Arcana Academy
A downloadable RPG
Arcana Academy is a tabletop role-playing game where you get to play as students attending a magical school. Solve mysteries, get into trouble, learn magic, and forge lasting friendships or bitter rivalries.
If you've ever wished you could attend a magical school like Hogwarts or Brakebills, this is the game for you. We wanted to focus on the core experience of what it meant to attend school for the magically gifted and focused all of the rules on these elements. Players will get creative with spells, wander the halls after dark trying to solve mysteries, and explore a world unlike any they've yet encountered.
The game is designed to create these kind of stories, whether you have experience with the genre or not. The game is great for anyone who just wants to pick up and play, regardless of your level of familiarity.
The game is inspired by wildly popular Powered by the Apocalypse style of games with a few twists to better fit the tone and theme we wanted to create. Arcana Academy uses a light tag based system that lets you choose what's important to the story. Along with the spells you've mastered, your character's personality or talents are what drive the action forward.
The game uses free-form spell creation, allowing you to customize the spells your character knows. Using the spells at your disposal creatively can totally change the way you approach a challenge. Spells do one specific thing, but have an endless amount of uses. Finding clever ways to use the spells you have at your disposal is part of the fun of playing the game.
A big part of the story revolves around the central mystery. As you look for clues to help you uncover the strange happenings at your school you will get to ask questions the Game Master will answer honestly, however the mystery is working behind the scenes to ruin things for the characters. It's up the the players to work out what's going on before it's too late.
The game also has a strong emphasis on making connections with the side characters. Who you admire and who you hate, how you interact with them, and the way your relationships evolve have a big impact on how the story and the game progresses.
Purchase
In order to download this RPG you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $19 USD. You will get access to the following files:
RPG
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Community Copies
If you aren't able to afford a copy of Arcana Academy right now, you can download a community copy.
Development log
- Arcana Academy ReleasedJun 23, 2020
Comments
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Bought and played this game for several months with some friends. We thoroughly enjoyed it. I bet it could be played for more longterm campaigns, too, but we ended up retiring it.
Is it possible to get play materials without all the background noise, to make it more printer friendly? Maybe even have the player aid part of the character sheet pdf?
Hello!
Before I decide on buying it, is there a chance you can tell me if the Character Sheet is fillable?
I mainly play online, and so it'd be a huge thing if it's fillable or not...
I don't believe it is, but give me a week or two and I'll have a fillable version available.
Hi.
Are there still physical copies? If not, could you perhaps upload the relevant files to a service like lulu or drivethru so I can order one?
I have a quick question. I was trying to find a video of a group playing the game to get a feel how the GM put everything together. I was not able to find anything online, do you by chance have any recommendations of videos of people playing the game?
Are there still physical copies available for sale?
There are misprinted copies still available, I disabled them because the itch notification system was really bad and I wasn't able to tell when they were purchased. I'll have a new website up soon, otherwise if you want to email me at jordan@makerpgs.com I'll get you taken care of 👍
I've just played my first session of this game, and it was very fun!
The game has some very cool ideas, like the weakness of the spells. Some really funny stuff happens in the game because of that. And I like the game system and the character creation, gives a lot of freedom compared to other games I played.
I'm looking forward to play again!
i like this game a lot! its exactly what my group has been looking for for a long time, and our first session was an absolute blast! i especially enjoy that roll results are really just 'yes, and,' 'yes, but', and 'no, and,' which is excellent for keeping failure from grinding scenes to a halt. however i think it is a little.. tone deaf to make the only nonbinary sample character the transfiguration teacher who is notably uneducated in formal magic and its society. i think they sound lovely, but more nonbinary presence in the sample profiles would make me feel a bit less tetchy about how deeply Other they are presented from every other sample teacher, as a nonbinary person myself
Hello. Your game is very cute but I have one question.
Is there no other character advancement than what is described under "Spell Progression"?
We tried something different in this game. Instead of character progression we focused on story progression to keep things interesting.
Basically, the GM adding new characters, locations, and items added enough variety to keep things interesting that it didn't feel necessary to add a bunch of different abilities beyond learning/improving but spells.
Hi, I would love to get one of the misprinted off your hands, but I live in Europe. I wanted to ask if it would be possible to get one of the misprinted copies by ppatibg the shipping costs necessary to ship to my country.
The cover still isn’t on the PDF
fixed
Awesome, thanks.
Hey there, I ordered one of the misprinted copies about five weeks ago. Can you tell me whether it was shipped?
You should have gotten it by now. I can only do a lookup by email, if you want to send me the email address you use on your itch account to geekypalmer@gmail.com I'll look into the tracking and figure out what happened.
Hi there, I sent you an email about ten days ago and haven't heard back. Should I send you another? Is there something specific I should put in the email?
Hmm, I'll check. Maybe it went into spam.
Great game. I ran this for my girlfriend. She's a huge Harry Potter fan. She said playing the game felt very much like taking part in one of the Harry Potter stories. We can't wait to play again. Thanks for designing such a great game!
About how long until the misprinted hardcopy gets shipped out? I ordered it 14 days ago and havent seen anything in the mail. No rush; just want to make sure my purchase didn't get lost in the cracks. :)
Word. Wondering the same thing.
The copies got shipped out Monday if this week (had a slight delay with my label printer) I believe you should be getting them early next week. I know I have at least one person that's said they've gotten their book already. Hope that helps!
That sounds awesome! Thank you for this awesome opportunity to get a hardcopy!
Hey, I got my copy in the mail today. Looks really sharp, too. The art misprint wasn't that big of a deal and didn't detract from the text at all.
Got it! Thank you so much! Can't wait to play this with my family!
What does the misprint mean? Shifted over one page? Like is it missing 1 page or something?
Will there be late pledges? Will there be retail copies? I just came across this game.
The book isn't missing any important pages (the title page went missing), and it's still 100% useable. It just means that the layout and images aren't quite right because all left pages are now on the right.
I might have a few extra as copies, but I don't have the money to do a huge print run all over again so I'm prioritizing backers before reselling the fixed books.
Ah ok...so ill have to wait to see if someone maybe chucks a whole KS edition on ebay for the KS stuff.
Any idea when these misprints will ship out?
To clarify, the front cover is not on the pdf, hence the reason to ask for it. The first page of the pdf is the Table of Contents.
Oh, I'll definitely update the PDF soon because the cover should totally be there. Thanks for letting me know!
Lovely game. Any chance you could release the cover as a downloadable?
you should be able to save it directly from the first page of the PDF, but if you still want the cover I can definitely get it to you