Nov 10, 2025
New D&D Campaign
Nov 10, 2025
New D&D Campaign
Wilds Beyond the Witchlight!
I've been playing D&D with my partner and our university friends for nearly a decade now. It's been really nice as a way to have some reoccurring social time with some low-stakes gaming. We've mostly been playing through some official v5 D&D ruleset campaign books, since I'm a very lazy forever DM, and I don't mind running them. While sometimes I wish I could be a player in a campaign, I'd probably miss knowing the full story and getting to do all the silly NPC voices. We're all adults with jobs and stuff going on these days, so we maybe get to get everyone together once a month if the fates are generous, but it's a good chance to catch up, make some food, and play pretend with rules.
So, we started up a new campaign with my yesterday! As per usual, I'll be running the campaign as the DM. This time, my friends wanted to play something a bit lighter than the scary gothic vampire/horrorfest that Curse of Strahd was, so we landed on Wilds Beyond the Witchlight. We're getting with the times and updated to use the new 5.5 ruleset for D&D, mostly because the online resources all switched over, so it's a bit easier if I do the same. I'm not super familiar with the feywilds or fairy-adjacent stuff, but it seems mostly kinda cute and a little sinister, which I think I'll be able to pull off.
We got our first snow of the season yesterday to, so we ended up taking transit over to our friends' house instead of the usual nice long walk. It was pretty gross out! We mostly hung out and ate from charcuterie boards for the first couple hours while we discussed character concepts and rolled up stats. I offer my players a choice between 4d6 drop lowest, and standard point buy for genning stats, and as usual, my friends all preferred rolling for stats. They tend to like how that ends up with way more polarized stats, leading to weirder characters than just jotting down the standard array.
After a bit, we got the characters all sorted out. Our cast of party-members for this campaign is:
I think they got a pretty fun dynamic going already, so I'm excited to see where my players take their characters.
We ended up going with the Lost Things campaign hook to get things started, with each of them having lost something at the carnival 8 years prior. Hemlock can't keep a secret, Bramblewine can't get any new artistic ideas, and Snuffy lost a stuffed red ball. We don't know what Red lost yet, mostly because Red doesn't really know what he lost either. After a short wait in line where Red learned the concept of waiting in lines thanks to a few large carnies, they got in.
Red immediately picked up the scene of food and got into a fairy cake eating content. He gorged himself and managed to eat like, 8 cakes before becoming a custard-covered lizard too stuffed to move, but that was good enough to win the contest, which got him another fancy cupcake of invisibility as a prize. Then, they hit up the lost property wagon in search of their lost concepts of self/missing red ball. A talking displacer beast was there taking care of some kids, and they helped him out by finding one of them that ran off.
Low on leads, they decided to just check out a bunch of carnival attractions, starting with a Snail race. It was a very close race, with Red and Bramblewine neck and neck for most of the race. At the last minute, the cheering of the crowd spurred on Bramblewine's snail to victory, nabbing a potion of advantage for the big prize, while everyone else got the magical equivalent of some sparklers.
Next, they checked out the Mystery Mine, a scary rollercoaster that looked pretty entertaining. They all peered into a wizard's orb before getting on which divined their biggest creature fears. Those fears were:
They had some scares and some good laughs, but nobody got too spooked, so a good time was had by all (though Hemlock declared that rollercoasters were "a menace to society").
Next, they went to the Bubble-Pop Teapot, and engaged in some wordplay with the goblin attendant there, charming him into getting a few pouches of protective herbs before hopping into the bubbles for a bubble ride. Bramblewine lost control of his bubble and just kinda landed back outside the entrance, Hemlock tried steering it over to the staff-only area, and turned back when she discovered it was covered by brambles, and Snuffy flew over to the Pixie Village attraction. Red was distrustful of being stuck in a bubble, so he just kinda followed Hemlock's bubble from the ground. They all met up back at the Pixie Village.
Snuffy hopped on in and was quickly followed by Hemlock who wanted to keep an eye on him. The others decided to wait outside, since this attraction seemed pretty childish to them. Inside, during a round of hide and seek, they learned a bit of gossip from the pixies about a kenku troublemaker, a budding romance between a mermaid and a mime, and about a bugbear that loves philosophy.
Finally, they checked out the Hall of Illusions, where they saw a halfling try to propose to his girlfriend in front on a cursed glass cabinet that caused his girlfriend to keel over in magical laugher. Saddened, he ran into the Hall without getting his ticket punched, so they went after him to see if he was ok. On the way, they encountered the aforementioned mime, who was working as the ticket-puncher for the Hall. After a few minutes of me doing my best miming/charades, they learned that he lost his voice trying to propose to the mermaid, when the kenku came by and stole his voice. No leads yet on where that kenku went off to though!
In the Hall, they saw a bunch of mirrors that showed them aging and getting younger. They managed to shake the halfling out of his stupor before he followed a spooky pig-masked girl's reflection in one of the mirrors into the mirror. Definitely getting the feeling that something weird is going on at the carnival now! They escorted the halfling out, where he made a successful proposal to his girlfriend, and that's about where we ended the session for the day. Next session's gonna start off with a big-top extravaganza, so that'll be fun.
It was a really fun day. Lots of good food and fun roleplaying. Also, their cat hopped up on the table and sat on the map a couple times, which was equal parts cute and annoying, in that usual feline kinda way. This campaign seems to have a lot more of a focus on non-combat encounters, and has a nice story tracker in the back of the book, so it's a really nice change of pace I think. Not going to get into spoilers, but I'm excited for the plot to pick up soon, since this first session was pretty light and mostly kind of introductory for the tone/feel of the setting I think. Looks like we'll probably run the next session in a couple weeks, so I'm already looking forward to it!