How I Run Strixhaven
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- čas přidán 23. 08. 2024
- I was excited when I first heard about Strixhaven, and when I looked online for details about how other DMs have run it, I was instead just hit with a lot of videos either criticizing the book, or responding to videos that criticized the book.
In particular, @DavvyChappy (whom I really enjoy and don't have any beef with I promise), just tore into it, and @XPtoLevel3 (whom I also really enjoy and also don't have beef with) just responded to a lot of that criticism. Jacob gave some tips on how he ran it, but he also didn't run the book starting with the first year, he just jumped around to the parts he liked.
After having run it for a few months now, and having figured out what I think is the best solution for my table, I decided to crack open Premiere and give this video a shot, hopefully this will be helpful for the DM looking for resources on how to actually run Strixhaven instead of whether it's good or not.
Let me know if you enjoy, and I'll keep making stuff
From one yelling popsicle stick to another: this video is super awesome! Definitely going to help me out as I run the whole adventure.
Wow, thanks a lot! I've been following you for quite a while now, I really appreciate everything you've done for the community! I'm also glad to hear that you're making a return to Strixhaven, I think it does have a lot to offer. Thanks again!
very big thank you, I am a beginner DM and decided to try running Strixhaven with some friends because yay wizard school!! and then i was really disappointed by the sort of inconsistency between giving details/personalities about the extra courses and professors, for example, but not really giving a very good starting point of how to include them into the overarching campaign (and therefore almost making the information seem irrelevant).
I can admit that part of this frustration comes from myself, being new to DMing, and my own inability to take little information and run freely with it, but all I really was looking for was some slight guidance, like this video provides. I really love the space Strixhaven gives to improvise and shape the world around the party but it's a little overwhelming having such much freedom you don't know what to do with!
I definitely agree, there isn't much guidance in the book for all of the lore and details they put in, so I'm glad this video is helpful for people! Thanks for the kind words!
Hey, the algorithm threw this at me, and I watched it. And here's a comment to hopefully throw it a little further.
Thanks a lot, really appreciate it!
It did thank you
This is incredible and good. It fills an ecological niche of “how to run a game without being more than 10 minutes long”. I hope you’ll be making more of these videos for different modules! Very impressed with the editing and easy to understand structure. Hoping to be able to tell people I was one of the first to see it when you have 50,000 subscribers!
Hahaha, I really appreciate it! Yeah I kept thinking about making videos and concluding that there was no niche I could fill, but in just making a video I think short, fast paced explanations are it. Got a few more videos planned, we'll see how they go!
Duuuude, please do it!@@userisinuse I'd love to see this for other modules.
We need more D&D CZcamsrs with decent voice over, editing, and writing. There are so many I can't stand to watch, but I've loved your videos so far. Keep going!
A lightbulb went off when you told us how you did it. Praise be the algorithm. Thanks from a first-time Strixhaven DM!
I wish Strixhaven had been 2 sets instead of 1, it had a lot of room for card design
What would the conflict of the second block’s story be?
@@jamescampbell2353 It's the rival school, allied colors
@@whalesequence you’re proposing a whole other school where there’s lots more magic happening… how would that school differ from Strixhaven?
@@jamescampbell2353 Different mechanics, I'm sure the people who made strixhaven could've figured something out
The commander decks were suppose to do that. The demonstrate mechanic was neat though.
I always had a strong negative reaction to everyone dunking on Strixhaven, but I could never put my finger on exactly why.
You did a really good job of summarizing that feeling here and giving it a voice. It's actually a pretty fun setting/AP, it's just not built like a standard dungeon-hopping adventure. The systems you put in place to incentivize exploration and RP interaction with what is a genuinely interesting setting are really simple and clever. Thanks for a fun video!
Thanks a bunch!
The main issue is that there was a need for a dude on youtube to make the necessary systems to incentivize exploration and RP interactions.
That stuff should´ve been in the darn book. The setting sounds fun as hell, but the barebone stuff just makes me as a DM personally, wait until someone comes up with a functional rework of the book as RAW i´d rather play FATAL unironically than this.
this editing is clean af
I like this, I’ve wanted to run a campaign that has the structure of persona 5. Where each day is part of a calendar day and you can only do so much in one day.
THATS AWESOME LITERALLY ME how has your calander system worked and in the case of peresona 5 i know dnd character relationship level is kinda wacky but did you add something similar to confidonts
@@tekred2828 like so many of my campaign ideas this hasn’t been implemented yet. I think though that something where a confidant could teach them a spell that is homebrewed or maybe gift them an ability that they couldn’t get through normal progression if that person trusts them enough to share it. I just ran across an idea to do this in a setting that is Xavier’s school for gifted youngsters that I think is a neat setting for the same thing. Cypher system 2 is what I use for super hero campaigns, it could work in call of Cthulhu too.
Great video! I've done basically the same thing with the acronym S.A.T. (like SAT scores): School, Adventure (your Event phase) and "Tell me what you want to do" (Extracurriculars). I did extracurriculars last in case players needed or wanted to leave early, with the understanding that they'd miss those benefits. In 25 sessions we only had two skips, and both were because they players weren't feeling well.
That's an awesome framing device, love it!
Please keep this type of content up. Really useful advice and not overly complicated
"personal weed dealing business" nearly made me do a spit take
I am actually doing something similar to this in my Spelljammer Academy campaign. The setting has players living in a single location the entire time, but the simulation chambers allow me an excuse to have combat take place in any location, under any condition, and against anybody. This allowed me to come up SOOOOOO many combat scenarios that I could only dream of jamming into a session. So, by making combat centered around the SIM Deck, I had to create a system that would sandwich combat and social gameplay together organically.
Phase 1: Player characters wake up to do daily exercises. These involve Acrobatics and Athletic checks. Succeeding one check has you pass, succeeding both checks gives you a Heroic Inspiration, and failing both has you suffer a level of Exhaustion (One D&D Exhaustion rules).
Phase 2: Interacting with NPCs. I use a similar version of Strixhaven's relationship system. Characters choose an NPC to hang out with then roll Charisma to see if they can boost their friendship levels. The higher the levels, the more boons that are unlocked.
Phase 3: Simulation Deck. Players will be sent into scenarios with different goals to complete. They will gain bonus experience points by completing certain tasks and how many party members stayed alive by the end. Monsters could be at any CR as this made the party think more carefully about how to approach unwinnable battles.
Phase 4: Second round of NPC interactions to boost relations.
Phase 5: The session ends with a Long Rest.
Major story events could take place during any of the phases and would sometimes override the day's schedule entirely. This system gave players a comfortable and expected schedule to follow, and made major story events a bit more of a surprise. My players are also loving the relationship system as they are finding themselves gravitating towards certain NPCs and wanting to actually learn more about them. In turn, this also has been encouraging me to dive deeper into NPC backgrounds and personalities so my players can have more to chew on.
That's awesome! I'm glad it's working out for you!
I wanna play this now showing to my friends.
It's like you took the words right out of my head and put it in to a structure. This is brilliant.
It reminds me a bit of the game fiasco, which is how I was planning to run the interactions. I love the token concept however, and will definitely be implementing it.
First time DM (moderately skilled player) and running strixhaven for my girlfriend and her friends who have never played DND. Thanks for this!!! I’m very excited, strixhaven seems great for 1st time players due to the ability to say “it’s like Hogwarts” to them 😅
Thank you so much for this video. One of my biggest struggles in setting up this campaign was figuring out how to run it, and this just gave me some really helpful ideas. The three-phase structure is a life saver
i've been looking for tips and tricks on running a strixhaven campaign and your video was the lightbulb moment for me. thank you so much for this!
I’ve never DM’d before, I actually just started getting back into playing dnd over the last year or so. But I’ve enjoyed Magic lore for a while, and eventually I’d love to run a campaign of Strixhaven. I feel like it has a lot of untapped potential to build on. It’s nice to know that the dnd material for it is new DM friendly!
this is the only strixhaven guide that has actually help me thank you
Improvisational roleplay, the one thing my players would never do.
This is stupid high quality. Keep it up boss
This is wonderful and pushed me to run strix next
Please do more!!
Starting my Strixhaven campaign today. This was a lot of help in designing how to run a session. It also allows me to know exactly how many sessions per "year" and plan breaks accordingly. Love this content!
Thank you so much for the video! Amazing structure setup and can't wait to introduce it at my table!! Liked and subbed, hope to see more from you!
Thank you, much appreciated! Let me know how it goes!
Thank you so much. I got the book on christmas and immediately jumped into making my first campaign and tomorrow is the first session, so this is a saver
Let me know how it goes!
Great video! I am planning on running Strixhaven soon for a group of players relatively or completely new to DnD, and you gave me some nice inspiration on how can bring the game to them in an easy and fun way.
I'm glad! Let me know how it goes!
Great video! I love the bits that say about what your players are doing. I find that really cool!
;)
Starting my Strixhaven campaign this weekend. I knew I wanted some structure for squeezing in the classes and extracurriculars, and this really helped me wrap my head around how I want to approach that. Thanks!
This video got recommended to me at the perfect time, I’m running Strixhaven in a few hours
Good luck! Let me know how it goes!
How'd it go? About to run it myself
@@emiliegracejohnson7000 We had a good time
This was such great advice that I subscribed just now, and turned out to be your 1k subscriber! Amazing work!
Thank you very much!
The best part about being out of the loop for a decade is all the cool shit you get to be brought back into the loop on.
So not only is strixhaven a fun magic set, it's DnD too? Hell yeah.
No idea why this appeared in my recommended but I’m so glad! Great video! Easy subscription!
Hahaha well I'm glad you enjoyed, thanks a lot!
This video is great! Keep uo the good work man
Good video, good ideas. Will definitely implement whenever I inevitably run our strixhaven campaign
This is great! The Strixhaven book has so much potential but every outside resource I have looked for has seemed overly critical. Thanks for the vid!
Hey this is one of the best videos I have seen on how to run Strixhaven, awesome job!!
this will help me a lot DMing strixhaven, thanks a lot!
My players bought me this like two days ago and I want sooo much to run it, so thanks for this video!
This was super helpful and in such an easy to understand format! Thanks so much!!
Glad I found this video. I bought Strixhaven at 40% off and was so curious on how to run it. This helps a lot.
I love this video so much! Great suggestions!
I work at a local hobby store that primarily caters to D&D and the DM in charge of running the Strixhaven campaign converted it to Adventure League format. The finale will be the end of this month and if there's one thing I wish I could change--I wish it had been run as a proper campaign. The DM did such a good job with the story and making each NPC have their own personalities, story and depth that I wish I could have more time to learn and hang out with them more. One year is just too short of a time and I'm gonna miss the npcs I've befriended so, so much.
the phase concept is super helpful! i will definitely be using it, thanks!!
Strixhaven will be my first attempt at DMing and this video helped a lot. Thanks. :D
Good luck, hope it goes well!
Wow really high quality video, was so surprised to see you're still relatively small when I hit the sub button. Keep up the awesome work!
This is awesome! Thank you very much for this! Exactly the kind of thing I needed from the book.
Great video! I’m picking up Strixhaven and my brain couldn’t wrap my head around how to prep! This helps!
Best of luck!
This video fully explains why I run Strixhaven, but add various extra detail like extra roll tables for class topics and make the extracurriculars matter more with extra benefits and drawbacks. Strixhaven is basically useless if you're not willing to use your imagination as both a DM and a player. Yes, Strixhaven is legitimately bare bones. That's because it wants players to actualy rp outside of straight combat. If you are willing, as a DM, to just take the bare bones and then expand on the bare bones, you can have a great experience over "four years of going to magic school lol"
Thank you for doing a video on game structure. This has been helpful for my DMing. I hope if you choose to pursue more of these videos that you are successful.
I'm a DM who's bad at prep - will be making use of your tips in an upcoming Strixhaven campaign!
Thank you!
I'm just now getting to DM this game. I really appreciate the tips and I'm hoping for the best with our session 0 coming up.
Best of luck!
Awesome video man. I have a similar structure except for the extracurricular part, so imma try adding that hoping to spice up roleplay. Thanks for the ideas looking forward to what you're doing.
Exactly what I was looking for! Thanks a bunch!
what a great way to run strixhaven! instant subscribe keep up the great work !!!
Good approach, want to see more like this
You did a great job with this. I’m running this for the first time and it’s been rough.
Great video! I'm running this campaign since a few months and my players are complaining that it's too slow... I ditched the entire plot and made my own version of it, hope they will like it, wish me luck
Best of luck!
Let me tell you: I love you. Exactly what I was looking for.
I shall invoke the dark powers of the algorithm to support your endeavors. Wonderful content, and the hope for more if you so desire.
Good vid. You have my subscription sir.
Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it!
Your video is awesome, please continue
I've never played D&D (haven't yet gotten into it) but I do play magic, so seeing someone talk about a game I'm not familiar with, with Magic artwork in the background, is rather...odd.
Great video though!
I havent read the book, so my idea might suck. I would probably just run it like my Uni. 2 classes each day with the oppertunity for a short rest in between. Then another break before extracuricular activities. Have a weekly schedule. The weekend is for the players to decide 100%, but I will make sure to give them a homework quest, or an NPC will ask for help or plan a party. after 8 weeks or so, it will be exam time, followed by a 2 week break.
This gave me some really good ideas to use, thank you
Thank you!
This dnd video is great! The algorithm is truly doing its work.
Hahaha thank you, I really appreciate it!
This was an amazing help thank you!!!
I like this idea, I might not run with it specifically, but I do plan to do something similar.
My plan is to set the typical class day up as an 8-hour schoolday with an hour meal break in between, so it's two 4-hour blocks of classes for the first year, since students are expected to stay in or around the central campus for their first year. It gives me the option to have all the classes for the players or I can have them do four 2-hour blocks instead of eight 1-hour blocks if I want to run it more like the book. With extracurriculars and jobs happening after the class day ends. I do love having the idea of a campaign that stays at low power for longer because characters are taking the longer, safer route to increase their power and even gaining extra abilities or spells that might not normally be on their lists.
Great video! Thanks for makin it!
Thanks! Appreciate it!
I like that structure! I'm running a mashup of MASKS and Monster Of the Week inspired by RWBY, and that looks super-useful. :)
this is so helpful! i'm about to run strixhaven (with 70s flavouring. we just stay silly with it
Best of luck, sounds like fun!
Thank you so much for this video, it has really helped me run my Strixhaven game, and my players have had a lot of fun.
That's awesome, it's amazing to hear that someone else ran Strix using this! Thanks a bunch!
Thank you for sharing this with us all.
Thx I came up with a lot of ideas just by watching your video that’s really helpfull
This is incredibly helpful!
This was great!
I was actually going to run Strixhaven in a few months!
Just starting a campaign in this setting. We're all MtG players and D&D players, this will be our 4th campaign together and everybody is starting from level 1. Running first session I immediately ran into the time window "shortly after" problem and tried going with it, leading to a pretty quick pace through an exam even though they've only technically been there two days? I like your system idea.
Thanks very much! I hope it works for you!
This great! I haven't purchased Strixhaven yet, but have been wanting too...does it provide guidelines for educational classes / ideas for what can be taught in lessons
This is a wonderful video.
I really do want to see more content like this!
I also wish someone would run this campaign for me.
School may be fun for some but call me a dwarf as I found this book to be total trash.
Much Respect to the video and insights. You earn my like.
Why would anyone want a setting that tries to recreate going to school is beyond me.
I need the music of this video for my own game XDDd
What you came up with sounds similar to how Blades in the Dark is inherently set up and curious to know if it had provided any inspiration. I think this would apply great and plan on trying it out!
Hey there, hope this works well for you! I think my group played blades in the dark once, but I wasn't actively thinking of it when I was prepping Strixhaven. Maybe it had an unconscious influence though!
The algorithm putting in work for me. I tried running this game and just hated how empty this "sprawling hub of academia" felt.
The NPCs provided are great, but not even including a handful of tables to generate quirky students or teachers for each college felt bad.
I love the tokens! I just have a question if that's ok? Do you pre plan for their token events? so when they chose to study, would you then say that their character went to the bilblioplex? And go from there asking if any players or any NPCs joined? Or is it completely the players choice? I'm just rubbish at improv. Strixhaven is my first campaign as a DM so I'm still finding my feet.
What I've been doing so far is creating lessons for the exams so that they learn the information in a hands on way rather than me just reading out of the book, for the Owlbear exam, I had their teacher take them to an Owlbear that she had rescued as a baby , it was very Harry Potter with Buckbeak, they then sat their exam the next day and their exams are presentations , just to make it more fun. I'm a little stuck on what to do for the Otyugh exam, maybe a magic simulation (illusion) of their lair 🤔.
We're year 1 so the players always have a class with another player so i have roleplayed some of these classes to but I won't be able to in year 2, so the tokens will really help 😀. I also have the Strixhaven cup (again like HP) for a rival system just to encourage players to roleplay with other NPCs. I'm hoping to create a Silkball tournament as one of my players is in that club. (Sorry for the essay)
Don't apologize for the long comment! Yeah, generally speaking I'm a bit of an overprepper, and I also think I'm not that great at improv, so I actually have intentionally done this to make the tokens as improv-y as possible. I generally don't prep classes because I have no clue what they're going to do.
However, I do prep some situations they can spend tokens on, like a student activities fair to choose clubs and jobs, and I do something similar with exams. The session of the exam, I prep a class they can choose to spend all of their educational tokens on to attend that gives them advantage on their study roll (removing the advantage they get from studying together, cause they're all going to study together or with another NPC anyway). I like that you spice it up with giving them hands on experience with the thing, I might have to steal that for myself!
Fantastic video
Great video
I know this video is a year old, so I hope your Strixhaven game went well or is still going well! I'm planning on running one soon and am just tackling the biggest BBEG of them all... scheduling. This system is genius for balancing improvised and planned content! And allowing players to take initiative (pun intended haha) in setting up interesting scenes. So Hats off to you! Major Kudos. I'm just curious how long would your average session be with this system? I know it definitely depends on type of the players, but how many hours did your game usually run for in each given session?
I also got hit by that BBEG, we haven't been able to finish our game of Strixhaven due to it. I appreciate the kind words though! I don't remember what the average length was, if definitely depends on how much improvised moments you allow, but probably anywhere from 2-4 hour sessions is the average. Thanks for watching the video!
good video! some quality editing. looks great. i must ask: which demon lord did you have to pledge yourself to gain the favor of the algorithm? bc it worked
Asmodeus be praised.
Best video I've seen on Strixhaven
♥️♥️
Strixhaven is probably the best adventure/rules book for campaigns that are 90% social encounters and skill challenges.
Dude, make more videos. Thanks. 😎
This really doesn't seem like the setting for me, but the video is really good! Hoping to see more great content
Thanks, I really appreciate it! What settings are you interested in?
Personally I really dig theros and highly recommend playing in it and/or making a video about it. But one I haven't played that id love to learn about would be wild beyond the witchlight
It’s like if you want the D&D version of a Persona 5 vibe. I love it.
I've been looking more into running a university campaign and there are a lot of content creators who have taken a stab at adding their own supplements to Strixhaven. Including you! Which I'm really gtateful for.
I think I'm gonna take a little from everyone and try to run a university campaign in Eberron 😊
Let me know how it goes!
How many sessions did it come out to be? I'm looking to run a Strixhaven game, but I don't know how much longevity this structure would provide.
Hey I loved your video and the idea you proposed for running strixhaven, do you think it would work for a "nearly imposible to hang out" grup? I mean the players would RP the academic and extracurricular scenes activities alone or in pairs or something and then when everyone could we would ro the event scene?
Yeah, that could certainly work! Might even be a fun way to introduce a little bit of drama, not everyone knows what other people's interactions with some NPCs are like, could try to get some players to like an NPC and others to dislike and see what happens when they all meet each other! Let me know if you decide to run it!
thanks this hepled