Wizard Student Loans is an experimental GM-facing ruleset. It is subject to change at any time, so if you love the current version, save a copy before it’s gone!
Everyone is a wizard.
Work with each player to develop a few key details about their PC. Ask...
- What are X spells you learned in Wizard College? How do they work?
- What are 3 weird little items you keep in your bottomless bag of holding?
Replace X with whatever number you think is appropriate. A solo PC might start with 3 spells; a group of four PCs might start with 1 spell each. By default, if you know a spell, you can cast it once per day.
If those numbers seem small, explain that Wizard College teaches hundreds of spells, but graduates master only a precious few. If a player wants more spells, they can take on more debt (see next section).
You might want to roll on random tables of spells or items from other games, especially if you want to get a big group started quickly, but I tend to think it’s more fun when players make things up.
Debt drives the game.
During or just after character creation, explain the basic premise of the game: Wizard College is ruinously expensive, and the PCs have turned to dungeon crawling to pay off their student loans.
Set the group’s debt at whatever amount makes sense for the adventure you want to run. When in doubt, 10,000 gold pieces (gp) is a nice round figure.
If you like…
- You can structure the campaign around a series of payments; for example, “You owe 1,000 gp each month.”
- You can allow PCs to take on more debt to learn more spells; for example, “You can increase your debt by 1,000 gp to learn another spell.”
The game is a conversation.
- Describe the situation.
- Ask, “What do you do?”
- Describe what happens.
- Repeat.
Only the GM rolls dice.
Whenever you are uncertain about what happens, roll a d6; the higher the result, the better the outcome for the PCs.
If the result seems unlikely, you can ask the d6, “Are you sure?” Roll again and take the new result if it seems more likely. You may not roll a third time.
Typically, all you need to know is that a 1-3 is bad and a 4-6 is good, but you might break it down further:
- Very bad
- Bad
- Mostly bad
- Mostly good
- Good
- Very good
For example: You’re unsure how a knight would react to the PCs, so you roll a d6 and get a 1. That seems weirdly hostile, so you ask, “Are you sure?” and roll again. Another 1! Oh no, this knight is pissed!
Note: If you don’t want to keep all the rolling to yourself, there’s nothing wrong with letting the players roll sometimes. The point is just to keep the players focused less on the rules and more on the fictional world.
There is no combat system.
In most dungeon games, players have roughly four means of dealing with enemies:
- Violence (Physical Force)
- Trickery (Physical Craft)
- Persuasion (Rhetorical Force)
- Deception (Rhetorical Craft)
But in this game, PCs are squishy wizards. The one and only combat rule is: “In a fair fight, you lose.” Direct violence is guaranteed to fail; players must instead rely on trickery, persuasion, and deception.
With the right group, this should feel so intuitive that no one will miss the wargamey, mathematical combat of other games.
Wizard College fits in any setting.
Wizard College exists somewhere between worlds. No one agrees exactly how old it is or who founded it; some suggest that it has simply always existed. But everyone agrees that the tuition is outrageous.
Graduates from Wizard College can wind up in Dolmenwood, the Ultraviolet Grasslands, a Troika sphere, or any other fantasy adventure setting you like.
You can even hop between different settings in one campaign. The College can serve as a home base where the PCs track down treasure maps to other worlds.
Maybe the greatest treasure of all lies buried beneath the College itself – or maybe the College recedes into the background. It can be as present or absent as you like.