 Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappy, and in all my years of doing videos, I've seen good adventures, I've seen bad adventures, but I've never seen an adventure so blatantly challenge me into talking about it than a story that whisks you away into the realm of unspeakable fairy tales. At first, I had half a mind to ignore the witchlight entirely and not give it the satisfaction, but then it had the nerve to include not one, but two new races, as if it's standing at the edge of the forest and saying, hey, come on, you know you need the content. So, as always, keep in mind that, unless I'm replaced with a changeling in the night, all of this is just my opinion. And if you feel at any point in this video, like my behavior has suspiciously changed, feel free to tell my cat that I love him. But first, before we get into the ADVENTURE, it's time for the AD… AD! 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So pledge to the Kickstarter in the link below and receive not just the book but also your choice of dice, DM screens, minis, pawns, maps, and monster cards to really spice up your sessions. Questonamakan, ten adventures, one book, dozens of hours of entertainment. But with that out of the way, let's begin. So The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is an adventure book that takes players from levels one to eight into the realm of the Feywild, where they'll slam face first into every Alice in Wonderland reference that the writers could fit in without getting sued for plagiarism. It went so far as to create an entire rabbit folk race that you can dress up with a butler suit and pocket watch, and I want to get the races out of the way first before I really talk about the adventure because even though this is a spoiler-free review, I know that some people don't like to hear anything if they intend to play it for themselves, so skip to here if you just want the adventure. As for the races, like I said, you can have all the lateness you want with the hearing gone, which is a name that is either a reference to Little Bunny Fufu, or could be, as one writer discovered, Vietnamese for a tasty rabbit. Regardless of the etymology, this Bunny Bay is supposed to be representative of the freedom that the Feywild has flowing through it, and it gets two different abilities that let it escape danger in the form of a bonus action bunny hop that ignores opportunity attacks and scales off of proficiency, and a rabbit's foot ability that gives a D4 to failed saving throws. Interestingly enough, both of these abilities specify that they can't be used at the hearing gone speed is zero, so you're not only encouraged to avoid getting caught normally, you're actually semi-dibilitated if you end up grappled or restrained. That said, the hearing gone also gets proficiency in both perception and initiative. They named the rabbit initiative hair trigger, please end me. And weirdly enough, hearing gone's come in two different sizes, medium and small. It has no bearing on the abilities, and it's not gender locked or anything, some hearing gone's just end up shorter than the others, I can relate. Personally, I like to think that the small ones are just crouching, because they're actually semi quadrupedal, and the medium sized ones are hearing gone that have the bone structure necessary to stand up all the time. It just makes it more interesting to visualize than just this. Speaking of size differences, the other race native to the Feywild is the fairy, and unlike the hearing gone, it's becoming increasingly obvious. They can deny it no longer. They are small. Fairies, as you might expect, are Fey, and it's interesting that the hearing gone aren't, because they both come from the same place. That said, the fairies make up for their cool creature type by not having as many interesting features, only getting the power of flight, which apparently means that Wizards has gotten over their fear of heights, and some fairy magic in the form of druidcraft, fairy fire, and enlarge reduce. I honestly wish that their version of enlarge reduce would last for longer, or that they would do more often, since it seems more thematic for the fairy race to have better control over their personal size. But I guess the fact that they can cast it on other people means that they can still get away with all their usual fey fuckery. Outside of the two races, there are two background choices as well, and while only one of them is technically restricted to this campaign, both of them are pretty much only going to end up being used in this book. So we may as well just start talking about the meat of these pages. Just to preface, I'm reviewing this book as is. Yes, I can rebalance things or change the story to suit my needs, but this isn't a book about Davy's dastardly homebrew, it's a review of Jeremy Jinjam's product. I also can't really talk about the combat encounters too much because the book just came out and I haven't played it yet. So, like I said, this book takes you through the Witchlight Carnival, a spectacle that comes around once every eight years and acts as a material plain friendly Feywild attraction that's fun for the whole family. The first chapter of the book details all the things that you can do with the carnival, and as introductory chapters go, this is pretty great. One of the big things that Wild Beyond the Witchlight is pushing is the idea that not only can you not fight everything, a la Curse of Strahd, but if you play your cards right, you might not fight anything. Looking through this book, the vast majority of the content seems to be intent on giving a non-violent solution to every problem, which may or may not sometimes involve subjecting others to violence in your place. And the Witchlight Carnival acts as the perfect representation of that. Being a carnival, there isn't much to fight, or a reason to be angry outside of the $5 hot dogs. So instead, the first chapter teaches the DM how the world might react to player choices, and yes, it still accounts for if one of those choices is violence. With this being the 13th mainline adventure module and the first to prioritize not hitting your enemies, I appreciate the change of pace and the fact that, if you want to, you can still be the party that tries to burn down the carnival mascot with the pervert still inside. After the first chapter, the game breaks off into an open world, where you can go into thematically distinct lands that all have their own brand of crazy going on, followed by a final showdown in the final palace of final team. It's all very straightforward, and while it's not linear per se, you're gonna end up going to all of the locations anyway. It's just a decision on what order you want to do them in. And even though the final boss is optional, there aren't any adventuring parties that'll say, no, no, I think I've had my fill, we don't need to go to the final place. Story-wise, the plot is all very simple to follow, and there's one twist in particular that really wishes it was better at hiding its secret, but anybody who's dedicated even a single brain cell to D&D will figure it out the first moment it gets brought up. Still, the locations are cool, and both in and out of the carnival, there are some really neatly designed NPCs. My favorite is Thack of the Clown. He says nothing, is unimportant to the plot, but his name is a reference to a D&D system we all pretend we've played before, and that's hilarious to me. As much as I enjoy the overall setup, if I had to criticize anything, it would be the story hooks that tie in all of the player characters to the adventure. The first main story hook kind of decides your backstory for you. Instead of being a meandering group of adventurers, you are explicitly characters who have snuck into the carnival as a child, had something of value stolen from you as punishment for not paying, and now suddenly feel a calling to come back and get your shit. This isn't a bad backstory option by any means, but it isn't an option. Everyone has to have this exact same, very specific experience, no matter what type of character they're playing, or else you can't use this hook. I get that it's trying to tie the player in so that they have more emotional investment, but not letting the player choose how that investment manifest is weird if it conflicts with how the player is view their character, and I feel weird as a DM to say you all have to play as a rule-breaking child. It's necessary for the story to proceed. I will say that the cool thing about the thing that you've lost is that it takes away your ability to gain inspiration until you get it back, which might not seem like a big deal at your table, but I'm a DM who uses inspiration heavily in my games. I hand it out every session, or have my players hand it out to each other. So being completely locked out of it is a really good way to interpret the mild sense of melancholy that losing a part of yourself can bring. The other story hook is a much more traditional magic man sends plucky adventurers on a quest to do a thing in Fairyland, which completely detaches the party from any backstory, and in doing so, it also demystifies the witch-like carnival and is simply a stopping point in the real adventure as opposed to the apparent main attraction that then organically opens up into a bigger mysterious world. It's basically the opposite of the first story hook, which is completely immersive, but also super backstory restrictive, and I wish that there was an easy middle ground that I don't have to come up with using my own big brain. The benefit to this story hook is that it turns the game into a bit of a mystery novel, as the magic man is a warlock whose patron keeps leaving him on red and he wants to know why, but the mystery gets revealed pretty early on, and like I said, it drops the surprise plot twist right in front of you the very first time it gets brought up, and then the rest of the book awkwardly tries to throw a blanket over the mess, or otherwise just distract you with a frog and pantaloons. Finally, I do want to say that as much as I really love all of the weird and crazy shit that they do to show you how different the Feywild is compared to the Material Plan, this is about as much of a sourcebook for the Feywild as Curse of Strahd is for the Shadowfell. They're both adventures that take place in a pocket dimension of some foreign realm, and you only really get a basic impression of how they're meant to operate. I do hope that they come out with an actual Feywild sourcebook, just like they did for Van Richting's Guide to Ravenloft, which is pretty much the closest to the Shadowfell that we're ever gonna get. Fun fact, by the way, the witch-like carnival is the Feywild counterpart to the carnival from Van Richting's Guide, and if you read up on the story of that carnival, you'll get a deeper insight into some of the characters that surround the first part of Witchlight, and none of its really spoiler territory. Overall, the Wild Beyond the Witchlight is a super roleplay heavy romp through a world where people can turn your thoughts into literal sands, so perhaps fighting them was out of the question in the first place. Fans of older D&D editions may appreciate the references, and parties that are looking for shorter adventures may be happy to hear that while it's not bite-sized, it certainly isn't as long as something like Storm King's Thunder. I can't wait to run it for my players, and I'm giving Wild Beyond the Witchlight a 4 out of 10. Buuuut that'll about do it. I hope you enjoyed this video. Be sure to leave a like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell, check out all my social media in the description below, and maybe support me on Patreon so that I can continue to wear the skin of a beautiful bardic boy. But yeah, dabby out.