (I wanted the characters to grow as spellcasters and sorcerers just don't have that vibe), however no divine spellcasters as they are banned from Glantri.
Pupils at the school begin at level 1 and graduate at level 9.
XP is gained from taking classes and passing exams.

We played with a party of all wizards, where all but one were humans (of different ethnic cultures as according to Glantri) and the last was an elf.
It was quite fun and intense to play, and we had great fun with an all wizard group striving to get to class and passing exams while being distracted by intrigues, secret societies, mysteries and the hunt for more magic.

For this type of campaign, you may want to read Bill Stoddard's Worminghall. It's a GURPS supplement about a medieval university of magic. It's packed with details, including realistic details about a university, town/gown relations, local places of interest (taverns, churches, secret locations, etc.), notable NPCs, and campaign ideas. I've plundered it for ideas for more than one campaign.

As an added bonus, It's included in the GURPS 33% off sale for the rest of the week, so the 41-page PDF is about $5.

How do you want it to play, just traditional dungeoncrawling or school drama?

If school drama, I might take a look at Smallville, seems like that could be adapted.

If traditional dungeoncrawling...the thing that sticks out to me is that students will be less competent than full-fledged wizards....so maybe consider some kind of spell failure or learning mechanics.