The Wild Beyond the Witchlight was released three and a half years ago in September 2021 and was something of novelty for Wizards of the Coast, especially coming on the back of Rime of the Frostmaiden and Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, two quite dark and horror-themed sourcebooks. Witchlight promised to be the exact opposite, a low-level romp through the Feywild filled with wonder and whimsy, with the intriguing premise that it was possible to complete the entire adventure without combat—more on this later. My group had just played through Curse of Strahd, so we were ready for something a bit more light-hearted, even silly. And reading through the adventure before play, I was very much excited by it.
If you don’t know—and no spoilers—the story of Witchlight revolves around the Feywild realm of Prismeer, a ‘domain of delight’ in the same way that Barovia is a domain of dread. Prismeer’s ruler, Zybilna, has disappeared, and the realm has been split between three hags known as the Hourglass Coven. The characters must travel between the three ‘splinter realms’—delightfully named Hither, Thither, and Yon—before journeying to the Palace of Heart’s Desire, a fairytale castle, to reverse whatever has happened to Zybilna and put things back to normal.
The adventure’s influences are palpable: the biggest are probably Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, but there’s also a dash of The NeverEnding Story, a bit of Studio Ghibli, elements of Labyrinth and Narnia, and of course the well-known fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, and others. It’s a fun mix. It’s a shame to me, though, that the adventure doesn’t lean a bit darker. In many traditional folk stories, the world of fairy can be a somewhat sinister and unsettling place—Tolkien calls it ‘the perilous realm’—full of creatures like the redcap, kelpie, nuckalavee, and shellycoat. I would like to have seen more of this in Witchlight, and at times it can all feel a bit . . . Disneyfied?
The best part of the adventure is unquestionably how it starts. Players can spend a session or two exploring the Witchlight carnival where there are tons of fun NPCs, mini-games, puzzles, and surprises. It’s a hoot. As one of my friends on BlueSky said, it’s so good that the players don’t want to leave. It is also, sadly, the most open-ended part of the adventure, and it starts to feel increasingly railroaded hereafter. Each realm consists of two or three key locations, a hag lair, and some random encounters, and while I love the creativity of the individual sites, the outcomes start to feel extremely predetermined. There’s little sense that one group’s experience of the adventure will be much different to any other’s.
Take the hags: Bavlorna, Skabatha, and Endelyn, each with a lair that captures their unique character. The hags have stolen things from the players when they were children, which is a great concept, but when the players eventually meet each of the three sisters, the structure of the encounters are dispiritingly formulaic. Each hag essentially wants the party to do a couple of chores for her before she will give them what they need, and my players got wise to this very quickly. ‘Find my cat!’ ‘Steal a painting!’ It’s surprisingly unimaginative for an adventure otherwise overflowing with creativity. And there aren’t really alternatives to this approach unless you are prepared to completely rewrite the adventure. All this ends up making the hags less frightening, less fey, and less interesting.
Speaking of NPCs, this is both a strength and a drawback of the adventure. A strength, in that, individually, the non-player characters are memorable and a lot of fun, like Sir Talavar, a fairy dragon knight, and Mudlump, a cyclopean beekeeper. But there are too damn many of them, and it’s nigh impossible to work out on a first read which ones matter and which ones don’t. In particular, there are two rival adventuring groups, Valor’s Call and the League of Malevolence, who are not very interesting and simply don’t need to be there. (On a side note, why does WotC keep returning to a not particularly successful cartoon from the 1980s to market their products? Very few of its players will remember it, and many of those who do would rather they didn’t.)
We should also address the lack of combat in the adventure. It’s definitely something you want to make the group aware of in a session zero, but even then, I wonder if players appreciate what they are buying into. D&D is inherently combat-driven. It’s there in the ruleset. Take away the chance for players to roll initiative and deal damage, and you are left with utility spells and constant skill checks. My group loves exploration and social interaction—but we love combat, too. And I think it’s fair to say that we are looking forward to a new campaign where we get to use more of our character sheet again.
So, the big question: do I recommend Witchlight? Yes—but with some serious reservations. I love the flavour, the premise, the art, the maps. The NPCs, with the exception of the rival adventuring parties, are fab. The Witchlight Carnival is one of the best campaign starts I’ve ever seen. And we have had a lot of fun! I kept a record of what I would rate each session out of ten, and we averaged around 7.3. That’s a good score!
But . . . I haven’t enjoyed it as much as Curse of Strahd, Tomb of Annihilation, Dragon Heist, or Dungeon of the Mad Mage. If I was going to do a tier ranking, I would put it in B-tier—fun, but flawed—which is a shame, because it feels like an adventure with the potential to be S-tier. How much you enjoy the adventure will depend considerably on the group you are playing with. Some will love it; some, I am sure, would hate it. It is also horribly overwritten, as I have covered elsewhere. Trimmed back, it might have been better served as an alternative starter set à la Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak. Next session, our 13th, is probably going to be our last, and for a $50 hardback of 250-plus pages, this feels underwhelming.
Ultimately, The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is a charming, creative, even beautiful adventure, but it never quite reaches its full potential. Still: I hope WotC takes us back to the Feywild someday, only next time, perhaps with a bit less railroading.
★★★☆☆