There are a lot of d20 products. A whole lot of d20 products. Yet despite this, there have been relatively few original products. This is one of those few original products.
Basically, The Redhurst Academy of Magic is a student handbook for a magical college, written completely in character. While it's not the first d20 book based on a magical college (that would be the excellent adventure "Unhallowed Halls" from Atlas games), it's the first that seems to be aimed at players as students.
While I call it a college, and that is what it resembles the most (I think), it's a bit vague on what age the students they accept are. It says "We prefer to take on students in their formative years, before their coming of age...". Is that 18? 21? Or like in Star Wars, where 10 years old is too old to be trained as a Jedi (in Episode 1). I guess they left it vague on purpose, so you could run anything from Harry Potter to Spellcasting 101.
It's also something of a "meta-setting", in that it really can be used in just about any d20 setting. While it is a college that teaches magic, it also happens to be a college that is magic as well. It travels throughout space, kind of like the Tardis. Several existing settings from a variety of companies are mentioned - Freeport, Nyambe, Kalamar, Sovereign Stone, Scarred Lands, and a few others. (The tie-ins with Freeport and 7 Cities are the best, presumably because the author of this also worked on those as well, though this is much more pun free than either of those products).
The first thing that is noticeably different, is that it's sideways. Rather than the typical book, in which the long part is vertical, in this case, the long part is horizontal. (Landscape, I think this is called).
Why exactly was this done? Beats me. The student handbook to the college I went to was like a normal book. (But then again, I went to an "Institute of Technology", not an "Academy of Magic"). But it's kind of neat. Its a hardcover, and also has a binding that lets it stay open, or flat on a surface, like a textbook. The physical quality is very high, probably the highest I've seen for a d20 book.
The second noticeable thing, is that the book is entirely in color. And that besides the normal text that makes up the guide, there is also red text in the side margins, by an anonymous annotater, commenting on the contents of each page. This largely serves as a "GMs Section", in which various secrets are revealed.
The whole college is mapped out quite well. There are maps for the 4 different stories of the college on the inside cover, and something like 50 locations are decribed. The only place I think it's lacking is recreational areas for students. Neither of the bars in the place seem suited to be a student hang-out.
It's a Wizardry college, and in D&D, there are several "schools" or sub-areas of magic, like "Conjuration", "Necromancy", "Abjuration", etc, and Wizards can specialize in a certain area. So in Redhurst, each school of magic gets it's own "School", which is more or less like it's own department. For each school, the Dean and Assistant Dean are described and statted, and a couple of the other professors get described but not statted. And there are descriptions of the classes each school offers (more or less like a course catalog for a real college).
For instance, the Necromancer school offers "Anatomy for Humanoid and Monstrous Creatures", "Graveyard Exploration 101", "Magic Powders 101", "Monster Identification 101", and "Morals and Ethics 101".
Most students are expected to pick one area of magic to specialize in, but they don't have to.
There are only about 6-7 pages or so devoted to rules material, and this is in the back, as sort of an appendix. For the most part, I think this is a good thing - while there are only a few new feats and prestige classes, they really weren't needed.
There are very basic rules for running a wizard school campaign. Graduation from Redhurst with a basic degree takes 3000 merits (and they leave as 3rd level Wizards). Each class they take earns them 100 merits, and they take 6 classes a year (on average). But there are no rules for actually passing/failing the classes, so you'll have to come up with something on your own.
Rather than come up with rules for students starting from 0 level (or something similar, like being able to trade in commoner levels for PC levels, like in my own house rules), students are assumed to be 1st level wizards.
It's fairly high level - many of the staff are 20th level or so, but nothing epic (it also uses the 3.5 rules as well). So it's suitable for most settings, though might be out of place in low powered ones, and a bit ordinary in high powered, epic settings.
Besides the academic aspects, there is some coverage of the students' social lives. As mentioned, Redhurst travels from plane to plane, and so they often take field trips. They also play a game called "Spellflag", which seems to combine capture the flag with magic and football.
It's a beautiful book. The cover painting is good, but is actually much darker in person than on their website. It's of a young woman (who bears a slight resemblance to Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) with a gravity defying bosom, dressed in somewhat punk-ish looking clothing.
Most of the interior art is excellent, though all of the pictures of halflings are quite odd. In one picture, the halfling is a mishapen dwarf like creature, in another, the halfling in question looks like a miniature version of "The Beast" from the Beauty and the Beast TV show.
While it's a very neat product, there are some downsides. First off, because it's presented exactly like a Student Handbook, a lot of the details are left vague. There are descriptions of the main faculty members, but if you want to run a game there, you'll have to come up with all of the students yourself. And presumably the lesser teachers and staff (I'm not sure of the demographics of the students, but I don't think those listed would be enough to teach in a real college, even small one). It would be cool if there were a Redhurst mailing list for DMs thinking about running a Redhurst campaign to exchange students and the like.
Similarly, the maps in the book look nice, and would serve to guide you to a location, but perhaps aren't great for role playing purposes. They're more or less to the kind of maps you see in mall kiosks (the "You are here" sort of thing)
Secondly, because the red comments in the margins serve as a way of telling secrets and other DM info, or at least things the PCs should pick up from rumor, you can't actually let the players read the book as a student handbook. It would spoil some things for them. It would be nice to have an un-annotated version for players. Though now that I think about it, it wouldn't be too hard to make one of those yourself, as all the comments are in the margin. You could just duct-tape over them, or perhaps cut out the outer margins.
A couple of settings Redhurst visits are problematic, and perhaps only included because they are affiliated with Fast Forward. For instance, the Sovereign Stone setting is mentioned, but while that is d20, it features an entirely different magic system than regular d20/D&D (including no clerics), and entirely different character classes. And alignment doesn't exist in the setting. When the college visits there, does everyone's alignment disappear? Do their classes change? Does the regular d20 magic still work (especially clerical)?
More annoying, the entry on Dungeon World felt more like a commercial than anything else, and a bit jarring. Like in a movie, where all the soda can are aligned mysteriously so their name and logo are showing.
(Also as a note, if they got permission from the various companies to use the settings, and apparently they did, they really shouldn't have included those books in the OGL. That's for open content only. And one book they use a setting from wasn't even released under the OGL, period, Kenzer has a D&D license for Kalamar)
As a work of art, it gets an A. As a gaming supplement, it's closer to a B. While there's no mention of it in the book itself, I hope Redhurst becomes a product line, it really deserves to be one. (I know it's getting some web enhancements.)
