The Lady and Tiger

The magic college or boarding school is a pretty awesome idea, as evidenced by just how many authors have tried their hands at it. It also makes for a compelling backdrop for a dungeon in a tabletop RPG, although that comes with some caveats. I typically play games in the D&D family (and mostly old-school ones on top of that) and that comes with its own baggage for how magic is presented in universe. Defining how a standardized school for magic looks like in a world where first level mages can only cast a single spell poses its own set of problems. I’ve decided ahead of time to have the school suffer some apocalyptic event, leaving it in a dilapidated state suitable for adventure and hijinks which lightens the burden of overexplaining the minutia of the setting. Other adventures or modules have taken a similar route, and it seems like a fairly reasonable one that avoid excessive immersion-breaking explanations.

The actual inspirations for a dungeon like this are, of course, many. Everyone and their grandma knows what Harry Potter is and the tropes it standardized are almost expected when your players hear “magic boarding school”. The most evocative of these is the concept of particular houses that students are sorted into, representing the cliques students in mundane schools typically find themselves self-selecting into. My favorite magic school story, however, is A Wizard of Earthsea, although I’m also quite partial to the Unseen University from the Discworld series. Each of these has stories have their own interesting ideas present that could make a tabletop gaming session more engaging, such as the University’s orangutan Librarian or the True Names of Earthsea.

Side Note: The orangutan Librarian is compelling in particular for me, since the concept of an NPC knowledgeable about the dungeon but incapable of effective communication with the party helps to sidestep one of the issues I found with having NPCs know too much and be willing to share it – namely that it slows down play considerably as the party interrogates the character and in doing so destroy all mystery as they get clear and defined answers to each of their questions. Alternative solutions to hampering communication could include having the NPC be less amenable to questioning or conversation, or have them know less than they think, potentially misinforming parties too willing to take others at their word.

The nature of a magic school means that you can embrace the absurdity of the setting and include a number of encounters or locations that hew closer to the dream logic of X2 Castle Amber than the naturalism of something like B2 The Keep on the Borderlands. Two ideas I’ve been mulling over in particular involve potions and books. An apothecary or potions class provide the party with a number of interesting knobs to turn, drinking random potions or combining them and risking the dangers of a custom miscibility table. It also opens the door to fun environmental storytelling, enabling encounters with creatures like rats suffering from the effects of different potions or spells due to either experimentation or chance. The idea of an enchanted library is also integral to the fantasy of a magic boarding school, and, much like the random swords in Brad Kerr’s excellent Temple of 1000 Swords, provide an opportunity to include a table of randomized books, grimoires and tomes, each with their own summary, potential effect, value and more. In addition, the idea of a ghost librarian (or librarians) is almost too good to pass up.

Other zones include different parts of the school dedicated to the classic schools of magic, such as Evocation, Enchantment, Conjuration and others. A potential secret wing dedicated to Necromancy practically writes itself, and these provide opportunities to include a number of new spells as well as introduce a number of background storytelling elements such as undead leaking in from the hidden Necromancy wing, or elementals running loose within the Evocation ward. Ultimately the goal here would the contextualize the setting as real place with its own internal logic while still embracing the opportunity to present a funhouse dungeon that doesn’t cleanly reflect what the players might expect from the world around them.

I’ll probably revisit this in the future, if for no other reason than I think this makes for a solid foundation of an adventure. There’s a litany of other elements that would need to be ironed out to make this idea really work – fleshing out the backstory, writing effective hooks, actually mapping out the entire structure as well as any supplemental buildings, etc. etc. I’d also like to mull over other potential dungeon ideas and what their core design ideas might be, and I’m currently working on a small adventure area I’d like to eventually discuss here once it’s finished, so we’ll see where this all goes.