D&D 5E What exactly is Feywild in your campaigns?

[Yaarel]

I think the difference is, the Feywild is not the same thing as reallife traditions about Jotunheimr, Alfheimr, the Faerie, and so on.

The D&D Feywild is more like an Elemental Plane of Plant, disconnected, and having nothing to do with the Material Plane. Thus the Feywild is irrelevant to nature.

By contrast, in the reallife traditions, the animistic regions are our material world. When one walks past Jotnar or Faeriefolk, they can see you, and a shaman with the Sight can see them. Animistic spirits ARE nature. They are the cliff, they are fertile land. They are not somewhere else in a separate plane. These natural features exist among us. And when the mind of a feature is itself a shaman, the feature can project its mind out from the feature to manifest elsewhere and influence elsewhere.

Thus, animistic regions are not some ideal version of nature. They are the same nature we see. When we see a barren landscape with a curious patch overgrown with plants, we know faeriefolk live there, being the fertile land where the plants are.

 

[Retreater]

You ... might want to look at some examples of Fey in use. They're powerful, and often incredibly irresponsible and selfish. They're the bright and cheery version of Hellraiser.

Or, I could just use the dark and scary version of Hellraiser?
I don't like putting frivolity and humor in my games intentionally. (There's plenty to get the characters off track, making out of character jokes, etc., without that.)

 

[Steampunkette]

In the Ashen Lands setting, the Fae Realms are a step to the left relative to our world.

Easily, and often unintentionally, accessible through natural entries like mushroom circles or leaving trails in Old Growth Forests, the Fae Realms largely mimic the lands of Iobaria in layout, but the inhabitants, and the dangers, are very different.

Currently, the Fae Realms are ruled by the Ash, the leader of the Old Court. But a new and upstart rival faction called the New Court has been trying to overthrow them for a thousand odd years or so. "New and Old" have -very- different definitions for the Fae. Speaking of old, Fae magic is a combination of Primal Power and Occult Magic from the dawn of existence. Representative things can have very real effects.

Want to stop a Fae running away from you but don't have a net? Just drive a Cold Iron nail into his Footprints in the trail and nail him to the ground. But be careful. The same can be done by them with your Shadow, or a doll with your likeness, or simply by asking for your name and taking it for themselves.

Contracts and Promises in the Fae Realms are quite -literally- binding. A Fae who makes a deal is spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, and often -physically- incapable of breaking that deal. But if you travel to those shrouded paths and shimmering meadows you'll find the same restrictions fall upon you. And failure to uphold a bargain can cause its most painful extraction from you and your future.

While the Fae themselves are the true rulers of these realms, much of the populace are animals given awareness by their strange masters. So if you should stumble upon a village of doormice neatly dressed in lovely clothes going about their business, or should hear the whispers of wolves discussing how best to take you down, it may behoove you to retrace your steps and find your way back to the world where you belong.

Expanding on my earlier post...

Last night I was going over the Vaktu Kai, the "Elder Things" which created the world of the setting with their dreaming. I came to the conclusion that the Fae Realms true purpose is super simple: Prison.

The Gods as mortals know them rose up against the Five Fates, the Vaktu Kai, in an attempt to seal them away in the Wasteland. For a time, this worked. Civilization flourished. But the Wasteland was broken from the start, and the Vaktu Kai broke lose, devastating the Gods and creating the Gods of Crisis (Deities that have no identity, no manifestations, no will, only a divine spark which offers succor to those in specific types of crisis), unintentionally, when the power of the Wasteland washed over some of the deities of the world and reduced them to their Quintessence.

So the Ash, one of the Gods, allowed the rest of the gods to bring the Five Fates into the Fae Realm he had created. And with a combination of Divine, Occult, and Primal magic the Five Fates are sealed away, for now. Their influence, however, is undeniable. Which is part of why the Representational Occult Magic is so strong in the Fae Realms.

So that's fun. >.>

 

[Bitbrain]

Reply to OP.

First, in the current version of my D&D cosmos, there is no single Feywild. Actually, there are four of them, one for each season. They are known as “season Courts” and each is quite different from the others.

If you want to have a really good time with the dryads and fauns, head over to the Spring Court.

If you want to fight fomorians and be rewarded for such by the eladrin, go to the Summer Court.

If it’s lost knowledge you seek (such as to fight some ancient, long forgotten evil back on the Material Plane), talk to the hsiao and brownies of the Autumn Court.

If you want to be in a supernatural horror and get chased by wendigoes, head over to the Winter Court.

 

[Sithlord]

Shadowfell in my games are just a realm in the shadow plane that borders the negative material plane. The feywild is a realm in the ethereal plane And ravenloft is still in the ethereal plane. Feywild is also another name for Avalon in my settings.

 

[Yaarel]

I am still intrigued by your post.

Just as Ghost are about memories and echoes of past loss for me Faerie is about the Dreams and the desire for future Being.
True Fey are formless beings of Passion and Longing in the process of gaining shape and substance. They are creatures of Phantasm, who respond to the expectations and desires of both the Observer and the Observed. Fey want to be real but are not part of reality. Thats why Faerie isnt about Magic, Magic has rules, Faerie is about Dreams

I reading this as both the Feywild and the Shadowfell are mindscapes (made out of subjective mental phantasms). One is a dreamscape, and one is a memoryscape. Perhaps the memoryscape is something like an archive.

The mind, mental, aspect interests me. I normally associate mental stuff with the "domains" of the Astral Plane", including the Wheel, which are mental ethical ideals, so that each alignment has a domain. But all of it is made out of mindstuff.

Yet, having the Feywild and Shadowfell be made out of mindstuff can make alot of sense.



In my campaign, I focus more on the ether as the fifth element, which is force (including gravity but by extension telekinetic force and magical energy). So, the Feywild is the magical energy that the Positivity energizes. And the Shadowfell is the magical energy that the Negativity unravels.



But if we are talking about mindscapes, then Fey is psychic/phantasmal at the threshold of Positivity and Shadow is psychic/phantasmal at the threshold of Negativity.



While I associate the ether with force because of certain reallife alchemical traditions, there are other alchemical traditions that identify ether with consciousness, mind, spirit, soul, and lifeforce.

Perhaps ether the fifth element is curious because it is at state of being that is simultaneously both mind and matter. There are alchemical traditions that are something like this.



Anyway your campaign got me thinking.

 

[Zardnaar]

Never used it.

 

[ccs]

In my games? The Feywild is definitely a place.
It gets talked about & hinted at a bit. Sometimes bits of it overlay the prime material for awhile. And supposedly the satyr tribes migrate back & forth to it seasonally. These comings & goings are often linked to wild bacchanals.
But to date I haven't run anything specifically set in it. Nor have my players ever shown any interest in traveling there.

 

[Quickleaf]

In my Khemti game, I'm treating the Feywild as largely a cyclical event tied with the flooding of the fantasy Nile River. Normally, the Feywild is relegated to the diminishing & forgotten Lands Within the Wind (borrowed from 4e Dark Sun) and is only accessible via oases. However, when the flood waters come, the Feywild bleeds into the landscape, so there is a profusion of fey & plant creatures, people go missing or reappear after being missing, animals might speak, strong dreams or visions may overcome sensitive folk, magically conjured food doesn't sate the appetite, etc.

 

[Yora]

In my campaigns, the world of nature spirits is not another dimension, but simply the untouched wilderness that covers most of the world. It's really the natural state of the world, with the realms of mortal civilization being special places that come into being by people imposing their order on the land and performing regular rituals to keep back the forces of eldritch chaos.
To travel to the lands of the spirits, you only have two walk for two or three days away from a city or major town.