1d20 Wizarding Colleges

David Wyatt

Wizards have degrees. This is the way of things. You can't be a proper wizard without a diploma. It's respectable. If you don't have a degree from a respectable school, why, you're no better than a witch!

The kicker is that there's no such thing as a respectable wizards' college.

1. Twin boarding schools for the children of the rich and powerful. Male and female campuses on opposite sides of the street. Anti-canoodling rules prove only vaguely enforceable in the face of the student body's vast creativity.
2. A flooded library buried deep undergound. Mushroom men maintain the records, though they are slow readers and often grow all over the books you need to get for class.
3. A shipwreck inside a whale's stomach, haunted by the ever-tormented souls of the sailors that now serve as the faculty.
4. Two aged sphinxes playing chess in a public park, discussing the mysteries of the universe. They will occasionally bring in someone from the circle of listeners to act as referee.
5. An ancient mountaintop tower, carved from a primordial stone spear pinning a demon lord to said mountain. Has an excellent football program.
6. A labyrinthine history department, severed from its parent school decades ago by a planar mishap. The inhabitants are descendants of the faculty and students, and have maintained the collegiate structure as a way of maintaining societal order.
7. A fortress in the middle of the desert built on top of a gigantic dungeon, which occasionally provides a student, rather than just eating them.
8. A haphazard cluster of bright-painted buildings on stilts in the center of a freshwater lake, sponsored by the Court of Lampreys. Tuition is free, but sometimes the administration needs a few favors. To help with the paperwork, you see.
9. A grungy inner-city community center, taught by a well-meaning but thoroughly overwhelmed and unprepared noblewoman.
10. A friendly traveling theater troupe with a curriculum of comedic-educational operettas. The tenor is remarkably good with the patter songs, though he does bear a striking resemblance to a wanted murderer.
11. An isolated complex devoted to the various thaumartial arts. The admissions department requires prospective students to impress the director with a show of athletic skill.
12. An opulent school practically a city unto itself. The dean is a dragon. The financial aid office is run by demons. The textbooks are sold by a vampire-owned publishing company. Many of the students are missing an arm or a leg. On the bright side, there's a diamond the size of a cow somewhere in the business office.
13. Greasy back room of a spicy fried cockatrice shop. Totally legitimate. Definitely, totally legitimate. Please ignore the misspellings and smell of narcotics.
14. You've had no learning besides the school of hard knocks (read: an old dwarf with a sturdy stick who took you on as apprentice.)
15. A crumbling gothic castle, filled with all manner of ghostly maidens in diaphanous states of undress, the tormented spirits of diabolic monks, and the occasional humanities professor with a sheet over their head.
16. Moon U, being the moon's first and currently only wizarding college. Started in a secretive bunker, has expanded into a full spaceport. It's an open secret that the New Gods are involved (all hail).
17. A tower of sapphire rising up over the moors. Classical, respected, traditional...and everyone there is a woman wearing a fake beard and socks down her trousers. They don't have to anymore, but it's traditional by this point.
18. An ordinary college town with a C-list school that is well-regarded in the region but one of the perpetually small fish of the academic world.
19. The place hasn't been dusted in five years, the syllabus hasn't been updated in fifty, and the youngest faculty member is 87. They still talk about the glory days.
20. Focuses entirely upon the study of a hypothetical parallel world where magic, and thus wizards, do not exist.