 So, this is going to be a little different from my other world building stuff. Like, I have the script here that I'm going to be reading from, and I will have Visual put up here at a few points. But this is shorter, and so I just wanted to keep it feeling a little bit more casual than I normally do. So, magic schools. When Harry Potter became a huge smash hit, everyone and their grandmother tried to copy it. I've talked in the past about how stuff like Percy Jackson is basically just Harry Potter in a different setting, but there are tons of different stories across all forms of media that are either ripoffs or take some sort of inspiration from J.K. Rowling's work. And, there are a lot of tropes that were either popularized or pioneered by Harry Potter. The hidden magical world, the over-the-top parental figures, the angry child protagonist, and the biggest one that caught on is the magical school. Now, Harry Potter didn't invent this idea, but it did bring it to the mainstream in a huge way. Tens of media aimed at kids realized the wish fulfillment potential in having characters be whisked away from a mundane life to a land of adventure and magic, and even stuff that isn't aimed at kids uses the magic school trope. Just look at the King Killer Chronicles for a good example. Even Star Wars has magic schools in it. The Jedi and Sith both have temples where they teach people to use the horse. They even have badass lightsaber duels and shoot lightning for practice, making them objectively cooler than Hogwarts. But no form of media uses more magic schools than anime. Fucking hell, there are so many anime magic schools. Watch Mother's Basement video on the subject if you're curious, because that's a whole other rabbit hole that I don't have the time or the expertise to dive into. The Irregular at Magic High School, Asterisk War, Trinity 7, King Danganar Academy, Unbreakable Machine Dolls, Skywizard Salady, Magikishat Regius, and Akashic Record of the Bastard Magical Instructor. To name just a few. The short version is that all magic schools offer escapism and the anime industry leans hard into that while also adding a lot of boobs. There's a lot of fun to be had in making a magic school. It can be a simple backdrop for the heroes to learn how to fight bad guys, it can be a character unto itself full of history and secrets, or it can be the primary reason for conflict. If the school is a place where students pit their abilities against one another in duels or tests, then that can be a fun excuse to put in a bunch of magic fight scenes. This is a subset of creating a magic system on, which I already did a video on. I won't go into detail about what sort of magic would be taught at this school since that's a different discussion. All I will say is that magic can be taught, then that means it probably has rules and consistency, meaning it's at least a somewhat hard system. Other than that, feel free to go nuts. And obviously you don't have to include a school if you have magic. It's possible for people to learn to use it in some other way, such as private tutors, but this will all be worth keeping in mind. Now, first things first, what is the purpose of the school? Obviously it's to teach students magic, but why are they learning magic in the first place? Is it because the world needs wizards to fight demons? Is it because a secret society is planning on overthrowing the government? Is it just for the love of knowledge? Is it because magic is innate and without training kids will hurt themselves? Is it to train for blood sport? All of you above? In real life, public schooling is primarily meant to prepare kids for life as a worker in the modern world, as well as instill the values of whatever culture they live in. A worker today needs to be able to read and write and do basic math, so kids get taught that. Most countries also want a certain level of nationalism in their citizens, so they teach about all the ways they're awesome. E.g. during the Cold War, both the US and the USSR talked to schoolchildren about how they were so much better than the other for a variety of reasons. Hogwarts is an institution meant to teach kids to control their powers so they don't hurt anyone and to prepare them for life in the wizarding world which has different problems to deal with in the mugger world. Contrast this with the White Tower from Wheel of Time. Iced I bring girls that can access the One Power in for training for several big reasons. Girls who don't get training could kill themselves for one. For another, someone needs to fight Shadow Spawn and the men who go insane from channeling. The Tower exists to solve problems using magic, even though a lot of these problems were caused by magic in the first place. So if you're putting a magic school in your setting, think about how and why it was created in the first place. What problems was it created to fix or mitigate? The answer to that will be very different depending on the rest of your setting, and if you can make it fit properly, then that makes the whole setting that much better. Next up, who's in charge of the school and what rules do the students follow? Is it run by the government? Is it a private institution? Maybe a demon lord funds it so he'll have a source of new minions. The point is that in most settings, education isn't free. Someone has to be providing the room and board for all the staff and students, whether that's tuition fees or tax revenue. And if it is free, then that has to be justified through the rest of the setting. And as an institution, there have to be some rules to keep students from blowing themselves up. If a public high school makes you wear goggles when doing a chemistry lab, then maybe Seamus Finnegan shouldn't be allowed to wave his exploded death stick around at the breakfast table. For that matter, they shouldn't sell love potions to teenagers, that's just asking for a whole lot of date rape. Not to mention all the Quidditch players that fly around 100 feet in the air. The only class at Hogwarts that seems to have any safety precautions put in place is, weirdly enough, the Care of Magical Creatures class that Hagrid teaches. The point I'm getting at is that magic is going to have some dangers to it, even if those dangers are just people who use it for unsavory ends. If you want to make a school that doesn't have any safety standards, then you can find a way to exploit that, maybe show off how magic users have an obnoxious macho culture that results in a lot of them getting unnecessarily hurt. And even without danger, there should be rules in place to keep people from abusing their power, such as not allowing teenagers to buy and brew love potions. Seriously, what the fuck? As for who is in charge, that one's going to depend on why the school was created in the first place and by who. The White Tower and the Jedi Temple were both created by magic users who wanted to continue their fight against evil, and they both used their power to influence politics in a way that benefited them. Without outside forces in control, they were free to choose leaders their own way, and your school will probably be the same way. Maybe whoever is best at magic will be in charge, leading to a highly competitive environment and breeding tons of conflict. That would be inefficient, of course, but it would be a lot of fun to watch. And there could even be a whole industry built up around watching the competitions they use to determine who's the best. But it would make the most sense to have them choose their leader the same way governments do. Hereditary succession, elections, or the predecessor choosing who will succeed them. This will, of course, involve some politicking among those who want power for one reason or another. The form this takes will be up to you, just imagine it as a miniature government because I already have a whole video on that too. And then there's the question of what sort of power the leader or leaders have, which is frankly a topic that's best left alone. Unless you're really into the idea of creating a constitution and body of laws, you can just leave it at they're in charge. The important part is that you remember that the staff of any school has lives outside of teaching the students and that it can affect what goes on with the students. Whether that means the teachers are magical Nazis, or they just do their own research, it's something to keep in mind. While we're on the subject of students, how old are they? In most cases, magic schools are there to teach kids and teenagers, but it's not unheard of to see older people there learning. The university from Kingkiller doesn't seem to have any age requirements at all. If you can pay, you can take classes there. And the White Tower picks up girls as soon as they display signs of being able to use SIDAR and teaches them for years before they become full Isidae. So the students range from being older teenagers to adults in their 20s. In both cases, the teaching isn't structured that rigidly, whereas Hogwarts is set up similar to a real school with students divided based on age, graded assignments, and exams that are continued to move forward. That makes sense since the students are kids, and quite frankly, they can't be trusted to learn in an environment where they get to choose everything. And this might seem like TMI to some of you, but how come no one at Hogwarts had sex? Like, come on, you're throwing a bunch of teenagers together in co-ed dorms. You really expect me to believe that none of them were playing hide the wand? What I'm saying is that the age of who's there can and should affect how everything is set up. Anyways, that's all the major stuff to keep in mind while making a magic school. I know this is shorter than most of my world-building stuff, but this is a pretty small aspect to most settings. If you want to make an institution similar to a normal school that barely features in whatever you're creating, just have at it. Most people won't care. But if you want to make it into something bigger and more fascinating, then consider some ways to make it more sensible. And don't have the school be the hiding spot for objects of great and terrible power. Seriously, that's the worst idea I've ever heard of. You're just asking for an elongated battle scene where the bad guys attack and try to take it. Just put some security for the kids and leave it at that. Thanks a bunch to Oppo Sabalainen, Brother Santotes, Christopher Hawkins, Joseph Pendergraft, and Tobacco Crow, and all my other patrons whose names are here. If you want to get your name on this list as well as get early access to my videos and some other perks, then consider throwing some money my way. And please like the video, comment on the video, subscribe to help this become more visible, and I'll see you next time. Bye.