The Wild Beyond the Witchlight: Milestones

I’m excited to start trying out the monsters from The Wild Beyond the Witchlight (WBW), the latest D&D 5e, in the Dungeonsports Coliseum. I’m really excited to field the Jabberwocky. That said, I’m disappointed that there aren’t any fey titans. We are desperately in need of very large fey siege monsters in the arena. That’s something I’ll have to start work on soon…

But back to the book at hand. I’ve had a chance to look through the the adventure a little bit now, and I’m liking what I’m seeing. The first thing I noticed was the implementation of milestone leveling. The PCs don’t gain experience basd upon the standard XP grants per encounter, but instead level when they achieve certain goals in the story. In WBW, the primary antagonists are a coven of hags and all of the milestones are tied to searching for and encountering the hags, or putting a stop to their villainy.

I’ve long preferred leveling by milestone. In contrast to WBW, I usually use arbitrary milestones. These milestones are typically encounters or events that come at the end of a session of play. In my experience, players like to have a little “me-time” to consider their options, especially at higher levels. I usually plan something big to happen along with the milestone, but I’m not sure I’ve ever made the milestones really feel as important as they are.

The Lesson of Wild Beyond the Witchlight

So, I’m going to give it a try. I’ll take the time in my planning to make sure that the game sessions during which a milestone falls have events that feel worthy of the changes that the characters undergo as a result. I’m also going to work on selling that drama, even if it comes before the end of the session.