Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos (2021)

Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos is a sourcebook, published in December 2021, that details the Strixhaven campaign setting for the 5th edition of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. The plane of Arcavios and its magical university Strixhaven were originally created for the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game and first appeared in the card set Strixhaven: School of Mages, which was released in April of the same year. The book is centered on the most powerful magic university in the multiverse and focuses on the lives of the player characters who attend its various colleges.

Contents

Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos is an adventure module and campaign guide for using the Strixhaven setting, from the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, in the 5th edition. The book expands on game elements for the 5th edition, such as:

Four adventures which correspond to each year of university; these adventures can be run as a continuous campaign or as individual one-shots

Gazetteer focused on the university, its five colleges, and the various non-player characters (NPCs)

New social mechanics

Clubs and student jobs which grant player characters a "student dice" that can be used on ability checks associated with skills related to their extracurricular activities

A relationship subsystem involving the NPCs which adds mechanical bonuses or penalties depending on if the NPC becomes a friend or rival

New player character options

Backgrounds, spells and feats connected to Strixhaven's colleges

The Owlin character race

New magic items and a bestiary

Colleges

Strixhaven's colleges were founded by five Elder Dragons. Each college has a specific mascot which player characters have option of summoning via the find familiar spell.

Lorehold: a college focused on history with "passionate scholars", "diligent researchers and daring adventurers".

Witherbloom: a college for "goth bio majors" where students "draw power from the essence of living beings, whether that means enhancing nature or exploiting it"

Prismari: a college for the theatre kids who use magic to express themselves

Quandrix: a college focused on math where "they study patterns, fractals, and symmetries to command power over the fundamental forces of nature"

Silverquill: a college for "literature nerds" where students "wield the magic of words, from inspiring battle poetry to biting arcane insults".

Publication history

Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos is the third Magic: The Gathering campaign setting adapted for Dungeons & Dragons; it was preceded by Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica (2018) and Mythic Odysseys of Theros (2020). Greg Tito, Dungeons & Dragons Senior Communications Manager, said to IGN that "the D&D guidebooks around Ravnica, and Theros have done amazingly well, and we thought that the Strixhaven storyline would appeal not only to fans of Magic and fans of D&D, but [also a] younger audience. There is a ton of information on how to create a campaign that would appeal to people of all ages... who love that kind of young adult coming-of-age storytelling – and so we thought Strixhaven would be perfect for dramatizing that in a D&D game". Amanda Hamon, Wizards of the Coast senior designer, is the book's story lead. The Guardian reported that Hamon "used teenage life as inspiration" for Strixhaven and that the setting draws in characters from across the multiverse; Hamon said: "As D&D has grown the creators have realised this game is for everybody. There's lots and lots of folks who are playing, and we want everybody to feel that they're welcome and come to the table. I get questions like: 'What is it like now that D&D is more diverse?' But it always has been. You might not necessarily have seen it because the people who were making things didn't always think: 'Hey, there's this whole wide world of folks out there'".

A crossover campaign book Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos was released in December 2021, which introduces the setting to Dungeons & Dragons. The book was originally scheduled for release on November 16, but was delayed due to supply chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. CBR reported that "in the world of Magic: The Gathering, Strixhaven is the largest and most powerful magic academy in the multiverse [...]. Due to its relatively recent addition to the Magic: The Gathering universe, it's likely this Dungeons & Dragons adventure will significantly expand on the lore associated with the magic school".

The book is also available as a digital product through the following Wizards of the Coast licensees: D&D Beyond, Fantasy Grounds, and Roll20. A promotional, free adventure titled No Tears Over Spilled Coffee! was released on December 2 on D&D Beyond. This one-shot adventure introduces Strixhaven's ruleset for extracurricular activities and is set at the school's Firejolt Café.

Related products

Plane Shift series

The various planes from Magic: The Gathering were first adapted for Dungeons & Dragons in a series of free PDF releases called Plane Shift by James Wyatt, a "longtime Wizards employee who worked on D&D for over a decade before moving over to Magic in 2014". Wyatt also writes the text for the series of Art of Magic: The Gathering coffee table books, which reprint illustrations from the cards with details for each plane's lore; the Plane Shift releases were created to allow players to use those books as campaign setting guides by providing the necessary rule adaptations. Between 2016 and 2018, six Plane Shift articles were released: Amonkhet, Dominaria, Innistrad, Ixalan, Kaladesh, and Zendikar, along with an Ixalan-set adventure.