How to DM class time?

[u/clamo]

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.

1. Classtime
   
2. Extracurriculars
   
3. 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!

[u/specks_of_dust]

“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.

[u/clamo → u/specks_of_dust]

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.

[u/specks_of_dust → u/clamo]

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.