Changing the Rules

DCC to Academia Arcana

Academia Arcana essentially uses the DCC RPG rules system, but with some tweaks to better suit a game about the misadventures and mysteries of adolescent wizards. The judge is free to tell whatever kind of stories that they wish, but the rules system supports certain types of stories more so than others. With all that said, I thought it’d be beneficial to do an overview of what’s different. You can also read much of this for yourself if you check out the Quickstart rules (which you get for free when you follow the Backerkit). But keep reading! Or at least skim so that you can see the first 3 (there will likely be a 4th!) of the Wizard’s Vault zines that will provide lots of new spells, adventures, patrons, and more!

Art by Teresa Guido

Crits and Fumbles: They’re still here, but you’re told to make them up, just as you would a mighty deed. There’s a bit of guidance for doing this and there’s an optional Crit table in an Appendix. But I’ve seen some of the DCC crit/fumble results so many times that I prefer to add a narrative flair. Besides, there’s no warriors at wizard school so this is how I essentially still get to keep mighty deeds in the game without explicitly doing so.

Alignments: They’re gone! Teenagers don’t really know who they are yet so this simply didn’t fit. Alignments stayed in the game for a pretty long time, but eventually I realized that it didn’t really do anything except take up room on the character sheet.

Birth Augurs: This concept is still present but represented in a way that fits the setting better. Birth Augurs become “First Magical Mishaps”. This helps create a backstory in a similar manner to funnels (by the way, those are gone too). So whether your first experience with magical involved zombies at a graveyard or being hunted for your mystic bloodline, your character has something to talk about with the other kids at school.

Occupations: These are now “Before School I Was…” and “But Now I’m A…” tables. So maybe your street urchin became a band kid or your noble’s secret love child is now a black magic goth. These results provide a magical charm that you start with and a minor bonus.

Gaining XP: You don’t level up by getting into dangerous situations. You gain experience through taking part in something that you would tell a story about. You can read my thoughts about how different character progression methods reinforce certain types of gameplay in my old post Methods of Character Progression. AA RPG is essentially going with a version of the 5^th method listed there.

Art by Kiril Tchangov

Complex Spells: This is more of a layout decision, but I really tried to make spells fit on a single page or a single spread. Make Minor Potion is the exception to this, but other spells are written in a concise manner to accomplish this. You can see an example in this older post: Prank (which has been renamed to Mystic Mischief).

Adventuring For Gold: Gold doesn’t really matter all that much. The equipment list doesn’t even have prices. If you need gold for a spell then quest for it or call in/trade a favor for it.

Equipment: I suggest using the usage die concept for weapons that use ammunition, such are bows or laser guns (hey, inter-planar travel could allow for those.) But it’s written in a way that I’m not prescriptive about how you track it. And equipment is organized by damage dice groups. So clubs and daggers get thrown in the same group since they both do 1d4 damage. This game isn’t focused on melee combat or getting plate mail so the section is written with the focus that it is due.

Youthful Luck: This is essentially a revised version of DCC Lankhmar’s Fleeting Luck, but with a focus on telling the kind of stories that you’d want to see in this game.

Carousing: Again, this is much like DCC Lankhmar’s method of Carousing. I was awful sad to see the license expire for that rules set. Love that setting!

Art by Giovanna Martin

Conclusion

That’s the essence of rules changes! Its been really fun playtesting these and refining the DCC system to suit a particular kind of gameplay loop. Next, I’ll go over how I made the two adventures that will be included in the back of the core book. Hope y’all are interested in this game and follow it over on Backerkit. It’ll link you to the free Quickstart rules once you click the follow button.

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