In our last game session I was DM for, the party captured a corrupted Pixie who was creating problems. One of the PCs is a Fey Wanderer Ranger who was raised/spent a great deal of time in the Feywild.  When she was questioning the pixie, she said something along the lines of "i know she can't be lying to me, because she is fey."   This surprised me, as I was not familiar with that lore; I opted not to pause the game to inquire and also decided to keep the pixie's answers truthful (from her perspective/belief), but I asked the player about it later.  He* indicated that it was general folklore understanding, and not necessarily D&D specific.  He was apologetic--which wasn't necessary, I wasn't upset, just surprised.  But since I plan to incorporate more fey and Feywild elements going forward, I need to sort this out for my world. 

My world-building to this point has been almost non-existent.  It's a game I started several years ago with my then teen children when I was new as a DM, and began with a short series of adventures purchased from DMsguild, until they took the adventure completely off the rails and I was "forced" to homebrew for a bit, and then began incorporating/adapting one-shots to create adventures that connected with their back stories.  Even after we added a couple more players to the group, I didn't do any real world-buidling other than what was strictly necessary for the adventure at hand.  I don't have either the time or the inclination to do a large amount of world building, but I do need to sort out more about the fey wild.

So that leads me to two questions:

-What can you tell me about fey not being able to lie

-What are some good resources for learning about the feywild and how it "works"? 

*For clarity's sake, the character is female, the player is male.

Quote from ArwensDaughter >>

In our last game session I was DM for, the party captured a corrupted Pixie who was creating problems. One of the PCs is a Fey Wanderer Ranger who was raised/spent a great deal of time in the Feywild.  When she was questioning the pixie, she said something along the lines of "i know she can't be lying to me, because she is fey."   This surprised me, as I was not familiar with that lore; I opted not to pause the game to inquire and also decided to keep the pixie's answers truthful (from her perspective/belief), but I asked the player about it later.  He* indicated that it was general folklore understanding, and not necessarily D&D specific.  He was apologetic--which wasn't necessary, I wasn't upset, just surprised.  But since I plan to incorporate more fey and Feywild elements going forward, I need to sort this out for my world. 

My world-building to this point has been almost non-existent.  It's a game I started several years ago with my then teen children when I was new as a DM, and began with a short series of adventures purchased from DMsguild, until they took the adventure completely off the rails and I was "forced" to homebrew for a bit, and then began incorporating/adapting one-shots to create adventures that connected with their back stories.  Even after we added a couple more players to the group, I didn't do any real world-buidling other than what was strictly necessary for the adventure at hand.  I don't have either the time or the inclination to do a large amount of world building, but I do need to sort out more about the fey wild.

So that leads me to two questions:

-What can you tell me about fey not being able to lie

-What are some good resources for learning about the feywild and how it "works"? 

 

*For clarity's sake, the character is female, the player is male.

 Fey have some rules like iron burning them, not being able to lie and having strict rules of hospitality. I would recommend Shakespeare’s play a midsummer nights dream for some basic fey stuff but that all I’ve got

The Dresden Files books by Jim Butcher have a lot of Fey lore in them. Start with Summer Knight. If you just want to look up Fey lore. Other than that, Irish folk lore is always good but you can draw from Welsh and Scottish lore as well. Even your basic fairy tales. 

I tend to use the traits  from the Dresden books as I really like them and they are based on a lot of folk lore. The Fey hate iron. It burns them, can kill them or can keep them from doing magic. They can't outright lie but they can dance around the truth which makes them entertaining. They have strict rules of hospitality. They never give anything away for free but they never take anything for free either. There is always a bargain involved. 

Thanks; I should have specified, I'm looking particularly for fey/feywild resources in 5e, or at least in D&D.  I've read the brief writeup in the DMG, and looked at the comments on the Eladrin and the feywild in Mordekaninen's.  I've guessing beyond that, for 5e specific resources I have to go third party?

Kinda ... I mean there's some Feywild player species in UA form, so there may be a official Feywild supplement in the works, but that could be anywhere from one to three years from now.

There's a lot of YouTube out there who get into Feywild lore, which doesn't have to change from edition to edition, and that's free.  A lot of them tend to really praise the 4th Edition supplement Heroes of the Feywild which is available both in pdf and as softcover book on DMsGuild.  It's on my "sooner than later" list to read based on the amount of praise I've seen it get (and I'm not a big fan of going back to old editions for lore if I think my brain and open source wikis can figure it out fine, so for me this book sounds like an exceptional book).  

At the end of the day though, how the Feywild works in your game is up to you.  My big take, or more a creative extrapolation on the Feywild is the key that it's mutable.  Time and memory get messy for folks passing back and forth from the Feywild to the Prime material for a reason (I also treat the UA Fairy "pass through anything that can allow a one inch gap" no so much some sort of misty/elastic/shrinking property of the fairy, but the fairy's understanding and agency in what we call space is just fundamentally different to those in the prime material that it literally doesn't make sense (and adds a creep factor to fairies).  What I'm saying to your particular question is maybe lying is impossible in the Feywild, or maybe it is.  "Truth" in a place like the Feywild is probably very different than it works in the Prime Material.  So in that sense, maybe Fey can't lie ... sometimes.  Yes there's a corollary relationship between prime material and Feywild, but it's a kaleidoscopic one.

The Feywild, for me, overwhelms the senses of mortals from the prime material plane.  That includes the "sensory" senses but also their senses of logic and reason, humor, propriety, etc.  DMs should feel encourage to drive their PCs up the wall, sometimes literally (and maybe find Humpty Dumpty).  Some players could find what they think is "arbitrary" or "whimsical" and "inconsistent" rulings in game irritating so you might have to go gentle if you don't have a sort of ringmaster relationship with your players, or players willing to let you go there.  On the other hand, you could still amp up the chaos while providing "method to your madness".  Whatever Lewis Carroll's real name was when he wasn't writing The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, he was also a mathematician.  There's a sort of play with structure in sense there that I port over whenever my players cross over.  A lot of this inspiration I'm throwing at you is derived from some of the vids and blogs that praise Heroes of the Feywild.  It may not actually "go there" but I think it may give you some ground to do so if you're looking for grounding.  

Thanks.  That's helpful.  I knew about the UA; I'm concerned whatever it will be published in will come out a bit late for my needs.  Possibly just after I need to have this figured out.  Sigh.  The upside is that it forces me to flex my creative muscles and be confident enough to make my own decisions about the feywild. 

Yeah, I'm interested in the possibility of those UA landing in a Feywild book, but I'm figuring it'll be at least a year or more before I see it.  So that 4e book I linked on DMs guild might be worth a look, I doubt 5e will make a major radical departure.  If you check out the book in the DMsGuild store, it gives you a table of contents and a couple of pages of sample to see if it speaks to what you'd want from a Feywild book.