D&D 5e Goes Wild Beyond the Witchlight - Review

The new D&D 5E book is The Wild Beyond the...

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This sounds cool.

I think I might be the only person who actually kind of appreciates the way WotC writes adventures. They tend to provide the stuff I hate to create as a GM, things like world details and so forth. Of course the only one I’ve run to completion is Tomb of Annihilation, and it definitely required a lot of me as a DM, but it was the kind of work I didn’t mind doing.

That said my experience as a player with Dragon Heist was…not the best. So what do I know?

I think I can file this review under the "Damning with faint praise" header

I could tell this was not for me just from the cover. While I'm not inherently adverse to more "role playing" oriented stuff that is the easy thing for me to come up with organically during play. A "Something Wicked this way comes" or even a "Needful Things" type adventure could be cool but 5e isn't the system I'd want for that type of thing.

I like the concept of this adventure, but it sounds more aspirational than actual, like a flashy fey cantrip. When I purchase an adventure that is ready to run, I tend to do a fair amount of additional prep. When I purchase a half-baked adventure, it tends to gather dust until I maybe eventually pilfer a map or a few ideas for something else. I thought that I read somewhere recently that D&D 5e now offers adventures that can be resolved without combat, and I think there is probably a decent market for that sort of thing, theoretically producing sessions that are more focused on role-playing and story-telling and less on power-gaming and murder-hoboing.

And players too. If the players don’t have buy-in to this kind of thing it’s gonna go south. I saw one review that said it was “best for drama students” or something like that. That is a pretty good assessment.

It’s had a lot of really good stuff going on, but like Jason suggests and what I alluded to I’m not sure that 5e is where I want to have this kind of game. Troika! For example is way looser and does this kind of thing better

It is pretty weird that this is the book they brewing back Warduke in.

Theater Kid D&D

Wilds beyond the Witchlight, aka 'Better hope Charisma wasn't your dump stat!'

I like the concept it looks cool

I must have misread because you mentioned Warduke and then never brought him up again.

Greater disappointment I haven’t known

Alternatively, it might be your best review because the mention of Warduke

He’s got a full stat lock and a cool picture!

That alone might push to get this damn thing

“Prepare for Whimsy” is a phrase that fills me with apprehension.

In theory I like a D&D that draws more on the lighthearted weird than the aggressively edgy. In practice “whimsy” often means “tryhard random” because it’s divorced from the fairy tale logic that ties it together.

Well. I would say that this is more successful than you might think- it really captures a dark fairy tale like atmosphere quite well (once again, provided you have the buy-in).

I wouldn’t accuse it of try hard to be honest, I think it does work as written and it does get across a different tone. You know what, in a way or reminds me at least a little of Castle Amber, how it went in a very different kind of direction at its time.

I kind of feel like the carnival part is almost a separate module…if it were 1981, the carnival would be like WW1 and the three realms would be WW2, 3, and 4 to create the WW series.