Geeky Babble: Fun at Con.ect 2022

Con.ect is a geek convention held in Gqeberha, South Africa almost annually. I say almost because this year was the first time since the pandemic that the convention was held. It was down-scaled somewhat with it being held only on one day (as opposed to the usual two), but up-scaled in terms of the variety of things that were going on. They had their first LAN arrangement, which was an interesting development. They also had an actual play D&D session running in another room... Which is a little strange for me, but I'm happy for the TTRPG exposure it offers. Beyond that, they had the standard geeky fare: stalls, geek quiz, cosplay, some demos, etc.

Every year, I save a small, monthly amount in a little money jar for the convention. With the pandemic, that amount grew a bit more than usual, yay. Tradition holds that I buy at least one set of dice at the convention. That tradition was broken as no one was selling dice. My mom, who usually gives me grief about my dice buying, noticed this lack before I did. She proceeded to give some stalls a hard time for this lack. They took it good naturedly - especially the book sellers who never have dice to sell to begin with, but did have some board games on display. (Sorry, Bargain Books!) I directed her to the right stall to exert her customerly annoyance at and the dude simply shrugged. Apparently they didn't have stock in so they didn't bring... A bit weird, but okay.

So instead, I bought myself something else.

My mom decided to get some things. I tried to buy a hat, my head was too big for it. I thought of buying a plushie bat but decided I'll try to win the raffle first and then maybe bug the lady later if I wasn't successful. We bought very nice chocolate croissants, then left the convention to stop at a food place for a nice meal.  

In the end, I'd call that a successful outing. 

D&D Babble: Thoughts on the Wild Beyond the Witchlight

 Life is kicking my butt. Life is an evil Dungeon Master.

However, I'm looking forward to a long, hopefully calming, holiday in December where I will sit and veg and whine about the heat. So there's that.

But that's not what this post is about. This post is going to be a discussion on The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. This babble will contain spoilers: Some light, some not so much. I think when I get into my struggle with it, I'll mark where the spoilers run thick. To be honest though, I think this is more for DMs who are looking to run the story to read. So players *makes a shoo motion*.

Wild Beyond the Witchlight (WBtW) is an adventure campaign that takes you from levels 1-7. It starts the party off at the Witchlight Carnival and then takes you deeper on a Feywild-filled adventure. Supposedly this game can be run on "pacifist mode" or gives you the opportunity to use negotiation to get past combat. In most cases, this may be true, but I found some instances where it would be very difficult to do. My group of adventurers was first drawn to the idea of finding ways to circumvent combat and then got surprisingly bloodthirsty with the first boss. So... Yeah. No.

There are two story hooks supplied. Both are interesting. One has the player characters look for things they've lost. The other is a more standard "someone gives you a mission" approach. I think you could use both if you wanted to mix it up. I took my group through the standard mission and in it found the first problem. But more on that later.

Your PCs are sent to the Witchlight Carnival - a place of fun and excitement and lot of whimsy. My players spent several sessions in the carnival and enjoyed it thoroughly. Enough so that, even when the exit was clear, they went to all the smaller stalls to see what was available. They sucked the marrow from the bone, so to speak. Wizards of the Coast really did good here. I have never had a party oblivious to the fact that they were only level one for so long and, it's true, you can introduce this adventure at later levels, though that might require a bit work from the DM to upscale things.

After some time, the party notices that things are not as they would appear and, with some investigation, they find that the patron to the carnival is in some kind of predicament. Through possibly heavy-handed manipulation, the party is sent through to a portion of the Feywild to further investigate and correct things. Depending on the story hook, the party has a clear mission at this point or a 'oh you've lost something? well uhm, go look there.'

[More Spoilers]

WBtW sends you to Prismeer, a domain of delight within the Feywild. You find that the current management consists of three, very uniquely crafted creatures. It is probably the strength of the campaign: how unique their villains are. Prismeer has been divided by these nasty critters and each one's area is different - in landscape, fauna and flora, and mood. For all of this though, the pattern expected of the players get old quick. Reach new area, go to locations, find bad guy, kick bad guy's ass, rinse and repeat. It was probably easier to deal with from the players' point of view, but for the DM's side, it felt really tedious. As unique as the creepy characters were, there was little variety in the actual missions.

Now I realise that some of this is my own fault. For one thing, I use Roll20 and roll in the open. I am also someone not blessed with bountiful luck and so every combat consisted of my baddies being trounced. The players found that entertaining. I did not. And I think that's what bothers me so much about WBtW. It just didn't click with me.

[Even More Spoilers]

So you know how I said the standard mission presented the first problem? Well, WotC was very heavy handed in their hints. The first character you encounter who gives you a mission has a tattoo on his face. The moment my players saw that, they instantly connected it to the final riddle even though they didn't realise it at first. Now you can say "Oh they shouldn't meta-game", but if you're going to have a famous person in an adventure and make it so bluntly obvious from the beginning, it's really, bloody difficult not to meta-game the shit out of that. And so when the final question arose, it wasn't the knowledge accumulated through the game that brought forth the answer, but external knowledge instead. And when the players realised this, they felt a little cheated. Sure, there are some hints of the answer in the adventure itself, but that bloody tattoo... was basically all that was needed for the cat to be out of the bag.

[Final Thoughts]

There are a lot of good things in this adventure. It has a very 'Alice in Wonderland' dark feeling to it. So if that's your cuppa tea, this will be fun. The villains are really good. The game is FULL of whimsy - which is something I just don't have a taste for, but recognise that this is a preference and not necessarily a criticism. It's an adventure that is on rails, to some degree, but with a lot of work, you could free it up. I just found my people didn't really care to go back to the places they were before. As we sped to the end, I think the party felt the same weariness I felt for the adventure. Maybe I just am just projecting this on them. They said they liked it, after all. But yeah.

WBtW is pretty. It is detailed and intricate and whimsical and dark. But just not my type of game.