Academics!

The Magaambya offers many courses, as detailed at the end of this document. While some courses require your character to study from book, scrolls, or lectures, many courses take a more hands-on approach where students learn by solving practical problems. There are three types of courses: general courses, branch courses, and electives.

Your character first chooses a primary branch, and potentially a secondary branch, starting at level 0 in both and advancing in level as you complete your courses. After choosing your branch, you have to choose which courses to take in the coming year:

• Choose 12 courses at each rank (Initiate, Attendant, Conversant).
• Choose at least 4 courses that are either general courses or part of your primary branch, and choose at least 2 courses that are either general courses or part of your secondary branch.
• The remaining courses can be anything, even electives or courses from a different branch.
• Some courses are obligatory, as indicated on the course list, though as you advance, fewer and fewer courses will be obligatory. 
• For general courses and courses not part of your primary or secondary branch, choose whether they belong to your primary or your secondary branch.

You cannot advance in a secondary branch until you have chosen one - if you have passed courses not part of your primary branch, but have not chosen a secondary branch yet, it can be chosen retroactively, and the branch levels immediately gained.

If you pass 4 courses belonging to your primary or secondary branch, you advance in that branch by one level. Note that you can’t advance your primary branch level above your character’s level, or your secondary branch level above half your character’s level (both with a minimum of 0), but you can 'save' your passed courses to level up your branch later.

As an Initiate, if you pass all 12 courses you chose, you can begin to choose Attendant courses, even if you have not yet advanced beyond Initiate rank.   Attendants and Conversants can choose courses from any rank, but Conversant courses tend to be more difficult and more specialized. 

Downtime Periods

In this system, each downtime period consists of two weeks, where 10 days can be used during the work days, for example to study, and 5 days consist of free time during the evenings and weekends that can be used for other activities.  Yes, this equals 15 days in a 14-day period; this is because it is assuming a "day" is roughly eight to ten hours of work, and the PCs have a relatively healthy work-life balance.  The school encourages not overextending oneself as many of their students are overachievers, and the faculty does not want an environment that incentives burnout.   However,  students at the Magaambya are adults and nobody will force them to take care of themselves.  You can simultaneously perform two downtime activities, other than Rest, but you gain Exhausted 1; pushing yourself even further by doing a second (or third, or fourth, or fifth...) simultaneous downtime activity increases the value of this condition by one each time.  The only way to (permanently) decrease this condition's value is with the Rest downtime activity. 

Downtime Activities

The following downtime activities are available to choose during any two week downtime period. Typically, the 10 work days are used for studying, while the 5 days of free time are used for relaxing and socializing, or for standard downtime activities such as Earn Income or Craft.  Once again, (probably) nobody will physically force students to attend classes,  so if you want to spend the full fifteen days doing something other than classwork, you are able. 

Strength of Thousands Downtime Activity Link