D&D 5E Everything You Need To Know About Witchlight

Todd Kenrick posted a video summarizing a press conference which listed many of the things you need to know about The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. The video is below, but I've bullet-pointed the key items if you can't watch it right now.

• The Witchlight carnival is a mirror of the carnival in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. Shadar Kair are in charge of the feywild carnival and someone else in charge of the Ravenloft carnival. If these two carnivals meet the ownership shifts again and it is part of the plot that Mr Witch and Mr Light do not want to trade the carnival back.
• The carnival will go to multiple worlds. Inspiration actually came from things like Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes; Mr Light is a reflection of Mr Dark from that movie.
• There's a map of the Witchlight carnival laid out like an amusement park map.
• Time is a component of the adventure. Time moves very differently in the feywild and the shadowfell. Expect time hijinks!
• The Witchlight carnival is a way of getting into the feywild itself.
• There are domains much like the dread domains but these are called domains of delight. Each is controlled by an archfey that has power over each of these domains.
• Some art included the Palace of Hearts of Desire, and they showed a treant called Little Oak who has a tree house built into his back and children live in that tree house, plus a displacer beast kitten named Star.
• This adventure will be a very light hearted. Any challenge in this book can be solved with combat but also in a non violent way. Talking your way out of things etc.
• The carnival has attractions and NPCs like a mermaid, a mime named kendlefoot, a Kenku that's up to to to to no good. Also classic characters from the D&D animated series. On the map there is a rollercoaster identical to the rollercoaster in the intro to D&D the animated series. This can imply that that entire amusement park was the Witchlight carnival in disguise.
• Playtesters loved the game you can play in the carnival.
• There's 'custard damage'.
• Player options include new backgrounds. The Feylost and Witchlight Hand. Plus the fairy and herangon (rabbit folk) races.
• Warduke, Strongheart, and Kellek from the cartoon.

 

[LordEntrails]

Any info on the level range for the adventure?

 

[Parmandur]

Any info on the level range for the adventure?

1-8

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I'm amused that this adventure is both apparently more kid friendly but also apparently features Iggwilv, author of the Demonomicon and on-again-off-again lover of Graz'zt, Demon Prince of Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll.

 

[R_J_K75]

I'm only buying this if there's a Carnie NPC who has a heart tattoo with an arrow through it that says "MOM" underneath it. Their special attack, Jack Daniels Breath. What respectable PC would get on that roller coaster after a guy like that showed up into your town and put it together in under a half hour, "Eh she's only missing a few nuts and bolts, no biggie".
Seriously the roller coaster seems like its pushing it a bit for my tastes. I'm sure there's good stuff to be used but I don't see our group running the adventure, most likely cherry pick things here and there.

 

[bedir than]

I love that map style

 

[Remathilis]

A tribute to SWTWC and connected to Ravenloft's carnival?

Sure WotC, take my money.

 

[Sonny]

• There's 'custard damage'.

Finally, I can run my game set in the Moonsea city of Phlan.

 

[Zaukrie]

While I will be surprised if I buy this, I love they are doing a "light" mirror of Ravenloft. Great idea.

 

[ART!]

I have never bought a hardcopy of a 5E book, but this might be my first.

The great thing about "more lighthearted" is that it's super-easy to push that right into "twisted and scary".

 

[Hexmage-EN]

While I will be surprised if I buy this, I love they are doing a "light" mirror of Ravenloft. Great idea.

Kind of curious how the Prince of Frost (one of the few archfey mentioned in 5E so far) fits into the new "Domain of Delight" paradigm, given the description of his realm from the Forgotten Realms wiki:

The Prince of Frost ruled over the Vale of Long Night in the Feywild. It was a place where the sun never rose and the moon never set, a frigid place where the snow never melted and the trees were eternally covered in frost. Barren orchards and ruined farms there reflected the fears of mortal farmers. A glacier rose to the north, and a vast, ever-frozen lake stretched across the south. The wind seemed to sing a song of pain and loss, and the cold seemed to reach through one's body to freeze even their dreams. The Pale Prince ruled the Vale from his Fortress of Frozen Tears, a citadel which was supposedly constructed out of frozen tears of sorrow. Within it, he kept a number of frozen mortals that he had turned into ice statues.

It goes on to say that it was once an idyllic place, so it could be spun as a corrupted "Domain of Delight", I suppose.