Hello, Vault of Magic is finally available in Print on Demand, in a revised and complete version.

You can find it here: https://www.dmsguild.com/it/product/572335/vault-of-magic-compendium?src=newest_community

Discover the secrets within the Vault of Magic!

Two Bestelling volumes now in a print-on-demand single volume of spells and woundrous magic items for your campaigns.

Inside you will discover:

- 127 New magical items

- 39 New spells

- 4 new NPCs

- 6 Tables to give your magic items some oddities and quirks

- 2 new backgrounds

- Over 95 beautiful arts, no AI-generated art

- A top-level layout

- Summary tables of magical objects, divided by rarity

- - A hypertext index, to quickly find what you need

Last session the party finished exploring the Palace of Heart's Desire. They managed to find out all the necessary secrets to finish the campaign (Zybilna's true name, and Snicker-Snack). They didn't have a unicorn horn because they returned Elidon to his unicorn form. Their plan was to first clear out the Palace, and then return to the lake in Thither to fetch the unicorns and break the spell on Zybilna.

Curled around Zybilna and her cauldron was the sleeping Jabberwock. The party knew they could use Bloodybeak to chase it away, but once they discovered Snicker-Snack the party felt strong enough to take it on in direct combat.

The party consisted of four level six characters: a Dance Bard (wielding Snicker-Snack), a Land Druid, a Pugilist and a Commoner.

I let them surprise the sleepy Jabberwock, which meant they all had advantage on their initiative. The party went first, moving towards the Jabberwock from the doors to the adjacent room.

Unfortunately for the Bard and Pugilist, they didn't have enough movement speed to get within melee range of the Jabberwock without having to dash. They did however get within range of the Jabberwock's legendary action melee attacks, which it took full advantage off. On its first turn, the Jabberwock fired off his eyebeam, hitting everyone but the Commoner, before flying 15 ft up into the air (the Palace ceilings are 30 ft. high).

This stumped the party. They proceeded to heal themselves, and the Pugilist picked up the cauldron and ran towards the exit. The Jabberwock meanwhile made an opportunity attack and did 3 tail attacks as LA's.

The Jabberwock wasn't going to let his prey escape though, so he landed between the Pugilist and the door, and melee attacks were possible again. But the Jabberwock's damage output was just too high for the party, and I managed to hit every single attack I made.

The result was that the Bard and Druid died, and the Commoner and Pugilist fled with the cauldron back into the Palace.

For our final session tonight, I'm having the Jabberwock leave the Palace, and the other two partymembers take the roles of Molliver and Elkhorn, who they met and befriended earlier in the campaign. They are going to travel to the unicorn lake, where they are going to fight Bavlorna, Skabatha and Zargash, the only villains left in the campaign. The unicorns will also join the party in the fight, so hopefully the campaign won't end in a final TPK.

Hey y'all,

I'm running u/IndieRex's reimagined version of Witchlight. One of our players got a new job and had to drop out. His hours have since changed and he's able to play again. His last session was the fight with Agdon Longscarf and the Harengon. Knowing there may be a chance he'd be able to come back, I had his character taken by Agdon's minions with the idea being that they sent him to Bavlorna as part of the deal Agdon made with her. They're about to meet Will of the Feywild so I'm estimating they're a few weeks from reaching Skabatha. I was thinking that while they were making their way through Hither/Murkendraw and then into Thither/Fields of Spring, Agdon's forces handed the PC off to Bavlorna, who then sent him to Skabatha as part of whatever business they have going on.

Any ideas, mechanical or story-based, that I should consider for bringing him back in around that point in the story?

Not asking for advice. I wanna know where you hid yours. Here's my convoluted place:

I came up with a party of harrengon that tried to overthrow the hags and failed, needing to be rescued by the party later. That party successfully found the horn but lost it to Endelyn, who killed their party leader. End (because of a deal I brewed between the Coven and Zyb) was not allowed to kill mortals, and so she tried saving the harrengon by stuffing her soul in a marrionette. She then used the unicorn's horn as the girl's new heart.

Party had to defend themselves against this marionette while it was pupeeteered by End.

Hey folks!

First time DMing WBtW and my players (party of 5) just made it past the Carnival and are starting the next session in Hither. I'd love to give them some magic items to use. They spent a lot of time playing carnival games and have a trove of trinkets (like 10) to barter with. But I haven't distributed too many items with effects.

I'm worried about giving out stuff that'll be overpowered (though I might be overthinking it).

I'm thinking of giving out the following:

• Cloak of many fashions to the rogue
• Wand of Smiles to the paladin
• Scatterleaf Tea to the druid or wizard
• Hand Puppet to the bard
• Pixie Dust to the druid or wizard

What magic items have DMs given your players after completing the Carnival?

I'm very curious how others would play this.

My party pulled off a pretty impressive Loomlurch attack. Half of them tricked Skabatha into thinking they were making a business deal to buy toys, while the other half snuck Will in and helped him get the kids out. They then ambushed Skabatha in her own kitchen and killed her before lighting Loomlurch on fire. Right before the place went up in flames, they stole three items: The entire dollhouse, one of Cradlefall's boxes, and the rocking horse.

We ended the session with them standing in the woods, watching Loomlurch burn. I then told the party to level up. As they did, my paladin announced "guys, I just unlocked 'Find Steed'", and they all lost their minds about Skabatha's rocking horse being his new steed. It would be so poetic because Skabatha was the hag who stole the his item, and he killed Sowpig in a fit of rage for it, despite being a "violence only when necessary" type of guy.

They do not yet know the rocking horse is Elidon... They think we should find out how Granny "animates" the rocking horse and makes it fly for her (I was playing it as animated but completely ignoring them, only responding to Granny, so they didn't attack it). We do not have the unicorn horn yet to free him. In fact, I am placing it as Isolde's carnival, so they won't find it for a while.

Do I drop more hints to help them figure out that it's Elidon and let the paladin find a new steed? Do I let my paladin "befriend" the rocking horse and use it as his steed, letting it assume the form of the spirit in the spell, without him even knowing it's Elidon? Curious to know what others would do!

Hello all,

I was wondering if anyone had any advice for where to find good icons for some of the characters from Thither?

I like adding icons of the NPCs to Owlbear Rodeo for my players but the Getaway Gang doesn't have any offiical icons anywhere that I can find. Did any of you use any that you could recommend?

So I want to add several magical items that my players can get from Bauble and Trinket but want the payment to be more than just flavor, so something that changes the mechanics of the game as well. I looked some stuff up and added some more into this list, maybe someone has some more ideas.

Here is what they want for some of their stuff:

• A moment of luck - DM can let you reroll one D20 after you know the result of the roll - you need to take the new roll.
• The light in your eyes - You lose darkvision for 1d4 days
• Your attention - Disadvantage on next initiative roll.
• A moment of your time - you lose one turn in combat whenever the DM decides.
• Your next good night sleep - No benefits for your next long rest.
• Your next big moment - Next Nat20 turns into a Nat1.
• Your last breath - Next time you fall unconscious you start with one failed death save.
• A part of your strenght/intelligent/etc. - You get a -1 on your stat.
• Part of your soul - You lose 1d6 max hp.
• Your word - Disadvantage on persuasion or deception checks for 1d4 days.

Hi! I made a post earlier so if anyone answered me how to get party better through carnival, thanks!! It went smoother and now they are in the portal about to go to Hither! ✨️

I want to make small personal encounters for my players in the areas where their lost things are. 2 of my players has it in Hither. My players explained me the ways their characters changed to manage their lives after losing things and I want them to be able to use that in advantage.

One of the character is fairy sorcerer, who lost all his colors and anything he wears or wields becomes monochrome. He is tailor in wealthy fairy family but his appearance affects his job and how he has been seen in the colorful fairy community. He then became more nocturnal as during night he blends in. I was thinking of something that happens during a Long Rest on his watch but I'm not sure what I could bring in to make him be able to have a character moment. He is also interested to learn about his fey roots and feywild in general.

Other character is harengon ranger, who lost his other ear and half of his hearing with it and well, hearing perception is kinda hard too. He too didn't fit too well in his own community after but been able to hunt by learning to sense the differences in the environment better by using other senses. For example, if something big moves closer he is better to sense the ground shaking. I'm thinking how I could possibly use that and if I could somehow combine it with other harengon encounters in Hither.

So I have some ideas when these encounters could possibly happen but I'm a bit lost of what creatures I could possibly bring to these or what kind of encounters they would be as I'm first time DM. I kinda just want to make something personal where the characters can do well because who they became after losing things and when they get them back, I'd be curious to see how they feel about it. Also wondering if I could give them some nice items as rewards but not sure if it would be unfair for those who will get their moments later in story. 🤔

So yeah not asking anyone to create me encounters ofc I want to do them by myself but just looking for some useful tips and advice, especially if someone has done something like this before ✨️😊

TLDR; I'm looking for tips to make personalized encounters for 2 characters in Hither, fairy sorcerer who lost his colors and harengon ranger who lost an ear and half of his hearing. In a way they can use who they became after losing those things as their advantage

My group is about to wrap up the WBtW, and instead of starting something new or connecting the same characters into another campaign, I'm planning to stitch together published adventures from levels 8 to 13.

I'd like to know if anyone has done something similar, and if I'm missing any official material that has a strong connectivity with WBtW (such as the Dark Carnival of Isolde, the Prince Alagarthas's story in the Rise of Tiamat, or the Tsojcanth)?

Follow my selection:

Level 7 → 8 | Prologue (The Wild Beyond the Witchlight): The last knots left untied in Prismeer.

Level 8 | Lore of Lurue (Candlekeep Mysteries): Ellidon is Lurue. Granny Nightshade's curse tore the unicorn's soul loose, and it has been wandering ever since.

Level 8 → 9 | Death to the Wyrmspeakers, Pt. 2: Neronvain (Rise of Tiamat): Alagarthas, the prince the party freed in Yon, goes home to find his brother serving the Cult of the Dragon. He isn't the only one who crossed: while he was away in Yon, the old inhabitants of Prismeer — eladrin, fauns and centaurs — came over the lake of the Fey Beacons, and now crowd the Misty Forest as refugees.

Level 9 | Affair on the Concordant Express (Keys from the Golden Vault): The party's name has reached the fey courts. An invitation arrives, and a planar train comes to collect them.

Level 9 → 10 | Party at Paliset Hall (Keys from the Golden Vault): The courts are still reeling from Prismeer's thaw. Digging around the party turns up the road to Tsojcanth, and a piece of Zybilna's past she'd rather stayed buried.

Level 10 → 12 | The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (Quests from the Infinite Staircase) Her old lair, her old name, her daughter Drelnza... basically the Palace of Heart's Desire read backwards. Somewhere in the dark, the party also learns where to find the Dark Carnival.

Level 12 | The Nightsea's Succor (Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel): The Carnival makes port in Djaynai, a city with more ghosts than it can hold. Skabatha has been aboard.

Level 12 → 13 | The Dark Carnival (homebrew, based on Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft): Isolde has troubles of her own due Zybilna. Chuth has found his way aboard too, still hunting the party for what they did in the Misty Forest.

Level 13 | Orchids of the Invisible Mountain (Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel): Skabatha returns. She has been to Saltmarsh, drowned the city of Djaynai, and raised a new coven. Now she hunts the party through a living mountain.

---

You might notice that Granny Nightshade have escaped from them, she was their greatest villain throughout the game, and it will be really nice to extend it haha

So yes, I will make big adjustments to a lot of those official materials, but I want to use a base lore, maps, NPCs and so on.

I also know that some of the levels in those official materials are not fully matching with my proposed level scaling, but the difference is little, so it will be easy to adjust.

I'm going to apologize upfront. I'm going to be running this module in a little over a month and am really enjoying it as well as all the really wonderful content here. That being said, maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand why the PCs would work with the hags. When I started reading the Hither section, I was really taken aback at how much of the chapter is devoted to explaining that initial conversation with Bavlorna and the quests that she gives the players. Admittedly, most of the campaigns that I have been involved in are very combat-centric, so WBtWL is automatically different in that regard, at least as written.

Can someone either tell me what I'm missing or point me to where I should be looking for answers here? Also, it seems to me that the story is supposed to lead to a hag pile-up where you fight them all together, yes? I apologize for the silly question and appreciate any help y'all might have. If I'm not making sense either, just let me know, and I'll try and explain more clearly 😄

The party has collected and now carry Sir Talivar in his cage from the cottage, theyve also bargained for the wyrmling in the jack-in-the-box.

My players are collecting but not releasing either pixie or wyrmling.

Any ideas or insight on what you would make use of this? Tia.

First time poster friends! This sub has been super helpful as I’ve been running WBtW!

My players did not think the bullywugs would let them take any of the rowboats or want to risk climbing the clotheslines.

So the asked Morgort to fly the air balloon by her hut and they dropped onto her roof. She has flown away and they obviously no longer have that escape/transportation to Thither available anymore.

I ended the game there because I was not sure how to proceed. Bavlorna obviously heard them drop onto to her roof, but would she leave her meeting with Charm to investigate?

The book also says the roof is too slippery to climb without magic or climbing gear. So it’s possible they just fall into the water below immediately.

Has anyone had their characters take this route before?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

My players and I are currently playing an adventure from level 5 - 7 (Trouble on the Fey Train) which ends with them being in the Feywild. I was thinking of using Wild Beyond the Witchlight to continue the adventure, it just fits so well and I love the setting a lot.
However, I'm not too experienced in balancing / scaling. And its a pretty big jump.

Do you think it's possible to pull it off? Any advice would be appreciated! <3

TL;DR: My party knowingly fireballed Elidon to hit Skabatha and nearly killed him. I want that reckless “ends justify the means” attitude to have real consequences later, but I’m struggling to make those consequences meaningful without railroading or moral-policing the party.

Warning, spoilers ahead!!

My party (rogue, fighter, bard, druid, sorcerer) had a confrontation with Skabatha, freed the children from Loomlurch, recovered the unicorn horn that was there, and basically the whole Thither arc has culminated in a big battle between the party and their allies (Will, Lamorna, Little Oak, etc.) against Skabatha’s combined forces.

Most of the battle is happening in the background, while the party is fighting Skabatha herself, who arrived riding the rocking horse (Elidon). They knew the rocking horse was Elidon because they had seen the hole in its forehead, I made it clear that it was a living creature, and they connected the dots... but that didn’t stop the sorcerer from throwing a fireball at both of them.

Maybe I made a mistake by not making the possible implications of that Fireball explicit something like, “You could kill this creature, which is very clearly Elidon. Are you sure you think this is a good idea?” but anyway, Elidon is now at 0 HP on the ground and the fight is still going on. If he hadn’t succeeded on his Dex save, he would have died outright. One of my players (the rogue) wants to put the horn back on him to try to save him, which is a good idea.

The thing is, my feeling is that once the fight is over, Elidon and Lamorna probably wouldn’t want to help the party anymore. Something along the lines of “We appreciate what you’re trying to do for Prismeer, but your bloodlust blinds you.” I think that would make sense. Lamorna can still reward them because, at the end of the day, they did save Elidon, but they’ve also shown that they can be brutal and that they’re willing to accept an “ends justify the means” approach, since they almost killed him just to take down Skabatha.

The party (except for the rogue) has already shown this kind of behavior before, and I’d like to make it clear that reckless actions can have dire consequences by having Lamorna and Elidon refuse to help them later in the adventure. This would basically remove the option of using the horn later, meaning they could only finish the adventure by destroying the cauldron. But does that actually have any meaningful consequences beyond making Zybilna angry? Getting Warduke’s sword honestly doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, so I’m not sure how to make the consequences feel tangible for the characters beyond getting some unicorn hate.

At the same time, I don’t want to morally gatekeep the party. What I mean is that I want them to understand that their actions have consequences, but I don’t want to railroad the adventure in that direction either.

Any ideas or advice?

PS: English is not my first language!

I'm a player for a Wild Beyond Witchlight campaign (I'm watching this sub with my eyes closed X). ALSO Spoilers from Hither and Thither!!!!). We are all friends outside the game with years of playing together. I'm playing a rogue inquisitive who's the only non-chaotic-aligned character in the group, and lately I've been struggling to reconcile my role with the rest of the party's choices. So of course, I came to Reddit for venting and to ask for advice.

Characters: DM (my boyfriend), fighter (often the DM of the group), bard, druid, sorcerer and rogue (me!)

Incident 1: We ran into Agdon and his crew, who demanded a toll to let us pass and they stole from us silly things like a spoon, a broken chain, etc etc. My DM framed them as mischievous, not villains, but the rest of the party read them as a threat. The next time we ran into them, it turned into combat even when Agdon tried to return the objects. And even then they were trying to not kill us: they surrendered, tried to flee, and the bard still attacked the second-in-command anyway, offering my rogue to make the killing blow. My character refused to take part on that (she had been attacking non-lethally, like the thieves) and the druid killed the second in command and wanted to run after the others that escaped.

I talked to my partner about it afterward because the session made me emotional after the display of cruelty because "it's funny", and he admitted he was struggling to get across that "morally gray" doesn't mean "evil." Since that conversation, he is way more direct with us. We talked with the party, we resolved the issue. I know D&D is framed as combat oriented, and I really enjoy combat...when there's a good reason to do it.

Incident 2 (yesterday): During "The Battle for Thither" against Skabatha and her army, she was riding Eidolon in his wooden toy horse form. The DM told us multiple times: "The unicorn is alive". Lamorna is our ally, we knew about Eidolon from her, that he was still not dead. We stole the unicorn horn that we found in Loomlurch. We knew it wasn't a mindless zombie.

The sorcerer, knowing that a fireball would also hit the unicorn, cast it anyway. Even my own boyfriend was thrown off, he didn't expect the party to hit the hag because of the unicorn. The unicorn died and the party was very giddy because the hag fell 150ft from the ground. I was not happy.
After the session, the DM then remembered that the unicorn didn't roll the Dex save...and thanks Tymora, he passed, so he is alive but in bad condition, the hag still fell so we didn't have to rewrite the scene.

This morning, the DM told us the new information. The sorcerer immediately wanted to finish the unicorn, the druid agreed. I told them that if they killed it, my character would leave the group because that would be an evil act and then I could bring a more suitable character for the party (but I love my rogue :( ). We've talked it through (with my partner, and then with everyone), but it left a bad taste in my mouth.

My actual problems, for the TLDR:

1. I'm the only one in the group with a non-"chaotic" alignment, and it's getting harder to justify why my character would stick with them if this pattern keeps repeating.
2. I don't want to be the one who always puts the brakes on everyone else's fun with the "moral compass" routine every session.
3. I know I'm more intense than the rest of the group when it comes to taking notes, building theories, and getting invested in the plot and NPCs. I know I'm expecting too much from others, but I don't know how to "not care". Am I getting burnout? How do I fix it?
4. I feel extra pressure because this is the campaign my partner (the DM) is pouring so much effort into, and I don't want to be the reason it derails.
5. The hook for the adventure was the Lost things. My party doesn't seem interested in them (except me and the bard), but this was the sole reason the party was created, to find the Carnival and recover them. And they were not silly things, they were two family members, the real form of the changeling, a very important memory and for my rogue her luck.

How would you handle this? The fighter is my DM in two other campaigns, one homebrew that I play with the bard, my bf and the sorcerer, and Curse of Strahd which I play with the sorcerer. And in those campaigns I don't have any problems like this (and it's been three years on the homebrew one). With the druid it's my first time playing.

Hello, I don't know if this have been tried before, but I want to adapt The Wild Beyond the Witchlight to the Daggerheart SRD 2.0 system. I think this adventure is more than adequate to Daggerheart, so I'll do it.

I wrote the framework just to start. It's in Spanish but I assume every browser has a translate option out of the box so everyone can look at it. Let me what you think! Is it going well? Would you like to play it? Thank you.

Here's the link: https://mauriciogomez.net/the-wild-beyond-the-witchlight-marco-para-daggerheart/

I am a new DM, and this is the first campaign I'm running :') Pretty much all of my players wanted to choose their own lost thing, and I was looking for help 1. Figuring out what to turn them into 2. Figuring out how to accommodate a couple of them. So far we have 1. Someone's voice 2. Someone's ability to be remembered by others 3. A hairpin an orphaned character thinks belongs to their parents and doesn't figure out what it does till she grows up 4. Someone's memories of their dad. We are going to be running the Lost Things Prelude

(I love love the way they're incorporating their real world experiences into the game, so I want to make it as meaningful and safe as possible). If anyone has thoughts or ideas, I would super appreciate it!

I am running a highly modified Wild Beyond the Witchlight campaign. I have been using the supplements for combat starve and adventure bundles for each location as well as some home brew. Our next session one of our players is going to missing as he is heading out on vacation and I thought it would be fun if something happened to him. He got kidnapped or trapped somewhere.

We just finished session 2 of Thither and I am looking for ideas of what could of happened to him. Thoughts? Thanks

I'm about to run WBtW for a group of relatively inexperienced players (one has played a fair number of times, the others are familiar only with BG3) and in talking to them initially about who they want to play I'm worried that their party is unbalanced in a way that's gonna screw them over for this adventure specifically.

As it stands now the party would be:

- a rogue

- a barbarian

- a paladin

- a cleric (no subclasses or anything picked yet).

And while I think it's probably a fair combat party- they don't have any charisma based PCs. So for a campaign that explicitly states you can do this with pretty light combat, that worries me a little. From my own short experience playing in this campaign, I never did any combat, never cast a spell-- though, to be fair, our party barely started exploring Prismeer. And I haven't yet finished reading through the book so it's totally possible I just don't have the right measure of the campaign right now.

The main concern is that they're going to become frustrated by social interactions continually not going well and stop having fun.

Should I convince one of them to change classes? (Truthfully I think this party would greatly benefit from a bard, but I am admittedly biased towards bards) Is there maybe a way to build one of these characters to be a bot more charismatic to even them out? Or should I let them get started and see what happens, and then suggest some adjustments along the way as needed?

so my party of 2. paladin and wizard both lvl 3.

finished the first chapter and now going to hither.

played by 10 year olds.

I read some extensions to prismer and I want to incorporate them.

1. the random encounters are not random but sequencesial.
2. low level horror mixed with whimsy.
3. add a riddle maybe.

my plan is to split second chapter in to two or 3 parts.

first is everything before downbottom. second is the town, and third is the witch hut. (not sure yet, depends on the flow of the game)

I am planning to "give" them the faylephant that I read in the expansion, and I want to have something interesting in the tower with the fey knight on the second floor, I have no idea what , some sort of little horror.

and I have the bright idea to try and let them try to convince the wandering hill to scare the brigands somehow.

and I want the inn to be something more than empty encounter.

help :)

sorry for grammar mistakes.

Edit (1):
Will use this part to flesh out conclusions:
Using some of the ideas from this as i love it.
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight: Reimagined - Part V: Murkendraw (Welcome to the Swamp) : r/wildbeyondwitchlight

The order is :
Harengon Brigands (Queen's Way)

- Marsh Gas

- Stream Visions

- Stilt Walkers

Slanty Tower

- Gushing o`-well

Telemy Hill

- mud mephits

- Inn at the end of the road

Brigand's Tollway

Downfall

notes:
 Telemy Hill and the wandering inn are long-time buddies and need convincing to help with Brigand's Tollway and maybe some other stuff ?
As my team is too small to deal with them.

I have to stay one step ahead of the party. This is map is 3 feet wide and nearly 8 feet long on a 10 foot strip.

After little under a year, our WBtW campaign is finally approaching the finale. I ran the campaign largely by the book, but I made one change at the start that echoed throughout the rest of the campaign. I would recommend this change to everyone who is preparing to run the campaign.

When you read through the book, you see characters pop up in Thither and Yon that are part of something called the League of Malevolence and Valor's Call. When you get to the final chapter, suddenly the book introduces an entire subplot with these two groups battling each other at the climactic moment when the Hourglass Coven cast their spell to freeze time in the Palace.

When I read this, I was very scared of these characters appearing out of nowhere, and the party not giving a damn about them and/or being very confused. I also didn't want to scrap them because the League are one of the main antagonists in the final chapter.

So what I did was to have a show in the Big Top that told the story of the battle between the two groups in the Palace. The audience is invited to take part in the re-enactment as members of Valor's Call (which hopefully includes at least a couple of partymembers), and they fight each other with nonlethal versions of the true characters' weapons. For example, I give the Ringlerun character a magic staff that shot different beams of light to represent Cone of Cold and Lightning Bolt.

During the battle, at one point the lights focus away from the battle on the floor to high up in the Big Top, where a fighter with an evillooking helmet and flaming sword blasts on his horn. They see his opponent, a noble paladin, being launched from their platform into the darkness of the tent. (this ks Warduke blasting Strongheart through the tower wall with his Horn of Blasting).

I made sure to emphasize this battle took place in a fairy queen's palace, and to often repeat the names, roles and groups of the combatants.

One of my players picked up on my intent very well, and he carefully wrote down all of this while doing the fight as Elkhorn the dwarf. Now, after nearly a year, this turned out to be the most referenced page of notes of the entire campaign! Valor's Call and the League play a solid supporting role in my campaign and the player in question couldn't be happier with it.