[CLOSED!] D&S 5E Strixhaven - Community Chaos

What if Strixhaven, but sitcom?


Hello everyone, this is Data, again, offering up a very different kind of D&D 5e campaign experience. So, here's the deal: I have the book, I love the setting and concept, I'm not super keen on going through the linear 4-year school adventure. What's my solution?

Sandbox Game Time!
Basically, instead of taking a group of students from their first day through graduation with a particular plot, I'm going to have this story follow a group of students through one particularly chaotic year at Strixhaven, with the only plot being whatever the students get up to day-to-day. Similar to other open-ended games, there will be plot hooks and events going on in the closed world of Strixhaven University, but the PCs will decide which plot string to pull, what to investigate, what to ignore, and might even opt for doing something completely different.



What year are they starting in?
Any! That's right, since I'll only be going over one year (presumably), I'm accepting PCs from all 4 years of Stixhaven.

Freshmen: Start at Level 1 end at Level 4
Sophomores: Start at Level 4 end at Level 6
Juniors: Start at Level 6 end at Level 8
Seniors: Start at Level 8 end at Level 10

How would you balance that?

Part of Strixhaven's core principles is managing extremes - and this is a good learning opportunity for students to be able to figure out when they have the upper hand and when they're in way over their heads. This will be a roleplay-heavy game, where characters can use their wits to get out of trouble as much as their skills. Sticking with the University theme, combat can be extremely dangerous, but not (permanently) deadly.

So, what kind of characters are allowed?
Any! Well, with the caveat that they are 1) Students of Strixhaven and 2) part of an interdisciplinary Study Group, which makes up the 'party/parties' of this campaign.

What I mean by any is: I am completely open to any Class, Race, Alignment, Background, or Homebrew. Really! Strixhaven is located in an interdimensional nexus, meaning it has students from all over the multiverse! "Matching the setting" is completely unnecessary - as is party balance. If there was some kind of super bizarre combo you've always wanted to try, but know wouldn't work in any other campaign, or some particular class that is widely banned by GMs (lookin' at you Mystics), just throw them in here.



Don't let your dreams be dreams!

As you may have guessed from the title card, and my excessive use of memes, this is not the game to take itself too seriously. I'm basing the concept off of the TV sitcom "Community", and making the adventures highly PC-led. For this reason, having characters with BIG personalities is a bonus. Really, this whole school is full of eccentrics, and the more chaos you can bring to the table, the better.

If you made it this far, great! I hope you're interested! Here are a few more basics:

✅ Dungeons & Dragons 5E, with a few Strixhaven-specific mechanics like Exams and Bond Boons/Banes.
✅ A sitcom-esque sandbox game set in Strixhaven University. 18+ for College themes, but no ERP (fade to black).
✅ This game is explicitly friendly to LGBT and any other minorities or marginalized groups.
✅ No Character Restrictions.
✅ Game Duration: my aim is to have this go through all of 2022, but that will vary by what the players would like to do. These will be formatted in a series of connected 'episodes', which may have multiple plot points going at once in different threads. Events and outcomes from previous episodes directly effect the world and what occurs in upcoming episodes.
✅ Post Frequency: Lax, GM posts will be up on Monday, Wednesday, Fridays - so at least 3 posts per week - though some threads may move faster than others. Time within 'episodes' is fluid, so PCs can be in multiple side-plots.
✅ Start Date: Monday, January 3rd!
✅ Player Experience Requirements: open to beginners and veterans alike!
✅ How to Apply: Please post your character concept here! I need at least 5 players to get started, but I don't really have an upper-limit of who can be a part of it (though the parameters of the game may change a bit if I get a huge group).

Sign me up!


Maxwell is a dragonborn (gem) artificer.
His major is magic-science, with a minor in magic art. (And a extra major in magic prank's)
Year is Sophomores or junior (I had my fill of low level characters)

His primary focus at the moment is to figure out why gem dragonborns horns are disconnected some places and why the act like the are connected

Goal: find romance



Propable avatar

@SJoyner72 *cough* Space-ape barbarian.

That sounds amazing.

Haven't decided on a race or class, yet, but I'm thinking a caster looking to take his cooking to the next level with food-flavored (pun intended) magic. I'm thinking it could work as a sorcerer for the "born to be a chef" sort of thing, a wizard with a cookbook for a spellbook, or maybe a warlock with a patron who gives him access to forbidden spices and components to take his cooking up a notch.

I love all of those ideas! Reflavoring spells to be food related sounds cool!

The spice must flow. Warlock patron is a grate worm

I'd like to repurpose a character from a short-lived Monsterhearts game I played in years ago.

Basic Concept:The character is a human Reborn. She died at Strixhaven, but she doesn't remember how or why, she doesn't know how or why she came back to life, and none of the faculty seem to know anything either (or if they do, they aren't letting on). Someone high up must know something, however, because she is still a student. There's probably a conspiracy surrounding her death, but she doesn't really care (see below).

This character (name TBD) is very "spacey". She feels disconnected from life and the living, and her mind is constantly wandering. She does, however, have a strong hunger to feel alive - something she gains by being around strong personalities and also by stealing people's things. She's a kelptomaniac. She takes things so that she can imagine what it's like to be the living person that used to own the thing. She has a secret collection of stuff (like Ariel from Disney's Little Mermaid) where she goes to sit amidst her collection and imagine the lives of all the people she's stolen from.

Class: Rogue - Arcane Trickster

Goals: The character doesn't have much of a goal beyond trying to feel alive. She goes through the motions of being a student because... what else would she do? Sometimes, when she's unusually lucid, she wants to do something more concerted to regain her humanity. But then that fades, and... that girl has a beautiful hat. I wonder what it feels like to wear that hat. Maybe I'll take it and find out.

My goal as a player would be just to enjoy inhabiting this really odd character and to cause mischief. If the truth of her past were to become a storyline, that could be fun. But like the character, I don't care too much about that.

Field of study: Magic-Art. The artists are so vibrant and full of life. And they seem to assume that her mindless attempts at art are actually the result of a conscious artistic choice, so she manages to get by even though she barely cares about her studies.

Meet Petyr Strongfoot, Junior in Witherbloom College. Though his parents are both graduates of Silverquill and their lifelong dream was for Petyr to carry on the proud bardic streak in the family that stretched back generations, Petyr was always more at home in the garden of his neighbor, a cranky human druid (Mykael MacGregor). It was under his begrudging tutelage that Petyr learned druidic arts and the grand history of Witherbloom. His parents still think he's enrolled at Silverquill, a misbelief he doesn't bother to try correcting.
Race: Harengon
Class: Druid
Goals: Finish out his time at the school so he can take over Mykael's garden and turn it into a community greenhouse highlighting the craziest of plants that he can find in the multiverse.
Field of Study: Magic-Science, with enough classes in Magic-Art to keep the ruse up.

Meet Milee Born, Junior in Witherbloom College and she is a Fairy. Though her parents were wizards of sorts, Milee just never fit into that. They were understanding when she applied at Strixhaven, but less thrilled at her choice of Witherbloom.

Milee loves to flutter about and explore the world. She found that Witherbloom was closest of all of Strixhavfen she liked. Her parents wanted her in Prismari, but it just wasn't her. Her exploring has many times lead to her defending herself (Ranger), but the more she has explored, the more she (Druid) has come to understand the world all around us.

She wants to understand more of the world and explore. Further what she can do and what she knows. She hopes studies Witherbloom will aid her.

Data, I do have two questions:
1) Could elaborate more on "sitcom" applied to DnD? Does it mean player goal is to be funny? I don't see how DnD is the best system for my interpretation of "sitcom-esque"
2) How flexible are you to player count? Would you be happy me to join game to try and leave if I find it not appropriate for me?

P.S. For me "sandbox" DnD depend the players. If I would play this, I would like to reserve my rights to quit game if I don't like the direction the rest of the team is driving the game especially when a player
and that something fits his character but does not fit mine.

A situational comedy is usually about the situations being funny, rather than the characters. A bunch of D&D characters going to magic-college just strikes me as inherently sitcom-esque, and the Strixhaven book supports that interpretation (the bond boon/bane optional rules allow you to make friends/rivals with NPCs, and the boon for befriending the captain of the weightlifter club is that anytime you’re on campus and need something heavy lifted, members of that club will come lift it for you, and the ban for making her a rival is that heavy things will ‘just so happen’ to show up in inconvenient places - like outside your dorm room door.)

Generally, it doesn’t matter how deadpan-serious a character is in a situational comedy - typically it actually makes it funnier.

In regular D&D you might dungeon-crawl through a tomb of deadly traps for gold, or glory, or to rescue people from a vile Lich by stealing its phylactery. In this game you might dungeon-crawl through a tomb of deadly traps for grades, extra credit, or to rescue your class from your Lich-professor’s unfair tests by stealing the answer key. You use all the same skills, it’s the situation that’s comical.
Of course! You can always quit a game you don’t like. Though the thing about the team driving the plot in a specific direction is why I advise players to make characters with strong personalities. As mentioned under Game Duration at the bottom: [the game] will be formatted in a series of connected 'episodes', which may have multiple plot points going at once in different threads.

PCs have the option to pursue whatever plot thread interests them, and party-splitting along those lines is encouraged. Sandbox D&D does depend on the players, but each player, rather than players collectively. I think there’s far more pressure to go along with what the collective ‘party’ wants in the usual life-and-death D&D plot, where everyone generally needs to be on the same page, than in this game where the stakes are much lower. Your character deciding to venture down into the depths of the Lorehold ravine to uncover a lost magic artifact for extra credit would not necessarily handicap the rest of the team who decided to finally get to the bottom of what the ‘secret ingredient’ of the Prismari cafeteria is.

Sounds like experience I really want to try. So here is my character idea I didn't dare to use in a normal game (because it may be hard to play race without confusing or irritating other players and because sub-class seems weak):

Basic Character Concept: Kenku by the book (lack of creativity, dreams of flight, plagiarist) who is nevertheless super intelligent (book-smart) and have discovered that his creativity curse does not apply to mathematics.
Class: Wizard - Graviturgy Magic
Goals: 1. (hopeless dream to) regain their ability to fly 2. (practical) find inspiring master with great ideas to implement 3. (actual PC driver) Understand mathematical logic of everything that happens, i.e. cause-effect.
Field of Study: Magic-Math (also everything related fo aero-dynamics and Graviturgy)

It looks like I have 6 players interested! Which definitely gives me enough to get started. I have a few things to set up in the game, but then I'll send out the invites this weekend.

Currently on the roster we have:Along with general plot threads for the whole school, there will be some unique character plots that can be gained through the PCs individual classes and advisors, so they can also push forward with their own character goals. Naturally, some of these will run into each other, so that a party might have one mission with several personal goals in mind.

Along with your individual advisors, there is another faculty member often located in the Biblioplex (on the Main Campus) where the study group meets up - Nons, a lawful evil Nothic hybrid. Nons, like all Nothics, was a spellcaster cursed by the Lich-God Vecna for his hubris in unearthing forbidden arcane secrets - unlike all other Nothics, Nons has actually made significant progress in undoing the curse. Now only mostly out of his mind, he's a Lorehold Professor of Chaos, and is known for trading secrets for new knowledge. He can be considered something of a wildcard advisor for the group as a whole.

I did think so too, but I do think Verelda Lang is likely the best advisor for him, though he could still be in Quandrix. Quandrix is more magic-math than magic-science though. Do you have an idea of what his discipline would be?

An update - my Kenku will be adopting the name "Crash" though when introducing himself he don't use the name "crash", but rather mimic sound of an object falling down and crashing into the ground (almost like Mortar fire incoming)

I think he is a magic tech prodigy and as an artificer draws magical circuitry in his sleep. But the question about the disconnected horn is more spiritual and dragon soul magic and he is totally out of his element here. Something he has trouble admitting.
Aking to an engineer trying to quantify art
When he hits lev 5 he will have a revelation and can briefly manifest dragon wings (rase feature), but that is just a step towards the answer.

Witherbloom can best help him find the answer, but he might have started at Quandrix. I don't know if you can switch college/house during once study or if he is just a permanent guest at Witherbloom. It could be another interesting conflict point to have some plot around

Ah, so maybe something like a Magical Engineering Major in Quandrix? It sounds like you settled on him being a Sophomore (pre-level 5), in which case he'll just be starting in Quandrix (the First Year at Strixhaven is general studies, then you choose which college to focus in). It's definitely possible for him to swap colleges at some point in the year (though he might have some of the faculty fighting over him).

In which case, I think Maxwell's adviser may be Ruxa, the neutral good Awakened Bear Professor of Substance at Quandrix. Ruxa is very patient and he believes that all students can benefit from a deeper understanding of the basics & the fundamental building blocks of the world. Maxwell may swap advisors eventually, but I think Ruxa works for Max while he's getting started.

Perfect :)