Running a school year in Strength of Thousands

[DatFatRaccoon]

Potention Spoiler Alert for Strength of Thousands. !!!

Just started running Kindled Magic. There's so much cool narrative direction in this, so many opportunities to offer the players. But I find myself wondering how much time is passing in between any of the events past the perquisite activities in the the first part. In addition, when and where do the players receive material to study by the second part? Is there any academic incentive for them to be studying already?

An idea I'm playing around with is the idea of a syllabus and/or a calendar, but I'm afraid to introduce an asset like this in case the AP drops something similar or contradictory. Any DM's or players want to share what they have happening with their table?

[The Raven Black]

This thread should go to the Strength of Thousands forum. I flagged it so that the mods put it there ;-)

[DeathlessOne]

I just started running the adventure this last Saturday. It went quite well, actually. As for the events that happen in the first book, I am running it as if most of the adventure is happening within the first week of being admitted to the school. They get exposed to all the potential paths over the course of five days, as sort of a 'crash-course', and their official induction to the school happens once they have all chosen their paths.

Then the weird stuff starts to happen. *Que auditorium shenanigans*

[Tonya Woldridge]

Post moved, thank you for the heads up.

[Sir Newt]

I'm having my players start right after Nantambu's Autumn Feast, and I'm planning on blocking downtime into 3 month chunks, for each of the seasons.

Chapter 2 has four "Meet the Teachers" encounters, so I'm planning on doing one per season. It normally takes an initiate 5 seasons to complete their perquisite and gain their mask, so the players doing it in four is realistic, but also noteworthy. They *are* heroes, after all.

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What I want to figure out, is how long a Magaambya semester should be. Using the classical definition, it is 6 months, but the more common usage is ~3-4 months. With the way the local calendar is, I can't imagine them breaking the year into 4 month chunks, so I guess the school either has two semesters a year, or four.

[DeathlessOne]

I'm treating the school 'year' as a six to eight month block of time, to represent the 'rainy season' (ie, monsoon season) and time better spent indoors to study and perfect their arts. The other four to six months are mid-year breaks from active study and teaching, and more serves to allow the students time to do other things and for others to go out and get some real world experience, or to spend time during the more productive seasons of the year serving the community.

[Herald of the Redeemer Queen]

With Book 5's release, and it opening with quote "One Final Semester" of Teaching, it operates under the assumption that a single academic semester is a three-month long period. So having the first year be 4 semesters worth of class time definitely works out. I'm planning on doing it that way myself, so that, when the year comes back around and we get to the Attendant Ceremony in Book 1, the players will have had enough opportunities to bank Rank 3 in their primary branch, as well as Rank 1 in their secondary, assuming they get 4 successes.

[DatFatRaccoon]

Just popping in to say that these have all been incredibly helpful! :) I went and made a full first term for the players to help let them get acclimated to the setting in their own ways and meet the different characters using a strategy comparable to IcedMik's Expanded Magaambya (https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43fs9?Expanded-Magaambya#9)

Because keeping that pace wouldn't be in line with the pace the story wants to progress at I'll probably be advancing to a 3-4 month interval to represent individual terms better.

Thanks for the help, I'm relatively new to the forums and it was great to get everyone's insight.