Universities of Magic aka All About Mages by John Josten is a role playing game supplement published by Board Enterprises. This is a mostly generic supplement although there are some references to the publisher’s Legend Quest system. The supplement is the “World Walker” edition; the full version is nearly three times the length and is only available to Patreon supporters.
This is a fifteen page supplement that is available for free from RPGNow. One page is the front cover and around three quarters of a page have links to the publisher’s sites and an ad for their Patreon campaign.
First there is a short Introduction to the series, followed by the Table of Contents.
Next is a number of articles reproduced from the Fletnern Wiki. These cover sites, cities, schools, individuals and groups connected to universities, universities of magic and the city of Brinston, where all the covered things are located.
The Sounding Board is a selection of reproduced blog posts.
Is Your Magic Balanced? considers the difficulties of ensuring that warrior-types and magic-types are balanced at all levels; often fighters are the hardest hitters at low levels but at high levels spell casters are the most effective, albeit having a “glass jaw.” There are examples from the Legend Quest system.
Dangerous Jobs aka Who’s Mad as a Hatter considers the dangers of certain types of magical careers and how these can lead to adventure hooks.
The Power Behind Magic briefly considers where magic comes from.
When is magic a lifestyle? diverts a bit from the intended topic and considers how different types of spell users look at the world differently.
The Evolution of Magic considers the idea that magic might be new, something that was discovered in the past century. In most settings, magic has been around forever (essentially), which makes it odd that it isn’t more widespread.
FRPG Schools considers what schools in games will teach, compared to modern schools.
The Good Life starts with an article on Fashion, which covers what students at the various universities in the city of Brinston wear – in rather great detail. Books covers businesses that rent students books. The Pearl Polishers are people who wealthy families hire to ensure that their children can cope with university. There are also a couple of “mission ideas” using these in game.
News of Fletnern starts with The Reindelphine Family, a family that is effectively making the Head Dean of one of the universities into a inherited job. Mounfeae Shalltae Wonsaince is a new school of magic.
What’s Missing lists the articles that can be found in the full version and In Conclusion gives details of some upcoming supplement in the series.
The PDF is bookmarked, but only the major sections are linked, and the Table of Contents is to a similar level of detail. Navigation is not as good as it could be. The text maintains a two column format and appeared almost error-free. There are a number of stock black and white illustrations that appear to be thematically appropriate. Presentation is okay.
As usual, this is a collection of generally related articles rather than a coherent whole. Despite the name, this is not a supplement that is all about mages, or even universities of magic; a fair amount is on universities in general. This is perhaps due to it being the abbreviated version. In the city mentioned, most universities teach magic, but most graduates are not really mages. Mages are simply believed to be more intelligent, so students take a bit of magic before moving on to business (Brinston is heavily mercantile town).
The supplement does have some interesting ideas, but this is perhaps more heavily focused on Fletnern and universities in general. Universities of Magic aka All About Mages can be downloaded for free by clicking here.
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