Grumpy Review – The Wild Beyond the Witchlight: A Feywild Adventure

So, on the back of the announcement of the new D&D Adventure – The Wild Beyond the Witchlight: A Feywild Adventure – the image below was “leaked” showing off the back cover of the book. Now, if this back cover is to be believed, and be sure to take all leaks with a grain of salt, my initial impression is that this book will have a lot more than just an adventure.

I took a few days to think about it and these are my best Grumpy Guesses™. First and foremost, the UA Folk of the Feywild is definitely going to be included. Unless the last book in 2021 is going to be a full Feywild Campaign book, then this might be the last official place to release them. Hopefully they fix some of the mechanical issues with the races before then. Otherwise, their flavor hits home right in line with this adventure! Juggler Rabbits! Trapeze Owls! Seedy Feywild Hobgoblins! Fairies selling treats!

Next is the small level range for the book. The level range is 1-8, which is honestly a great range for a campaign. By the time you get to 8ish in level, the campaign is normally so off the rails that the DM has had to adjust for so much player choice. It is nice that this ends early and lets the DM continue to homebrew after that point. Hopefully, since this is such a short adventure, there will be a lot more Feywild-specific information to allow for some great homebrew creation. Something along the lines of the recent Van Richten’s Guide, where they list out the different domains, would be interesting to have all the Feywild locations and their associated antagonists outlined to allow for this.

Lastly, I hope this book changes something core. Frostmaiden has this huge initial feeling that you could drastically affect the current Faerûn world, but it just ended up being a prequel. This is very underwhelming when you read the endings outlined in that campaign. This back cover states that “Time has not been kind to this realm,” so I am hoping for some large specific changes to happen, specifically in the Feywild. DnD 5e is a great edition of the game. The adventure books are great. But it feels like most of what is being written is just re-hashing the older content into 5e rules and not furthering world growth. When I played 4e, we had the Spellplague and the Sundering, two huge events that changed the landscape of Faerûn. So far all that has really happened is Elturel being pulled into Avernus and Acquisitions Inc set up shop in Waterdeep. All the other adventures and their effects have been self-contained.

This grumpy DM is really looking forward to this adventure. We are starting my own homebrew Feywild adventure soon and should have it partially released before this book is out in September. All in all, I think this is a must-have book. You can pre-order it on Amazon or at your local game store.

Pre-order your copy of The Wild Beyond the Witchlight: A Feywild Adventure

Currently 40% off!!!

Do me a favor and watch our Feywild stream when it begins on 7/10 at 8pm EST. Be sure to also listen to our Podcast where we will discuss all the information about this new campaign as it gets released.

Till next time!
– GDM Christopher