Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos - First Party Review

[Paul Farquhar]

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.

IT'S NOT AN ADVENTURE!!!!!!

"Stryxhaven is a really bad vacuum cleaner!"

"But Stryxhaven isn't a vacuum cleaner."

"By my personal definition of vacuum cleaner, Stryxhaven is a vacuum cleaner."

"But Stryxhaven does not suck up dirt!"

"Exactly, Stryxhaven is a really bad vacuum cleaner!"

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Roleplaying games provide incentives for behavior they want to encourage. If you want to encourage different behaviors, you provide different incentives. The problem with Strixhaven is that it wants to encourage different behaviors in the players, but provides the same incentives as the rest of WotC 5e.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Roleplaying games provide incentives for behavior they want to encourage.

The incentive is to pretend to be someone other than who you are in real life. It's fun. No further incentive is needed.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The incentive is to pretend to be someone other than who you are in real life. It's fun. No further incentive is needed.

Strong disagree. That might be good roleplaying, but it's bad game design. Both parts of the term matter.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

IT'S NOT AN ADVENTURE!!!!!!

You should probably tell WotC that.

Campus Kerfuffle​

The day has finally arrived! Your players’ characters have moved to campus, have picked up their tomes and uniforms, and are about to embark on their academic careers at Strixhaven University.

In this adventure, the characters explore campus as first-year students. They’ll navigate orientation at the Biblioplex and settle into social life in rowdy gathering spots. They’ll get roped into a thrilling dare. They’ll watch—and maybe even take part in—an outdoor play and discover something jarring in a marsh adjacent to the campus. And along the way, hints of something sinister emerge. Danger crops up in the most unassuming places, and the characters must rise to the occasion. Will they become campus heroes? Or will these kerfuffles explode into something that threatens all of Strixhaven?

Running This Adventure​

Here’s what you need to know to run the adventure in this chapter, whether you’re running it as part of an ongoing campaign or as a standalone adventure.

The adventure takes up 138 pages of a 224-page book.

 

[TwoSix]

IT'S NOT AN ADVENTURE!!!!!!

The adventure takes up pages 40-181 of a 224 page book. The product I own is an adventure with a gloss of setting.

 

[bedir than]

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.

Is this a trope in the fantasy-student sphere?
Because it doesn't feel like a trope that is specific to an age group. When I was at college sometimes I studied, sometimes I didn't.

 

[niklinna]

Is this a trope in the fantasy-student sphere?
Because it doesn't feel like a trope that is specific to an age group. When I was at college sometimes I studied, sometimes I didn't.

When I was in college, I basically just studied. I regret it to this day. If magical hijinks had been in the offing, however, I'm sure I would have skipped out quite a bit!

This thread also has me thinking of the video game Bully, which integrated "study", or rather class attendance, just enough—and on the clock!—to make it feel like I was at school. Studying gave mechanical bennies for off-curriculum escapades, so I was motivated to do it (except for that $#!*@ shop class), but playing hooky was also totally an option.

 

[TwoSix]

Is this a trope in the fantasy-student sphere?
Because it doesn't feel like a trope that is specific to an age group. When I was at college sometimes I studied, sometimes I didn't.

The problem is the adventure starts off by introducing two random occurrences of violence and danger, which are also obviously linked together by a physical clue. The party is then expected by the adventure to handle the violence, but ignore the clue for at least several weeks.

I can accept that a party of 13-14 year olds, being told by an instructor that the issue is being handled, could decide not to worry about it.

But a party of 18 year olds (of D&D types, no less) just accepting an authority figure's OK and not doing any digging into the the mystery you just waved in front of them? That just doesn't track.

Gen V is a much better example of how I would expect a D&D party to handle a mystery. That's had 3 episodes of investigating a mystery packed into 2-3 days of fictional time.

 

[Sparky McDibben]

But they copped out on doing all this work, which leaves us trying to run Mallory Towers with a toolkit from The Expendables.

That is an outstanding comparison. You, sir, get a like!

This is just so obviously wrong. I will explain why the ages where raised, since it seems to have passed over your head: There are people who will react negatively about the idea of children in deadly situations, or killing. There are people who will react negatively to the idea of children in "romantic" situations. So the age of students was raised to 18+ to avoid controversy. But the school works just the same if the students are 14 as 18.

As I've said, the parallels to Harry Potter are overwrought. Elements lacking in Strixhaven that are present in Potter include (but are not limited to): actual danger, ties into a larger world of which the school is only part, a continuing narrative that carries forward as the students leave school, overt competition between the schools that is a fundamental part of student life (instead of being confined to a Mage Tower game), etc. And if this book was inspired by Harry Potter, they did a botch job of having that come through the page.

I was doing a bit of research, and I came across this article on the covers of Mallory Towers through the years. Clearly, it has had a lot, reflecting the fashions of the time, but what struck me is just how old the girls look on the original covers - easily the same age as the students on the Stryxhaven cover.

For comparison:

Clearly I've confused my messaging. Per my very first post, the Throne of Glass comparison was not intended to say that it was a literary antecedent to Strixhaven. It was to illustrate how I normally deal with issues I have with work I find disappointing, as a reference point to why Strixhaven is drawing some ire.

If I do an RPG set in a school, the school need to have effects on the skills and abilities of the characters.

This is where something like the invocation system, with specific gates by level and college, might be more helpful than a spell list add-on.

Which is why you need to understand which particular stories inspired Stryxhaven.

Clearly, Strixhaven needs to understand those stories first, because this is a mess. I'm not sure what source material they were drawing on.

And when talking about students "mature adult" is an oxymoron. The assumption is the students at Stryxhaven are not mature, whatever their chronological age might be.

Not really? They all look like grown adults, a point you illustrated earlier, I believe.

They assuredly are, but they're tropes that most players are going to be familiar with via popular media. They might not be accurate, but when has that mattered for a trope?

An excellent point.

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.

Indeed; this leads to the weird cognitive dissonance of giving an adult college student at the elite magical university a plushie.

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.

Also agreed.

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.

Yep.

IT'S NOT AN ADVENTURE!!!!!!

Yes, it is. I know you don't want it to be an adventure, and that it's not marketed as an adventure, but it's absolutely an adventure. That is part of what I'm discussing in the review.

Strong disagree. That might be good roleplaying, but it's bad game design. Both parts of the term matter.

Yep.

@Paul Farquhar - I understand you seem to like this book, and you probably don't like seeing someone, as you say, "miss the point." But this is a critical review. I'm seeing where the problems are, and I bring my personal experience (and preferences in gaming) to that view. In this thread, your tone has skated from condescending to outright hostile. If you'd like to start a thread on why Strixhaven is awesome, please do, and DM me the link so I don't miss it. I'd love to offer you some constructive, polite feedback on any points you make that I might have missed.

For everyone else, I apologize. I try to respond to pretty much every comment, but unfortunately the sheer volume of them in this thread are making it a little hard to reply to every one.

Now, moving on! We still have 25 pages to go for Chapter 3: School Is In Session!

School actually does start session. The text informs us that all the characters are enrolled in the same class, Magical Physiologies. That's good! Having all the students in the same classroom allows for all manner of hijinks! Or at least it would, if the book did anything with that setup. Instead, it's noted that they'll have three Magical Phys. exams this year. The DCs for both exams are 12, which is somewhere between Medium and High on the DMG DC chart. I think those ought to be higher, but you do you, WotC. We get a whole sidebar on the kinds of facts students would be trying to memorize about slaadi (the subject of the exam). It's decent flavor if your group loves making flashcards.

After that, they graduate to 2nd level. I have a whole 'nother rant about how I dislike milestone leveling, but it works in this context.

The next encounter is "Work Hard, Play Harder," which sounds like every boss who wants you to work late for no extra pay and a pizza party. We get a full key of the Bow's End Tavern, where everyone is heading to blow off some steam. Again, no reasons given for why the PCs are coming here, and no option to opt-out. Again, we get the full key for the location, but it's utterly useless to the encounter. There is a fun little section playing what sounds like wizard beer-pong for bragging rights, but mechanically it's a skill challenge. If I'm playing in person, we're doing actual beer pong, y'all. Turn it from a test of character skill to a test of player skill.

After that, the cook is attacked by steam mephits coming out of her own cauldrons. Apparently she thinks this was her fault, because she yells, "The steam! It's too spicy!" to get help. My first thought is, "What hell did she put in the soup?" but apparently this is totally normal because the PCs all run in, followed by everyone else. The PCs fight the steam mephits, and everyone else fights swarms of bugs. As usual, faculty heal anyone knocked down to zero. Also as usual, the adventure completely stops the PCs from making any forward progress in investigating it.

This is just bad design. You could have had a trail of clues leading the PCs to track the corrupted unguent from place to place, giving the PCs a reason to intervene in the frog race, and a reason to be at the tavern. You could have the PCs desperately juggling social schedules, class schedules, and investigating on their (limited) free time. This is the reason this adventure irritates me so much - it could have been amazing, but instead it falls flat on its face.

At this point, the PCs go to third level.

After that we get another exam on owlbears from what is apparently the only course the PCs are taking (Magical Physiology). This is also a snoozefest, but then we get something that's actually useful! A Classroom Gossip table, foreshadowing what's going to happen in later encounter! That's good! It gives the PCs a reason to head over to the improv outdoor play stage (even if they aren't very good reasons), and it helps color the campus. The rumors and foreshadowing really ought to have been spun throughout the whole adventure, preferably starting from the very beginning, but I'll take what I can get.

But the next encounter is actually a small raid / heist set up, breaking into a donated house the University owns and manages. You're stealing a doll that insults people. The reason given for the PCs to do this is...their friends dare them to. The promised reward? They'll buy their lunches for a month. So let's break that down. Thus far, we have an adventure that's ruthlessly deprived the PCs of pretty much any decision-making ability outside of "choose an extracurricular and a job, maybe." So how much investment is there in the campus or the student body? Even assuming there's a student NPC that has landed well with the party (the adventure suggests using a PC's Beloved), the dare assumes that the PCs care about their standing in the eyes of their peers. Considering that the self-same peers have been basically window-dressing this whole time, I have to question the soundness of this premise. But in the context of a college prank-off, this works. Especially if you get a group of rivals to issue the dare. Now, the promised reward is worthless. You're never told you should be charging characters for lunch money, so there's no point. Motivating a player to retrieve the item because someone needs it, or because a Beloved asks them to for (relevant plot reason) would be a stronger process here. Even better, just link it to the mystery you've set up. Oy ve!

Now, the actual heist is pretty well done. The key works, there's an NPC or two to interact with inside, and the stakes are that the PCs can get caught by professors. If caught, they will go to "special behavioral training" that stops them from going to an EC or job for the rest of the year. First off, "special behavioral training" makes me think of the weird earthbending brainwashing from Ba Tsing Tse. "You do not want to do crimes. You do not want to do crimes...."

Secondly, this art:

Bobby, this is the third time I've had to put handcuffs and a gag on you this month. This has to stop, Bobby; I've got kids.​

Either way, there are some actual stakes in this part, but they are trivially easy to avoid, so I guess points for trying?

The next part of chapter is taken up by the final exam for the year (otyughs), and then an encounter called "All The World's A Stage." The setting is a big improv play put on every year; PCs can be spectators or participants as they like. It doesn't really matter what they choose, though, since the ending's predetermined.

One of the props (an owlbear) turns into an actual owlbear, and starts menacing people. The heroes destroy it. There is much jubilation. Afterwards, though, they FINALLY get a clue about the source of these magical mishaps! The professor who couldn't help while they were dealing with the owlbear tells them exactly where to go and what to do (a bog near the Witherbloom campus; pour in a vial of holy water) to stop these issues. Why is she having the PCs do this and not doing it herself? Well, because she's got to track down any other corrupted items on campus! So surely, the PCs can go trudging through the bog while she does inventory management, right?

This feels like they got this backwards. I would have preferred having the PCs running around campus trying to stop two or three threats materializing while the professor went in the swamp. When the professor doesn't come out, that's when you send in the PCs to find the set up for the next arc.

Regardless, the PCs go to this swamp, Sedgemoor. The run around the swamp a bit, using a pretty barebones key (I mean, it's a swamp, so there's not much there), fight a giant scorpion and some worgs, heal the waters, and then leave. There is a little bit of foreshadowing of a larger threat with Murgaxor's journal, but there's not much action the PCs can take with the journal.

After that, the PCs get back and everyone thinks they are the coolest. They're named Students of the Year in a big ceremony. Professors praise their bravery. Presumably someone faints at how awesome they are. And scene.

So that closes out Chapter 3. This chapter was bloated as hell (56 pages), poorly communicates what needs to be communicated to the DM to run this, fails to take into account even basic PC behavior, and has a bunch of information that did not need to be here (notably the keys for most of the adventure locations). There is a startling lack of stakes, even of the simple social variety, and towards the end it feels like the PCs are the center of the world. I find that disingenuous and immersion-breaking; the PCs are freshmen and haven't really made their bones yet. Yes, a few acts of heroism are nice, sure, but the way that translates to "Students of the Year" is frankly cloying.

This adventure has some decent ideas - a campus investigation, a heist on the professor emeritus' house, an evil wizard! All of these are great concepts, but Jesus, the execution is terrible. I saw upthread someone remark that Strixhaven was the boldest book WotC had done. My first thought was that Strixhaven is certainly bold, but so is a Twinkie salesman walking into the Weight Watchers convention. Just because an idea is bold doesn't make it worthwhile.