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Dungeons and Dragons is packed with amazing ideas and solid worldbuilding that help players and dungeon masters create an epic adventure that transports them to the lands of the Forgotten Realms.
Since it’s mostly ready-made and has a ton of beginner adventures available, most beginner campaigns start in the Forgotten Realms.
And many of them stay there.
As big as the Sword Coast can feel, there’s more to Dungeons and Dragons than Waterdeep. If you and your D&D group are getting bored of killing trolls in the Forgotten Realms, you may want to consider playing in the Feywild.
What and Where Is the Feywild?
Though most campaigns happen in the Forgotten Realms, Dungeons and Dragons actually has multiple settings that are interconnected but separate from each other.
An easy, and grossly oversimplified, way to imagine it is to think of how the Nine Realms work in Norse mythology. You can think of the Material Plane where the Forgotten Realms is located as Earth/Midgard.
Outside of that, you have the Feywild, a plane of existence that is fueled by wild magic and exists parallel to the Material Plane. Unlike Curse of Strahd‘s Barovia, which is a separate demiplane with its own geographic features, the Feywild is an “echo” of the Material Plane.
Because of this, certain locations in the Feywild look like ones in the Material Plane except they’re twisted by the primal magic of the realm.
That said, there’s no exact consensus on what the Feywild is and how it functions beyond the basic information we just went over. D&D reimagines the plane several times throughout its many editions, and while it’s frustrating to keep track of, it certainly fits the overall theme of the place.
So, what is the overall theme of the Feywild? One thing to keep in mind when running a campaign within the Feywild is that it more or less follows faerie folklore conventions such as:
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- Time flowing slower or faster in the Feywild than in the “real world.”
- The fae being unable to tell outright lies but still being experts at deception through misleading words or lying by omission.
- True name magic, an ancient folkloric trope that gives anyone who knows your real name magical power over you.
- Eating food from the Feywild traps you within the plane.
Setting a D&D Adventure in the Feywild
If you’ve decided to set your campaign in the Feywild, the next step is to figure out how your adventuring party ends up there.
You could be inhabitants of the Feywild, great beauties or artists who have been kidnapped by their fae admirers, or unfortunate souls that stumble into the Plane of Faerie through a Fey crossing.
Fey crossings are places where the planes converge or where the “veil” between planes is thinnest. Places like Evermeet, Evereska, and New Sharandar straddle the borders of reality between the Feywild and the Material Plane.
Geographic and Temporal Inconsistencies
The Feywild is fraught with dangers. While places like Strixhaven’s university of magic and Ravnica have predictable geography despite not being part of the Forgotten Realms, the Feywild throws all logic out of the window.
Its main gimmick is that the regular rules of D&D reality don’t apply which is why walking around a pond can take days while climbing a mountain may take minutes.
The plane’s unpredictability is because it doesn’t just reflect the Material World from a single realm or point in time, but all of them at the same time.
Attempting to make a map of the Feywild, should your players be daring enough, will only end in disappointment or, if you’re a forgiving DM, a map that only works at a certain time of day.
For all its horrors, though, the Feywild is still a place teeming with flora and fauna that is more breathtaking than anything seen in the Material Realm. But its most beautiful inhabitants are also its most dangerous ones.
The Seelie and Unseelie Courts
The Feywild is host to several groups of fae that are effectively the plane’s only form of government.
Again, there are no set rules for how you should create a fae court, however, many DMs prefer having four courts with each court representing a season. This is in line with the nature themes of the Feywild.
If you want to have more material to work with, you might want to go with the classic Unseelie Court and Seelie Court divisions.
The Seelie Court, sometimes called the Summer Court, is the court of Queen Titania and King Oberon. Their association with light and growth means that they’re often associated with a good or neutral alignment.
On the other hand, you have the Unseelie Court which is ruled by the Queen of Air and Darkness. The Unseelie Court is associated with darkness, winter, and decay, which is why it also gets equated with evil.
But if that’s too simplistic for you, you can make both courts truly chaotic neutral or beyond our typical understanding of morality.
Locations in the Feywild
The Feywild is a constantly shifting plane. Be that as it may, it does have a few canon locations that exist in the Feywild or the Material Plane and the Feywild at the same time. Many of these places are located in the Moonshae Isles which are located west of the Sword Coast.
For DMs reading this, here are the places you can take your players to:
- Karador: The capital city of Sarifal. Ruled by the fey queen Ordalf, Karador is a home for elves away from humans. It can shift between the Material Plane and the Feywild.
- Cendriane: An ancient eladrin city that was abandoned in the wake of the war between the eladrin and the drow.
- The Feydark: The Feywild’s version of the Underdark.
- Evermeet: The “last” true elven kingdom of the Forgotten Realms. It’s D&D‘s analog of Lord of the Ring‘s Valinor.
- Nachtur: An underground goblin kingdom that exists solely in the Feywild.
- Brokenstone Veil: A valley of forests and castle ruins located in the Feywild.
If you’re a player, you can either have your character come from one of these locations or choose from a number of other ways to connect your character to the Feywild.
Connecting a Character to the Feywild
Be a Fae Creature
Obviously, the easiest and coolest way to connect your character to the Feywild is by making them a fae creature and chances are, you’re already playing one right now.
With how often elves are treated as pointy-eared humans, it’s easy to forget that they’re fae creatures themselves, hence their Fey Ancestry feat.
If you want to play a character who’s a little more otherworldly, you’ll have to settle for the Eladrin variant of elves or one of the Unearthed Arcana fey races.
Eladrin are the elven natives of the Feywild. Their separation from their Material Plane cousins has resulted in them being more like nature spirits than the elves we often meet in Faerun. They are divided into Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter variants.
Eladrin sometimes make appearances in the Material Plane in places far from civilization.
Unearthed Arcana adds more options in the form of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Owfolk.
Be a Warlock and Take the Pact of the Archfey
Warlocks are frequently depicted as dark, gloomy servants of demonic creatures, but one of the paths available to them is to serve an Archfey.
Warlocks who make a pact with an Archfey, such as Queen Titania, the Queen of Air and Darkness, and the Prince of Frost, gain fae-like powers regardless of their race.
There’s also a lot of potential for your character’s backstory here. Fae are known for their mischievous ways and in folklore, they get humans in heaps of trouble either directly or through their games.
If your warlock serves an Archfey, ask yourself why.
Be a Druid and Join the Circle of Dreams
Okay, maybe it’s not the most ideal option since Circle of Dreams druids have access to less powerful spells compared to the ever-popular Circle of the Moon druid. But being a Circle of Dreams druid connects you to the Fae plane which is said to be not just a reflection of the Material Plane, but its dream.
Dungeons and Dragons Adventures to Get You Started On Your Journey Through the Feywild
Have no fear, dungeon masters. You won’t have to write a fae-themed adventure from scratch nor do your own worldbuilding if you use a pre-made adventure.
Sure, there aren’t a lot of options for D&D adventures set in the Feywild, but there are currently two free adventures from Wizards of the Coast that can help you get started.
Pixie Trouble
Pixie Trouble is an introductory adventure for 1st to 3rd-level player characters. The story starts with your adventuring party being called to help the residents of a small town find their missing children.
The module is great for familiarizing players with fae tropes like the dangers of straying from forest paths and child kidnappings. It also provides a relatively low-risk point of entry into the Feywild because the “antagonists” aren’t malicious in nature.
A Bargain With a Hag
Bargain With a Hag is suited for players with a little more experience. It’s designed for player characters from level 5th to 7th. The characters end up in the Feywild while searching for a magical item or spell ingredient.
The module lets you swap the quest item for just about anything, which makes it easier to interweave with an existing campaign if your players want to take a quick romp through the Feywild or get lost in the new plane entirely.
The adventure ends with a disastrous consequence that will follow your players into the Material Realm that can be used to incentivize players to return to the Feywild.
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight
If your players loved either of those introductory adventures, you can try setting them loose on the Feywild with The Wild Beyond the Witchlight.
This new D&D adventure brings your player characters into a “domain of delight” where a twisted circus awaits them.
You can find The Wild Beyond the Witchlight here.
Admittedly, this isn’t the most traditionally fae experience so if that’s what your D&D group is looking for, you’ll have no choice but to make your own homebrew adventure.
