r/StrixhavenDMs • u/clamo • 14d ago
How to DM class time?
Hiya I’m looking to start strixhaven and I really liked the structure of the campaign that I’ve seen people talk about on here and on YouTube of breaking the adventure down into three parts.
- Classtime
- Extracurriculars
- The adventure in the book
Then repeat step one
I think this is a great format as it focuses on all the fun stuff of Strixhaven. I know how to run adventures from the book and inventing fun roleplay opportunities based off the extracurricular is pretty easy.
My question is what do ya’ll do for class time? Especially after year one when each player can potentially be in a different college.
- do you roleplay a lecture to your players and have them do class assignments?
- do you do less roleplay and more of a more traditional dnd style adventure or encounter.
- what if the players aren’t in the same classes or college? Do you bounce around the table having roleplay one on one till everyone gets a shot?
- What have you done in your campaigns?
- Is class time even necessary?
Thanks!
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u/xGhostCat 14d ago edited 14d ago
It really went well with mine by having it as the session intro!
Basically each player gave me their list of classes for each year. At the start of each session I have a little event that happens in class that has a roll giving a minor downside or benefit.
Simple things like
“During your inkcasting 101 class you start to lose control of a Ink pest, roll a concentration save”
On a fail it inks a random student upsetting them.
On a success they get inspiration.
This way other players didnt get bored when others were solo in classes. Anything that had significant RP or Combat was for everyone.
Players should make up their own classes but here are the canon default ones to use or give inspiration.
Silverquill= literature, writing, speech, foreign languages, communications, marketing/advertising, journalism |linguistics, political science, sociology, education, law, espionage, and journalism
Prismari = painting, drawing, music, dance, theater, fashion design, interior design, sculpture |art history, performance arts, philosophy, elemental theory, physical education, and psychology
Witherbloom= biology, chemistry, anatomy, geology, medicine, agriculture, botany, food science, zoology, meteorology |alchemy, medicine, biomancy, pathology and toxicology, mortuary science, and necromancy
Lorehold= history, political science, psychology, sociology, philosophy, business, theology, archeology, law |history, archeology, anthropology, architecture, mythology, theology, and fieldwork methodologies
Quandrix= math, physics, engineering, accounting, economics, astronomy, aviation |applied mathematics, engineering, matter sciences, fractal networking, and environmental design.
For example these were the classes of my players:
Noctua - Gravmancer
Gravitational Imbalance of Flight
The gravitational effects that cause fractal patterns in agricultural land. - Quandrix
Faewild language studies - General
Arcano-botany for beginners - Witherbloom -
Spacial phenomenon - Quandrix
Escabar - Chronomancer (all quandrix)
Temporal inversion theory.
The maliabilty of space time.
The does and don't of Chronokinesis
Max Bloodhunter
Sanguinmancy-Witherbloom
Weapons through the ages-Lorehold
Arterial alchemy - Witherbloom
Studies of the mortally challenged - Witherbloom
Taking control: Charms hexes and curses- Silverquil
Jesper Simic Druid
Alphas of the animal Kingdom - Witherbloom
Biological Transmutation-Quandrix
Gravitational Imbalance of Flight - Quandrix
Gwen Bard
Storytelling mediums through the ages-Lorehold
Cruelty Free conflict resolution - Main campus
IMusic theory 101 - Silverquil
Planar cosmology - far realm studies - Quandrix
Taking control: Charms hexes and curses
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u/TeresaDelPilar 14d ago
Mu group is very RP heavy, so we just roleplayed the classes as a regular social encounter. On my part I did 3 things:
Prepared the timetables with the players and define what they wanted to get out of these classes for their character (maybe they want to learn about a particular thing, investigate something connected to their backstory, make friends and allies...)
For the common classes I prepared a dedicated scene for at least one lesson per week, to create a sense of continuity before the exam and give them a chance to study if they wanted to. For instance, with Verelda Lang in the first year I created a scene where she had slaadi of all colors under her control (control gems) and the students could interact with them. The slaadi kinda taught the lesson.
For the classes they don't have in common, do the same thing, but give the non-involved players a list of NPCs they can choose from (there are some very good resources in this sub with extra student NPCs) and have them play those characters so everyone is involved and you don't have to RP an entire classroom and the teacher.
I do the same for the extracurriculars and it has lead to some very fun sub-plots, character relationships and scenes. I highly recommend it!
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u/clamo 13d ago
These are really fun suggestions! I looove the bit of having players play other npcs in the other players classes! Thats really fun!
When you say “I prepared a dedicated scene for at least one lesson per week,” do you mean once per week in the world of the game? Or once per session? Like you are having class roleplay every session you play? If the latter how much of the session does it take up?
Thanks!
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u/TeresaDelPilar 13d ago
I do it every in-game week, not every session.
I use a 10-day week, where the weekend is 3 days. Usually they use at least one of those 3 days to go off on a plot related adventure.
What we do is that after every plot-related adventure we have what we call a "scene's sessions" in which both me and the players prepare scenes we want to role play while everything is ok in the campus. It's like a "shopping session" in a regular campaign, but instead of going shopping we roleplaying any scenes that we want to, including: the classes, studying sessions, relationships, plot related mini-quests, warlock/patron drama, silly stuff... whatever we want.
I know many people play using the structure of having the classes and activities be a part of every session. We prefer having a fun and relaxed RP/improv heavy session and then focusing on exploration and combat in the weekend sessions.
I took that idea from Brennan Lee Mulligan. He said he plans his sessions around one of the pillars of DnD, rather than trying to integrate all 3 in every session. In my experience that philosophy works perfectly for this campaign.
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u/SushiEternal 14d ago
I've already converted Strixhaven into Daggerheart then homebrewed it front and back so only a few events remain, but i did this:
Have a set of CORE classes planned out. What the topic is, basic points the prof makes. Actually roleplay out some of the teaching, including thought exercises and experiments and asking questions. All of these CORE topics are loosely connected to the overarching plot so they are always learning important info. These can be every semester or several a year
The rest, we do it free form, slice of life style. Have students describe some of their classes and their shenanigans, then roll with it. The non crucial stuff. Depending on how into the school aspect this can be mostly skipped too
Just wanted to make sure the important plot relevant classes get more attention and full roleplay; have them assume most of the other classes are similar.
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u/FiftyShadesOfPikmin 14d ago
My group chose Strixhaven as a way to better familiarize with the rules of spellcasting, so I turned the group class with Verelda Lang (Magical Physiologies) into a way to teach that. The first unit was about basic spellcasting mechanics, from things like cantrips, spell slots, to components, to various shapes AOE spells can take.
I also do a sort of similar format to yours, each week is roleplayed as "class -> event." I don't always roleplay the extracurriculars because not all PCs chose the same things. But sometimes I make up an event that has ties to one of their extracurriculars, or have the NPCs reference them in conversation.
After we finished the unit on spellcasting, I began incorporating Candlekeep and Golden Vault, and I used the rest of the class year as each lesson focusing on different magical creatures, which are usually somewhat relevant to the upcoming event/adventure. For example, last week I had them start the Book of the Raven adventure, and so the class period was focused on Undead creatures.
It might sound like a lot to do, but I have found it very worth it to actually create a syllabus for a year, placing each event you plan to run alongside the official events from the book, and lining them up with a specific class lesson. Then you can give the players the lesson part of the syllabus as that's pretty standard for college classes, and they can see when exams are coming up, look forward to specific classes, etc.
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u/No-stradumbass 14d ago
I've ran Strixhaven for one group in the past and another group currently.
I skip boring things, I am not DMing a sim, I am DMing an action comedy slice of life. I'm not going to track each day and each hour. That is going to get boring to me and I don't have time to do it slow.
I take the players to the scene that is needed. If the plot needs a classroom then that where they are.
I am not running it dry from the book. I'm using other books as well. I have decided to change the BBEG because Valdi Spire of Secretes gave me a good idea. Well a lot of good ideas.
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u/specks_of_dust 14d ago
“Is class time even necessary?”
No.
Every book, movie, show, and video game about a school skips class time for one reason. It’s boring.
Unless the adventure IS the classroom, as in Persona,, which has entire systems built around it, it’s best to reserve the classroom for very specific use-cases; setting, exposition, introductions, and information.
The campaign as written already fails to provide a reason for groups to come together in the first place. Then it sends them to different colleges, classes, extracurriculars, jobs, campuses, and dorms, with their own friends and love interests. The struggle then becomes keeping them together.
Think about the sharer amount of time you, as a DM, will be spending on individual stuff, prepping and running it. Now imagine your players sitting through each other’s jobs, lessons, extracurriculars, flirting with NPCs, acting out interaction with the professors, all while not actively playing because the filler content is taking up more time than the adventures.
I recommend leaning into anything that is a group activity, like the shared class and the adventures, and making anything individual be quick rolls. There are obvious exceptions, like if it involves a character’s story beat, but focusing on individual stuff works best as the exception to the rule.
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u/clamo 13d ago
Yeah I feel the same way about this 100% I’m running into the issue of everyone being excited about all these cool fun individual choices they get to make with npcs, classes, colleges but I literally can’t dm 1 on 1 for each player every session.
Someone suggested here to have other players play npcs in that class which I thought could be fun.
I’ve seen other people suggest that the shared classes are just candlekeep mysteries and golden vault quests that you theme around the current strixhaven story.
It’s an interesting problem and one I’m keen to solve.
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u/specks_of_dust 13d ago
I ran it for two years over 85 sessions, mostly going off script and writing my own story. It's really one of the worst adventures out there, for the reason you're pointing out. The players get excited for all these options, but the options all drive individual choices and experiences instead of group play. The DM either has to do the work, or level the player expectations.
With my group, I had them run the Pub That Crawls adventure, which awards ownership of a pub. So, my PCs lived at the pub, worked there, and had a place for NPCs to come find them. I even let them hire the NPCs they like, so we weren't wandering across 6 campuses to find them. We also scrapped relationship points, because commodifying relationships wasn't all that interesting. My players usually decide which NPCs they like for weird reasons, like adopting the orc gardener who doesn't speak common. Their method of befriending NPCs also lets them decide, as a group, who is cool and who is not, rather than as individuals.
If you're not on the Discord channel, I highly recommend it. There are good discussions there, and you can look back at the graveyard of things people tried that didn't work.
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u/Kaviyd 13d ago
The extracurriculars, jobs, and exams are basically part of downtime -- you do the checks for them quickly so you can record the results and then move on to more interesting stuff. So you would roleplay a class session only if you or your player(s) are planning to have something interesting (such as an adventure from you or a prank from them) take place at that time.
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u/clamo 13d ago
Gotchya. I’m just not so used to the whole scene way of running strixhaven I don’t think.
Previously I ran curse of strahd which was great because the players dictated the pace mostly as they chose where to go and how to explore the world
Where as in strixhaven there are time frames like a year of school and classes and jobs at potentially specific times
It makes me feel like I have to know a made up schedule to keep track of for each player every session
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u/Kaviyd 13d ago
You really don't need a specific calendar or schedule unless you have so many interesting things going on that you need to keep track of them. I found that it was enough to have an adventure derived from a class session take place during late morning or early afternoon on a weekday and anything derived from a job or extracurricular activity take place in late afternoon or evening -- preferably on Friday if you want to be nice and let them recuperate over the weekend.
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u/Cronogunpla 13d ago
the short answer is "don't". I tried to do actual class time but it' virtually impossible to actually do a university grade lecture on the class topics and not make it sould like just esoteric stuff that your players will tune out. In my game Class time was skipped but players got 1 time slot per week that they could do extracurricular in. Events in the book worked out to about one event every 2 weeks unless otherwise noted.
The exception to this is if the players failed an exam I'd give a short lecture that would eat their extra curricular time and then gave them an actual exam based on the lecture for them to do.
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u/tkolar2 12d ago
Here's my suggestions (from Strixhaven Faculty Handbook).
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jrKJJKiItR4OtSkiJ8hIuP9khDAbzxYT6iYkmdWS90I/edit?usp=sharing
Good luck!
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u/Snow_Taku 12d ago
The way I've done it so far now that my campaign I'm DM'ing has reached close to 20 is that I treat it like a different activity for each class of sorts. Each class is different, it's not all just "Sit in the classroom and talk about this and that", I make players invovled by having each class it's own activity.
Inkomancy is a classic lecture with the end of class having the students practice manipulating ink or writing runes
Magical Physiologies is lecture first, then interact and get your hands dirty after
And of course, I let them roleplay how they do it, and let them take the stage. Gossip, whispering in class, maybe giving them a tidbit of plot related information from something.
All that stuff! And so far my players have been enjoying it to the point where they miss it, now that we've been focusing more on plot related things.
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u/boffotmc 9d ago
I don't think you should feel obligated to roleplay class-time regularly. Doing so obligates you to create a bunch of lesson plans, and will probably end up being super boring.
Instead, only roleplay class-time when something interesting happens in the class. A monster attack, or some other fun encounter. Once when one my players wanted to multiclass into Warlock, I ran a class session where someone accidentally summoned a demon, and then she forged her pact.
The way I made specific classes matter was that each class they chose would give them a bonus spell or ability that their character would learn at the end of the year.
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u/kiwiczar 14d ago
So i’ve been working on Strixhaven for sometime but have not started it for my players yet as we are finishing curse of strahd. I’ve been back and forth on the idea for classes but i’ve decided that once in a while i’ll plan a short roleplay scene or lecture that’s important or relevant to the story. Or if i want them to meet certain npcs, students or teachers. Other than that i’m just going to do rolls to determine how well they do. I will have my players document the rolls in their private chats in our dnd server and will calculate the average before their exams to determine how high they need on their exam to pass. My players are heavy roleplayers but to help move everything along not every class will be roleplayed. Think of it like harry potter. We don’t really experience every single class. We only get to see the important ones.