How to Make the Fey Less Twee

[Shiroiken]

Unlike some prior editions, fey are not really the cutesy woodland spirits (although there are some for sure). Hags are fey, for example. Dark fey are a thing, and I suggest checking out Tome of Beasts (3PP) for great new evil/dark fey creatures.

My next adventure involves going into a fey forest. I won't go into details (at least one of my players periodically reads the forums), but it won't be cute. They already know about the grugarch, which are neutral xenophobic elves that generally attack/kill outsiders on sight. They previously met centaurs on the outskirts of the forest, warning them that the fey in the deep parts of the forest are not to be trifled with. I have a handful of encounters ready that will teach them to respect the fey, if they don't already. Oh, and those are the "good" fey...

 

[practicalm]

Some other sources of good Fey stories

Fairy Tale by Raymond E. Feist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faerie_Tale
The Fey steal children and in general they don't come back
Fairy Tales were often rules about how to avoid offending the Fey and survive them

Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale https://blackholly.com/books/tithe-modern-faerie-tale/
Another example of what happens when mortals get wrapped up in the affairs of the Fey.

Duty, bargains, and truth but from a different point of view are all fun elements of messing with mortals.

 

[Dax Doomslayer]

Kobold Press Wrath of the River King is a pretty good fey adventure without it being silly or light. I liked this adventure and it was updated to 5E.

 

[77IM]

The White Walkers could be interpreted as fey-like. (Really, the supernatural creatures of folklore defied easy classification that would distinguish "fey" from "demon" from "undead" from "whatever the hell the White Walkers are.")

 

[Immortal Sun]

How can I make the fey into something they'd actually respect? Either as adversaries or as allies.

Respect, or fear?

Do you want your players to see some fae and run away screaming? Do you want them to pay humble respects in the presence of fae?

It's not terribly difficult to present horrifying creatures, but it is difficult to get people to take horror seriously. It's a problem I've had attempting to run Ravenloft and CoC. There's no giant flesh-eating, mind-warping monster in front of their faces to truly terrorize them, it's just words and your attempt to describe the indescribable and it's difficult to describe the indescribable without making it sound silly. Like, have you ever looked at pictures of great old ones? It's more goofy than it is terrifying. Granted in person it would be terrifying. But as a picture or a description they're all well...pretty describable.

I think this puts it best:

Fey are powerful, irresponsible, and unaccountable. Most common folk should be and would be terrified of them.

Fae, true fae, not faeries or elves or redcaps or boggarts, but true fae are semi-phenomenal nearly-cosmic beings. Their power is limited only by the fact that they tend to only use it to entertain themselves, and they bore quickly, and that boredom manifests as untold cruelties upon their targets. And noone shy of gods has the power to stop them (and none of them really have any interest), which makes the subject doubly horrible, not only are you tortured for an eternity by a giddy fae, but your god won't help you.

The fae, in many respects, operate on the blue/orange alignment spectrum.

The true fae are hard to run, they're exceedingly inhuman and we are only human.

Alas, such are the imperfections of flesh.

 

[Ath-kethin]

Unlike some prior editions, fey are not really the cutesy woodland spirits (although there are some for sure). Hags are fey, for example. Dark fey are a thing, and I suggest checking out Tome of Beasts (3PP) for great new evil/dark fey creatures

+1 on the Tome of Beasts. I really didn't care for it at first, since its creatures are often more mechanically complicated than those in the Monster Manual, but boy have I changed that tune. And there are a bunch of cool fey creatures in there.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The Gentleman from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (novel & miniseries) is another classic style fey. One-sided bargains and cruel tricks galore.

Mr. Gold/The Dark One from the TV series Once Upon A Time... is cut from the same cloth. Yes, it’s a lighthearted series overall, but he’s incredibly powerful, narcissistic, and the prime mover or catalyst behind nearly everything that goes wrong.

 

[Seramus]

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is actually a pretty epic D&D story about the Fey.

You can also draw inspiration from Changeling: The Lost. That source book goes into great detail about some extremely dark and monstrous fey. Arcadia is a terrifying place.

 

[Raith5]

I havent thought of fey as cute or twee for quite a awhile. Fey in 4e were quite alien in terms of motivation and scary in terms of ability in our campaign - I think the lore in that addition had a great range of darker story potential. I also quite liked the WItcher 3 computer game which took a darker Slavic slant to "fairy tales" in some of its story.

 

[ad_hoc]

While the entire adventure doesn't have to be there (but could), a trip to the Feywild would help a lot.

Make the Feywild itself a character. The first reference that comes to mind is the 2018 movie Annihilation. They pass through a prism where the land has been changed and only gets stranger the deeper they go. Some of the abnormalities are beautiful and others are nightmare fuel.