Image by Me and my partner Trout!
The Hawthorn Academy for Unconventional Magicians
Calling all you beasties & critters! Head over to the hawthorn tree for school! Learn new spells! Practice advanced sneakery! Sign up for Zortch Ball!
$20.00
/ Session
Details
3 players following this game
Weekly / Wednesday - 10:30 PM UTC
Session Duration / 3–3.5 hours
1 / 5 Seats Filled
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Meet your party members
1/5
About the adventure
A magical school for monsters (includes custom PC art)! It isn’t easy to live a quiet life as a slime, a goblin, an imp or a kobold if you never know when the next upstart would-be “hero” is going to come trampling through the woods, armed to the teeth and hungry for plunder. That’s where The Hawthorn Academy for Unconventional Magicians comes in — a one-of-a-kind school for the arcane arts where inquiring minds can learn practical magic in a safe and collaborative environment. This unique institution, housed within a colossal tree and shrouded by a wall of mist, is as much a sanctuary as a school, a place where any and all curious creatures can congregate. But there are darker things in the Wood that aren’t so keen on cooperation — and worse yet, the humans tend to break out the torches and pitchforks when so-called “monsters” get organized! Can you work together to become more than minions for the next self-styled dark lord or XP fodder for novice adventurers? Enroll today and find out! Absolutely NO AI is used in any of my campaigns. (I'm a writer and an artist, I'll write and draw it myself, thanks.)
Game style
Roleplay Heavy
Rule of Cool (RoC)
Theater of the Mind
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
5.0
(6)
Less than a year on StartPlaying
6 games hosted
Highly rated for: Storytelling, World Builder, Inclusive
About me
Hi there! I'm Adam, I'm an illustrator and comic artist, and I've been GMing TTRPGs for over 10 years. When I'm not working with my partner Trout on our graphic novel, I'm constantly dreaming up adventures I want to run and worlds in which to run them! Getting to create custom art for my players is one of my favorite parts of being a GM, and that will absolutely carry forward into my campaigns here on StartPlaying! I have years of experience running DnD 5e, and I've run dozens of sessions of Cypher System, as well. I'm also extremely excited to start running games using the Wild Words system! I'm honestly really open to branching out and seeing what else I've been missing. If you're interested in seeing some of my previous work in the space, check out Brine & Blight, a Cypher campaign I ran a few years back, on YouTube! IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: As a matter of principle, none of my campaigns will ever make any use whatsoever of generative AI. I'm an artist and a creative, and I am categorically opposed to AI.
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
Before jumping into the campaign proper, we'll get the table together for Session 0, where we can all go over our hopes, desires and expectations for the game (+ figure out what exactly Zortch Ball is)! Feel free to bring character ideas to our Session 0, so we can collaboratively create our gaggle of monstrous students and tailor our choices to the campaign setting!
What to expect
Preparing for the session
-We'll have a discord server for ease of communication between sessions as well as for voice/video during sessions -Foundry login (free version, I will have the paid version)
What Adam brings to the table
-Setting/Lore document -Hand drawn campaign setting map -Hand drawn NPC tokens -Hand drawn custom portraits for PCs (Completed after 3 sessions) -Character voices (PCs are encouraged to do so too!) -Ambient music -I love tactically satisfying combat, but the rule of cool exists in my games, as well!
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Webcam
Platforms used
Safety
How Adam creates a safe table
I make use of Lines and Veils in every single campaign I run, sent as an anonymous Google form prior to our first session, as well as message-based X/N/O cards during play. Also, as mentioned above, I make use of Session Zero as a space where we can all go over our hopes, desires and expectations for the game. And at the end of each session, we'll take time to share our Stars & Wishes, so we can both celebrate the things we enjoyed and highlight the things we want to see in future sessions!
Content warnings
Safety tools used