Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos

For players this is an extraordinarily fun module if you enjoy heavy roleplay and taking initiative in social situations at the table!! The NPCs are interesting and varied, the mystery is just involved enough to intrigue players but is not so urgent it overshadows campus life roleplay if you're table is interested in that. I love the boons/banes system for relationship building! If combat is the main reason you play Dnd, this is likely not the module for you. But if roleplay and character development are up your alley I highly recommend the Strixhaven module!

Strixhaven is a great setting book with an ok campaign attached. The idea of magic school sells itself. Especially as this is college so players can romance NPCs and the ethics of that don't have to be as questionable as they are in video games that mostly offer high school settings. The included NPCs are wonderful and there's bound to be a handful your players get attached to. The subsystems like relationship points and study bonuses are maybe a little too simple but also easy to grasp. As for the campaign, it's more a framework than anything. Literally, the book will tell you that a friendly NPC comes up to the players and is like "Hey, have you heard of 'thing that advances the plot'?" Also, the setting emphasizes player agency more than any other. I found it better to just make my own villain and play the story by ear as players made decisions. It's a great book for slice of life campaigns. If that doesn't appeal to you, or you prefer lots of structure in your plots, Strixhaven is probably not the book for you.

I've been running a Strixhaven campaign for a few weeks as a solo PbP game and my player loves the lore and roleplaying that the setting/adventure allows for.

Strixhaven gives the perfect balance of information and flexibility. They have filled the setting with diverse people. This gives the DM the opportunity to fill in with adventure after adventure. There are no limits to the number of stories you could tell in a setting this rich.

Strixhaven is the University education you WISH you had received; part Hogwarts, part hunger Games, part Old School, this adventure and setting have some pretty unique twists on the eccentric professor and looming disaster, intermingled with the pressures of socializing and maybe even romance? The new lineages and magic items are charming, as are the 'schools' of magic one can attend. There is enough lore to sink one's teeth into and the setting lends itself to a near-infinite number of adventures outside the included one. Highly recommended, though the Dungeon Master should probably have been at least an RA for a Semester before running it. 4/5 "Good!"

Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos is a module with a lot of potential that doesn't deliver. It requires a lot of work from the GM to make it compelling. The module has a wondrous magic school setting, including some decently fleshed out student characters and interesting mechanical concepts (like ways to study or not study for exams). But there are many areas that need further fleshing out. The most glaring weakness of Curriculum of Chaos is the included campaign. The majority of Curriculum in Chaos is campaign content (Chapters 3 through 7, of seven chapters). But the campaign itself is very linear, has a weak villain, few opportunities for meaningful decision-making, and flavorless dungeon areas lacking interactivity. Online GMs in particular will want to replace many of the black-and-white maps with colored maps. Perhaps most egregious is that the relationships with student NPCs so core to the appeal of Strixhaven as a module are left entirely to the GMs to manage. In the module, the campaign often has interlude "Relationship Encounter" sections that tell the GM to make up a scene between a student NPC and a PC. Poor guidance.