The '80s D&D cartoon is in the next D&D adventure book
You see it, Right? You see the rollercoaster from the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon next to the snippet of the carnival map from the upcoming D&D adventure, The Wild Beyond the Witchlight? Nostalgia is kicking me right between the legs.
Of all the places Dungeons & Dragons would go next—and I'm talking about the tabletop game here—I wasn't expecting it to head out into the Feywild. Truth be told, I had to look up what the Feywild even was. It sounded like fairies (or faeries, rather) might be involved? And to an extent, that put me on the right track. It's a plane of existence that runs parallel or shadows the "normal" D&D plane of existence. It's indeed nature heavy and filled with all sorts of mischief that you'd expect, say, Tinker Bell's cousins to be up to. That's where the next D&D book heads to in The Wild Beyond the Witchlight: A Feywild Adventure.
It's taken me a couple weeks for this campaign setting to grow on me. My inner child is, for all intents and purposes, dead. Despite the fact that I am a dungeon master for a group of Dungeons & Dragons players, you'd be horrified to find out just how little imagination I truly have. But that's exactly why these sourcebooks and official adventures have been a godsend to me. They spark my imagination with artwork and adventures and settings and characters that I just wouldn't have the wherewithal to conjure on my own. From there I have been able to get a play-by-post D&D campaign up and running.
At this point, after a year of stumbling over how to be a dungeon master again, I can finally say with a mote of confidence that, hey, I think my players might finally be having fun. Kudos to them for sticking with me as I've relearned the ropes; the last time I'd touched D&D was in the '80s, and I can guarantee you that 1980s me had no idea what he was doing when it came to roleplaying games.
All that notwithstanding, a new piece of information has come out of The Wild Beyond the Witchlight that absolutely tickled my fancy. Or at least had 1980s me clapping and thinking happy thoughts: It's a tie-in with the '80s Dungeons & Dragons animated TV series. Check the show's intro. You'll see the roller coaster right in the beginning:
Honestly, I just wasn't making the connection between Dungeons & Dragons and a carnival setting. But now my mind is thoroughly blown. Witchlight has officially become a must-have purchase for me. The Wild Beyond the Witchlight adventure launches September 21. Here is the info, straight from Todd Kenreck, one of Wizards of the Coast's in-house interviewers and gentleman that's very much in the know regarding all things D&D:
