Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos Expands What 5E D&D Can Be

A press briefing early this week gave Wizards of the Coast an opportunity to share details about the three new fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons books slated for release in fall 2021. Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos gives 5E D&D adventurers a chance to play students at an incredible magical school and the five unique colleges comprising Strixhaven University, drawn from the multiverse of Magic: The Gathering. Characters explore the setting over the course of four adventures, which can be played together or on their own. The book also includes a poster map showing Strixhaven’s campuses on one side and location maps on the other. Let’s get into it.

Campus life never felt so magical

Each of the four adventures in Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos describes an academic year filled with scholarly pursuits, campus shenanigans, exciting friendships, hidden dangers and perhaps even romance. Wizards of the Coast’s Amanda Hamon and Jeremy Crawford joined the meeting to talk more about the adventure and answer questions. Earlier in the meeting Ray Winninger, executive producer in charge of the D&D studio alluded to some of the design approaches taken with these adventures.

Winninger talked about how the D&D brand aims to expand beyond the core of the game established through the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual. The foundation for 5E D&D is incredibly strong and as a result the brand experiences consistent growth. Now the goals for the design team focus on creating and incorporating better tools for players to customize, build and create the experiences they want to share together.

This approach is reflected in Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos, which are tailored to offer more bite-sized chunks of adventuresome material. The four individual adventures span a range of levels, from 1st-4th, then 4th-6th followed by 6th-8th and finally 8th-10th. These can all be strung together to form a comprehensive four year campaign representing the entire college experience or played discretely. But within each adventure itself there consideration for the shorter length of time many people allocate for a game session. These adventures take up about two thirds of the book.

A product focused on the fantasy school experience wouldn’t be complete without reflecting campus life and Hamon described a lot of really fun content related to this aspect of the book. For one thing there’s exams to pass at Strixhaven University and the book includes rules and guidance for them. This is a great time to make clear the school is a place to learn about magic — not to learn magic itself. This makes it accessible for characters of all stripes from Champion fighters to School of Beardomancy wizards.

Relationships feature prominently throughout Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos, which makes perfect sense because they’re such an enormous part of our own college experiences here in the real world too. The book includes mechanics for NPC connections like friends, enemies, frenemies, rivals and so forth. Characters develop these relationships through their engagement with the school, campus life and of course their adventures.

A robust portion of the book is a dedicated bestiary, which contains over 40 new 5E D&D monsters. These aren’t the only physical challenges to be found on campus though. Strixhaven boasts its own magical sport called Mage Tower, which is the key part of one of the adventures. Player character athletes can participate in this extracurricular activity but there weren’t many details given about what exactly the sport is and how it’s played.

New 5E D&D character options in Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos

You want to know if the hybrid subclasses from Unearthed Arcana 2021 — Mages of Strixhaven are in the book, don’t you. Nope. During the Q&A segment of the meeting Crawford answered this and I got the sense a great many attendees submitted this question. The content did not pass WotC’s threshold for feedback and Crawford intimated the response was overall quite poor. He did share the design team’s positive takeaways though, which were two lessons. Firstly, he mentioned how people love a subclass that speaks to the distinctiveness of the core class. Second he explained how people like game content usable in many settings rather than material tied to one specific setting.

There are of course new spells included in the book along with a new background. A Child Prodigy is a character who basically goes straight from childhood to college life at Strixhaven, which sounds like a fantastic character I’d love to play. Most notably the book includes owlin, the owlfolk race from Unearthed Arcana 2021 — Folk of the Feywild. The survey feedback response for these adorable creatures was outstanding according to Crawford and I’m sure there’s tons of people out there who’ll love to see them in official 5E D&D capacity.

• Adds new character options including feats and new backgrounds for first year students at Strixhaven
• Includes new spells and magic items to help characters feel connected to the college they join
• Players begin as first year students who study, socialize and adventure their way to graduation
• Includes four adventures that can be played as standalones or woven together to create one campaign from 1st-10th level
• Encounter over 40 magical, mysterious creatures and NPCs in the bestiary
• Players can create characters using a new race presented in the book, an owlin, one of the owlfolk who study at the university
• Experience 5E D&D in new ways through the academic challenges, extracurricular activities, jobs and relationships on campus
• Strixhaven can easily be dropped into any 5E D&D world or campaign with the provided rules for adventuring as a student of magic

Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos releases on Nov. 16, 2021. You can preorder the book through Amazon and help out Nerdarchy here.

Check out the gallery below for additional images shared during the press briefing and check out these other posts for news about more 5E D&D announcements from D&D Live 2021.

• Wild Beyond the Witchlight
• Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons

*Featured image — The school of magic is in session for rollicking campus adventures for the world’s greatest roleplaying game. The greatest minds in the multiverse meet at Strixhaven University. Professors convey fantastic secrets to eager students, and life on campus is frenetic. But danger lurks even here. Campus hijinks mix with mishaps and sinister plots, and it’s up to you to save the day. [Images courtesy Wizards of the Coast]

Campus Tour by Caroline Gariba

Dance by Caroline Gariba

Strixhaven cover illustration

Student Adventure by Zolton Boros