Weird Facts About the Feywild and its D&D History
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 24 окт 2021
- Ok Dungeon Masters, time to get ready to jump into The Wild Beyond the Witchlight and prepare to adventure out in the Feywild. And if you're just running a homebrew dungeons and dragons 5e game, this stuff may still surprise you.
Come Hang with me on Discord!
DISCORD: bit.ly/Taking20Discord
Streaming here:
twitch.tv/smartasscody
----------------------------------------------------------------
TAKING20 LINKS
----------------------------------------------------------------
Taking20 Rewards: WelcomeAdventurers.com
Join us on Discord: bit.ly/Taking20Discord
Taking20 Merch: bit.ly/Taking20TeespringStore
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOW AVAILABLE - The Mist Walker! - New 5e Class!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download the Mist Walker here: bit.ly/MistWalker
----------------------------------------------------------------
WANT TO SUPPORT THE CHANNEL?
----------------------------------------------------------------
Check out the Rewards!
WelcomeAdventurers.com
LET'S CONNECT!
Twitter ------- / takingd20
Facebook ------- / takingd20
----------------------------------------------------------------
NOW AVAILABLE - MY 5E ADVENTURE!
----------------------------------------------------------------
A Much Bigger Problem - bit.ly/2ovBKtj (DriveThruRPG)
A Much Bigger Problem - bit.ly/2qiCYqp (Roll20 Add-on)
----------------------------------------------------------------
LOOKING FOR MORE PLAYLISTS?
----------------------------------------------------------------
Tips & Tricks for Game Masters - bit.ly/GameMasterTips
KYPW D&D Monster Guides - bit.ly/KYPWDnDMonsterGuides
Starfinder Week - bit.ly/StarfinderRacesClasses
Wrath and Glory Week: bit.ly/T20WrathandGlory
Call For Aid - bit.ly/CallForAid
For business inquiries please contact takingd20@gmail.com. 
Игры
![Sean Rii, Karyon, Sharzkii - Taungule [My Love] (Official Music Video)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/eJoMuypbSzQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Feywild rules and laws: In my Feywild, there are four courts representing each of the seasons. Rather than seasons changing for the whole plane, seasons are place-based, and the courts are constantly trying to expand and gain more ground. Simultaneously, they all accept that all four need to exist, so it's more of a game than a conflict. Each court has specific characteristics, for example Winter is more militaristic and Spring uses giant (I mean GIANT) snails called Springbringers to move about, eating forest and leaving fertilized goo for Spring to take hold. There are villages on the backs of the snails, it's pretty cool.
My other cool rule is that distance isn't really a thing. Travel in the Feywild has to do with intention. You basically have to set off in a direction for a reason, and whatever you put into your journey, your need, the effort, your deeds, etc, dictate how long it takes to get there and how hard the journey is. So no map necessary, just thoughts and feelings.
I love these
I'm playing in a game that has a heavy Feywild presence and influence. I'm playing as an Eladrin Twilight cleric of Sehanine. My DM let me use a Feywild city I had already been creating for my own campaign as her birthplace. It is named Ára Nènar (translates from Quenya as Dawn Star) and exists at the border between a Summer Court aligned archfey and a Winter Court aligned archfey. Neither archfey has been able to gain a permanent advantage over the other for millennia, so each half of the city is ruled by nobles aligned with one of seasons with a lot of political maneuvering. Because of this, about half of the city is in permanent winter and summer.
Can I have more information about the 4 courts as I have my party at an autumn court festival
@@thycrownedking3372 Sure. This is all homebrew content though, just so you know. I was inspired by the Eladrin info from the 5e books and built my own Feywild concepts from that. First off, in my Feywild an Eladrin is what an Elf becomes after living in the Feywild for a very long time. Rather than shifting between seasons, an Eladrin is a fixed season and is like a representative of that court. You might find a Winter Eladrin leading a group of Elves patrolling the Winter Lands, for example, or a Spring Eladrin overseeing the transition of dead areas into a blooming Spring. But most of the Elves are just Elves. I did this mostly because the Eladrin in the books are quite powerful, and it didn't make sense to have whole settlements of NPCs that are that strong. So the idea behind the courts in my world is that they're loose political organizations that represent each season, organize settlements and projects, compete with the other seasons, and so on. At any given time and for any given reason, a court may disband and cease operations entirely for whatever length of time. This allows the Elves and Eladrin of each season to live periods of their lives in organized ways and other periods as chaotic nomadic Fey. I made the Summer to be honourable and stoic warriors dedicated to protecting the beauty of everyone's favourite season, the Spring sort of like hippies who are very optimistic and peaceful given Spring is the beginning of renewal and hope, Autumn are calm and neutral, celebrating and honouring death and dying, but also healing and wisdom, and Winter are militaristic and defensive, focused on permits and paperwork (they might arrest you if you don't have permits to be in their lands). So, using my ideas here, an Autumn Court festival in my Feywild would probably be a weird sort of somber party where very old creatures at the end of their lifespan come to die surrounded by celebration and serenity. It might also be a place where clerics gather to try and heal stubborn illnesses. In my Feywild, Autumn Eladrin are also frequently targeted by Drow to be captured due to their mastery of death and healing magics. Another idea is the autumn interaction with spring. As I wrote in my other comment, one of the main ways the Spring transition lands into their season is using giant creatures that move around devouring dead forest and leaving fertilized goo. Google ''giant snail with village on its back''. You'll find a shitload of images that will give you crazy ideas. What is during the Autumn festival, a Springbringer snail makes its way into the area, eating its way through the forest? It threatens to disturb the festival and the old souls who came there to die. On the giant snail's back is a village of Fey creatures. The snail would be way too big for the party to truly harm or fight, but perhaps they want to direct it away to save the festival. They'd have to start by getting onto its back or head and dealing with the village. Perhaps the Fey want something done in return for control of the snail's direction, or any crazy combination of whatever crazy fey shit. In my campaign, the party got together and rolled a group Charisma check to concentrate their ''intention'' while on the snail's head, and managed to direct it to go in where they wanted.
very unique
I had a player GIVE their name to a satyr and just after they did that, they did not remember their name and they are now on a quest to retrieve their true name and that is the most hilarious thing my group has ever done xD
One of my PCs in a campaign had to give up his name to a fae trickster, so he took the fae's name instead.
I can imagine the party going on a mission impossible style adventure trying to steal back player 1's name. it's amazing
May I ask how you ran the quest to retrieve the name? I have a feeling a character in my campaign is gonna fall for this trap, but I also know he would 100% want the name back cause he worked hard on his character. So I want to make it very possible for him to get it back, cause I don’t want him to feel like I’m playing against him lol. I just want a lil mini sidequest for name retrieval cause I think that would be entertaining
Fey campaigns are the ultimate vehicles for throwing crazy bullshit at your players.
This tbh
That's what I got from it in short. What a blessing Goblins can get really old in this Multiverse too. At least one familiarity.
There is this Pandora's Box-esque Japanese folktale about a guy who finds themselves in an underwater kingdom, for one reason or another, spends time there and when he leaves he gets gifted a box that he is told to never open. When gets back home, he finds out that so much time has passed that all his friends and family are dead. Figuring there is nothing else to lose, he opens the box and from there come all the years that he lost and he just shrivels away.
This setting of feywilds, especially with passage of time, just makes me want to do something similar for my players. I find the setting just super cool!
That's daaaaaaark. I like.
Damn! I wouldn't have the heart to do that to a player. Maybe have them witness an NPC go through it.
Yes, Urashima no Taro!
The most interesting thing about that tale imo is that the modern version makes no fucking sense whatsoever.
Linfamy has a great video explaining how and why that tale got to be like that.
4-minute episode from Overly Sarcastic Productions about Urashima no Taro:
ruclips.net/video/KAma-_bjyfU/видео.html
It's a fun story, and such a cool mechanic (stopping age for someone, tying it to an object) if you gave it to an archfey.
he shrivels away? why
My first really consistent dnd game was a game I dropped into at a local coffee shop. The DM was very fast and loose with the rules, and we were in the feywild.
One of the other players had a "Book of Prophecies" they had found, that worked very much like a magic 8 ball, except the person giving answers was the barista at the coffee shop. Most of the time she didn't even hear the question, but we would just call out "hey book of Prophecies!" And she would say "yes" or "ask again later" or "unlikely". This is how my character ended up essentially being the compass to our location despite having no idea where we were going.
The currency was memories, and the DM didn't have a proper system for this, but it was a really cool idea, and magic worked differently there, which is to say it did not always work, and if it did sometimes it would go wrong. Again, the DM didn't have a good system for this, he was very loose with things, and while actual play ended up frustrating me a lot, I loved the ideas and still had fun.
Memories as currency is a really cool idea that I now want to play around with in a future campaign
I use a narrative approach to handing out character levels, so my kneejerk reaction of mechanically translating memories to XP wouldn't work, but that could be a good thing cause it might be more _interesting_ to give the player the option of losing a thematically appropriate resource or having an element secretly added to their backstory; proportionate to the good or service they're trying to buy plus or minus whatever they haggle and bargain down too, of course.
So as an example of the player opting to giving up something, maybe a feat or proficiency is lost because they no longer remember some aspect of their training and they wont regain it until they level again or retrain it, or past connection could be damaged or broken because the PC traded their memories of a smith they promised to bring back some rare material for or the relative in their backstory that told them they'd always have sanctuary if they need it.
For an addition to their backstory perhaps they aren't an only child after all so while they gallivant about questing their noble title is under threat of being pulled out from under them, they'd forgotten the betrayal of someone they currently think they can trust, or they'd forgotten the _their own_ act of betrayal and now there's some villain out there that's taking things extra personally and knows them better then they suspect.
It might also be interesting to let that exchange go the other way, with certain denizens of the Feywild willing to trade their memories to a _PC_ instead, letting them obtain a _new_ feat or proficiency if they bargain well and are willing to risk complications or throw away the potential rewards of a side quest they'd be forgetting.
That's a rough idea, of course. I still obviously need to figure out how people would purchase things that _aren't_ worth the price of temporarily nerfing your character or adding dangerous complications to your ongoing plots. I briefly considered having players erase lines from their notebooks or something, but I would actually prefer my players put together puzzle pieces so that's probably not wise. Maybe they'd just ask for small favors or the memories of stories you've heard for things like that and we could just avoid copper counting with improvised anecdotes? IDK, the thought's still percolating.
I'm also not sure it would feel great for a campaign _primarily_ set in the Feywild, as I imagine it might grows tedious playing with rotating perma-nerfs on your wizard just because he's component hungry or facing an ever expanding rouges gallery that's threatening to become a cabal because the _party's_ rouge buys their incendiary devices in bulk and is too edgy for a DM to possibly convince them a friend or member of their family still lives. Thus having instances of grand bargains scattered _across_ a campaign as rarer opportunities for carefully weighted sacrifice would probably be my aim if introducing the mechanic.
Thanks for the idea! It's gonna be fun to play test in a one shot at the very least.
@@julianweir3030 omg this was so much fun to read! Thank you! I'm glad my experience could inspire some much more in depth ideas!
@@practicepositiveprogress5396 and I'm glad my musings amuse a muse; sorry couldn't resist the wordplay. Hopefully my ramblings inspire someone similarly to how your story inspired me. Cheers!
_Dance of the Wild Faeries_ (Gary Stadler) is a great song example of how terrifying Fae/Fey Crossings can get.
Adrift, by Heather Dale, is a good one that covers the idea of fae time skips, too (though one character in the song is apparently unaware of this risk).
It's a nice song. Thanks for the suggestion :)
Our party recently met a fey. They had a short conversation. "Have a nice day." my PC said on leaving.
"Yes," said the fey, "Day...".
When we got back to town, half a week had passed... Dammed Fey :D
In my campaign, the Fey abide certain rules that are enforced by the magic of the Feywild itself...
- Tell No Lies: Be vague, avoid absolutes and clear answers, use poetic language, dodge questions, respond in questions, give irrelevant information, and so on. You can answer plainly only by the rule of three (one must ask three times if you want something explicitly from a fey).
- Break No Oath: Any oath, contract, promise, or bargain made is magically binding. Only if both parties fulfil their end of the bargain or mutually and freely agree to terminate the contract can it be ended. Oathbreakers will lose something of equal value, or be placed under the control of the claimant for some period of time.
- A Gift for a Gift: Accepting a gift binds you to give back and the reverse is also true. The value doesn't matter, only the intentions. If you don’t give something back and are unwilling to do so in the future, this is considered breaking an oath, with all the consequences thereof. This is why one should never accept food or drink offered by a fey.
- The Law of Names: Knowing someone’s true name gives you power over them. This is especially true within the Feywild, where everything is magic and words and thoughts grant power. One way of defeating a powerful fey is to learn its true name and speak it. They will then be bound to either serve you or relinquish their powers.
As I consider it the plane of myth, my campaign threaded adventures through stories inspired by the Lion Witch and Wardrobe, Alice in Wonderland, Krull, and Labyrinth. Travel and manipulation of the Feywild required Persuasion (Charisma) checks. Time proceeded at different rates, but their hours were roughly days or weeks in the Material plane.
nuh
m
n
k
nu
m
n
k
i basically go with all the same things, i got most of mine reading the Dresden Files series. it is a text book example of how exactly the fey should be handled and i recommend giving it a read. its about a modern day wizard set in 2000s chicago and continues to present day but all the things from grim dark fairy tails exist
umm doesn't the first and the fourth kinda conflict I mean they can't lie and they have to answer if you ask their name three times.
@@darkdragonsoul99 the fey can tell you that it’s a fake name, boom, they’re not lying.
I have to say, I'm really getting re-enamored by old fairy tales and themes they bring to the table. Currently reading Neil Gaiman's Stardust. It's great for inspiration! I totally recommend it for that.
We've been playing with Fae in our homebrew campaigns for 30 years. And the one addition that we've settled on is the fact that certain metals from the Material World have a definite and powerful RP effect on creatures with the Fae subtype * who hail from the Feywild as their plane of origin *. Eladrin who are born in the Feywild and cross to the Material Realm would be affected by the Three Metals Rule, while Eladrin who were born in Toril, lived in the Feywild for a while, and then came back to Faerun would not.
The Three Metals rule for Feywild-born Fae:
Lead binds.
Silver fascinates.
Iron repels.
Generally speaking GMs are encouraged to keep the effects of the metals as plot devices more than rules mechanisms. Essentially they represent the kind of 'country wisdom' and 'folklore' about treating with the fae to your own advantage while they are in your world.
Lead binds - even so much as a single drop of lead as a seal or a binder on a knot, or as a simple necklace chain immobilizes the fae, or prevents them from even attempting to open or separate the things joined by lead.
Silver fascinates - an object made of fine silver worth 5gp or more has an enchanting and distracting quality for the fae. They will be drawn to it, want to touch it, want to steal it or possess it, be tempted to abandon quests, or... in the case of a silvered weapon, drop their guard against attacks (attacks with a silvered weapon that the fae can see have Advantage against the fae). A finely wrought silver mirror bound with a thin lead chain is a Fairy Trap. They will be drawn to the mirror and unable to break even the flimsiest lead chain to get away, and like a monkey trap, they'll have to succeed against a Wisdom Save to break their gaze and leave the silver bauble behind.
Iron repels. Cold iron/wrought iron (not steel) repels the fae. It makes them itch and twitch to be near it, and if they are surrounded by a circle of iron filing dust or placed in an iron cage, they will act as though Frightened of the iron... not advancing, and more importantly, unable to bring their powers or take action to release themselves or get past the barrier. A fae surrounded on all sides by cold iron will go catatonic. An iron horseshoe over an entrance to a dwelling wards the dwelling and makes it so the fae cannot pass in or out of the portal until the ward is removed.
These rules aren't for everyone, but it gives a very Celtic/Rustic Earth feeling to campaigns where they are enacted. Of course, to offset this, as a GM I reward fae players with plot-driving "extra powers" that are never spelled out or rendered into combat mechanics, but when safe from interference allows them magic rituals, or allows them and their party to ride their steeds from dusk to sunrise flying on starry pathways as a means of getting the party quickly from point A to point B. Etc. Always for sake of story and to balance out the penalties of the three metals rule.
I really like that idea, thank you for sharing it. :-)
I designed a play on perspective for my group: as we play in a setting where every adventure needs to end in a central hub (for organisation reasons), every time they enter the feywild they have their perspective changed - as if the land changed around them. First time they saw a bonsai forest and spotted some "natives" that were ant-sized. They decided to leave sugar water and bacon for them. Next time they were in a forest that was the biggest one they saw, and they happened upon a "crystal mine" and a tower of glass, which were the ideas of the bacon strip and the sugar water vial distorted into something new. Also a wizard lost her bright orange flamboyant hat, which became all the rage in the summer court, when they visited again. There is a lot to play with here and I love it!
Nice!
If I'll ever DM I definitely need to include things like that. :-)
I also have "location-based" seasons, but I do the same for day and night. You can walk in either direction "towards night" or "towards morning" and you'll move into permanent day or permanent night (I might get to putting Fomorians into my night region).
Fey also LOOOOOVE mortal children, and will kidnap them to create new fey: when this process is interrupted at a Fey Crossing, the baby is left behind and becomes a Changeling.
The law for mortals is "follow the seasons": any mortal that tries to travel to the previous season will have to face powerful Fey spirits and defeat them to do so (~CR 20-25). BUT each season they travel in the right direction means they will show up a season later (my version of altered time).
Also, non-native spellcasters roll on a special Wild Magic table each time they cast outside of combat (but the bad results are mostly prank-level annoyances rather than actual penalties).
As someone who is running a campaign where one of my PCs has post-creation worked in a backstory involving the Winter Court and the Feywyld, this video and the comments are a gold mine. Kudos to all involved and Cody for putting this together!
Our group has adopted the 'law' system based off of a friends PC. Some laws include but are not limited to:
-Gnome punting
-Conspiring with Keeblers
-Baking a brownie (the fey kind)
With a distinct "it was funny" clause. Its one of my favorite things.
I had a halfling lose himself when he left the group at night to enter a magical tower to look for magical items... but wandered through a fey gate (already inside a time bubble) and danced 60 years of his life away, returning a few minutes later. So good. :D
One of my favorite quirks that i incorporate into the feywild is the concept of stealing names, or names having value. Lavish, long-winded titles and niceties might signal a very powerful archfey, whereas singular names are seen with pity or disdain.
The way i incorporate stealing names is when PCs are having conversation. if one of them mentions a character's name and the character acknowledges it, the fey can force a wisdom save to steal the name. If the character fails, they lose a character trait and can't remember anything that happened since walking into the feywild. if the party gets the fey to give the name back though, or if the character is given a new name, they get their character trait back and maybe a few memories
All fey can make fairy deals in my version. It can be simple or complex and is basically a magical contract that if you break or go back on, you are punished how that fey deems fit. They could just revoke their favor or item, or if you really pissed them off invoke a curse or make your bad credit known to everyone. In extreme cases if you kill the fey they can place a death curse on you and I basically use the madness table for that except that any effect is likely to be permanent.
Don't fuck with the fey
The concept of time warping with fae creatures reminds me of a song by Heather Dale - "Adrift." The song was inspired by folk tales of that exact sort of situation, and it's a beautiful song (though I understand that folk music isn't everyone's cup of tea).
I had an idea with the Feywild that the only way for a denizen of the Feywild to leave is to take the place of an outworlder who traveled there. Thus sometimes they’ll pretend to be one of the adventurers and try to convince the party that no, they’re the real one! So sometimes they won’t even leave with their full party, because a saytr or a tricksy Eladrin who wanted out managed to convince a party that they’re the real deal.
I love your videos so much dude. I wish you could upload more often but I know these things take more time and work than most realize. Great work and happy holidays
We haven't had a campaign where we've come into the feywild yet.
However, I have a spore druid raised in the Underdark who took the Feytouched feat. My DM (and our group) likes to RP feats/level ups/etc. Anything you gain will have an impact on you in other words.
i.e she has started to show slightly shroomy features like mycelium webbing her hands and arms when using Symbiotic Entity.
Once she became Feytouched we RP:ed that she'd fallen asleep in a Faerie circle and being a druid with a certain affinity and background they gave her the Feytouched boon.
So in addition to the goodies of Feytouched:
She causes a circle of mushrooms to sprout around her whenever she falls asleep, is it a true circle, is it not, who knows?
She has developed a severe sweet tooth for honey. She will put honey on anything she eats.
She counts as fey-blooded when it comes to attunement to magical items.
She can't abide the touch of iron. Iron weapons gain advantage for 1 round on her if she is hit and Cold iron weapons deal double damage.
So far we don't know if this will give her an advantage if we ever go to the Feywild.
Hey Cody! Another great video, I wish you could upload more often. Your format for videos and personality make this my favorite dnd channel!
I have so much gratitude to you and all the other creators who make videos like this for dnd lore. Its really helped me be able to make my first proper campaign pop, originally I was only going to string together a few official modules, but my party decided to try and kill a very important npc, so now I am doing a campaign focused around nether, dragons, magic and the cult of dragons, so a lot of videos have been very helpful
About to run Witchlight with a long running play group (about 8 years at this point). What a book. Probably the best adventure I have read through as a DM, and a great fit for any adventuring parties who are tired of the game trying to kill the players. A heavy HEAVY emphasis on narrative and giving the players ways to influence the world, non-lethal encounters abound, rewarding side-quests, creative puzzles, etc. Does not feel like the DnD we have grown to know, and it feels so incredibly refreshing.
I agree so much! Witchlight is just incredible
So perfectly timed as my players step into one of several Domains within the Feywild for the first time!
I like the idea that time is not a straight line in the feywild and an adventurer who visit the feywild multiple times can run into themselves.
My of my player's characters was lost in the fey and came back to his timeline being 50 years later and for him he just blinked and lost everything.
In my Fey-Wild campaign I am framing Prismeer into a SNES/N64 style graphics & throwback to classic games.
Sound effects when doing object interactions. Accomplishing great deeds (Side quests) will materialize a treasure chest to loot for new items.
Ect ect!
I'm starting the Witchlight adventure now, loved your tips on the Feywild
I recently wrote a whole campaign for the feywild where the party aims to destroy the Ring of Winter by having the summer queen Titania wear it on her finger as told in legends. Did all sorts of research with old lore and such, only to have WotC put out official 5e stuff in witchlight... Salt aside haha Im definitely using all the feywilds madness to my advantage. The abundance of magical energy messing with their spells, almost losing their names in deals, an eternal twilight sky messing with their sense of time, travel, long rests, food, etc.
My favorite thing i pulled off though, was their initial entering of the feywild: They thought they were jumping through some fairy rings to enter, only to be spat out in the underdark, dirty and confused. They had to find their lost memories kept by a sprite they befriended, only then could they go back and "remember" a.k.a. play everything that happened to get them into the underdark, such as meeting the sprite that kept their memories safe in the first place.
DMs should take inspiration from other media ( movies, tv, comics, etc. ) for their games, the movies “Alice in Wonderland” and “the Wizard of Oz” are actually good inspiration for campaigns that involve the Feywild.
The foreign yet familiar line reminded me of one of my favorite pratchett quotes, edited for relevance here
[The fey] are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
[The fey]are marvellous. They cause marvels.
[The fey]are fantastic. They create fantasies.
[The fey]are glamorous. They project glamour.
[The fey]are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
[The fey]are terrific. They beget terror.
The craziest thing I've done with the Feywild is one of my homebrew nature gods is a halfling whos base of operations is in the Feywilds and he exploits the time distortion to keep eternal youth by taking certain paths in and out of the wilds.
The Manual of Planes cover is a solid classic!
my god i set myself to in the trap of running making a feywild "infected" dungeon and you just saved me so much trouble explaining the difference between seelie and unseelie
Well that explains why it's hard to find fey lore. Thanks for a very informative video, really fascinating.
I'm just starting to run it and really enjoy the "Gift for a gift" law. Very opposite to Avernus
I love the way you described this. I DM for my kids (5 and 12) and have not yet started a campaign in the feywild, but am looking forward to it. They will love the location.
In my Feywild, the players make the save (losing memory usually when you exit the Feywild) everyday to remember the day before. Being in another realm (like the moon) shouldn't be easy for things not evolved to it. But this save could also mean random aging or impulses relating to their flaw!
Looking forward to you doing another review of all of the adventures now that we've got more, and even revised versions.
Can't wait to get more into the Fey with my next adventure. My current one that I'm running has tons of shadow crossings to get to the shadowfell and those have been super fun! I utilize my own rule of spacial warping instead of temporal. Travelling a distance in the shadowfell is equal to a much greater distance in the prime material plane which leads to some fun villainous plots of getting ahead of the players quickly. Kinda snagged the concept from the nether in Minecraft lol
Something to clear up; the concept of a "Plane of Faerie" had been floated around before in the earliest days of D&D, though never really detailed. In AD&D 2nd edition, the Plane of Faerie was a demiplane that served as the divine realm of the sylvan (seelie/good fey) pantheon, which roamed between the Beastlands, Arborea, and Ysgard, whilst the Queen of Air and Darkness ruled over the Unseelie Fae Court in her dismal little realm on the plane of Pandemonium. 3e fleshed out the idea of the Plane of Faerie as an optional but full plane, and then 4e gave us the Feywild and codified it into the cosmology, creating a definitive place for the fey, who had been kind of neglected and ignored in earlier editions.
Redcaps are one of the best ways to kill and or at the very least, down your players. Tiny murder gnome shin kicks. It never gets old.
One of the groups I DM for have been campaigning through the Wild Beyond the Witchlight and are really enjoying it. So far, they say it is one of their favorite official modules.
I love the model from the Dresden Files. Summer and Winter are the main powers with the wyldfae are neutral. Using the feywild as a form a fast travel is also really good, where you can travel to different locations on the material plane by walking different paths on the feywild aka Walking the Ways. There are points within an enchanted forest or Feydark the connect to different locations on the material plane.
Keep making these great videos brother!
I don't know if this detail will be in Fizban's dragon book coming out tomorrow, but in the lore previously, when a green dragon dies, plants around the dragon's corpse will have lush growth for a time and the area is more closely connected to the Feywild than other parts of the woodlands. I'm going to use that detail later as a transition from Lost Mines of Phandelver into a follow-up homebrew Feywild adventure.
Well, the Astral plane has a weird thing about slow time too and it catching up to you if you leave
I have a recurring npc, Ello’whin, that recognizes the pcs from past or future campaigns. I’ve used her as a guide in the feywild, a rescuer from the unseelie machinations where I reveal something dangerous that the party is not yet ready to tackle, a fey patron, a way to remove a pc from a game the player couldn’t make, or a means for players to reminisce about prior characters, or even to tease future campaigns. It’s been a lot of fun.
I'm running Call of the Netherdeep, and one of my players is a warlock that was held prisoner by Potentate Sammanar, Master of the Unseelie Court. This warlock was a consecuted missionary of the Luxon, and was charged with finding more Beacons, but stumbled through a fey crossing and was subsequently enslaved by Sammanar. (For those who don't know anything about Critical Role or Exandria, the Luxon is a deity of light, spacetime, and potential. There are several magic items called Luxon Beacons that allow faithful of the Luxon to undergo the ritual of consecution. A consecuted character is magically reincarnated if they die within proximity to a Luxon Beacon.)
In my interpretation of the Feywild, I took a detail from Pathfinder: fey that are killed in the Feywild are magically resurrected at a random time and place by the plane itself.
Anyway, so this character was basically just a pet to this Unseelie Archfey, and served their purpose until Sammanar grew bored and executed them. However... turns out two things are working in this character's favor: 1) Sammanar has a Luxon Beacon. 2) The character has just enough fey heritage to benefit from the plane's resurrection effect.
So the Luxon and the Feywild both try to resurrect/reincarnate this character at the same time but separately, basically turning them into a metapysical game of tug-o-war. As a result, they were reformed in a hexblood body, and an imprint of the Luxon's consciousness, the character's own mind, and the living essence of the Unseelie Domain itself congealed into a whole new being... A being composed of the Luxon's potential, and the Feywild's terrible whimsy. This is the character's patron (using the genie warlock subclass): a new entity altogether, part archfey, part deity, part mortal.
Congrats man, your starfinder vid caused me to buy the base books. Thumbs up for your content and a sub for you.
Currently running a campaign, and have decided to base my Feywild on the Dresdenverse Nevernever. There are both the Seeli and Unseeli courts, with enough information to explain their purposes and goals. There are the Outsiders beating at the gates of the Nevernever, in an effort to claim it and the Mortal plane. And it is described that there are indeed areas where one can more easily broach from one side to another. Also, time runs differently, and can vary in its speed depending on where in the plane one is. One day might be a week in the Material plane, or one day might be an hour. Now to see if my party of adventurers ever decides to enter the Feywild.
I unfortunately don't have a group to play with:(
However, I have created 6 different lvl 1 characters in case I found a group.
My favorite character is: A Female Drow Feylost background Death Domain Cleric sworn to the Raven Queen. I wrote in her backstory that nearly every Equinox & Solstice portals open to the Feywilds. She deliberately entered a portal that opened during an Autumn Equinox:)
So, in my games, the Archfey are probably some of the most powerful extraplanar beings, but they are also specifically bound by the rules of the fey to never be allowed to leave. This is because they are the anchors of which time works in the feywilds. They slow or speed up time around them as per what they need/what is convenient for them in that moment, which is why they can seemingly be anywhere in the feywild whenever they want. Especially within their specific domain, where, if they so choose, they could pretty much slow time to a standstill. Of course, time also means very little to them, and they rarely think of the consequences of speeding up or slowing down time. It doesn't bother most of their subjects, either, as most fey are timeless beings, and the ones who arent are so beneath their notice, they can't do much about it.
What this means practically, is if mortals want to safely transverse the plane, they need to either have a guide from the court of the respective archfey who is aware of how their archfey is making time work currently, OR they need to specifically ask the Archfey for a favour in the form of manipulating time in a way that is helpful for the party. If you get stuck or lost in the feywild, the only way you can guarantee you get 'home safely' is to make your case to an archfey, and if you satisfy their whims, they will go out of their way help you out. For the Seelie this could mean you are simply asked to play them one of your mortal songs, or you could be asked to go find a rare flower from x location and present it to the archfey. For the Unseelie, this could mean doing something cruel or humiliating. Both types just want to be entertained, but their definitions of entertainment can be varied and extreme. Of course, you could also form a pact with one to become an archfey warlock, and then pretty much gurantee they will help you, but in return you are required to do all of what an Archfey Patron might require of you.
Great Video! Thank You!
I've always imagined the feywild to look like the shivering isles from oblivion on lsd
So nice to see 5e catching up to Pathfinder 1e.
One of my players gave his name to a powerful fae as part of a deal.
Guess he did not expect the hag to actually take his name and identity.
Love it
Oh, you NEVER give your name. Never sign anything. If you're given a gift, give something back. And most importantly, NEVER take a fey's word at face value - they won't lie, but they will absolutely mislead and twist the truth.
Great video, Cody!! Lots of ideas from this...🧚♂️
Love the Eldar teeshirt Cody
Loving the info being real close to the historical documents in our real world.
I've read the fey portals can be found in wardrobes.
I am playing a Divine soul sorc Aasimar. My Aasimar was cursed by a hag when he was at a low level, and my character lived with that curse for several levels until we triggered the event which finally removed it. We roll our stats, so I ended up with a 20 cha on character creation. The curse gave me disadvantage on cha ability checks. I went through a story arc that had me researching hags, the courts, persons of power, and ended up cross classing into archfey warlock before being freed from this curse. I'm now 4 sorc/3 warlock.
This story arc isn't over yet either. our next goal is to enter the feywild, find the locations of power for the hag known in our game as granny mudgums (happens to be the First hag in our world) and perform a ritual at those locations to weaken Granny Mudgums so she can be purified of being a hag and return her to her original elven(?, might be a type of fey) state, which may kill her in the process. We had to find and repair a magic lyre to play a magic song at those locations.
We've repaired it in a mystic hidden spring hidden from the world on top of a snowy mountain inhabited by a white dragon who's pastime is kidnapping people for their hearts so he could purposefully overdose on longevity potions as a method of gaining power. After eliminating the dragon, we found the spring. I entered the spring with the Lyre, and that act repaired the lyre and finally removed the curse on myself. That was a few sessions ago, and I still have spent more sessions cursed than not.
One note is that curse was not a character creation quirk or twist. I "earned" that curse in gameplay about 2 or 3 sessions after he was introduced to the party. We were level 2 or 3 at the time.
We were in the Telben Woods at an abandoned logger's camp. This camp was next to a lake with a lone island containing a single ancient gnarled tree. That tree was covered in effigies. and some of our party went across the water to take a closer look.
Meanwhile, the rest of us circled the lake to come upon the abandoned camp where we found 3 hags that we hid from and tried to listen in on their conversations to gather information. We were found out, I was cornered, they took some of my blood because of it's celestial "flavour" (i'm an aasimar remember) and cursed me with boils and such.
They fashioned the blood mystically into a dagger they could use for their nefarious purposes. I survived that encounter with a curse that Remove Curse couldn't handle and those 3 hags got away with that dagger made with my blood.
Back at the island, the rest of our party messed with the ancient tree and ended up releasing Granny Mudgums from it which was her prison. She was trapped there by her own 3 daughters ages ago, which happens to be the same 3 that took my blood and cursed me. After this some things happened, and the tree was turned into a portal to a corrupted portion of the feywild that has been leaking it's corruption into the world slowly ever since.
Another note about this world is that without magic, the brightest the day ever gets is twilight. Ever since the Lightfall happened, the world is effectively in eternal darkness, and demons have been invading sporadically for various reasons ever since.
1:44 I believe Arboea was called Olympus in 1e. Some of the planes had different names.
Of the 3 campaigns I have played. Beyond the WitchLight is my FAVORITE!!!!!!!!
Witchlight stands as easily one of the best adventures that wotc ha put out. The layout, story, npcs, and dm and player tools are amazing and I think it could many peoples number 1 adventure.
Running it now, can’t agree more!
There are certain unspoken rules in many places in the feywild, one of which being the rule of reciprocity, or the "game of giving". Basically, when offered a gift, it's considered an insult to decline, and the receiver must offer something of equal(ish) value to the giver. One of my PC's is an eladrin, and gave away their smile.
So Seelie and Unseelie are exonyms. Thats' nifty
I watched a podcast d&d game based in the feywild before witchlight came out, they were going into the feydark to free a princess and in order to have an advantage in the darkness they had to capture sunlight in a tea cup. Felt it was very whimsical
I am going to be starting a fey wild campaign as the campaign after my current one. I have decided to hinge on markets and allow my players to buy tings that are unheard of "an ounce of depravity" or "a lock of Misery" or "a droplet of joy" and have them be actual items.
The story will use the idea that a Fey (who stole the item) escapes the wilds and before being pulled back in drops a vial of blue liquid, filled with a memory. Now without the vial being opened the memory will never come back and thus the being lost to time will never be let out. But whether its a player or an NPC to open the vial this is where my story will hinge. And my group can either follow suit or try and get out of the way. I will see where things go from here but I am excited for them to "fall into" the feywilds
For the Record! Long live the Wildriders, May Saim-Hann ride free!
Love the Eldar shirt
I really wanna buy the Witchlight. Thanks for talking about the Feywild man.
Found Wild Beyond the Witchlight at Walmart yesterday and grabbed it because of the discount, and I'm so glad. Been wanting to DM a published adventure again, and my old copy of 3.5's Expedition to the Demonweb Pits is more grimdark than Warhammer! I read the first chapter of Witchlight and can't wait to run it! It's just a fun, spectacular carnival for PCs, with just that slight undercurrent of dread and mischief. For me the highlight is the charming cast of NPCs. Really can't wait to start it. 😄
Started planning a campaign last year that takes place in The Labyrinth, was considering setting it in the feywild… think I need to go back to that idea
Nice history lesson
Good video
I'm running WBtW but in a kind of unique way. I'm blending it in with a trip to my own "Fey Realm" in my homebrew setting and only using the bits and pieces I need to flesh out their adventures. So for example I skipped the whole carnival part at the beginning and went straight into them meeting the unicorn who had her mate's horn stolen and used that as a hook. I think it actually works great this way. There are tons of encounters, but you don't have to use all of them, just pick and choose the ones that make sense for you. I think there's like a solid years worth of encounters in this book (if you play as infrequently as our group does anyhow (2x a month 3 hour sessions), so condensing it down to the very best bits, is a good choice for us.
I use the Feywilds to explain ADD.
"Excuse me! Can I have your attention, please?"
The party can't complete quests requiring any amount of focus, now.
Running in the established world and lore is so much better
Cody with the receipts!
Seelie and unseelie are mischievous and malicious, respectively. They’re the nobility of the fey.
The DMG says that the Seelie and Unseelie are not necessarily good or evil, which goes a bit against the trust or not trust explanation here, so this the idea I came up with. The difference between the two courts are what emotions and memories they consider beautiful, the Seelie think of "positive" emotions and memories as beautiful, and the Unseelie think of "negative" emotions and memories as beautiful.
What this means in practice is that a Seelie gathering is going to be super bright and fun, with loud music and dancing, where the members of the court want to give you drink amd party with them. But on a flip side they will probably be offended when a mortal cannot live up to their standards of partying, could force them to dance to exhaustion, and might trick mortals into trading their hapiest memories.
The Unseelie on the otherhand, think a bit like the Adam's family, they will be grim, but could actually friendly in that grimness, where they might love to talk to a mortal about all their sad experiences and as opposed to the seelie find delight in a damper put on things. What might put them in conflict with mortals more often is that their parties tend to turn into hunts, rather than delightful dancing, the idea of something running in fear is the entertainment. It could be up to an individual if the idea of trading away a bad memory might be a win-win.
My idea was having festive holidays be competition between reps of the two courts. On Christmas the Seelie has Santa that represents the idea of giving and rewarding, while the Unseelie have Krampus representing taking and punishing. Halloween has Samhain representing the Seelie who tries to spread pranks and sense of relief after realising a scare was fake, but the Unseelie has Pumpkin Jack who spreads true terror and fear of the unknown. Festivities on the mortal plane being general ideas of what mortals think placate these entities, but they are games for seeing how well the representatives of the courts can subtly influence mortals on these times that the Feywild is near.
The third group kind of like a court is Baba Yaga's, but not quite the same thing. The Seelie and Unseelie care about beauty, their difference being what they consider beautiful, both controlled by powerful archfey. But not every fey is beautiful, and not every ugly fey is evil and cares only about their own power and small covens. Baba Yaga being a hag like archfey provides her protection over many ugly creatures, which is sort of like an alliance that could oppose the two courts from going on a cleansing of ugly things and theoretically could help mortals. Their principles lie in the area of being humble, so they might trade in representations of making changes after learning a lesson, but could be super offended by perceived arrogance, and could be very like to curse a mortal with something ugly like a chicken hand or warts for being rude.
These were just my ideas of creating groups in the feywild that could be both good and bad by mortal standards, just having their own set of values.
My plan is to base my version of the feywild exclusively around the feel of it being a mirror of the prime material, just with more magic/vitality/etc. I'll have more nature "elementals" spawning there just show off just how much more intense everything is. PCs could even be able to do more while there until it causes mental strain from going 200% all of the time, requiring a short rest to get that energy back. Maybe you overshot a swing of your axe or that spell was wider range than expected, taking out an extra nearby enemy, but it tires you out sooner.
To contrast, I'm also reworking the shadowfell around the lore that claims it is the opposite, where features are drained/dampened. The monsters are chosen with this idea that everything else aside from the MOST intense part of a creature is now absent. Unlike the shadowsworn, this won't just be negative traits like "The Angry" but include monks, clerics, etc. being changed to "The Serene," "The Faithful," and more.
I personally like to play up the childish nature of the fey. For example, pinky-promises if broken might make a creature take damage similar to the Geas spell.
I also like the fact that sugar is like alcohol to them.
Parties are mandatory.
Are you going to be doing more player role combat videos like you did for Striker and Healer?
I would really benefit from this video back when my players went into the feywild in my home game, as there's not much info on the feywild out there. What I did was base my version of the feywild pretty much on narnia. So lots of satyrs, centaurs, witches, talking animals, gnomes and such. I also watched Frozen and other fairy tale movies as inspiration.
Get Shadow of the Demon Lord’s expansion book. I think it is called Terrible Beauty. It will vastly improve your fae world building.
I can't be the only suoer nerd who wants to use this to make a dresden-files-esque adventure. With the summmmer and winter courts.
Maybe two members of the party get conned into becoming the summer and winter knights. Then they have to try to work together to foil the plans of the queens. The queens impose their will on their knights at inopportune times though, and the knights need to find clever ways to technically fulfill their queens bidding without screwing eachother
In my campaign, Elves are fae creatures that were trapped within the planet during its creation (lifted from White Wolf's EXALTED ttrpg). Most fae spirits trapped at that time were obliterated when they emerged into the stabilising force that binds the material plane (as that force opposes that energy of pure chaos the fae normally thrive in). Elves avoided this fate by taking on a semi-mortal form.
At the end of a normal elven "lifespan" they travel down a fae pathway and live in the Seelie courts until they feel ready to return to the Prime Material plane. They then wake up as young, naked elves in a forest somewhere and are guided to elven settlements by friendly forest folks. They have no memories of their past lives or their time in the Seelie court, except when they go into Reverie.
There are a finite number of elves. If an Elf dies on the material plane, it's spirit hangs around until an elf has sex and only then can an elven woman conceive a child. Elves rarely conceive and a pregnancy is a precious, celebrated thing.
Elven women have been known to get particularly thirsty after a big battle!
I know people like the knights and swords sort of fantasy but I really am a sucker for the chaos of fairies and glitter
I don’t know that I’ll end up doing a whole campaign there but maybe take some players through as a side mission for their greater goal
It is against the law of the Fay wild to tie your crocodile to a grand father clock on a Tuesday between childhood and adulthood...
For my rule, inspired by a Tumblr post on sleeping beauty, if you invite any Fae from the Seelie Court to any party, celebration, or gathering you msut invite an equal number from the Unseelie and vice versa. Otherwise they will interpret the invitation as picking a side in the war between the Courts and that will open you up to reprisals.
I really like what you brought up with Fey Crossings. I might use that planar travel as a way to shift my players to a new setting. We are not big fans of The Word Coast.
I don't like the Word Coast either, and the Number Coast is a bore....
I'll show myself out.
@@mikegould6590 gotta love autocorrext plus hurried typing at lunch.
How do you know what Fey to trust? The simple answer is none of them. They tend to like to twist words almost like devil's but where devil's are malicious in their intent, Fey just do it for giggles and amusement. I like the rule from the Dresden files (a great inspirational source for people looking at the Fey folk especially the courts) that if you can get a Fey to promise you the same thing 3 times they are bound to the oath not just the words but the spirit too. Of course this will typically make them mad and they have centuries to get back at you.
Fun fact! Dryads are often normal fey being punished for loving a mortal by binding them to trees, according to the 5e monster manual
I soooo miss Planescape, berk! With the Lady of Pain in the center of the cosmos, lol. And Woodland Stride hapless against Razorvine. Endless sources of adventure in the Outlands... all the goodies & baddies in one contiguous area.
For a game I'm running, the party had met a fey of sorts early on who runs a shop and realized it mid way through the journey. Found out also that he's been spying on them to make a book based off their adventures, plans to sell it for the fey queen. He's very much what you expect from a fey, taking deals and asking for very specific things.
Now... this same fey I introduced was going to give the fey queen a cookie, one he has been making for years in advance with the freshest ingredients, had nothing to do with the party whatsoever. Wasn't planning on doing anything plot related. I kid you not, the party was taking care of a young kid in the same town as the fey and one of them figured, "A cookie should do the trick! Kids love cookies!" The wizard used summon object to make whatever object he wants come straight to him (I believe that's the spell's name).
I was speechless and thought, "Huh?! Uh.... okay." The cookie appeared in the wizard's hands and the fey's shop emitted a loud crash and scream. The party freaked out and ran to him only to find he was standing there speechless like myself with an empty plate and a cup of milk. Explaining the situation, the party winced and thought of ways to help with the fey's gift to the queen. That's when the party artificer just said in a smug tone. "Oh just give me to her." The party laughed, the fey laughed, the trees soon laughed and they were then in the feywild. Because the fey took him on that deal.
4:26
It's a bit more complicated then that.
Think the summer vs the winter court...
I am playing a totally homebrew game and the Feywild is basically the place the the Fey rediscovered after turning their homeworld into a massive city. Its where they cross to be with nature and has its own, super old school laws. after the material fey vanished, the Fey of the Feywild have combined the old school ways of the ancient Fey and the wild magical and societal advances of their planar forebears. They occupy 4 seasonal points and have avoided the need to take over the material plane with their superior understanding of magic with a combination of superstition, plenty of overlapping contracts, and constant bickering between the 4 courts.
Unrelated, but that's a really cool shirt! Is that your merch?