This holiday season, I’m going to review a different module, game or supplement every day. I haven’t sought any of them out, they’ve been sent to me, so it’s all surprises, all the way. I haven’t planned or allocated time for this, so while I’m endeavouring to bring the same attention to these reviews, it might provide a challenge, but at least, I’ll be bringing attention to some cool stuff!

Arcane Academia is a 48 page game by Tomas Herbertson, author of the exceptional Celestial Bodies, Orbital Mechanics. It turns out I’d backed the crowdfunding campaign for this, but hadn’t gotten around to looking at it until it was offered for Critique Navidad. Let’s dig in to this GM-less adaptation of the Franchise-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!

It’s interesting what Herbertson’s ordering choices says about the subject matter and about the priorities of the design. We open with two pages on safety and principles. This is a game about the complexities of relationships and the wonder of magic through childlike eyes, it says: To enjoy this, we need to care for the people at the table playing. I think this shows a strong awareness of the sensitivity of the subject matter: The majority of people coming to this, are coming to it through the works of a certain bigot, and most people have very complicated feelings about that property. Starting with safety firstly acknowledges that the players reading this book know what they’re getting themselves in for genre and theme-wise, but secondly acknowledges that they’re entering emotionally fraught territory where childhood nostalgia and attachment might meet modern day danger and trauma.

The approach to the rules is systematic, but in a way I personally find challenging. It takes a “define terms and then how to use them” approach, which I know is ideal for many people’s brains, but is not ideal for me at all. I prefer terms to be parcelled out as the rules are given, as I find it challenging to hold terms in my head untethered to any specific use cases. But there are only 13 items to remember; it’s not a huge ask I think for most people. The main issue for me, as that it proceeds to character creation — which makes sense, that’s the order you play the game in — but it means I’m going to forget those meanings by the time we get to playing the game. I can’t help but think that for me, this would be improved by play aids, given how we progress, rather than the open-ended system of index cards that Arcane Academia uses.

I love the character creation, though. Your traits give you relational questions to the players around you, as well as points in attributes to provide you strengths and weaknesses, and once all of that is done (probably ten minutes), you describe the character you’ve created in a single sentence. Neat, flavourful, well supported. Excellent. Then you create the reference deck, effectively the school you’re learning magic in, consisting locations, instructors and peers. A small cast and set to work with. I’d like as much support here as the player character creation is given, as in my experience people know who they want to play, but have more trouble articulating the people in the world around them and the places they’re in, when creating this kind of shared world.

The gameplay is proceduralised through the in-world daily timetable, making this a slice-of-life game by default. This is a neat way of aligning things, placing the players in a mixed stance of metagame, authorial and in-character at all times. This procedure is effectively three separate sets of 5 minigames with different themes, separated by debriefing time and free play. At the end of the day you debrief, you build more references from your experiences of the day, and you repeat.

It’s difficult to talk about Arcane Academia without talking about the minigames that drive so much of the play, but the constraint of Critique Navidad is that my time is somewhat limited. In terms of minigames, some are a lot of fun, and I’m excited to try them: Herbal Lore involves real-world cooking, but describing the experience as if it were a potions class. Clash of Wills is a very fun boasting competition. Mystery Investigation explores the rumours in a flavourful, adventuresome way. These minigames just work. I think most of them do, even if some struggle to extend themselves beyond the format that Firebrands set for minigame-based TTRPGs almost 10 years ago.

But, some of them, despite being excellent ideas, I think I and my friends would struggle to play in practice. A good example of this is Theory and Application, where one player has to wing a magical lecture on some topic, and the others have to ask questions on it while passing each other notes, with the goal of creating a rumour which can be added to the reference deck at the end of the day. With such minimal support for an entire lecture, and an unclear amount of time for the “timer” to go off in (I’d go for 10 minutes based on other minigames, but it isn’t stated), I think we’d fumble this game, despite a startling amount of verisimilitude for the experience of being a student in a boring lecture, and the interaction between lecturer and student in these circumstances.

This system as a whole is a cool, self-perpetuating campaign system, which can continue as long as you choose. But, I think there would be a benefit to including support for breaks between years, or time skips, or ending a campaign. The rules here, while robust, feel like they fall short on the promise of one of a year-long adventure, simply by the daily structure of the procedure. Now, I will freely admit, there are no restrictions in these rules on time skipping, or anything I’ve mentioned. It’s just implied by the framing of the school day, that it’s all over one day, continuing in an unending loop. If a round takes 1–4 hours, as is implied, that feels feasible that you might spread it over a week or semester or year, and you could bend the implications to do so. I’d love a little support in doing so, though.

The layout here is simple, but clear. The art by Annie Johnson-Glick is not centre stage, but rather the games are. I like how headings have preserved space here, although I do wish minigames opened on a consistent spot in the spread, and art was used to break up the gaps a little, just for ease of navigation. Lots of small touches are really useful, like icons unique to each game marking those headings.

Overall, this is a joyful game, which would be a lot of fun to play if your table has fond memories of wizarding schools. The minigames are largely strong, although a few rely on improvisational prowess many tables won’t have, and you might need to remove those or warn your table of their existence before play. I wish it had a framework for longer term play, as well, as I feel the subject matter begs for it. But gosh, there’s a lot of fun to be had even in a one-shot of Arcane Academia, and there’s a lot of interesting directions to take it, like further sessions featuring peers rather than the original cast.

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