00;00;00;01 - 00;00;20;13
Speaker 1 Let me tell you the story of a fey deal. If you've seen any of my videos before, you
might know that my group and I are playing Wild Beyond the Witchlight. It has been a wonderful and whimsical time
full of panic and paranoia. My players and the characters they created
are not terribly inclined towards making deals, so they're very careful when they do. 00;00;20;13 - 00;00;42;40
Speaker 1 This story, by the way, is not a spoiler. It's something I added to the campaign, so
don't worry about that. But I had the party encounter a baby hag,
a.k.a. a young girl who had just turned into a hag,
but she didn't have any powers yet. She didn't even really look like a hag. Her nature was obviously very nasty, but she
was okay. 00;00;42;40 - 00;01;03;25
Speaker 1 Some of the party members wanted to kill her,
stating that she is no longer the elf girl she was. She's now a nasty monster going to grow up
to become a terrorizing creature. And others felt that it might be a little
unethical to kill a creature much weaker than them who has not done anything bad yet. So let her live people 00;01;03;25 - 00;01;42;28
Speaker 1 won, but on the condition that a very specific
deal was made with this fey, a deal that took a full hour of our lives for them to make
and was three paragraphs long that all parties had to sign. If I remember correctly, the deal was that
the girl could not learn magic at all. She couldn't pursue knowledge of her hag abilities
and that for the next 50 material plane years, which is super hard to track when you're in
the feywild, but for the next 50 material plane years for either party, neither of them
could kill the other. 00;01;42;28 - 00;02;07;01
Speaker 1 She also had to go on her merry way and reroute. She was heading to another hag at the time
and she was not going to be allowed under the terms of this contract to go there and
to share about the deal or the encounter at all. My players don't know for sure if she's broken
it. They assume she has, but they also don't know
if they'll even ever see her again, which they totally will. For most of this campaign, 00;02;07;01 - 00;02;39;54
Speaker 1 however, my players have staunchly refused
to make a deal or have any sort of need for exchange if they can help it. They know from folklore of our real world
that fey are tricky and making a deal with them is probably not in their best interest. At least in many cases. So if you're running a feywild character or
campaign or session and you want to make sure that your party, some how gets themselves
into a deal with a fey, 00;02;40;15 - 00;03;00;24
Speaker 1 I have a few tips and tricks for you. Also shout out to this commenter who gave
me the idea for the video this week and of course leave below any ideas that you have
or any experiences you have in-game with making fey pact. How has it gone wrong? How has it gone right? Have you been tricky? The first way I think is really easy. 00;03;00;24 - 00;03;21;50
Speaker 1 To get your players to make fey deals is purchases. There are very few moments in wild beyond
the witchlight where the characters can buy something at least as written in the module
and when they do the fey selling it don't want coin, they don't want gold, they don't
care about that. I made my merchants pretty dumb and pretty
easy to trick. 00;03;21;50 - 00;03;40;16
Speaker 1 I knew it would be fun for the players to
figure out what they could exchange and to, maybe mess with them a little bit, get an
unfair deal out of it. So rather than give up their eye color or
their ability to dance, they exchanged goods for trinkets, some trinkets which were not
nearly worth what the item they got was. 00;03;40;16 - 00;04;12;22
Speaker 1 But not all merchants are going to be dumb
and easy to trick. So what do you do? Of course, the more valuable or powerful an
item is, especially if it's magic, the more difficult it should be for the party to attain. It should feel like they actually lost something. It could be anywhere from their most treasured
memory to I guess if you're working with a hag, your firstborn child, which hopefully
no one's going to go for, but maybe they think they can get out of it. If they don't have anything on them or they're
not willing to give up a part of themselves. 00;04;12;38 - 00;04;38;10
Speaker 1 The exchange could be some sort of service,
no matter how strange. But let's say that your players don't have
a trinket to exchange, or they don't want to give up a personality trait or a memory
or whatever it is the fey wants, their big toe. Have the exchange be a service of some kind,
whether now or in the future, or even have them just trade a future favor. 00;04;38;39 - 00;04;59;32
Speaker 1 My party would certainly not go for it, but
maybe yours would, you know, keep your options open. The system of magic in the feywild also prevents
theft or ripping someone off. Let's say that your party does try to undercut
a shopkeeper. I'm not doing this right now, since I didn't
think of it sooner, I don't think it'd be fair, but I'm definitely implementing it 00;04;59;32 - 00;05;25;07
Speaker 1 next feywild campaign. There needs to be consequences. Your party can't just exchange something not
worth the thing they're getting and get away with that. I guess they could get away with it, but I
like the idea that the nature of the feywild desires balance, despite its chaotic nature,
almost because of it, stability must exist somewhere and in some way. 00;05;25;17 - 00;05;48;45
Speaker 1 And when there is a destabilization like a
stolen item, the feywild naturally stabilizes it by creating some sort of chaos or strife
for the person who stole. Don't worry, at the end of this video I am
going to get into consequences for when something like this happens. And consider even making gifts impossible
in the feywild. If something is given, something must be given
in return. 00;05;48;45 - 00;06;21;03
Speaker 1 Next, we have unspoken arrangements. A lot of characters in the feywild might have
an understanding of reciprocity. In wild beyond the witchlight there is literally
the rule of reciprocity. If you do something for someone or give something
to someone, something must be done or given in return. There could be a spoken arrangement made,
more like the purchasing, but I think unspoken would be a really good way to trap your players
because the creatures around them are just assuming that they know something will be
owed. And it does go both ways. 00;06;21;04 - 00;06;41;05
Speaker 1 As an example from our games, and this is
a minor spoiler for an NPC early on in the campaign, but there is a character who is
a fairy dragon stuck in a cage. He can't get out except by magical means or
an exact key, and the players find him and want to help him. But first they need to fight off this other
creature or two. 00;06;41;05 - 00;07;01;41
Speaker 1 This fairy dragon offers up his sword for
the ensuing combat, which is of course really small. But he offers it to one of our characters
who takes it. And when she returns, he asks if it was of
aid to her, of help, and she says yes. Of course, the sword didn't help at all. She didn't help him. But she said that it did aid her. 00;07;01;57 - 00;07;19;53
Speaker 1 And so he has an expectation now that she
will aid him, aka get him out of his situation, get him out of his cage. I had him say something along the lines of
the deal is struck then or something to indicate (to) her that an exchange had just occurred
or started, and she panicked and she said, What do you mean? 00;07;19;55 - 00;07;41;18
Speaker 1 He explained his expectation, and just that
alone put her on edge. She did not want to owe him anything. And when they finally were able to release
him, everyone was very careful to make sure that she was the one who did it. Unspoken arrangements are probably best kept
minor, important, but minor. You know, balance that as you will. 00;07;41;18 - 00;08;04;45
Speaker 1 Unless, of course, there's a super powerful
character who's trying to trick them, in which case hopefully your party knows to be very
careful. And this can go both ways. Let's say that the party helps out an NPC
first. That NPC creature, whatever it is, will feel
beholden to them that they have to fulfill this balance. Even if the party insists We were just helping
you, you don't owe us anything, 00;08;04;45 - 00;08;33;19
Speaker 1 it's totally fine. It doesn't matter. The NPC wants to effectively pay them back. Maybe they have a powerful connection. They know someone who they can send a letter
of recommendation to about the party. Maybe they have a family heirloom or in a,
you know, not life threatening sort of situation they were saved from, a lesser trinket. Maybe they don't have anything to give and
they insist on following the party until they feel that the debt has been paid. 00;08;33;22 - 00;08;53;36
Speaker 1 No matter how that happens. It is also a classic move that the words thank
you are basically magical fodder for this kind of arrangement. Even if just a compliment was spoken, the
words thank you imply that you have given or done something and therefore something
must be given or done in return, again, even if it's just a compliment. 00;08;53;38 - 00;09;22;41
Speaker 1 My third idea is to twist their arms. I think this one can be abused if not done
right or done too much. But I also think it could be really fun if
you use it wisely. Put the party in a dangerous situation, or
maybe they'll put themselves in one or have an item that the party really needs that another
character or being has. In order to be rescued or receive aid or receive
the item that they were looking for, 00;09;22;59 - 00;09;48;06
Speaker 1 they have to make an agreement with the fey
who has it, that or kill them, which isn't always in their best interest. If you have a party like mine, in the case
of an evil hag, they're going to try to just kill the hag, which happens. But an evil creature could be trying to push
its own agenda, whereas a good NPC who has something they want or can help them may want
aid with their own noble quest. 00;09;48;18 - 00;10;16;47
Speaker 1 So even though they are a good character,
they're still in the feywild. They're not just- they're not going to do
something for free. Finally, if there's been a theft or a broken
bargain, what do you do? My advice is to curse them, not in like a
big way, but curse them. There are some creatures that if you break
an agreement with them, there may be preset consequences that just automatically go into
play. 00;10;17;01 - 00;10;40;37
Speaker 1 I was researching one creature that I'm going
to talk about in a later video who if a bond is broken, and they can only have one at time,
then as soon as it's broken, the other being automatically can pinpoint their location
and knows how or why it was broken. And assuming that the creature is feeling
pretty vengeful about the broken pact, it can be very dangerous for them to have the
other's location. 00;10;40;38 - 00;11;01;17
Speaker 1 If you need something more minor but still
inconvenient, I did find a list online, a hundred things so you can have your player
or PC roll a d100 and they're supposed to be fay deals, fey pacts on their own. But I think it works really well as consequences
for something being broken. I'll show you what I mean. 00;11;01;19 - 00;11;24;40
Speaker 1 And by the way, some of them are pretty brutal. So, you know, adjust as necessary. But let's say that you have a player who finds
a purple mushroom in a fey forest unlike any of the others around it. It has a cap that shines like moonlight and
it looks like it swirls like an enchanted pool. Your player plucks it, not realizing that
it belongs to a pixie. 00;11;24;52 - 00;11;45;24
Speaker 1 Maybe if you wanted this to be more fair,
you could have them roll a perception check or check their passive perception to see if
they notice a little pixie hole that someone lives in or signs of ownership elsewhere. But the pixie is furious upon finding that
it has been plucked. They won't even accept it back. They wanted it in the ground where it was
(growing). 00;11;45;24 - 00;12;11;49
Speaker 1 It was their prized mushroom. The player can't offer in return what the
pixie wants, except maybe if they're a druid, so they take on a curse. I'd like to roll three different options just
to see the kind of curse that a player might take on. So I'll be rolling a d100. 29. Sitting causes you physical pain. You can only stand up or lay down. 00;12;12;18 - 00;12;34;48
Speaker 1 I like that one. It's also safe to assume that they can't just
break this curse. I guess depending on what exactly they've
done, you can decide how that would work. But I like the idea that it could only be
broken with something as powerful as a wish spell because this was intended by the nature
of the feywild. Maybe if the curse was placed on the player
by the pixie itself and not by the nature and magic of the realm, 00;12;35;19 - 00;12;54;20
Speaker 1 then it could be broken with a curse breaking
spell. I don't know. What do you think of that? Let's roll again. 60 on the dot. Oh, no. Your childhood pet always appears to you to
be in the room, but no one else can see it. That could be really great at first. Or really sad. I guess that depends on the player. 00;12;54;24 - 00;13;21;05
Speaker 1 Oh man like that could be a great comfort
or torture. 2. Okay! The character has forgotten their own name. No one will remember them, even close friends
and family. See, that's just so classic. Everyone's afraid of losing their name in
the feywild, and that would make it come to fruition. One more. 30. I'm getting a lot of them, like, right on
the line. 00;13;21;17 - 00;13;41;46
Speaker 1 Your sneezes produce sparkling dust. I love it. You can definitely play with that. And by the way, I did put the link to this
website in the description. I think it's a great resource and I am definitely
going to be using it for our games from now on. What have I missed? What are other ways that you can get your
players to make fey pacts, fey deals? 00;13;42;02 - 00;14;01;11
Speaker 1 And again, what kind of stories do you have
where something's gone wrong or incredibly right? A quick plug before we close out. I do have a discord and a patreon. The discord is just for anyone who wants to
talk more about the feywild or D and D. It's a very small community, but the link to that
is in the description. 00;14;01;13 - 00;14;21;30
Speaker 1 I also have a Patreon with nothing on it yet,
but I am working on that. In the meantime, if you want to support me
while I work on stuff or you just like my videos and want to give me some sweet sweet
money, the link to that is there as well. Patreon, you can also follow someone for free. So when I start actually posting stuff, you
can then decide if the content is worth your money or not. 00;14;22;10 - 00;14;30;55
Speaker 1 So there's that. That is all I have for you today. Like the video if you liked it. Subscribe if you want more feywild content
and I will see you next time.
