The Witch Light Carnival is a mesmerizing and enchanting event that takes place annually in a hidden and mysterious location. It is a gathering of witches, wizards, and magical beings from all corners of the world, coming together to celebrate and showcase their skills and talents. The carnival is known for its vibrant and colorful atmosphere, with the entire venue illuminated by mystical, glowing lights that seem to dance and twinkle in the night. The air is filled with the aroma of exotic potions and spell ingredients, creating an otherworldly ambiance that captivates all who attend. One of the main attractions of the Witch Light Carnival is the spellcasting showcase. Witches and wizards of all ages and levels of expertise take turns demonstrating their prowess in spellcasting.
The purpose of the Mine is to give your players a prompt to think about what their characters fear, which is a great way for beginners to flesh out their personalities. However, the application of this is extremely clunky: what if they decide their greatest fear is something that is difficult or impossible to represent, like fear itself, grief, or God forbid, sensitive and mature subject matter that makes other players deeply uncomfortable?
With the second example, when your players think about using Stealth to get in without paying, it s less you spoonfeeding them an idea, and more them working out a possibility based on context, and it s so much better. Before you run this, I recommend you come up with some insults for Kettlesteam to throw out to Palasha avoiding any real-world slurs , and combine it with the Gondola Swan ride to help flesh it out.
Witches and wizards of all ages and levels of expertise take turns demonstrating their prowess in spellcasting. Spectators are left in awe as they witness spectacular displays of levitation, transformation, and other mesmerizing magical feats. Another highlight of the carnival is the magical creature exhibition.
The Witchlight Carnival: advice and analysis from a professional DM (warning: long post)
I’m a professional Dungeon Master who runs games for paying customers. I thought it might be interesting (and potentially useful to others) to journal my process as I transform the adventure module The Wild Beyond the Witchlight into a playable campaign I’d be happy to run.
I’ll take you through my thoughts on the adventure, its strengths and weaknesses, and all the changes I’m going to make to patch it up and make it ready to deliver to a paying audience, starting with Chapter One: The Witchlight Carnival.
I recommend if you have the book handy, you browse through each section of the chapter along with me.
Overview
The first chapter of this adventure promises a fantastical and whimsical journey through a magical carnival with strong ties to the Feywild. Importantly, this adventure is touted as the first ever official module which has been designed with the intent that the entire story can be completed without ever having to get into a single combat!
The Witchlight Carnival itself is a sandbox, which means there are multiple locations that your players can visit in just about any order. This means it is important to read the entire chapter before attempting to run it, but don’t worry about the rest of the book: the Witchlight Carnival is an entirely self-contained prologue to the main adventure, and no important characters or locations carry over once you’re in the Feywild.
Initial thoughts
- The illusion of player freedom! And trust me, player freedom is always an illusion.
- Tone and flavour! The Carnival is bursting with whimsical concepts.
- As advertised, combat is entirely optional for this entire chapter, and the party will have to go out of their way to start a fight if they want to experience one.
- The NPCs. Just about every character is given a flavourful description and a gimmick, making them a lot of fun to play.
- As a DM, you’ll need to read and prepare for over a dozen possible encounters with a vast cast of characters and locations. Worse still, every time I’ve run this, the party has split up to wander individually or in small groups through multiple attractions, meaning you’ll be jumping frantically between scenes extremely quickly. This is an extremely difficult experience for a new DM to handle, and can be daunting for new players as well, who might need extra guidance when starting their first game.
- Some of the carnival attractions are poorly designed, but I’ll get into these individually - and talk about how we can improve them.
- Many of the concepts in the Carnival are poorly fleshed out. This seems like an intentional design choice, to give a simple prompt to the DM to build an entire encounter from the bare bones of a thought. This is a huge issue: a published adventure should elevate a DM, the DM should not have to put extra work in to elevate a published adventure.
- Many of the challenges of the Carnival itself are extremely passive: often boiling down to one or two prescribed skill checks for the players to roll to see if they succeed or fail, with no room for them to actively influence the outcome. This appears to have intentionally been designed to teach newcomers the system: you roll dice, you win or you lose. Unfortunately, it’s the DnD equivalent of snakes and ladders: you don’t have any control over the outcome, it’s all up to luck. You’ll see this common theme rear its head again and again as I break down the carnival attractions, and most of my improvements are all about adding player agency to the adventure.
- The lack of combat is a blessing and a curse: the removal of one of the core pillars of the game (and the center of most of the rules and abilities for many classes) means you may find your party very unbalanced during this section.
Carnival Attractions:
Ticket Booth:
Nikolas Midnight the Goblin takes the party’s tickets and lets them into the Witchlight Carnival.
As written, your party will have tickets waiting for them at the booth, pre-bought, so they can simply walk in. This is the most befuddling design decision of the entire chapter, and should immediately be scrapped.
There are optional tasks available for any character who wants to get in for free, which include making them compliment everyone they meet, or carrying around a pumpkin like a precious egg for the entire time. There are also special events for those characters who decide to sneak in without paying: they can be chased by the staff, or hounded by magical thieves!
If you run the book as written, your players will miss out on all of this content. Encourage your players to make a magic pact with Nikolas and take on a roleplay challenge! A new player whose hero has agreed to pay a compliment to everyone they meet needs to engage with the story, learn about new characters, and be inventive with their compliments.
Alternatively, a player who sneaks in may be exposed to the Hourglass Coven’s Thieves: a trio of unsettling monsters who add a much-needed layer of dark mystery to the otherwise saccharine carnival.
A piece of general DM advice that I can offer here is to “show, dont tell”. This may seem oxymoronic in a game where you are a narrator, but consider this example:
- Your players are at the ticket booth. You know they can sneak in without paying if they choose and you want to make it clear that it’s an option. You ask “Hey, instead of paying, do you want to do a Stealth check and try to sneak in?”
- Your players are at the ticket booth. You know they can sneak in without paying if they choose and you want to make it clear that it’s an option. You say “In the distance, you see a group of rowdy children climbing over a tree branch and sneaking into the carnival without paying. A Witchlight Hand spots them and begins to give chase, but they giggle and disperse too quickly, getting away.”
With the second example, when your players think about using Stealth to get in without paying, it’s less you spoonfeeding them an idea, and more them working out a possibility based on context, and it’s so much better.
Also, each ticket comes with an 8-punch limit, for some reason. Get rid of it immediately: there is no reason to discourage your players from exploring the entire Carnival with an arbitrary cap on how many things they’re allowed to see.
Big Top:
A grandiose show of spectacular feats and magic, and the crowning of the Witchlight Monarch!
The Big Top is the location of the two major events of this chapter: the Big Top Extravaganza, and the crowning of the Witchlight Monarch. These events are such big deals they are given main billing on the Timed Events tracker!
The Extravaganza is the laziest encounter design in the entire book. As written, you very briefly describe in hazy terms a couple of acts and then ask your players if their characters are having fun. That’s it. At the end of the extravaganza, the stage is opened up, and the audience members get a chance to do their own performances. which boils down to a single Performance check.
This is obviously awful, and grinds up against my point from before: “show, don’t tell”. Simply saying “There are feats of strength, some firebreathers, and the mermaid sings a song” is very dull compared to actually inventing acts to narrate and events for your players to get involved in.
The first thing I did after reading the chapter was to invent interactive performances for the NPCs, where they would ask for volunteers from the audience, so the players could get involved. As a DM, you want to avoid long stretches of you simply describing what’s going on: this is your player’s story, not a book for you to narrate as they sit there at your table with nothing to contribute. Give them opportunities to use their skills, to be inventive, to have agency.
The second and final event at the Big Top, the crowning of the Witchlight Monarch, needs nowhere near as much work on your part: your players will almost certainly be distracted by executing a delicate heist while the show goes on, so it’s perfectly OK for the event to occur in vague terms in the background.
Bubble-Pop Teapot:
A simple, harmless ride, with an unnecessarily difficult roleplay element.
A fairly confusing scenario where your players are encouraged to use ‘rhyming slang’ to convey their conversation to a slightly insane Goblin who runs the ride. It’s awkward and difficult for a DM to run, and can be confusing for players to grasp what is going on.
Not every DM is going to be a master of improvisation. Thankfully the rhyming slang game is optional. I recommend new DMs to drop it completely if they’re not confident, or alter it to something similar, such as singing everything you say, or making your sentences rhyme while speaking your meaning clearly.
Calliope:
Cal - eye - oh - pee. I know you were wondering.
Giving Ernest a button gets your players a Get Out Of Jail Free card if they get kidnapped in the future (likely). However, this is poor adventure design, going back to that old idea of making your players the heroes of the story and giving them agency: you’re skipping the opportunity for a dramatic breakout sequence if you use it.
Ernest himself has a dramatic and hilarious story of having his brains switched with a monkey: but, nowhere is there an opportunity for this information to come up, or be relevant in any way. Even if the players learn about it, they can’t do anything with it!
I almost never have groups investigate the Calliope. If they do, give it a brief description then move on.
Carousel:
I sure do love exposition.
I’ve talked a lot about “show, don’t tell” so far, and this is the most egregious example you will find in the carnival. The Carousel presents a simple riddle game, where for every answer the players get right, they get up to three pieces of laborious exposition for the DM to patiently explain to them.
This challenge involves the players knowing common colloquial sayings and playing a word association game. It’s so convoluted that the adventure even offers an alternative game for the DM to run instead!
I’ve run this challenge as written four times so far, and no group has got even half of the answers correct, which is a pity, because this is actually where a lot of very important information is hidden, much of which is critical to the player’s understanding of the adventure ahead.
My advice is to drop the Carousel by hanging an “out of order” sign on it, and finding another, more organic way of giving your party the information they need to understand the adventure. Don’t gate this stuff behind an entirely optional encounter that the players may not even solve, delivered in an infodump.
Dragonfly Rides:
The party reunites with Northwind and Red, rides some Giant Dragonflies, and gets into a life-or-death situation with the saboteur Kettlesteam.
Honestly this attraction is great. Northwind, the walking talking tree, has a wonderful character flaw in that he is terrible at keeping secrets. He’s a fantastic way to flood your players with information in a fun and flavourful way!
When they do mount their dragonflies and take off, there’s an actual encounter for them to solve: saving a dwarf on an out-of-control dragonfly, and potentially spotting the culprit responsible and chasing her down, leading to plot development.
This attraction displays several wonderful components of great encounter design, with strong NPCs, clear stakes, a chance for players to show off their skills, and organically tying in to the wider story. Best carnival attraction, hands down.
Feasting Orchard:
Fun little diversion where the players can get into a cupcake eating contest and meet a powerful ally.
The cupcake eating contest is a simple string of Constitution saves, which falls victim to the issue I flagged in the intro: it’s all luck, with no real agency from your players. Whenever this situation arises (and it will frequently from here on out) you should encourage your players to cheat.
And I don’t mean ask them if they want to cheat. Show, don’t tell: put in a Commoner contestant who uses Sleight of Hand to throw their cupcakes under the table, or uses Prestidigitation to make someone else’s cupcake taste like dirt, or Minor Illusion to eat illusory cupcakes without a real one ever touching their mouth.
Cheating will add a layer of creative, underhanded fun to these competitions, where your players can compete to find the most ingenious ways to ensure they win, giving them that all-important agency.
The Feasting Orchard is the home of one of the worst characters in the story: Ellywick Tumblestrum, the planeswalking Bard. She is so powerful, the adventure doesn’t bother to give her stats: it simply tells you she is invincible and invulnerable, and if everything else falls over, she will tell the party where to go and what to do. There is no reason she simply can’t waltz into the Feywild, solve the entire adventure for everyone, and leave. She’s also responsible for one of the other big mistakes of the adventure, in that she buys the party tickets for entry. After this, she disappears entirely from the story and plays no further part.
Remove Ellywick from your game.
Gondola Swans:
The party has a relaxing ride around the carnival, while being peppered with philosophical questions.
This attraction is a short and simple diversion, where Feathereen the Swan can share some gossip about other characters at the Carnival, and then ask some deep questions of the players. The questions provided for her to ask the party are sadly awful: a quick Google of metaphysics will give you much better material to engage your players.
There’s really nothing else going on here. Due to the lack of content, it would be a good idea to combine it with Palasha’s performance at Silversong Lake, cramming two very thin encounters into one layered one.
Hall of Illusions:
A pig-masked Ghoul tries to steal away a carnival patron as the party desperately tries to save them.
The other fantastic attraction at the carnival, the Hall of Illusions is the encounter your players will remember most strongly from their time here. It has conflict, character, high stakes, and a genuinely unsettling and magical location.
It’s also the only example of one of the Carnival Thieves actually being utilised in the story, as Sowpig tries to steal Rubin away into the Feywild. It’s such a shame that the other two Thieves, the Lornling and Gleam’s Shadow, are never given a moment like this to shine, and as a result they feel like entirely wasted characters.
Mystery Mine:
Just the absolute worst.
This attraction is extremely lethal and offers very little reward for participation. A few unlucky rolls, completely outside your player’s control, could end up with them having a useless or dead character. Why is this even an attraction? Who signed off on this? If you had eight Commoners on every ride, most of them will die within a few days after leaving the ride due to its effects. Can you imagine the Witchlight Carnival lasting very long leaving dozens of attendees dead in its wake every week?
The purpose of the Mine is to give your players a prompt to think about what their characters fear, which is a great way for beginners to flesh out their personalities. However, the application of this is extremely clunky: what if they decide their greatest fear is something that is difficult or impossible to represent, like fear itself, grief, or God forbid, sensitive and mature subject matter that makes other players deeply uncomfortable?
This is an attraction that needs to be completely reworked, replaced, or closed down by the DM. If you do run it, I strongly recommend you twist your player character’s fears into comic scenes, play using an “X” card, and drastically lower the penalties for failing the saving throws during the ride.
Pixie Kingdom:
The players are shrunk down to the size of Pixies and play some harmless games.
Another attraction with nothing really going on, simply offering a platform for your party to do a bit of roleplay if they feel like it, and play hide and seek with some Pixies.
The biggest issue with this section (besides the complete lack of interesting conflict) is the lack of a visual aid: it’s up to the DM to describe the Pixie Kingdom in detail before and during the game of hide and seek, and then the players choose where they want to go. This wouldn’t be so bad if there was an adequate description block to read to your players: instead, bits and pieces of the location are spread throughout this section in the book, and the DM has to put them together into a coherent setting with enough detail for your party to decide on places to conceal themselves.
The Pixie Kingdom is crying out for extra content: perhaps a missing child has shrunken themselves down and needs to found in one of the locations here, one of the Coven’s Thieves is haunting the attraction and spooks the dog, or a regular-sized carnival goer accidentally steps on the palace leading a Gulliver’s Travels-esque encounter with a “Giant”.
Silversong Lake:
Palasha the Mermaid sings to onlookers, as Kettlesteam tries to ruin her performance.
The adventure tells you that Kettlesteam the Kenku will heckle Palasha during her performance three times, until she stops and leaves, sobbing. Two issues with this are:
- The adventure doesn’t provide the DM with any script for Kettlesteam to follow, leaving you to improvise and describe a scene where your imaginary characters heckle each other while your players sit there and listen.
- If your party has already dealt with Kettlesteam, then absolutely nothing of note happens here.
Before you run this, I recommend you come up with some insults for Kettlesteam to throw out to Palasha (avoiding any real-world slurs), and combine it with the Gondola Swan ride to help flesh it out.
Small Stalls:
To skip the tutorial, press any button.
Six minigames, each centered around one of the primary ability scores, each boiling down to a couple of rolls for success or failure. This is DnD at its simplest, designed to show beginners the ropes before they delve into a bigger adventure. But, there’s an issue: they’re not on the map. If you want your party to participate in them, you’ll need to insert them into the Carnival yourself somewhere.
The games themselves are given extremely threadbare descriptions, and this hurts the Gnome Poetry Contest the most: how cool would it be if you had a few short, silly DnD-themed limericks to surprise your players with?
If you have more experienced players who want a little bit more out of their games, encourage creative cheating by describing carnival goers around them finding creative solutions to the games: after all, the purpose of the Witchlight Carnival is to have fun and give out prizes, not police people’s enjoyment. Maybe someone uses Mage Hand to cheat at Almiraj Ring Toss, or tickles the Goblins to win their wrestling match?
Snail Races:
The party competes in a high-speed race on Giant Snails.
The biggest attraction at the Carnival, and it’s essentially an extended version of a game from the Small Stalls: a string of Animal Handling checks, some randomly generated obstacles, and then someone wins based on luck.
I’ve seen more home-made maps, models, and systems for running this race than all the other attractions combined: tracking the speed of eight separate racers in a six-round race is no small feat, and this could have benefitted immensely from a racetrack map.
I strongly recommend you have the other Giant Snail riders cheat to liven up the race and show your players they aren’t slaves to their die rolls: the Goblin referees have a Passive Perception of only 9. They’re bad at their job, and they know it, but that’s part of the fun!
Having players roll Stealth and Sleight of Hand checks to cast spells, interfere with other riders, and pull stunts during the race elevated this event every time I ran it. Any time anyone rolled a 9 or below, the referees would spot them and disqualify them, to raucous laughter from the crowd: I’ve never had a race finish with more than half the contestants still in it!
Other Events
Catching Kettlesteam:
If your party tries to catch Kettlesteam, the adventure boils the chase down to an hour of lost time and a single ability check, a huge waste of potential for an exciting pursuit through a lively carnival.
I put together a table of random carnival-themed obstacles for Kettlesteam to run through, adding flavour and character to the carnival and making my players feel like catching up to her was a real achievement. I strongly recommend that if you are thinking of running this campaign, you come up with exciting moments for this chase too: it’s important, and it’s the closest thing your players will have to an action scene for quite some time!
The Heist:
Burly sharing his plan to steal the Witchlight Watch is the inciting incident that will kick your players into gear and give them a clear direction for their adventure. If you are running a brand new group, make sure this happens as quickly as possible, otherwise you may find your players wandering aimlessly and wondering what to do.
The heist itself is really well designed, and that’s difficult to do: take it from someone who’s designed and run a few heists myself.
It gives the party a reason to engage with several NPCs scattered throughout the Carnival who can help them, and through their skills offers creative players a myriad of ways to pull the theft off. It’s not particularly complicated (unless your party makes it that way) which is important because it has to work, or else the story breaks.
Many of the carnival prizes, such as the Potion of Advantage, Pixie Dust, or Cupcake of Invisibility, can be leveraged for use in the heist: seeding these seemingly innocent items through the attractions as prizes for the players is a masterstroke, that will encourage them to participate in the games, play to win, and cooperate with the rest of the group on the best ways to use them.
Closing thoughts:
The Carnival feels at odds with itself in many places: in the case of some of the attractions, the adventure writers appear to have conflated a combat-less story with a conflict-less story. There is also a strange interplay between the chapter wanting to be extremely friendly for first-time players, laying out easy tutorial-esque challenges and safety nets in the story, whilst also presenting a complex sandbox of characters and locations that requires a deft hand to run smoothly.
The strongest parts of this Chapter all lie in the characters: many of them have extremely memorable personalities and quirks and are an absolute joy to roleplay.
If you are thinking of running the Wild Beyond the Witchlight for your group, ensure they know that they will be entering a low-combat adventure with a heavy emphasis on roleplay, and ensure their characters have good reasons of their own to drive the story forward
- Check out my Carnival Supplement on DMsGuild here: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/376945/The-Witchlight-Carnival-DM-Supplement
- And my collection of digital maps for the adventure here: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/373550/The-Wild-Beyond-the-Witchlight-Map-Pack
The party reunites with Northwind and Red, rides some Giant Dragonflies, and gets into a life-or-death situation with the saboteur Kettlesteam.
Here, attendees can get up close and personal with mythical creatures such as unicorns, phoenixes, and dragons. The creatures are well-taken care of, and experts are on hand to answer any questions and share fascinating facts about these enchanting beings. Throughout the carnival, various booths and stalls offer a wide array of magical items for sale. From spellbooks to enchanted artifacts, visitors can find all sorts of intriguing and mystical treasures. It is a perfect opportunity for witches and wizards to stock up on essential supplies or acquire new tools to enhance their magical practices. The Witch Light Carnival also features breathtaking performances by talented witches and wizards. Acrobats fly through the air with the grace of birds, while fire-breathers and illusionists perform incredible tricks that leave the crowd spellbound. The performances are accompanied by enchanting music, adding to the magical ambiance of the event. As the day comes to an end, the grand finale of the Witch Light Carnival takes place - a spellbinding fireworks display. The sky is illuminated by a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes as fireworks explode overhead, accompanied by orchestrated music. It is a truly awe-inspiring sight that marks the conclusion of this extraordinary event. The Witch Light Carnival is a celebration of magic, unity, and the wonders of the supernatural world. It brings together individuals from all walks of life who share a common love for all things magical. It is a place where the impossible becomes possible and where dreams come true. Attending the Witch Light Carnival is an unforgettable experience that will leave you with cherished memories that will last a lifetime..
Reviews for "Discover the Witchcraft and Spectacle of the Light Carnival"
1. John - 2/5 stars - I was really disappointed with "Witch Light Carnival". The storyline was all over the place and I found it really hard to follow. The characters were also very underdeveloped, and I couldn't connect with any of them. Overall, the book just didn't grab my attention and I struggled to finish it.
2. Sarah - 3/5 stars - I had high hopes for "Witch Light Carnival" but unfortunately, it fell short for me. The pacing was incredibly slow, and it felt like nothing was really happening for the majority of the book. The magical elements that were promised weren't explored enough, and I was left wanting more. The writing style was also a bit dull and didn't engage me like I had hoped.
3. Emma - 2/5 stars - I found "Witch Light Carnival" to be extremely predictable and lacking in originality. The plot twists were easy to see coming a mile away, and I was hoping for more surprises. Additionally, the romance in the story felt forced and didn't add anything to the overall plot. It's a shame because I had high expectations for this book, but it just didn't deliver.
4. Michael - 2/5 stars - "Witch Light Carnival" was a confusing mess from start to finish. The world-building was weak, leaving me with more questions than answers. The writing was also very disjointed, and the author seemed to jump between different storylines without proper transition. The lack of cohesiveness made it difficult for me to fully grasp what was going on, and I was left feeling frustrated and unsatisfied.