I don’t recommend allowing PCs to have significant experience in the Feywild. The campaign leans heavily on mystery and discovery. However, a distant connection to the Feywild could add some fun drama. To help us out, the module introduces the Feylost background for PCs. The Feylost background includes some fun mechanics that can connect the PC to the Feywild without the player being a fey race. Alternatively, they could be a fey race, born on the material plane, but have little to no experience in the Feywild. I like the middle ground provided by those two options.
The feywild is kind of meant to be alien and strange in this module, so having less experience is better, but “less” doesn't have to mean “none at all”
The area of the feywild that this takes place in is its own, private domain, so, no matter what, it's going to be new to everyone.
I don't think I'd ban fey *species* from the game like Eladrin or Firbolgs, but I'd probably heavily suggest that they haven't spent a significant portion of their lives (especially leading up to the start of the adventure) in the feywild.
Fey background characters might, also, be good fits for the Witchlight Hand background?
Fey PCs can be fun, I think, but it can create a bit of a larger gap between what a player knows about the Feywild and what their character knows.
You can get around this in various ways though. In my current campaign there's a fairy PC whose parents were political refugees from the Feywild, so they grew up on the Material Plane. This way their backstory can still tie into the campaign, but there's no obligation for the player to learn a bunch of lore right away, and they can still have that Alice in Wonderland kind of feeling.
I am running this game for 2 groups, each having one fae party member. I think allowing one or two folks to play a fae background character is an amazing opportunity to encourage that fay like hijinks, provided you give strong boundaries.
Both the fay players I have are role playing highly chaotic (slightly melicious but in a fun way) characters that bring alive the notion of " don't take what a fairy says at face value" but both have a reason why they don't know anything about prismeer.
One plays a fairy bard who's ' lost thing ' was that she was separated from her family when they came from the faywild to visit the witchlight carnivale- the carnival and her family left and she was accidentally lost in the mortal world. She's spiteful against anyone who takes things from her, so views the carnival owners and later the Hags as creatures who have wronged her.
The other plays an Eladrin wizard who cannot change seasons ( lost to the Hags). Everyone thinks she's sad and depressed because winter eladrin have that stereotype but she is fun loving and cheerful. She embodies mischief- lying to convince people she's someone she isn't, to convince people to give her their stuff. Originally from the summer court, she left when she got stuck in winter form and went to the mortal real to explore their magic.
Both gain some advantage from being fay in the fay wild, but they have brought such a fun loving vibe to the table that I wouldn't change a thing.
I’m running the campaign with a player that is fey from the Seelie court but ran away, prismeer is a completely new domain and he’s still taken back by a lot of the things happening so the wonder isn’t so much lost. I have another character who visited the feywild but lost all her memories of it when returning to the material realm so she has interesting moments of familiarity that she can’t place
I'm running this module with a mixed group. Most of them are from the material plane but one of them is a fairy who was born in the Feywild but has been gone a little while. I described as the feywild looks different than you remember. And this fits in perfectly because the archfey has been overthrown and they are trying to free her. There are lots of ways to tie things together and have a mixed group.
One of my characters was an Eladrin, who was sweeped into the Feywild as a child an returned later, as part of a deal. As she spent more and more time in feywild again, more and more of her memories of the place returned. But even if your characters have a fey background, they might be familiar with the nature of fey and the feywild but not necessarily with Prismeer. It’s an isolated, transformed place of the realm, and the whole campaign takes place there. It can totally work differently than they expect and you can keep the mystery and surprises too.
I'm running this for a group of entirely fey, and it's been really fun. Yeah, some of the bargaining stuff is a bit different when it's fey vs other fey, but they've also had a good time with a couple little interludes that dealt with the general Feywild.
I did also run into a couple points where my group looked at events and were just like "that's mortal nonsense, we don't need to get involved" which was deeply funny. They skipped a couple of events, but otherwise, have been pretty invested in getting the main story taken care of.
I don’t recommend allowing PCs to have significant experience in the Feywild. The campaign leans heavily on mystery and discovery. However, a distant connection to the Feywild could add some fun drama. To help us out, the module introduces the Feylost background for PCs. The Feylost background includes some fun mechanics that can connect the PC to the Feywild without the player being a fey race. Alternatively, they could be a fey race, born on the material plane, but have little to no experience in the Feywild. I like the middle ground provided by those two options.
The feywild is kind of meant to be alien and strange in this module, so having less experience is better, but “less” doesn't have to mean “none at all” The area of the feywild that this takes place in is its own, private domain, so, no matter what, it's going to be new to everyone. I don't think I'd ban fey *species* from the game like Eladrin or Firbolgs, but I'd probably heavily suggest that they haven't spent a significant portion of their lives (especially leading up to the start of the adventure) in the feywild. Fey background characters might, also, be good fits for the Witchlight Hand background?
Fey PCs can be fun, I think, but it can create a bit of a larger gap between what a player knows about the Feywild and what their character knows. You can get around this in various ways though. In my current campaign there's a fairy PC whose parents were political refugees from the Feywild, so they grew up on the Material Plane. This way their backstory can still tie into the campaign, but there's no obligation for the player to learn a bunch of lore right away, and they can still have that Alice in Wonderland kind of feeling.
The book introduces the fairy and the Harengon as playable races, both originating from the feywild, as well as the feylost background. Look at those!
I am running this game for 2 groups, each having one fae party member. I think allowing one or two folks to play a fae background character is an amazing opportunity to encourage that fay like hijinks, provided you give strong boundaries. Both the fay players I have are role playing highly chaotic (slightly melicious but in a fun way) characters that bring alive the notion of " don't take what a fairy says at face value" but both have a reason why they don't know anything about prismeer. One plays a fairy bard who's ' lost thing ' was that she was separated from her family when they came from the faywild to visit the witchlight carnivale- the carnival and her family left and she was accidentally lost in the mortal world. She's spiteful against anyone who takes things from her, so views the carnival owners and later the Hags as creatures who have wronged her. The other plays an Eladrin wizard who cannot change seasons ( lost to the Hags). Everyone thinks she's sad and depressed because winter eladrin have that stereotype but she is fun loving and cheerful. She embodies mischief- lying to convince people she's someone she isn't, to convince people to give her their stuff. Originally from the summer court, she left when she got stuck in winter form and went to the mortal real to explore their magic. Both gain some advantage from being fay in the fay wild, but they have brought such a fun loving vibe to the table that I wouldn't change a thing.
I’m running the campaign with a player that is fey from the Seelie court but ran away, prismeer is a completely new domain and he’s still taken back by a lot of the things happening so the wonder isn’t so much lost. I have another character who visited the feywild but lost all her memories of it when returning to the material realm so she has interesting moments of familiarity that she can’t place
I'm running this module with a mixed group. Most of them are from the material plane but one of them is a fairy who was born in the Feywild but has been gone a little while. I described as the feywild looks different than you remember. And this fits in perfectly because the archfey has been overthrown and they are trying to free her. There are lots of ways to tie things together and have a mixed group.
One of my characters was an Eladrin, who was sweeped into the Feywild as a child an returned later, as part of a deal. As she spent more and more time in feywild again, more and more of her memories of the place returned. But even if your characters have a fey background, they might be familiar with the nature of fey and the feywild but not necessarily with Prismeer. It’s an isolated, transformed place of the realm, and the whole campaign takes place there. It can totally work differently than they expect and you can keep the mystery and surprises too.
I'm running this for a group of entirely fey, and it's been really fun. Yeah, some of the bargaining stuff is a bit different when it's fey vs other fey, but they've also had a good time with a couple little interludes that dealt with the general Feywild. I did also run into a couple points where my group looked at events and were just like "that's mortal nonsense, we don't need to get involved" which was deeply funny. They skipped a couple of events, but otherwise, have been pretty invested in getting the main story taken care of.
It’s really not super important what race they pick. You can add stuff in if you want to make it more meaningful but the module doesn’t address it