SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
A wickedly whimsical adventure for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.
Once every eight years, the fantastic Witchlight Carnival touches down on your world, bringing joy to one settlement after the next. Its owners, Mister Witch & Mister Light, know how to put on a good show. But there’s more to this magical extravaganza than meets the eye!
The carnival is a gateway to a fantastic Feywild domain unlike anything found on the Material Plane. Time has not been kind to this realm, however, and dark days lie ahead unless someone can thwart the dastardly schemes of the Hourglass Coven.
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight takes adventurers from the Witchlight Carnival to Prismeer, a Feywild domain of delight, and is designed for characters of levels 1–8. This book comes with a poster map that shows the carnival on one side and Prismeer on the other.
The adventure book is being released on September 21st, 2021 and has an MSRP of $49.95. You can also get the book on DnD Beyond or Roll20 digitally. WotC has given us two cover options for the physical adventure book. A standard cover and a very nice alternative cover by Hydro74. The alternative cover book will be sold exclusively in game stores in the wizard’s network.
This adventure book covers levels 1 through 8, with some small additions for players with new races (fairy & harengon) and two new backgrounds (feylost and witchlight hand). The adventure can be placed into any adventuring world, and I found that it has an easy system for level progression. There is a sense of whimsical and fey from the very beginning from the two-story hook choices. The first story hook was not really to my liking, and I preferred the traditional one. As only being a reader of the book, running the first one hook may be a better narrative for your players. You will need to choose.
As far as the carnival, there is a lot going on here. You will show your players this map and use it as a tracker. They can go about as they wish but they need to behave themselves. This part of the adventure is not geared towards hack & slash, so take that into mind with your playing group style of gaming. Brute force solutions are not really the aim of the adventure. The second act of the adventure was very intriguing as we go to a part of Prisamer. I enjoyed reading through the many options that you can present to your game with just a small portion of the Feywild. I am not trying to spoil too much, but it reminded me of a smashup of D&D with Changeling: The Lost style of a game.
There is so much goodness in this adventure book that you can be using the material for a very long part of your campaign. Like I said, this adventure can be dropped into any world because of the mechanics behind the Witchlight Carnival. The magic items are very Feywild and there are a lot of surprises that you can give your players. There are also “old-school” D&D references that will make fans of the original version happy.
Overall I loved this book. the art that you will find through the book is fantastic and ties well with the theme. I think this book is a must-buy for Dungeon Masters that are fans of the Fey, or if you want to try out a new vein of adventures with your group. It is well crafted and put together. I give it a 10 out of 10!
If you want to hear about the book with some great background on the Feywild, then let’s listen to Chris Perkins, Ari Levitch, Kate Irwin:
Product Description
- The adventure book is over 252 pages with a pull-out double-sided map.
- Explore the Plane of Faerie in the first official D&D adventure set primarily in the Feywild
- Easily drop The Witchlight Carnival into any campaign—for passage into the Feywild or just a night of carnival games and wild entertainment
- Introduces two races—play as a fairy or as a harengon, a race of humanoid rabbits
- Adds two backgrounds—the Feylost who grew up in the Feywild, and a Witchlight Hand who works at the carnival
- All encounters can be resolved without resorting to combat, rewarding clever ideas and creative roleplay
- Classic 1980s Dungeons & Dragons characters return, including Warduke, Strongheart, and Kelek
Disclaimer: The reviewer was provided a free review copy of this book by the publisher’s press agency before the release date.