Instructions unclear, my hag villain ate the ranger's baby sister before challenging the party to a dance off on frogs

awesome video!! i love the feywild. i avoid "too much whimsy" by making NPCs too self-absorbed to notice redcaps, hags, etc. the "only protagonists see the problem" trope can make anything scary. it works so well in horror and fairy tales alike because there's nothing as universally horrifying as facing a danger alone.

I like the idea of the immediate fey curse to indicate the favour or gift owed; I've long pondered how to make clear that the PCs have to repay a gift without having the fey say plainly "and now you owe me :)" Hair colour, eye colour, or their shadow could be taken away, or something relating to the fey could appear on the PC, like a flower that grows on their head (many favours owed makes a flower crown : D), or a symbol on the hand

Having lost/stolen children turn in to some sort of creature over time (like the kids turning in to Donkeys in Pinocchio) is a classic way of adding stakes/consequences in a Fey setting.

I've run Changeling the Lost for my friends so many times that they have a Pavlovian reaction to rings of mushrooms, odd reflections off a pond's surface, a strange light dancing across a mirror . . .

Pirates of the Caribbean and Treasure Island both had the "Curse of the Black Spot" trope... I did a variation of it as a curse for those who swear oaths to fey and then break them. Basically, I used a red spot on the face instead of a black spot on the hand to mark the bearer of the curse, and the oathbreaker is hunted by a Wendigo instead of the Leviathan.

So I really love Changeling the Dreaming and it really influences the way I view fae in D&D. In the game, the fae feed on awe, wonder and creativity, the dreams of mortal beings to be succinct. If you want to threaten the taken children but want to stay away from direct harm, you could have the fae farming them, putting them in situations to feed off of the emotions they produce. Gets real unsettling really fast, especially if you get some Unseelie fae that enjoy the taste of fear.

My players have, over the years, learnt that the Fey and the Feywild are completely alien and absolutely terrifying.

One of World of Darkness’s Changeling editions has shaped my approach to fey stories more than any other media. The game has players make characters who were stolen away by the fey and replaced with a changeling, then subsequently escaped. The advice they had on backstories boiled down to making them truly other, not necessarily malicious, but they don’t “get” humanity to such an extent that they often cause harm anyway and don’t really see us as sapient in the same way they are. By way of example, avoid: “I was taken for my beautiful singing voice and was prized by my fey keeper.” Better: “I was taken for my beautiful singing voice and was prized by my fey keeper. Like any prized instrument, once my performance was done, I was wrapped in soft velvet and locked away in a case to keep me safe. To this day, I cannot stand enclosed spaces.” The fey in that scenario wasn’t acting maliciously; they were just treating their prized instrument the way an instrument should be treated, and it’s not like instruments have need for space to roam. That’s kind of been my guiding approach ever since when I’m prepping for fey stories/encounters. They’re just so truly other and in many ways immutable (another characteristic of fey legends) that they have a tendency to cause a ton of harm and aren’t necessarily equipped to navigate fey-human interactions in a way that guarantees there’s not a bunch of broken people in their wake.

So I have given all three of the Hourglass Coven hags a reason to take children for their realms. And it is specifically *because* the children cannot be harmed in Prismeer that his benefits them. They have frozen Zybilna in time and as the realm dictates children cannot be harmed and Zybilna is the one who rescues them from the protective demi-plane they go to when actually harmed, I decided that the children wind up in this sort of limbo state. Until then however the Hags can utilize the children do their dirty-work for them to extremes as the definition of "harm" is loose at best. So long as the Coven frames the work they put the children to as "good" for them, then they don't come to "harm" and the children can work indefinitely, never aging, never tiring. I made it so that each Hag transforms the children into something else. Bavlorna turns them into tadpole-like creatures that she sets to swimming in this vast cauldron to forever churn the very potion she used to put Zybilna to sleep. Skabatha turns them into toys in a sort of Reverse Pinnochio scenario and then sets them to Toy Making in her factory. (Father Winter arrives to check on the progress of the toys they're making for this season's Solstice at one point). And Endelyn well... They haven't gotten to Yon yet so I have not yet decided how Endelyn uses the children. Perhaps she turns them into Goblin Stagehands or something. But the children coming to harm and being popped into a Limbo of neverending Nothing while Zybilna is unable to rescue them seems like a pretty horrifying consequence to me. And while children don't typically age in Prismeer, I made it so that the Getaway Gang had met my heroes early on as young children at the Carnival before sneaking off into the Feywild ahead of the heroes. Then, when they meet them later, they will be the pre-teen/teenage versions we see in the book and that will be due to them using Little Oak to hide in the In-Between mists of the three Realms and the resulting timey-wimey-ness causing time to move faster for them. But I digress. I think it's super interesting to think that the children winding up in this Limbo could also be beneficial for the Hourglass Coven. I'm thinking that Zybilna has a special cauldron that is where she retrieves the lost children from when they get stuck there and maybe this cauldron being full of lost children causes a sort of power overload that the Hags can siphon off of somehow.

there was a book by john ford called 'how much for just the planet' it was a star trek novel but it was a place using whimsey to keep peop;e poff balance while soemthing more ominous comes out

Great video!! I've always imagined that when the hags realized the law that protected children wasn't removed, even with Zybilna neutralized, they would explore how to make the kids suffer without harming them, so maybe terrible experiences and trauma is a key element in an environment where fey allegedly won't "harm" you

Yes, fairy tales *always* have happy safe endings. That's like one of my favorite movies, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Backers. 👍 I like this courtyard, btw. We should come here more often.

Congratulations on 100 videos and 4.5k subs. Totally awesome! Keep grinding. :)

Yesss I think this is so important! I run several feywild games and looove the moment realize fey can terrifying!

I have seen so many of your feywild videos, now I finally understood one can have their own little niche, and that's just fine. :) I will go create something with snow, warm furs and cruel women, like the Frostwild Virago which you showed me.

Great video as always! I think you'd maybe find it interesting to look into how the Feywild works in Eberron if you haven't already, it's a really interesting spin on concept! E.g. Thelanis (Eberron name for Feywild) is all explicitly connected to storytelling and archfey are motivated by playing out the stories they're associated with. My players are going through a Thelanis Manifest Zone at the minute and I'm finding it really fun to play with

This was a great, whimsical video! :D

Re: $5 coffee; Cold-brew counts!

I am admittedly not very well read with shakespeare or particularly wise, so coming up with ways to portray a character who's wise in unexpected ways might be a challenge for me 😅 Nevertheless great video as always!

You could perhaps add stakes to the whole child protection thing by having a cost, the fey don't do anything for free so to get a child home safely the players have to give something up (or the child can promise their firstborn to the fey if you don't mind that trope). Like maybe a sufficiently charismatic person could promise years of service to the fey as a performer at a future date (or even bind their soul there so they'll end up there after their death and have to serve for a whole lifetime). A simple example would be an arrangement that if the child takes damage, one of the party does instead, if they are about to die, well, best find someone else to sacrifice in their place. In order to have the fey take the child's traumatic memories of their experience, you'll need to give them some positive memories of your own to balance it out. Maybe the party don't find out about the exact details of this arrangement until after the child gets home, so when it comes time to pay the debt all the damage the kid would have taken gets dealt all at once to whoever claims responsibility, or maybe divided up among the party.

While I typically would make it so that the children could be harmed, one of my players really isn't okay with children getting harmed so it's not really a possibility for me.

Much of what we think we know about old European traditions, including fairy tales, is at best distorted through a 19th Century lens and at worst outright made up by the Victorians. The retellers imposed their cultural values on the stories. Of course cultural values change over time. Attitudes to literary (or other media) depictions of violence, sex, substance use, racial or gender stereotyping, have changed enormously. For example The King of Elfland's daughter was published in 1924; the hero first carries off his bride (who he's never even met) after attacking and killing several guards, and then participates in a unicorn hunt! The Lankmar stories that are important early heroic fantasy include the heroes abusing alcohol, women, and children. I'm not a fan of the Disneyfication of DnD, and I certainly don't want see the outcomes of combat reduced to "This Skylander is Tired", but I can see why the official material needs to be cautious. In the end where a particular table lands will depend on the preferences of the participants, which is something that should be openly discussed in advance.