The Wild Beyond The Witchlight is an players attending the Witchlight Carnival, where they can experience the amusements, take part in games, and enjoy all of the fun of the fair.
The players will end up in the Feywild, or more specifically, the realm of Prismeer. Much like how Ravenloft is broken up into Domains of Dread, which are ruled over by Darklords, the Feywild contains the Domains of Delight, which are ruled by Archfey. In The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, the party will be dropped into one of these domains, where they must learn to survive under the strange rules of fae society, and foil the wicked plots of the Hourglass Coven.
Dungeons & Dragons Principal Story Designer & Project Lead on The Wild Beyond the Witchlight Chris Perkins recently spoke to Screen Rant about the adventure, and how players will have to contend with the rules of the Feywild - as well as how they might approach situations involving the jabberwock.
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is the first D&D campaign in fifth edition to take place in the Feywild. Has the Feywild changed from its previous iterations in earlier editions of D&D?
Chris Perkins: The Feywild is described in the fifth edition Dungeon Master’s Guide, which builds on material from earlier editions. The Wild Beyond the Witchlight used the DMG’s description as a starting point and expanded from there. The concept of archfey - powerful Fey creatures who carve out domains for themselves - dates back to earlier editions, but this is the first time we’ve given these domains a name: Domains of Delight.
How much information will The Wild Beyond the Witchlight contain about the Feywild as a whole? Will it just focus on Prismeer (the main location of the campaign), or will it go into detail about other Domains of Delight? If it’s just about one Domain, could we see a Van Richten’s Guide type of book in the future that fleshes out the rest of the Feywild?
Chris Perkins: The Wild Beyond the Witchlight presents an archetypal Domain of Delight. It shows by example what a domain in the Feywild can look like. Space precluded us from talking about the Feywild too generally; however, we are releasing a for-charity supplement on DMs Guild at the same time the adventure releases. This supplement, titled Domains of Delight, expands on what’s in the Dungeon Master’s Guide and provides information DMs can use to create their own archfey and Domains of Delight. It also contains rules for fey pacts and fey curses. There’s a lot of interest in the Feywild right now, so I could see us doing another product in the future that explores more of it.
The Feywild has Domains of Delight, which have similar names to the Domains of Dread from Ravenloft. Are the Domains of Delight as nice as they sound, or is there more going on beneath the surface? Is it easier to enter/leave one of the Domains of Delight than somewhere like Barovia?
Chris Perkins: Domains of Delight are certainly delightful … at least to the archfey who rule them. They can be safe, idyllic realms. They can also be scary places, especially to outsiders who don’t know the “rules.” It really depends on who’s in charge. Some archfey are benevolent, while others quite the opposite. An archfey can make it easy or hard for other creatures to enter and leave their domain; it really depends on the archfey’s mood. Some Domains of Delight are cut off by mists similar to those that surround Domains of Delight; others have different sorts of barriers (hedge mazes, thickets, and so on). Many Domains of Delight need no barriers of any kind.
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight starts out in the Witchlight Carnival. What kind of carnival games are on offer for players and how will they work within the mechanics of D&D? Can they try to cheat? What are the repercussions of being caught cheating?
Chris Perkins: Since the carnival is a safe place and tickets aren’t expensive, only a fool would cheat. However, fifth edition has mechanics to deal with that. For example, if a character tries to swipe a prize, the system allows for a Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check contested by a Wisdom (Perception) check, so we don’t need to re-explain that in the adventure. Most of the carnival games have simple mechanics by design, making them easy for DMs to emulate should they wish to add games of their own. Other challenges, such as the pie-eating contest and the giant snail race, have special rules.
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is adding two new backgrounds – the Feylost (characters who grew up in the Feywild) and Witchlight Hand (people who work for the Witchlight Carnival). How would these work in relation to the adventure, as the hook for the adventure seem to be about the players as outsiders who are attending the Witchlight Carnival for the first time? Could the entire party take them, in order to set the entire campaign in the Feywild?
Chris Perkins: The adventure allows you to play an employee of the carnival. However, the Witchlight hand background is built on the idea that you’ve become weary of carnival life and are ready for a new adventure. If you’re a feylost character, you might also be traveling with the carnival at the start of the adventure, or you could have returned to your world after a lengthy stay in the Feywild, in which case you might be ready to go back to the Plane of Faerie.
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight will add two new races – faerie and harengon (a race of humanoid rabbits). Do they still function as they did when they originally appeared in Unearthed Arcana, or have they been altered for The Wild Beyond the Witchlight?
Chris Perkins: The official versions of the fairy and the harengon, as they appear in the adventure, are different from the earlier versions released in Unearthed Arcana. We’ve made tweaks to them based on playtest .
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is bringing back the characters from the ‘80s D&D action figure line (like Strongheart and Warduke). Will these be minor cameos or will they actually be a part of the adventure? What prompted the team to bring them out of retirement?
Chris Perkins: Strongheart, Warduke, and the others all have important roles to play in the adventure, and characters will have opportunities to interact with them as well as help or thwart them. One of the major themes of The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is time. To reinforce that theme, I dove into D&D’s past and pulled forward lots of half-forgotten relics from earlier editions.
Does the Witchlight Carnival have any references to the classic Dungeons & Dragons cartoon? It seems like the perfect opportunity to give a shoutout to the infamous Dungeons & Dragons ride.
Chris Perkins: Yes, there are multiple nods to the classic Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series in The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, including an Easter egg in the poster map.
How long is The Wild Beyond the Witchlight expected to run for the average group? It’s mentioned on D&D Beyond that it can easily be slotted into existing campaigns. Can it be wrapped up in one or two sessions? Is there scope to expand it further?
Chris Perkins: The fact that the Witchlight Carnival travels from world to world means that it can show up on any campaign world. In fact, the adventure presumes that you’re using a home-brewed setting as the starting point. The carnival alone makes The Wild Beyond the Witchlight one of the easiest adventures to adapt for home game use, since it can show up just about anywhere. The adventure assumes that the characters start at 1st level and achieve 8th level before the end of it. Depending on the path the adventurers take and what their goals are, you could probably run the whole adventure in a few months. You can also break off a piece of it and just run that piece. The carnival is a fun place to visit by itself, as our playtesters can attest, but there are other parts of the adventure that can be broken off and used by themselves with very little work.
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight allows players to finish the campaign without resorting to combat. How did the team go about deg a campaign with a pacifist route? What sort of solutions will be available to players, especially when so many class abilities in D&D are related to combat?
Chris Perkins: Yes, if players are clever and understand the “rules” of the Feywild, they can talk and maneuver their way through the adventure without having to resort to violence. We’ll see how many groups can actually pull it off! In deg the adventure, we tried to make sure that every encounter had a fun workaround or some way for the characters to use what they’ve learned about the Feywild to get what they want without having to put creatures to the sword. That said, there’s nothing stopping characters from hacking and slashing their way through the Feywild. It’s nice to always have a choice: do I attack the jabberwock with the vorpal sword, or do I scare it away using a secret I’ve learned from a dubious source? That kind of choice is always fun to build into an adventure.
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight will be released on September 21, 2021.